From the category archives:

Hardware

Kindle conversion

May 18, 2012

Q: I have an Amazon Kindle and have found it great for reading eBooks from the Amazon store. Recently, however, I downloaded a book from Lulu.com in PDF format – the Kindle’s spec says it reads PDFs. But when I loaded the file onto the [...]

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Memory lane

March 14, 2012

System: Dell Inspiron 1525, 2GB RAM Q:I want to add some RAM to my current laptop to boost its performance. However, I don’t know how to do it, and when I went to a computer shop, they want to charge me AU$ 20.00 just for the labour [...]

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Go slow

March 6, 2012

System: Pentium D 3.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, Windows XP Professional Q: My computer runs very slowly even after deleting all of the partitions on hard drive and doing a clean install so that only Windows is running. All the solutions I’ve found indicate this is a [...]

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CPU cycle

February 7, 2012

System: Acer Aspire M1640, Intel Core Duo E4700 2.6GHz, 2 GB RAM, Windows Vista Home Premium Q: I have noticed in Windows Task Manager that the CPU seems to regularly cycle from 100% down to about 50% and I wondered whether I might need to [...]

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Boot sequence

February 1, 2012

Q: I have made a DVD by copying the Ultimate Boot CD. But to be able to test it my Windows XP Professional machine needs to start up from DVD. When I use F8 at startup so I can alter the BIOS, I can’t get [...]

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Wireless printing

January 23, 2012

Q: My daughter who is disabled spends a lot of time in her bedroom and when able uses a desktop Vista PC, however the amount of disability paraphernalia has left no room for a printer. There is an HP 2575 printer downstairs connected to an [...]

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No charge

January 19, 2012

System: Acer Aspire 7730 Q: My laptop is around two years old and has been intermittently temperamental for a while. Just recently it won’t charge and won’t boot up even when plugged into the mains. Is there anything that can be done or is this [...]

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Extra! Extra!

January 16, 2012

System: Acer Aspire M1610 Q: I have been fortunate enough to be given a computer, but I don’t have any other equipment at present. Apart from a monitor, mouse and keyboard what other equipment do I need, eg printer, cables, leads, etc? Could you please [...]

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Digital switch

January 3, 2012

Q: Where I am located in the UK, we are now faced with the forthcoming digital TV switchover. No problem is expected with my TV’s as they are already digital, or, for the ones that are not; include set top boxes to convert them. The [...]

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Unreadable discs

December 23, 2011

Q: Being a long time reader of PCU I have a question about my CD R/RW drive, a CyberDrive Cw088D. Over the last month are so I have been experiencing a problem where I cannot burn discs or read ones which I have burned from time to [...]

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