Hardware

I put off some hardware purchases at the end of the year because HDD prices spiked due to shortages caused by flooding in Asia. Have manufactures been able to ramp up production to meed demand yet, or are supply shortages still an issue?

I have a trip coming up next week and I'll be taking my laptop along. I'll be analyzing data from racebike onboard data recorders between track sessions, so about every 20-30 mins for a couple of days I'll have to grab the data and help figure out what changes to make to the bike. Cool, eh!?

The new "Ivy Bridge" Intel Core processors are being released, and I'm a little surprised at all the attention it is getting. I mean, yeah, sure, I suppose it is of interest whenever Intel releases a new processor. But isn't Ivy Bridge more or less an incremental evolution of Intel's existing chips?

I have to purchase about a dozen new laptops for office workstations. These are intended to be pretty light use machines, with the majority of their time spent either doing research online or used for word processing. Obviously, this doesn't require the most powerful (and expensive) machines.

The Raspberry Pi has generated a lot of excitement, which I suppose is understandable in light of the fact you can buy a new computer for $35. But as one would expect at that price, it isn't exactly a new Mac. What can you actually do with the thing?

I may be reading too much into this, but Netflix isn't going to release an app for the Blackberry, which seems to be suggest a company that has spent much more time than I have analyzing RIM has a dark view of the company's future.

I was looking though a magazine I picked up at CES, and saw an ad for 3M privacy screen protectors for tablets, smartphones and laptops. I missed the booth where they had them, so I didn't get a chance to see them in person. Maybe I'm a little paranoid about it, but I've always been uncomfortable using my laptop in public.

MRAM has just started popping up on the radar. MRAM (magnetoresistive random access memory) is fast and non-volitile, and is already used in Airbus flight control computers and in race cars The downside is that it is expensive, so few applications make sense at this point, except those where non-volatility is of paramount importance.

How do I format an external drive so it's compatible with my Mac?

Netbooks seem to me to be at the point where they will either disappear, or alternatively surge in prominence thanks to the rise of cloud computing. Sure Dell is getting out of the netbook business, but Asus is jumping in. So who is right? Are netbooks set to be a thing of the past or the next big thing (again)?

I have an external blu-ray drive,how to watch Blu-Ray films on Mac

I do a lot of work from my home during weekends and evenings, and my wife decided to encourage me to spend more even time at my home office PC by getting me Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for Christmas.  Maybe I should actually be thinking that she just wants me out of her hair when I am home!