When working though, our electronics should be always be kept far away from liquids, but with Logitech’s keyboard all your worries of spillage can be put to rest with their K310 washable keyboard.

For those who think it is essential to have a cup of café, water or any other beverage next to you as you work, this should be the perfect item. In fact this durable little accessory is able to withstand quite a beating.

The K310 can be submerged up to about 27cm of water and have drainage holes for faster drying. It is also able to stand water over 50°C. As for those who are worried that the lettering on the keys will fade, fear not as they are laser printed and UV coated to last repeated washings. It should be noted that the USB cable attached should not be made wet, so this is definitely not dishwasher safe.

This nifty keyboard is now available in the US for US$40 and will soon hit the European continent in the beginning of next month.

I definitely needed this when I spilt coke all over my desktop keyboard!

The Samsung NC215S has a battery life of 14.5 hours and solar panels cover almost the entirety of the lid. The netbook runs on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom dual-core processor, coupled with a Intel GMA 3510 graphics chipset.It has a memory capacity 250GB of storage and 1GB of RAM, and weighs in at a little over 1 Kg.

The company says that for every two hours of charging in the sunlight, you get up to one extra hour of work on the netbook. It automatically charges while sitting in the sunlight and the battery is designed to withstand 1000 charge cycles over a 3 year period.

The netbook is also able to charge portable devices that we all love and carry around with us, even if the computer is in sleep mode or turned off. If the battery is discharged, the devices can carry on charging with solar energy. The display is coated to make it anti-reflective,  so you can still see the screen, even under direct light. Definitely a plus considering that you are going to be sitting near or under direct light in order to charge this solar device.

The Samsung NC215S is slated for release in the US in July for an estimated US$399 and is also hitting Russian in August.

Personally, I’m still on the fence about solar-powered laptops. Yes, it is the greener choice, but I just don’t think I want to sit under the hot sun for such long hours. Sure, I could just leave it under some sun and come back after it’s charged, but wouldn’t that just cut down productivity? What do you think?

In vein with solar-powered products that help make our world a greener place, here’s an interesting concept from Industrial Designer Andrea Ponti and his concept for the Luce Solar Panel Powered PC.

Sure, there are already some products out there that help prolong battery life for your laptop, but surely there has not been any single laptop that has built-in solar panels.

The computer itself is designed with two solar panels, one at the back of the monitor, and another behind the keyboard. The panels should be able to power the computer continuously, but so far, it has not been successfully tested. Anyone who has worked with a laptop outdoors knows that you can’t really see your monitor unless it’s cranked up to the brightest screen setting, so using it under the sun might actually use up more battery power. Maybe an e-ink display might work to solve this problem, but the designer utilises a cordless design, so when the sun goes down, it will probably mean work time is over very quickly.

The Luce, meaning Light in Italian is made from a clear polycarbonate and weighs about four pounds. It was shortlisted in Fujitsu’s 2011 design competition, but it was not made clear if Fujitsu will actually take the design and make it into a real product.

Personally, I think the Luce looks great, but having a cordless design might not work so well in the long run, because even with a fully charged battery, you can only use the laptop for a few hours at most.

This very cube is a computer. It’s made by the company Xi3 and within the aluminium case, there are three separate boards – one holds the AMD Athlon 64 processor and 2GB of DDR2 RAM, another the power/video card, and the last the input/outputs.

The Xi3 Modular Computar is ment to be tinkered with, and in addition to the internal boards, it has only two sides, eight screws, and different coloured chassis (for you to customise to your liking).

To quote Jason A. Sullivan, President and CEO of Xi3 Corporation, “We reject the concept that computers should have a useful life of only two to four years. Instead we believe that computers should be upgradeable and updateable over and over and over again, and that’s how we’ve designed the Xi3 Modular Computer, making it (potentially) the last computer you ever need to buy.”

As for pricing, the base model, which includes a 1.8GHz AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of flash storage costs US$850. That’s quite expensive considering it doesn’t come with a Windows OS. The company is aiming this at the embedded market, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t configure it with a larger hard drive, and install your OS of choice on it.

The model is available for purchase now at Xi3′s website.

The US$399 Lexmark Genesis all-in-one printer has a 10 megapixel digital camera with a fish-eye lens that produces an image 750 milliseconds after you close it’s scan bay. The CMOS sensor generates a preview of the scanned image on its 4.3-inch colour touchscreen. 2.2 seconds after that, it has a full 300 dpi image saved on either your USB connected computer, or through 802.11n WiFi. The company calls the system FlashScan, and it lives up to its namesake.

What’s also unique about this printer is that it stands upright, which makes it somewhat of a space-saver.

Announced along with the Lexmark Genesis are the Twitter and Facebook SmartSolutions. These will enable users to scroll through and search their Twitter feeds as well as view their Facebook walls and print photos right from the device. Twitter is currently available for download. Facebook will be available next month.

Personally, I think this is a great improvement as old-school scanners take a long time to scan just one page, while the Genesis takes mere seconds. The price is a little steep, but I suppose you get what you pay for.

How to locate explorer.exe

"Do you want to end explorer.exe?"

How To Kill Windows Explorer (Windows 7/Vista/XP):
Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc (-Ctrl-Alt-Del no longer brings up the Task Manager in Windows 7, it brings up an interim screen) to bring up the Task Manager and click on the Processes tab, then find all instances of explorer.exe and press “End Process” to kill them.
After killing Windows Explorer, you will notice that the taskbar has disappeared, and you will no longer have any access to the Start Menu. The only access you have is the Task Manager itself.

Note: If after you kill Windows Explorer, you get something like “Dr Watson (Not Responding)”, kill it as well.

Press "Enter" to restart explorer.exe

How To Restart Windows Explorer (Windows 7/Vista/XP):
Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc (/Ctrl-Alt-Del) to bring up the Windows Task Manager, then from the menu, click on File > New Task (Run …), type in “explorer” and the Windows taskbar should regenerate itself before your eyes. You will now have Start Menu access and everything is back to normal.

Homework:

You can easily practise this now by following the steps above to kill Windows Explorer, then restart it again. As a precaution, save your work before doing this but generally Windows is more resilient to explorer crashes these days compared to the days of Windows 95, so the crash itself should not take down other running applications.

Disclaimer: In a less than perfect Windows installation, killing Windows Explorer may cause system instability, and causes other applications to crash. So, try this on your system if you have a stable system that you have confidence in. You are on your own in this, be warned.

Read the disclaimer above, cross your fingers, and do this at least once as HOMEWORK, so that you can remember how to apply this when the real thing happens. Repeat as many times as necessary – especially if you are a slow learner.

 What’s HOT on HTC Desire

The 1GHz Snapdragon CPU with 576MB of ram (64MB more than its cousin – Nexus One) is extremely fast. Web surfing experience has never felt so good!

Desire’s 3.7 AMOLED with 480 x 800 pixels plus HTC Sense UI looks extremely nice & eye candy! And the capacitive touch screen is MUCH MORE responsive than Nokia N900’s resistive touch screen. Finally someone is giving a decent challenge to Apple iPhone and HTC’s multi-touch pinch zooming makes it happen.

When it comes to the web, the guys at HTC have thought of it all – Facebook & Flickr integration, Facebook & YouTube app etc. In addition the Flash Lite support means I can still check out those fancy flashy websites on the web. But then again at least I didn’t lose the Full Flash Support in Nokia N900 –

Overall I’m pretty happy with my HTC Desire, it’s fast, very fast and EXTREMELY FAST!

Having said all this, I think Desire has some shortcomings too: 

1. Android Éclair 2.1 does not supporting application installation on external memory card. 120MB for apps is just not enough! (Hopefully Froyo 2.2 will)
2. No task manager and file manager – this is really WEIRD for the typical Smartphone cause you don’t feel like you’re controlling it. But third party apps will do.
3. The alarm gets turned off automatically if it’s not in task manager ignore list. (Solution: Don’t install any Task Manager and let Android handle it.)
4. The only way to wake up the phone is through the power button. This is extremely annoying and hopefully HTC will fix this in next update.
5. A rather useless Optical Track Pad. Does anyone know what it’s for?
6. Battery life is mediocre at best.
7. Mobile Network connection problem -enabling & disabling it too fast or frequently will hang the device.
8. Is it just me? Or does Android have a rather confusing interface. Sometimes long press for options, sometimes menu button to be pressed for options…
9. There is no built in TV out and FM transmitter and no secondary camera. Hmm.. even iPhone 4 has it.
10. Paid apps are not available in Malaysia.

I am compiling a comparison between HTC Desire and Apple iPhone 4 next couple of days. Hopefully this will help you decide on your favorite Smartphone.

First of all is the ever colourful designs by the Japanese company Kotori. Although these earphones might look simple, the creativity behind it is the sheer number of variations in colour you can choose for a pair.

If you don’t like the colour combinations already offered, you can customize your very own pair of earphones to your liking. There’s even a shuffle option if you want to randomize your colour selections.

If the earphones just aren’t to your liking, weather they be too inconspicuous or weather you want something flashier, Copenhagen’ s AIAIAI have partnered with Kilo to create these great looking headgear to satisfy the audiophile in you.

With their great looking, yet light-weight Tracks Headphone Series, you’ll be looking stylish and be able to enjoy your music wherever you go. Gone are the days of sweaty, uncomfortable headphones.

If you’re into the retro design for headgear, then WeSC (WearetheSuperlativeConspiracy) has just the thing for you. Who says that you can’t make the old new again? There’s just something that’s comfortingly familiar with the designs here that make me yearn for a good pair of retro looking headphones.

My 3-year old notebook

The 5 Ways

Note that since there are so many different configurations for notebooks, what’s mentioned here in this article are suggestions which may or may not apply to you. You will need to google for more information and also read your notebook’s user manual as I can only give you hints. You will have to do more research.

1 Upgrade your memory to the MAXIMUM as indicated in your notebook’s manual

Upgrading your RAM from 512MB to 1GB, for example, can give you a much noticeable speed improvement.

-The maximum memory limit can be anywhere from 512MB to 4GB depending on when you bought the notebook. And for Windows XP, regardless of how much physical RAM you have, there is a 3GB max for 32-bit WinXP and 4GB for 64-bit WinXP. If you need to use past this limit, upgrade to Windows 7!

2. Use Microsoft ReadyBoost if you’re running Windows Vista or Windows 7

ReadyBoost works by using flash memory in an USB drive or memory card as a disk cache. It is not additional RAM. Think of it as a middle man arbitrating between the RAM and the Paging File.

3. If your laptop has a hard disk running at 5400 rpm - upgrade it to 7200 rpm

…. for faster disk access times and better Windows performance.

A Nvidia Geforce graphics chip on a MXM card

4. Upgrade the graphics adapter in your notebook

No need to buy expensive Home Servers. There are a lot of free open source Linux distros that allow you to configure such a server. Like I said earlier, you will have to do the leg work yourself.

Finally, consider buying a netbook. It’s small, it’s cute, it’s adorable and it’s drawing all the admiring glances. Netbooks are also in line with the current focus on saving energy for a greener style of life. Notebooks are so boring and so last millenium. It’s like those Compaq luggables of old 80s. They were the portable computers of their time. Now, the baton has been passed to the netbooks.

And here comes the broadband service providers to save us from the misery of slow and expensive dial up connection. Here’s the handful of broadband providers in Malaysia who are ready to brighten your day.

Criteria for Consideration

If you are not sure of which broadband package to subscribe to, then consider the following questions:

1. Your monthly budget.
2. Do you stay online even though you are not using the PC?
3. Do you download music, video or large sized file frequently?
4. Are you an online gamer?
5. Do you host a server? Do you need a fixed IP address?
6. Do you share your connection with other people?
7. Did your area being covered?
8. Do you need internet access whenever you go?

Now, answer the questions and the decision will be easy for you.

Streamyx (Home user package)

Streamyx (Corporate package)

P1 W1Max | WiMAX (Home user)

P1 W1Max | WiMAX (Corporate)

P1 W1Max | WiMAX (Wiggy Plans for Laptop users)

Maxis Wireless Broadband

Celcom Broadband

Digi Broadband

U Mobile Broadband

Infolient Broadband (Biz for Business user)

Infolient Broadband (Biz for Business user)