QuickFix: Basic Troubleshooting Steps for Non-branded External HDDs and HDD Enclosures

Category: Tech TodayThe advantages of buying branded hard drives is for the warranty, availability, and reputation but anyone who has gone through several Western Digital and Seagate drives know the chances of getting a lemon can still be pretty high and there are horror stories for both internal and external products from both companies.Buying a cheap HDD enclosure or non-branded external HDD can be a pretty good investment...

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Digital Taipei Part 2

Category: Techtoday Continued from Digital Taipei Part 1 I grinned when I saw the poster of the now-familiar Megan Fox ad for Acer S7 Ultrabook. Haters may hate but I found the ad extremely charming and almost laughed out loud when I saw the Acer kiosk inside the store looping the video over and over again. For people who are used to the structure and rustle-and-bustle of Asia's boutique...

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Digital Taipei Part 1

Category: TechtodayI was quietly munching on my KFC hamburger outside the Taipei Main MRT Station, just above the underground MRT Mall one Saturday afternoon. A group of young Taiwanese students were having an outdoor activity to one side, toting their shiny new HTC and Samsung phones. I was so embarrassed for my archaic Nokia E63 mobile phone that I was sure they would hand me an HTC One if I whipped my phone...

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Using YaST2 Partitioner to fix USB Flash drives Part 2

Category: openSUSE Continued from Using YaST2 Partitioner to fix USB Flash drives Part 16. After clicking Yes to the confirmation message for partition creation, the main Partitioner page will now display just one block of unpartitioned space. Take note that your drive hasn't been wiped out or repartitioned quite yet and you can still turn back if you get cold feet.7. Click the Add . . . button. On the next window,...

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Using YaST2 Partitioner to fix USB Flash drives Part 1

Category: LinuxIt's easy to give up on a USB flash drive especially when a Windows OS can't seem to detect it anymore. Flash drives rarely fail unless they're the boutique-type found in stuffed toys, flashlights, souvenirs, company giveaways and bags. Besides physical damage, one of the most common reason why a USB flash drive "stops working" in Windows is a corrupted file partition table or a unique file partition table...

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What is the openSUSE 12.3 Rescue CD?

Category: openSUSEAlthough I've been an openSUSE user for a few years now, I haven't tried the brand spanking openSUSE 12.3, which looks to be one of the better releases of the SUSE team. The openSUSE 12.3 Rescue CD, released along with the KDE, DVD, and Gnome versions, is not designed to be installed but rather to run as a LiveCD or LiveUSB for use with workstations or home desktops for repairing or recovering data....

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Linux (Probably) on Film: Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future

Category: Linux I was more of a Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters fan than I was of sci-fi movies and shows back in the 80s. I loved the Back to the Future trilogy but preferred Indy over Han Solo and Spidey over Flash Gordon (the only part I remember from the 1980 film was sexy Princess Aura). I'm often surprised that my younger self was a devoted fan and toy collector of the controversial, short-lived,...

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Linux on Film: Skyfall

Category: TechtodaySkyfall brings back the classic elements of the James Bond mythos such as the gadgets, Q, a male M (played by the immortal Ralph Fiennes), a sexy character (played by the delectable Berenice Lim Marlohe) that dies after minimal screen time, and a very lovely Moneypenny (Naomie Harris). Unlike the poorly conceived, disastrous, and pathetic 50th anniversary celebration of the Spider-Man comic books last...

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Toshiba NB520 HCL in openSUSE Wiki Updated

Category: openSUSE The Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for Toshiba laptops has been updated with an entry for the Toshiba NB520 netbook.  For a more in-depth review of openSUSE 12.2 on the Toshiba NB520, please read my 2-part review. ...

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Review: Toshiba NB520 Netbook featuring openSUSE 12.2 Part 1

Category: Linux With the Smolt Online Profile system effectively retired, users can go directly to laptop Hardware Compatibility Lists for their respective Linux distributions to contribute to hardware profiles. The openSUSE wiki doesn't list Toshiba netbooks and I'm looking to add the Toshiba NB520 to the list despite the decline of the form factor. As mentioned in a previous...

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Flirtations with FreeBSD 9.1

Category: Linux Although I've been using Linux for awhile now, I've had little experience with its brother-in-arms, FreeBSD. However, I've admired FreeBSD and its derivatives from afar (somewhat like watching Jun Ji Hyun in movies like Il Mare). The FreeBSD wiki is well-written and comparable to the Fedora Project's robust online documentation so it was more about time and attention that prevented me from...

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A Brief Review of WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Part 1

Category: Techtoday With the amount of products available in the market today, it's as important as ever to make an educated decision before purchasing a product. Media players, such as the Ubuntu-powered Xstreamer Sidewinder, Apple TV, and the Roku 3 each have their own unique features but they're generally very subtle for buyers not inclined to doing their research. More mainstream products such as the ASUS...

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Use Sigil to insert SVG images into an EPUB

Category: Techwriter You can actually use SVG images for your ebooks in EPUB format. They're great for covers and small illustrations all throughout your ebook. SVGs, which are based on vectors, are significantly smaller than JPEGs or PNGs. Since the EPUB format is nothing more than packaged XHTMLs, inserting SVGs aren't that difficult. In this example, we'll insert a CorelDraw X3 vector layout as cover...

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