One should be familiar with the history of the printer. Back then, with the invention of, and the increase in the demand and usage of computers, paper companies were afraid that their products would be forgotten and outdated. That was definitely not the case. In fact, ironic as it may sound, the paper business grew as one of the staple office appliances was invented – which we will come to know as the printer. The printer is an example of a computer appliance, which is an external hardware component that does a specific job for the computer. In this case, the printer creates a hard copy of a computer’s data by printing it on paper.
How did the printer come about? Many years ago, all data had to be copied by hand. By the fifteenth century, small-scale printing by wooden blocks was already present. But things changed with the invention of the movable metal type by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450. Gutenberg’s movable metal type might not ring a bell to you, but if you have seen a typewriter, you have to know that it is a creation based on the movable metal type. Christopher Latham Sholes, an American journalist, and his colleagues created the typewriter. However, since it can only produce one copy of a document at a time, texts became time-consuming and tiring to re-create. Luckily, computers became popular, and in time became word processors wherein text can be typed and corrected before printed out. Thus, printers became a necessity to print your documents from your 1tb external hard drive.
If you have bought yourself a snazzy new A3 flatbed scanner and you have decided that you don’t need your old scanner anymore, here’s a little do-it-yourself project you can work on. Did you know that with a little bit of tinkering around, you can repurpose your old scanner into some sort of primitive pinhole camera?
The best thing about turning your old scanner into a camera? You don’t need to take the scanner apart, nor do you need to alter the scanner’s hardware in a permanent manner, so if you need your scanner back, it’s easy to undo what you’ve done. This is a safe DIY project, folks.
You will need black foamcore board, a magnifying glass, and a razor. First, you need to remove the cover. Then measure the size of the scanner glass for the baseboard, then cut the foamcore into the glass’ dimensions. You will need to glue together three layers of foamcore for some thickness. Cut out a 7×7 inch square hole in the middle of the foamcore boards. You will need to make a cube in the same dimensions as the hole, then you need to cover it with a cube of slightly bigger dimensions.
Then you will need to make the lensboard – just cut a 3.5-inch hole on a 7×7 board for the box’s cover. Cut a hole the size of the magnifying glass on a 6×6 inch board. Put that on top of the board. Now make pinhole/aperture cards, then you’re ready! Point your camera at your sublect, run your scanner as normal, and you have your pinhole scanner camera ready! You can find a video on how to make the camera here.
Your photos will come out with a bizarre and spooky appearance. Perfect for that Halloween photo project! Quick, try it out now!
Now if you have a spare Eee PC battery lying around and you want to get it charged without plugging it into your Eee, then this Eee PC clip-on battery charger may be right for you. Made by Expansys, this clip-on charger lets you charge two batteries at a time.
In keeping with the Eee PC’s diminutive size, Expansys are offering a range of clip-on battery chargers for the ASUS netbooks that can keep a spare power-pack juiced up without needing it to be fitted to the netbook itself.
Versions are available now for the Eee PC 700/701 and the Eee PC 900, with a new model for the Eee PC 901/1000 “coming soon”. All use your existing AC adapter and take the form of a small, lightweight box that clips onto your Eee PC battery and hides at the bottom of your laptop bag when not needed.
Depending on the model, the charger can cost between $40.99 to $70.99.
Customizability has always been one of the Eee’s greatest strengths. From software customizations such as switching from Linux to Windows (XP, Vista, 2000, even 3.11), or even OS X, or hardware upgrades such as replacing the RAM or the SSD, or even full DIY, such as turning the Eee into a touchscreen, or inserting built-in bluetooth, the Eee has been the modder’s best friend.
So why is the S101 so darn hard to upgrade, asks Laptopmag.
While there is a small latch for getting to the RAM, that is about all you can access. We had no problem unscrewing that latch and replacing the default 1GB SODIMM with a 2GB stick of DDR2 RAM; in fact that is the easy part. However, when we popped in the RAM the Windows XP operating system didn’t recognize the extra 1GB, still showing only 0.99GB. Is it possible the BIOS itself won’t recognize more than 1GB? We haven’t gotten an official answer from ASUS about this, but it looks like that’s the case.
Ok so we didn’t really think the Eee PC S101 needed more RAM any way. But a new SSD would be pretty sweet, considering we weren’t all that impressed with the one that came standard on the system. We have a new Eee PC SSD upgrade chip from SuperTalent. However, there is no easy way to access the SSD from the back of the system. Even after we pulled off all the screws we couldn’t get to the internals. We assume you have to pry the keyboard off.
Again, this makes the S101 a no in my next netbook choice.
Eeeuser forum member RandyLude92 has a long forum thread detailing how he managed to retrieve the larger screen from the 90x and maneuver it into the 70x. This involves carefully lifting the screen from the 90x, placing it into the 70x and even updating the BIOS to support the larger screen (to remove the screen size limitation, otherwise the whole screen would not be properly utilised).
Obviously, this is not for the faint of heart. Go ahead if you’re feeling adventurous.
User TenaciousDre from the Eee User forums posted a guide on how to make a 12 cell 701 battery. Charging time can last up to 12 hours, but the charge can give you 8 hours of juice.
The Intel Atom processors have been pretty neat, enabling us to have a whole generation of netbooks like the Asus Eee PC that are relatively fast and light on power. The’re pretty good for surfing the net, watching a couple of videos, and for finishing that stupid spreadsheet, but we all know that the Atom can do better. More »
For those willing to give their aging Eee PC 901s another lease at life, you can upgrade your favorite netbooks with a new SSD. Runcore Pro IV Light mini-SATA SSDs have 16GB, 32GB and 64GB iterations.
Two videos have been uploaded on YouTube by user 1walkgirl showing the Runcore Pro IV Light miniSATA SSD successfully working on the Eee PC 901. The first video gives a general idea of the speed, and the second video shows a Crystal diskmark test and the results.
Written by Ade Magnaye on April 18th, 2010. 1 Comment »
Filed under Hardware.
This isn’t exactly groundbreaking news, but Asus just put out a quick announcement that USB 3.0 will be available on future Eee PCs. Okay, I’m pretty sure most manufacturers are going for USB 3.0 on their netbooks and other computing devices. What’s new with USB 3.0 anyway?
The theoretical throughput improvement offered by USB 3.0 is dramatic — a theoretical 10X jump over existing USB 2.0 hardware. USB 2.0 maxed out at a theoretical 480Mbps, while USB 3.0 can theoretically handle up to 5Gbps. Mind you, applications like storage will still be limited by the type of drive inside; so, for example, you can expect better performance from RAIDed hard drives or fast solid-state drives (SSDs) than from, say, a standalone single drive connected to the computer via USB 3.0.
One of the things to look for in the coming months is the certified SuperSpeed USB 3.0 logo. Products are currently filling the queues at the official certification testing labs, but presence of that certification logo will give you some peace of mind that the product you’re buying truly does live up to the USB 3.0 spec.
EeePC.net is wary of having a computer with a USB 3.0 port but with no USB 3.0 devices to use it with. Well, at least we have the interfaces to plug the devices ready, right? And when the devices that have 3.0 ready, we don’t have to worry about reduced speeds.
I know, I know, Intel dual core Atom chips have been around since the first time the processor came out. But the thing is, the dual core Atom processors that came out two years ago weren’t actually made for processors, and I even remember that Intel specifically forbade computer manufacturers from installing the said dual-core chips on our favorite netbooks.
That didn’t stop Asus from making the Asus Eee PC 1201N, though. Even though it is a netbook, they managed to put a desktop Atom 330 dual core processor in it. The said netbook ran a bit faster, but it lost a serious amount of battery life. Plus, let’s not even talk about the heat generated by the Atom 330 chips.
It looks like Intel is working on a dual core Atom chip made specifically for netbooks. Via Liliputing:
Intel may be working on a dual core Atom chip for netbooks. It will reportedly be called something like the Atom N500, which makes sense, since the latest dual core chip for desktops is called the Atom D510 — and most of the company’s netbook-specific chips have started with the letter N, such as the Atom N270, N280, N450, and N470.
But let us not expect these netbooks running the future Atom N500 to run as fast as our Core2Duo laptops. More »
Now if you have a spare Eee PC battery lying around and you want to get it charged without plugging it into your Eee, then this Eee PC clip-on battery charger may be right for you. Made by Expansys, this clip-on charger lets you charge two batteries at a time.
While there is a small latch for getting to the RAM, that is about all you can access. We had no problem unscrewing that latch and replacing the default 1GB SODIMM with a 2GB stick of DDR2 RAM; in fact that is the easy part. However, when we popped in the RAM the Windows XP operating system didn’t recognize the extra 1GB, still showing only 0.99GB. Is it possible the BIOS itself won’t recognize more than 1GB? We haven’t gotten an official answer from ASUS about this, but it looks like that’s the case.
I know, I know, Intel dual core Atom chips have been around since the first time the processor came out. But the thing is, the dual core Atom processors that came out two years ago weren’t actually made for processors, and I even remember that Intel specifically forbade computer manufacturers from installing the said dual-core chips on our favorite netbooks.
