Case – 13 Pounds – $80

Everything needs to start with a frame. Something that will hold everything that is to come. Something that is sturdy, and does what it is made to do. In this case we are looking for something that is, essentially, geared towards lanning. Thermaltake has been creating excellent products for years, and this is one of those excellent products. Thermaltake’s LANBOX Lite is perfect to show off to your friends, and also perfect for the traveling PC gamer. From Thermaltake, a company that has remarkable cooling products, you can only imagine that amount of vents and fans that are correctly placed to keep your precious hardware cool and keep you above the rest of the pack when it comes to performance. Sporting a cool side window and some sleek blue LED fans, your friends will rival you and your rig, no doubt about it.

Power Supply – 4 Pounds – $90

Powering the beast we are about to create will be a Corsair CMPSU-650TX, definitely perfect for our build. The 650watt output is great to power all of the fans for cooling, and of course all of the processing power and graphical power needed to jump ahead of the competition. Also we have all the power on one 12V rail which will keep it from ending with an early demise. With it’s nice color scheme of black and gold, it will look like it belonged inside our Thermaltake LANBOX, and have more than enough power to shred the competition.

Motherboard – 1 Pounds – $120

This motherboard is rated quite highly among the microATX form factor motherboards, and it is obvious to see why. This board takes full advantage of the new Core i7 and i5 processors from Intel, and because of that they will keep you multitasking like never before. Play multiple games at the same time if you want! Some gamers call that hotboxing, I call that purely extreme. With this motherboard you can have a maximum of 16GB of memory installed, not like that would really be necessary for our type of build, but it certainly is nice knowing you have the room to upgrade. With a whopping 10, yes TEN, USB 2.0 ports in the back of this beast, you will always have room for all of your gadgets to hook up at your LAN station. You have as many hoola-girls you want, as long as you save room for your favorite mouse and keyboard, of course!

Processor – Really Light – $195

This is probably the lightest part of our lightweight lanning beast, and also the most expensive. You might think that with a gaming computer the videocard is going to be the most expensive, but to get the most out of your computer you don’t want it to bottleneck at the processor. New games are coming out with multiprocessor capabilities, which means that it will take full advantage of your brand new processor. The Intel Core i5-750 running at 2.66Ghz is remarkable, quad core meaning you have more processing power than you can handle. You will be able to quickly switch your computers focus and of course, this is just another one of those components that will put you ahead of your friends, and probably even further ahead of your enemies.

Video Card – 2 Pounds – $135

This is the part you have been waiting for, I am sure. The BFG Tech GeForce 9800GTX+ video card is all the power you will need. Lot’s of guides will tell you to go all out and spend more money then you will need to, but this is supposed to be a lanning machine! If you need more power than this I suggest you take a step back and stay at home. This puppy will do just what you need, with high clock rates and great overall power, you need not worry about framerate lag with this bad boy. You will be able to run almost all of your games at high resolution and max your settings out. What more do you need? This will keep you up to date for quite some time, and you aren’t spending $300-$500, making upgrades possible without emptying your pockets fully.

Memory – Really Light – $105

G.SKILL has been an up and comer for quite some time now, which is great. I love seeing companies like this come up and break forward to become one of the top memory companies around. This one doesn’t change anything, with two 2GB modules, you have a total of 4gb of memory to again, keep you from bottle necking and keep your computer from running out of power. Since your motherboard has a maximum of 16GB of memory you could always buy two of these packs, netting you a total of 8GB of memory for only around $200. And I mean, with a description attention-getter like this, why wouldn’t you want this for a LAN box? Pwn the competition and frag your enemies with fast DDR3 1600 SDRAM at a price point that lets you upgrade on a budget.

Hard Drive – 1 Pound – $160

This was a really tough decision for me, not because of the part itself, but because of the cost to space available ratio. I suppose that we aren’t really trying to keep our costs extremely low in this post, but I always like to try to work on a budget. My goal for this bad boy was to stick under a grand, and so far I am pretty sure we are under that.

We have here a 150GB hard drive. Yep, only 150GB. Why so low? Because we are going for speed here. This is a 10,000RPM hard drive from Western Digital, aptly named the VelociRaptor. The 10,000RPM is 25% faster than the standard harddrive, which makes the cost of this drive go up as high as it is for the amount of space capable. This speed, for instance, will make your game load 25% faster than your friends game if he has the exact same parts besides the hard drive, and with all the parts we have picked out so far you will be guaranteed to finish first 100% percent of the time, and kick your friends butts without a doubt.

If, however, you need some more space for other things like music or videos, then you could always spend a few more dollars, for another Western Digital drive, such as the Caviar Blue, which will give you 640GB more space for only $70.

DVD Drive – 1 Pounds – $26

LITE-ON is great, and a DVD drive may seem like any other DVD drive, but sometimes you just need to know about the manufacturer before you purchase, and LITE-ON is one of those where you just know. This drive will read any disc, and play any disc, with some speed behind it. It also burns discs if you need to, but all we would really need this for is to install our games and maybe to throw in a CD once in a while. This will get the job done for only $26.

Summary – 22 Pounds – $900

Twenty-two pounds. All of this power and under than 30 pounds? I’d say that is worth it! Topping at $890, plus a hundred or so depending if you want to beef up your memory, I would say that having a 2.66Ghz Quad core with 4gigs of ram and a kickass video card to boot will teach your friends and enemies a lesson! And of course you will have a sleek and stylish case from Thermaltake to let them know that you really mean business. This installation will also be incredibly easy due to the fact that inside the case, everything is done with cages and thumb screws. You might not even need to own a screwdriver to get this one fully put together! I did not include prices for the operating system, or games, but for a good copy of Windows 7 Home Premium from NewEgg you will still barely be breaking the $1,100 mark. For this kind of cash, if you are a true gamer and your computer keeps freezing up and crashing in the midst of every important, explosive battle it’s worth it.

It’s time to upgrade folks, you gonna do it?

UPDATE: I have asked NewEgg for the opportunity to have a full build log with the above hardware. Hopefully I will be able to show you guys exactly what everything does and give you bench marks and actually weigh it when it is all put together! Just waiting for a response from them, can’t wait!

Lately there has been a commercial floating around the TV airwaves asking you a simple question, “Do you know where your identity is?” Well, do you?

Every time you order a package on line, over the phone, or anywhere, your information can be passed down the line and someone will probably remember it somewhere in that line. It’s a scary scenario, that’s for sure, but it isn’t something that you should completely dwell on forever, and you shouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.

Your identity, for the most part, is safe. Sure there are those assholes out on the web who make it their goal to screw you over and take every penny you got, well your bank should already have some preventative measures for those type of situations, as do the companies that you purchased the product from, as do your credit card companies, and so on.

You can do yourself one better by purchasing an “identity protection” program by certain companies, but for the most part I say just don’t do anything too stupid by going around telling people your social security number, and you should be pretty safe.

However, if you know you have a virus, or pop ups are coming out of nowhere, or something just isn’t right about your computer, you should call a computer guru RIGHT AWAY! There are reasons for this RIGHT AWAY, ASAP style of capitalization. And by that, I mean that the company hasn’t stolen your SSN yet, but they might be doing it the very next time you type it in.

There are programs that can be installed into your computer without you even knowing it, and the program I am going to be centering around is called a keylogger. Keyloggers do just about exact what their name implies, they log keys. I mean like the keys that I am using to type this right now, or the keys that you might be using to type in a password to your email, message board, or even bank account. These logs are then generated and automatically emailed to a thieves email account, and sadly there is almost no way to trace where they are being sent to.

So this is why, the first time you see something wrong with your computer you should take care of it as soon as possible. You don’t want your identity to be stolen and sent out so all of Times Square knows who you are!

QUINCY —

It can seem like the end of the world when a computer breaks, and figuring out what to do afterward can be confusing.
Fortunately, the world is full of computer repairmen.

“A lot of people throw out their machines without even seeing what can be repaired,” said Jeff Pierre, owner of Comp-Net Solutions in Quincy.

Pierre recommends going to a local store and having someone run a simple diagnostic test of the system. Most problems can be found and fixed easily this way about 90 percent of the time, Pierre said.

Pierre said to rely on a computer expert’s reputation when you’re looking for a good repairman. He also recommends getting a computer repaired in person instead of asking for help over the phone.

John McNabb, owner of South Shore PC Services in Cohasset, said it’s important to pay attention to the manufacturer’s warranty terms for the machine, because many independent repair jobs could nullify that warranty.

Computer repairmen generally charge between $45 and $75 an hour, and they can fix computers in as little as an hour.

Comparison shopping to find the best price is important, Pierre said, and consumers should look for places that do free basic diagnostic tests.

“Sometimes people think that a repair can cost more than to actually replace it, and it could actually be something simple,” Pierre said.

Once fixed, a computer should work the way it did when you first bought it, said Jeff Watson, owner of Jeff the Computer Guy in Hull.

“A local business will tell you exactly what’s wrong, and they can fix it on-site,” Watson said.

Lana Lagomarsini may be reached at llagomar@ledger.com

COMPUTER WARRANTIES

*What is usually covered: Most companies will cover expenses for labor and replacement parts for hardware that is defective or broken, as long as it was not broken by the owner. Software damages are harder to repair, but usually can be done by the manufacturer.

*What isn’t covered: Any damage to the hardware that was a result of the owner’s negligence will not be covered by the warranty, but the company can usually fix the problem for a fee.

*Protecting the warranty: Many warranties are voided if you open up the inside of a laptop. Read your warranty carefully before you take it to be repaired by someone other than the manufacturer.

Sources: About.com; South Shore PC Services

That would be one strange world, and to some, a euphoria. Not to me though, then what would I do for a living? Why would I write a essentially do-it-yourself style blog with simple tips put in to easy to read tutorials? There would be little to no reason to write such a blog! That’s fine, because I am not too worried that all computers will someday be magically fixed and made into some sort of auto-cleaning, auto-fixing super power.

I bite my tongue though, because with all of the crazy gadgets that have been spoken about at CES this year, who knows what next year will bring. Every year more and more crazy gadgets are released, and soon, maybe there will be a utility invented that, quite simply, fixes computers. Completely. I would definitely buy stock in that! It would probably end up like some sort of crazy dot come craze, and then they would tank after they flood the market with their super popular and absolutely perfect computer fixing tool. I’m ranting now, but I think that is good.

Anyways, just in case that doesn’t come around any time soon I’d like to let everybody know that I am here to stay. I am here to help you all out the best I can, send me emails with questions, send me emails with problems, send me emails! I will gladly answer them all as fairly as possible, and I will never say “sorry, can’t help ya!” – Never. There is no reason for anybody to not have an answer, or at least a finger to point you in the right direction.

FixIt Computer Repair is being developed with a promise of delivering your computer on time, always being on time for appointments, and always delivering like Domino’s. FixIt Computer repair, is essentially just that, a promise. And like I said earlier, I am definitely not going anywhere any time soon. I love the expression on customer’s faces when I tell them that there is nothing to worry about, all the spyware has been succesfully removed, and all of the viruses that they had have been removed to. Just yesterday a nice woman told me “Oh thank goodness there are people like you out there.” I left her house with a huge smile on my face, and to be completely honest, I felt like I was on Cloud 9. I think I might have literally skipped around a little bit while going to my car.

I love what I do. I live for what I do. It’s great, and you get to meet all sorts of amazing people who are in distress and simply need someone to lighten up there day. The spiritual reward is just as great as any monetary reward that comes after the job is done. Sure, you can charge someone $100, but you don’t go around telling your friends the story of how you made $100, you go around telling your friends about the guy who want’s those porn shortcuts taken off his desktop because he has ways of getting himself in trouble, he doesn’t need any help.

Now that is a story.

I love hearing from past customers, I love hearing how they are doing and how their computers are still alive and kicking, even after years and years of dedicated work. The computer is quite the workhorse, especially if you never turn it off. Think about what would happen if you never slept? Well, you would die.. computer’s dont! They keep going and going, kind of like the energizer bunny. So if a computer from 2002 is still working, I like to call it elderly. It will still work, it will still get it’s jobs done, but it might just take a little bit longer.

After your poor ol’ trusty computer has reached it’s end, it is time to put it to sleep. But like everything in life, something new cannot be born without something from the original. This is why you backup your data. You backup all of the data needed and move it onto the new computer, and the files themselves are, essentially, happier. Your Microsoft Word files load 10x faster, your movies load faster as well and of course they play smoother, too.

Getting a new computer is something that must be done, I’d say do a full upgrade about every four years, if you message me and say “My computer is about 6 years old and……” I will immediately reply letting you know that computer’s are coming down in price, and you can probably get a computer that is at minimum five times faster than the one you currently are working on, for probably a lot less than you could imagine.

Computer’s from places like Dell and Gateway and Lenovo and even Apple are great computers, they last for a long time and have a great support staff backing you and your crazy ideas about expanding the memory to a whopping 32GB! Yeah, that might be a little far fetched, but the support staff will help you through those crazy decisions, and probably dial your crazy-o-meter to about 4GB of memory instead.

There are always companies like that, offering you great deals, reasonable prices, and a great overall experience. But then there are people like me. Friendly people, not a very large company, just a friendly local guy who is helping out neighbors. People like me are all over the country, from the west coast, to the easy coast you can find someone just like me who want to actually help you and solve your problems.

I will gladly build you a computer, from scratch, custom. Made to order. I will be your Computer-esque Burger King, all you have to do is give me a chance. I will prove to you that I can get your computer setup gracefully and efficiently, and with time to spare. If you are in the Naperville region, give me a call, or even send me an email. All I need to know is what you use the computer for, I can give you what I think an estimated budget will be for a computer from simple word processing tasks, to something that needs to perform almost constant CAD renderings (or you can just give me a budget, that works too!)

I really hope this epicly long post shed some light onto what exactly I am. What I am here for, and why I wont to keep my start-up business going strong. I remind you, I am not going anywhere. I am here to stay.

Are you?

Backing up your computer can be a relatively simple task if you have the right software and the right media to back your data up on to. A few years back the suggested media of choice was a DVD, or even a DL-DVD. That was a few years back though, now a days we have much better replacements for it. Replacements such as thumb drives that can hold sometimes up to 32GB of data, or now we have tiny tiny external hard drives that connect to your computer simply with a USB connector. The hard drives can reach a terrabyte or two without a problem. Just check out your local retail store like TigerDirect or Fry’s Electronics.. or even Best Buy.. for a solution that is perfect for you.

A lot of times these type of hard drives come with an automatic built in backup utility, and lot of times these automatic backup utilities work wonderfully. But what if your external hard drive didn’t come with one? Well I have a great solution that I use from time to time on computer’s that I am worried I wont be able to get back to a stable running condition, such as a computer infected by the Virut.ce virus.

Fab’s AutoBackup

Fab’s AutoBackup is, quite simply, easy. It finds the type of files that you have on your computer, it even detects what version of your operating you are running, such as Windows XP or Windows Vista, and then it tells you (pretty much) which files you should backup. You can chose to backup your whole hard drive, your My Documents folder, or just about everything in between. It isn’t free, sadly, but at less than $8 (it’s 4.9EURO), it’s definitely worth the purchase if you are in the market for backup utilities. It get’s the job done and doesn’t take too long to do it.

Thankfully it really isn’t all that difficult to figure out which kind of memory you need. Throughout this short stub of an article I am going to be interchanging the terms RAM and memory, just letting you know before you get too confused. Pardon that interruption, I suppose I am just typing out my thoughts and this is just how my thought process tends to flow.

Now let me digress, figuring out what kind of ram that you need isn’t difficult at all! It only takes a few quick on spot on tips that get you pointed in the right direction. There are only 3 real things that you need to know, and all of the information can be found somewhere in your documentation for your motherboard, or you can just Google your motherboard’s name, and you will get the quickest response to what you desire, answers.

Googling a motherboard, for instance “M2NPV-VM”, which is an older Asus motherboard, will bring up a laundry list of items ranging from pricing to why someone’s particular motherboard is broken, to overclocking, to what you really want, specifications.

The spec’s are usually right on the first page of Google, so just pick one of the first few links and try to find out what memory is supported. Numbers that you want to look for can included any of these: DDR, DDR2, 800mhz, 433mhz,  PC4200, PC6000, and numerous other combinations of those numbers and letters.

DDR stands for ‘Double Data Rate’, most memory you buy now-a-days will be DDR2 or DDR3, DDR3 being the newest option to you. What DDR basically allows you to do is make you put in two sticks of memory that will act essentially at the same time, which creates much higher output. The new DDR3 memory is phenomenal, and will take place of DDR and DDR2 all together at some point in the near future, just like DDR2 wiped out the original DDR.

To me, that seemed like one huge run on sentence, wow.

The ‘mhz’ portion of the numbers is the speed that the memory runs at, the higher the number, the faster, more expensive the memory.

Lastly is the PC2-4200, PC2-6400, and similar. This number actually signifies the “Peak transfer rate”. The PTR is read in megabytes, so PC2-4200 runs 4200MBs per second, of data. Now that might seem like a pretty hefty load of data, but the 4200 is actually on the lower end of speed, and now DDR3 can actually run 12,800MBs per second, thats just about twelve and a half gigabytes per second! If you need some more information on any of these types of memory, Wikipedia has fantastic articles about them.

Anyways, once you find out the type of memory that your motherboard you need to find that type of memory at a retail store like TigerDirect or Fry’s Electronics, or even an online marketplace for computer related goods like NewEgg. All of those are great places and will help you find exactly what you need to get your computer running as well as it can.

Of course, if you want a memory upgrade just give me a call! Memory upgrades take a short amount of time and I will never try to oversell you on a certain type! Give me a call at (630)363-1738 and, if you are in the Naperville area, I can install and bring your memory to your door! Just let me know what you need it for and we can figure it out without any problem what so ever!

If you think your memory is the cause of all of your computer problems, then you need to get it checked out, most of the time computer technicians will use MemTest to actually check out if your memory is the root of all the evil on your desktop, this will help show you without having to go to an expensive technician.. like myself.

I found the easiest way was just to use HP’s USB Disk Storage Tool, which you can download from BayWolf by clicking on this link right here, then by downloading Windows 98 system files, yes, Windows 98.. by clicking on this link right here.

After that, install the HP tool and run it from Start -> All Programs -> HP, odds are it will show up as a newly installed application, so there shouldn’t be much hassle finding it. Then when that pops up chose the Flash Drive that you wish to format, yeah sadly this will format your flash drive all together, but in the end I think that this will be more helpful to you. Chose Create a DOS startup disk from the Format Options box, and then browse to the directory that you that you extracted the Windows 98 system files to. Click OK, then click Start. It will warn you that everything will be lost, so click Yes and let it do its thing.

That’s it. Your USB flash drive is now bootable, nice and simple, right? Now you will need to get the MemTest application from this link, and put that mt400.exe file (that’s inside the zip) in your flash drive. Odds are it will look like the flash drive is already empty and wont be bootable, don’t worry the files are just hidden system files, they are there

After you put mt400.exe on your flash drive you will need to reboot your system and make sure you load up boot options by pushing F12 or something similar right when the computer starts up, it varies depending on which motherboard you are using so make sure you got it right, it might take a couple reboots to get the timing down but I am sure you can manage if you got this far..

You will then have a DOS prompt, a simple DOS prompt with a blinking bar, type in “mt400.exe” and memtest will start! Run whatever tests you want to make sure your memory is working up to par, after you find out it’s severely damaged, I suggest you head over to NewEgg and get yourself some new memory

Have you had troubles getting MemTest to work on a USB drive? Did this help you? I hope it did because if I had a guide like this in the first place it would’ve saved me a lot of time!