Cody Taylor

LateNiteTV sends in news of a “kill pill” from LM Ericsson AB that a wireless carrier could use to remotely disable a subsidized netbook if the customer doesn’t pay the monthly bill or cancels their credit card. “…the Swedish company that makes many of the modems that go into laptops announced Tuesday that its new modem will deal with [the nonpayment] issue by including a feature that’s virtually a wireless repo man. If the carrier has the stomach to do so, it can send a signal that completely disables the computer, making it impossible to turn on. … Laptop makers that use Ericsson modules include LG Electronics Inc., Dell Inc., Toshiba Corp., and Lenovo.” The feature could also be used to lock thieves out of the data on a stolen laptop.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harry writes “Microsoft’s new Windows ad, with shopper Lauren buying a cheap 17-inch HP laptop instead of a $,2800 MacBook Pro, has unleashed the whole ‘Are Macs Expensive?’ debate again. I’m diving in with a pretty exhaustive comparison of the MacBook Pro against machines from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Sony that were as comparably configured as I could manage. The conclusion: High-end laptops tend to carry high-end prices, whether their operating system hails from Cupertino or Redmond. And the MacBook Pro wasn’t the priciest of the systems I compared.” We looked at this question, not in as much depth, a couple of years back.

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theodp writes “When every student has a laptop, why run computer labs? That’s a question schools have been asking themselves as computer ownership rates among incoming freshmen routinely top 90%. After only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, the school decided that it’s no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs. Student computer labs have been a staple of campus life since the ’60s. So what are the benefits that will be missed as other schools follow UVa’s lead?” The university’s report notes understanding that “that students need collaborative space where they can bring their laptops and mobile devices to conduct group work, especially as the curriculum becomes increasingly team- and project-based.” One of the spaces formerly occupied by computer labs “has been transformed into a technology-rich collaboration area.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why limit your on-the-go Web surfing to Wi-Fi hot spots when you can get online anywhere you can find a cell signal? Here’s how to pick the right service and device to bring mobile broadband to your laptop.

Check out these three creative and inexpensive laptop stand solutions offered within; all are cheap to build—less than or free in some cases—and all can be used to help save your neck when it comes to proper home office ergonomics. Anyway, lets get down to business

Death Metal writes “Chief Security Engineer Andrea Barisani and hardware hacker Daniele Bianco used handmade laser microphone device and a photo diode to measure the vibrations, software for analyzing the spectrograms of frequencies from different keystrokes, as well as technology to apply the data to a dictionary to try to guess the words. They used a technique called dynamic time warping that’s typically used for speech recognition applications, to measure the similarity of signals. Line-of-sight on the laptop is needed, but it works through a glass window, they said. Using an infrared laser would prevent a victim from knowing they were being spied on.” (This is the same team that was able to pick up the electromagnetic signals emitted by PS/2 keyboards.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the first part of “Utilize Your Mac SMS” series, we discussed a SMS-based application to prevent Macbook theft. Now we will discuss other cool applications utilizing the Sudden Motion Sensor feature of Mac laptops.

Since Firefox is one of the most important tools of Web designers and also other internet users, and because of big mount of Firefox memory usage, I decided to write this article and make it visual for all to be more interesting. Well, if you have a laptop and want to work with Firefox, Photoshop, Dream Weaver and….

Since Firefox is one of the most important tools of Web designers and also other internet users, and because of big mount of Firefox memory usage, I decided to write this article and make it visual for all to be more interesting. Well, if you have a laptop and want to work with Firefox, Photoshop, Dream Weaver and … as web design’s tools, you may need many memory on your computers But as we know, it costs much expensive to upgrade your hardware and for laptop owners that would be a disaster if their laptop maximum Ram support doesn’t let them to add another Ram in order to have more memory. ( I’ve also wrote another article for laptop owners: 32 Useful Tips To Improve Laptop Performance )

In this article I am going to tell you how to decrease firefox memory usage and increase firefox speed. This article of mine has two parts. So, follow each part to the end to make your Firefox Faster and Reduce your Firefox Memory Continue reading

This morning I thought I’d try and spice this blog up a little by making my own logo and then I realised why I never did it before: this laptop is godd*mn slow! This is why I never got to installing Photoshop, the program I’ve been using for years to create my own stuff.

I’ve never been particularly tech–savy, so you might think I’m unqualified to write a column comparing Dell’s computer repair customer service to Apple’s. But this is no tech-head review. Instead, I’m only reporting the events of my last week when a perfect storm of mishaps combined to break both my Dell Laptop and Mac Powerbook.