The HP Pavillion DV8-1110-ea Entertainment Laptop

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After saving for nearly two years and searching various online computer stores I finally bought my laptop. Costing a total of £1300 it brings a whole new feel to laptop users. Although primarily a desktop replacement I found the 18" chassis still highly portable. Diagonally the screen measures a massive frameless 18.4" with infinibrite 1080p full HD display. Powered by the new Intel® Cor i7-720QM (1.6 GHz), 4Gb of RAM (upgradable to 8GB) and Windows 7 Home Premium, it runs like a dream. The optical drive is fitted with the new Lighscribe technology exclusive to HP laptops answell as Blu-ray Player and the usual DL and RW stuff. As for gaming, the Nvidia Geforce Gt 230M GPU with 1GB dedicated memory (upgradable to nearly 3GB) handles most of the new games including Darkest of Days, Modern Warfare 2, etc perfectly. The dual 320Gb hardrives suficiently store all my music, movies and photos. (Upgradable to 1TB) . To truly make it a media laptop, HP have included a media remote, 2MP Built in webcam, built in subwoofer (Sounds more than equivelent to Dolby surround sound 5.1), Touch sensitive media controls aswell as the pre-installed Mediasmart software and the awesome expresson theme. The DV8 also has many features to keep your laptop and data safe such as the Kensington lock port and the programmable fingerprint scanner. As for the ports, the laptop includes 4xUSB, 1xESATA port (shared with USB) HDMI, VGA Express card slot, Expansion port, TV antenna port and tuner, ADSL port, Firewire, 5 in 1 card reader and 2x audio and 1x microphone port. The only drawback with i7 range is that the proccesor DRAINS the battery, at best I could get 1-1 and a half hours on it. (Surfing the web and listening to music.) But the sound is truly awesome, definetly the best I've ever seen on a laptop before. This is definelty a laptop worth buying, don't worry about the price though, there are many different models in the pavillion series. The best priced was the DV6 with i5 proccesor and 4gb of RAM, a truly great machine selling for an affordable £400. Definetly a bargain.

The complete Guide to Jailbreaking your iPhone/iPod Touch

There are many ways of Jailbreaking your iPhone/iPod but unfortunatly Apple has made things slightly more difficult for the standard user by using different baseband versions, bootloaders, serial numbers etc. etc. etc. Many of these details factor in the method of Jailbreaking and the firmware necessary to do so. But for me, the easiest method was to use Geohot's blackra1n un-tethered and Blacksn0w Jailbreak along with the iPhone/iPod Touch firmware 3.1.2. and iTunes 9.0 (or higher). I personally haven't had any problems with jailbreaking, none-the-less, you should install the jailbreak at your own risk.

Please Note the following:

-Jailbreaking software is COMPLETELY FREE, if you paid someone for it, demand a refund.
- Jailbreaking lets you completly customize you Device with wallpapers, custom themes, settings, tweaks, free apps, the list goes on...
- Jailbreaking and then installing sn0w on your iPhone lets you unlock your device and use it on almost any network and use almost any SIM ( Tweaks from Cydia allows you to tether your iPhone to your PC or Mac which is normally only permitted with the AT&T network.)
-DO NOT upgrade your firmware to 3.1.3 as this version was released mainly to kill the jailbreak. If you already have it installed then you can easily downgrade by following the steps below.
-You cannot upgrade your firmware with the jailbreak installed. You must first restore you Device, Update, then Re-Jailbreak if possible.
-Jailbreaking will void your warranty but the geniuses at Apple can't tell if you restore afterwards.
-Jailbreaking may slow down your device but this will barely be noticeable.

Requirements
-iPhone/iPod Touch
-PC/Mac
-Apple iPhone/iPod Touch firmware 3.1.2 (Download here)
-USB Cable
-Blackra1n

Steps

-1. Download Apple iPhone firmware 3.1.2 and Up/Downgrade by opening iTunes (with your device connected), holding shift, selecting "Update" and selecting your firmware you previously downloaded. Now wait for you device to finish updating.



-2. Download and run Blackra1n with your device connected. Select "make it ra1n". The jailbreak will be installed and your device will reboot.


-3. You will now see another icon on your device's springboard. Select it and install the packages you want. (For the Tweaks etc. download "Cydia" and if you want "Rock", to unlock your iPhone download Sn0w.) You must install the packages ONE AT A TIME.



Congrats, you device has been Jailbroken!

Task Manager

The Windows task manager.
Some people aren't even aware of it's existance.
It's mainy used for starting/stopping procceses, services, veiwing your networking status, performance and the users logged onto the computer.

It's especially useful for killing crashed programs or a quick way of exiting multiple aplications in a short space of time.

It's easily accessible either by hitting "Crtl", "Shift" and "Esc" in sequence or "Ctrl", "Alt" and "Delete" and navigating to "Task Manager".

Don't kill important procceses such as "explorer.exe" etc as this causes your taskbar proccess to close.

Windows 7 - Is it worth £200?

I have been using windows 7 for a long time now, a few months after it was first released. The main reason for upgrading was because I was one of thoses statistics that was unfortunate enough to use Microsoft Windows Vista.

There aren't alot of perks in using Windows 7, the only main things I can pick out is the new taskbar and the awesome aero theme. It also makes a few things easier such as creating and connecting to networks, task managment and task scheduling.

Personally I think XP would be a better alternative to Vista since 7 has alot of compatability issues especially with anti-virus software st the moment (Maybe becuase it's still relativly new.)

If your running Vista at the moment...WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!!! UPGRADE OR DOWNGRADE NOW!

Mozilla Thunderbird - Email Client -

This is now my favorite email client.
It's free, fast, efficient and Oh so easy to use.
I found this a formidable competitor for Microsoft Outlook 2007 with which took me a while to figure out how to set up my domain email account (spent ages re-typing my ingoing and outgoing etc.) and downloading a hotmail connector whereas Thunderbird did everything for me, all it required was the email address and the password. I seriously recommend this program.

Windows 7 - Godmode -

I discovered this accidently whilst surfing the net and found it quite interesting.

This basically gives you a new Folder that includes Every setting in the book from system control panels to drive partitioning.

Simply create a new folder and name it "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" (without the quotes) and hit enter. The icon will then change to
resemble a control panel and will contain many many options.


It's said "Godmode" works on Microsoft Windows Vista although only the 32-bit edition as the 64-bit edition simply crashes. (I haven't tested this myself so do so at your own risk)

Backtrack 4; Booting from USB Drive

Backtrack 4 is basically a Linux operating system but with one difference: It's primary function is to hack into Wi-Fi WEP keys, Bluetooth devices etc.
(To be used for educational purposes or security testing software ONLY)

I found the easiest way to use it was to boot directly from a USB pen drive rather than go through all the bother of partitioning drives and unnecessary "Konsole" commands.

Step 1 - Requirements -

You will need a Pen drive with a minimum of 2GB Capacity and a copy of Backtrack 4 (.iso) Image Version , a copy of Unetbootin and of course a PC or Mac.

Step 2 - Formatting the USB pendrive -

Once you USB Pen drive is plugged into an available USB port, select the drive from "My Computer", right click it and select format (Format to FAT32).

Step 3 - Unetbootin - Creating your bootable USB drive -

Open Unetbootin, browse and select the disc image location and drive. Select OK and wait (this process may take up to several minutes (Dont worry if it lags or gets stuck on 85%, this is normal, just continue to wait.)

Step 4 - Booting Backtrack from your USB Drive

Once finished restart your PC with your USB plugged in. When possible got to your boot options in the BIOS (Normally by hitting F12) and select the correct drive. You will now be confronted with a booting options screen for Backtrack. Select Default. Backtrack will now load all the files.
Once finished type in "startx" (without the quotes) and the Backtrack GUI will appear.

Have fun!

For more information go to the Backtrack site

PC Vs. Mac, Which one to buy...?

This is a topic that has been debated almost endlessly,
Unfortunatly things haven't changed between either company; Mac's are still overpriced and PC's Operating systems are still reliably unstable.
Mac's Operating systems are VERY stable and almost never crash though you pay a shocking price for minimal hardware, some argue that Macs cheap O.S. makes up for it but I disagee: It would take a minimum of 5 years for a Mac to pay for itself. So the only advice I can offer is it all depends what your using it for:
-If you only want to check your emails from time to time or watch the odd movie then don't bother forking out for a Mac unless of course its a cheap Mac, by a PC and run either Windows XP or Windows 7 (the most stable and reliable O.S.'s)
-If you looking for something to support multiple memory intensive applications with vulnerable data then by all means by a Mac although this will cost you as a Mac with more than 2GB RAM and 160GB HD it's going to cost you something in the vicinity of £1,175 although for that money you will get an excellent Graphics card and reliable software.
Then again for that money you could get a quad-core, 1000TB, 18.4 Inch awesome PC.

So finally, if your torn between PC's cheap hardware and Macs incredible software then I suggest you by a decent PC and run "Hackintosh" (Designed to run Mac's software on a PC)
It may not run as smoothly as actually buying a Mac due to obvious compatability issues but it certainly is cheaper. Click here for more information on "Hackintosh"