PC Components Tips

Read these 4 PC Components Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about PC tips and hundreds of other topics.

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Do you know what kind of projector you would connect to your computer?

Projecting Computer Needs

If you have a media computer and use it to give presentations at work or school, you should take a little time to learn about the projectors you can connect to your system. The three common types of projectors are standard LCD, polysilicon LCS and DLP.

Standard LCD projectors will be brighter than DLP, but tend to overheat faster. If you are using the projector for long presentations or back to back ones, you will start to see the picture degrade somewhere in the six to ten hour range.

Polysilicon LCD projectors use three panels instead of one like standard LCD. The panels are also a better quality, resulting in a higher color saturation than LCD.

DLP (Digital Light Processing) is the most commonly use projector at the moment. DLP uses a single chip with thousand of micro-mirrors that modulate the lamp's light and project it through the lens. Heat is prevented from affecting the picture due to the mirror configuration, thus you will not see the image degrade over time.

When looking at specs for projectors, you want to pay attention to resolution for the particular model, depending on the size screen you need and the size of the audience. Also pay attention to brightness. A rule of thumb is the brighter the room the brighter a projection lamp you will need.

   
Would you use biometric security features?

Biometric Security Measures

Computer security is always a concern for people who store sensitive personal information like bank statements and appointment calendars on their PC. In the past couple of years biometric fingerprint scanners have made their way onto laptops as an added security measure. This way if you lose your laptop someone cannot guess your password. Only your fingerprint will boot the machine up.

This feature has found its way onto numerous computer products besides the notebooks themselves. Now you can find external hard drives as well as USB flash drives that have biometric fingerprint security built into them.

This is a good way of safeguarding your system if you have any sensitive personal information on your hard drive or flash drive that you do not want shared with others. It can also serve as a deterrent of theft if someone knows they will not be able to access the computer or drive even if they were able to steal it.

Biometric safeguards are gaining a lot of popularity among business workers and college students in big cities or people who find themselves in large crowds regularly. This is where a lot of theft takes place, but maybe these new security measures can change that.

   
Need an affordable GPS unit that can interface with your laptop?

Bluetooth GPS to the Rescue

If you are the kind of person that travels a lot with your notebook computer then you are in luck. There are new GPS units on the market that can use Bluetooth technology to connect to your laptop and get you anywhere you need to go.

Units like the Garmin Mobile 10 Laptop GPS can connect directly to your Bluetooth enabled PC. Along with the appropriate software on DVD and the Bluetooth receiver, you can actually download all the maps you need and get turn-by-turn directions to your destination. You can also look up specific addresses and points of interest.

The Garmin model comes in at $129.99 online and it comes with a one year warranty. This is just another example of the Bluetooth features and computer products that continue to pop up day after day for laptop users.

This navigation system is considerably cheaper than other stand-alone models. So if you bring your laptop with you all the time when you travel anyway, this system can save you some money and get the job done just as well as more expensive GPS units.

   
Are your computer cables becoming a knotted mess?

Wire Management

When you build a desktop, you generally want to leave room to add more PC components later on. The more you add, the more wires you will have running through your computer case to the outside. This makes it more difficult to see what you are doing when trying to install upgrades through a maze of wires. It also increases the likelihood of computer cables getting caught and pulling on a piece of hardware.

An easy way to avoid this is to bundle wires together wherever possible. You can use plastic zip ties to secure wires together and off to the side so they do not hang right over components or get tangles and then cause more problems later during upgrades.

By keeping these wires organized you also leave more free space inside the case for air to flow. This will help to regulate the temperature inside the system and avoid any damage from overheating.

For convenience, it is also a good idea to do the same with any wires that you have coming out of your case and running to other peripherals like the power supply, monitor, surround sound system and more.

   
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Sherril Steele-Carlin