I’m not happy – not happy at all. The P5WD2 is Asus’s top end intel motherboard, based on the new 955X chipset. It’s been well reviewed all over the net but I’ve had nothing but problems with mine. Initially I had random problems getting past the BIOS POST – sometimes it would insist it had been overclocked (it hadn’t) and moan about settings. I think I sorted that out by rewiring the optical drives to only use one of the IDE ports. (bizarre, huh)

Then when it finally got into windows it was random lockups time. (I’m not talking about some simple blue screen, I mean the “mouse pointer stops stops dead and num lock doesn’t work any more” kind of freeze).

The latest thing, and the issue that’s probably going to make me give up and buy the Abit version instead – It randomly falls off the LAN! Leave a download going for a few hours, come back and windows will not be able to see anything. Pings just drop in to a black hole never to return. A reboot sorts it out, for another few hours and then it’s gone again (yes, I’ve updated the BIOS and all the drivers I can find)

The thing that *really* annoys me is that none of this can get me an RMA on the board, because the chances are that if anyone just plugs it into a test bench and fires it up it will work for a while. So basically I have to trash it because I certainly can’t trust the thing.

The rest of the components (RAM, PSU, video card) are all new, top quality and tested to work as far as I am able – so all I can do is try another board to see if that makes a difference.

So all in all a very UN-cool gadget

That’s it – rant over and now I’ll get back to posting about more fun stuff, honest!

We all have stress whether we are students sitting in front of our computers seeking out information for that term paper, working for a demanding boss, or just stressing out playing online games. Yes, playing bingo can be stressful when you get close to winning a thousand dollars. But, what can you do? You sure can’t jump up and run to get a massage or take a shower to relieve that stress. The best way to relieve stress while sitting at your computer is with the USB powered massage Ball.

You will be able to relax and never even leave your desk, you will still be able to find all the information you need for your term paper, get that project completed for your boss and win that thousand dollars while relieving stress.
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Laptops are designed to be of must use when people are on the move, but they are far from the most ergonomically friendly devices. They generally kick out a considerable amount of heat, which either ends up heating your thighs or being reflected from the desk back into the laptop causing the fans to have a whizzing frenzy.

A company called Xbrand may have the answer to your scorched thigh problems.
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A few months ago a series of images did the rounds purporting to be a keyboard with a programmable LCD display on each key. As far as I know that one (unfortunately) isn’t in production but United Keys today announced something on the same theme.

The 205 pro is a regular QWERTY keyboard with programmable LCD displays on the function keys. Neat idea but I suspect it won’t get an awful lot of use. Or perhaps I should say I can’t see why people would pay $300 for a keyboard that doesn’t really do that much more for them than the one they can get for $10

This could be worth a chuckle though:

“Internet or intranet sites can embed HTML and hexadecimal code that will automatically launch images on your display keys related to site-specific content”

I’ll leave the rest to your imagination

I don’t know a single gadget head that hasn’t got a large collection of online music. The first thing I do when I get a CD (bought or borrowed) is rip it. Gee even my mother has an MP3 player.

It’s fine having a large collection of music but if you only ever listen to it out of the tinny speakers that came with your PC then you’re just not getting the most benefit. Even connecting your PC to a decent AMP and speakers that cost more than your PC is only part of the answer, what about the rest of the house. This is where the Sonos Digital Music System comes in.
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Forget the usual “Media boxes” made by the likes of Pinnacle, D-link, Linksys etc. They’re not that cheap, they have a very restricted set of connection options (who, in this day and age, connects a TV up with the composite video cable?) and most importantly they don’t play back half the file formats that I have lying around on my system.

No, what you need to do is pick up an Xbox, then get a mod chip installed which enables it to execute arbitrary code (i.e not games).

Then you need to find a copy of the Xbox media center, which can be found from what is euphemistically termed “the usual places” (Microsoft’s licensing terms make it technically illegal to distibute binaries)

Why do I recommend a vanilla xbox when the 360 is just around the corner? Read on…
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A RSS reader for Microsoft Outlook. Attensa for Outlook is one of the few RSS news reader and news aggregator to provide integration of RSS capability into Microsoft Outlook, that brings up-to-date news and content from website, blogs, and Podcast sites, directly into Microsoft Outlook.

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Is this a gadget? Not really, but it is cool so at least it’s halfway there!

Moonpig is an online greetings card company with a difference – they will personalise the text of the card for you. On the surface that may not seem like anything special but the nice thing about these guys is that the cards are exactly the same as the ones you can buy over the counter, but with the generic names and messages replaced with something more personal.

For example you’ve probably seen the “Muriel was having a bad day…” type of birthday cards. Well now you can be much more specific with your insults!

Having used them last year I can say that card quality is excellent and for a small extra fee they’ll also take care of posting the card as well so it makes the whole thing about as hassle-free as it gets.

They’re a UK service but they will post internationally, although at $2.50 postage per card you may want to be selective about who gets the special attention!