happy with both roil mail and maplins

I have had a small inconvinance resontly regarding maplins, for my fearground style stall that some of you know im building i requierd a chaser unit to make the lighs around the signe flash.It was orderd online and just a few days later thrue the post came a package from maplins, it was a small par can, not the chaser that was ordered. I was a little anoyed by this. I then tryed to ring up ther custemer suport number but it was anounced by a recorded message on the other side of the line that it was 'tempareraly unavalable'. This got me quite anoyed, but after trying about half and hower later i managed to get thure to some one. The lady on the end of the phone quite happaly after taking some detales quite happaly sent out the  chaser, that i was suprized that it came the very next day by roil mail. thanks very much maplins.

Roilmail or roil snail as it has been nicknamed by a few peple have suprized me over the last cupple of months, I have had quite a few packeges sent with them and they have all been extreemly quickly. well done roil mail.

Thanks for reading, fell free to coment on hear. 'like' ower face book page, or send me an email: georgesblabberings@hotmail.co.uk

george out.

Is self building a computer actuly cheeper than building one?

I get asked this question a lot and it dipence on a lot of things. First of all if you are building a super hige end gaming masheen, you can get a very lage reducon in price then buying the same rig off some one elce. But for a standerd home computer im not shuear so im going to test it out.

disclaimer: All prices listed are prices at the writing of this post and may have changed by the time you are reading this, although in theory this rig should work I have not tested it and therefore is completely theoretical.

I have solected the HP Pavilion P6630uk to test this out with as it is a mid range computeer, nothing speshal, but also nothing extreemly spectacula, at the time of rigitng this post it was priced at £493.92. Lets see if we can build more or less the same computer for less than this price. 


It has a AMD athlon II x4 runing at 2.9GHz, I cold not find one of them but we can go better with the Athlon II X4 645 running at 3.10GHz for £75.55.

Now we know what sort of proseser scoit the motherbord will need to have(AM3), we can find a realy cheep mother bord, the bord i have solected is the ASUS M4A78LT-M LE priced at £38.98. So the mother bord and proser combanaton total price is: £114.53.


The HP has 4gb of ram so i have solected 4gbs of Kingston ValueRAM DDR3 for £23.73. total price so far: £138.26


The hard drive in the HP is a 640gb dirive, found a Western Digital Caviar Blue for £30.95. totoal so far is £169.21.


Thegragics card in the computer is a nVidia GeForce 210, Palit do one for £38.90. total after that is £208.11


so that is realy the main parsts of the computer for only £208.11 the other acsesarys that are needed  are a optical drive: this LG will do the job fine at only £12.29. most cases will be fine for this build the Cooler Master Elite 335 shold be fine therfor priced at £35.59 ans a basic 500w PSU shold be ok to power the thing this one shold be ok at only £13.49. So for the total cost of the hardwear it is only 269.48.


Personaly I think that alot of computers cost comes from the OS wich is why i use linux, a typpe of free oparating system(But that is a compleatly difrent post altogether). To be fiting with the chalang i set my self cost of the OS needs to be included. I have cosen to use Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM for this build(£70.99). It is the same OS that is one the HP computer, just the OEM vershon, this meens that it was bort in mass, sort off. but also that is a compelaty difret post.


Altogether the cost of this similer computer if self built is £340.47. £153.45 cheeper than if bort from HP. but with a self build you dont get alot of things that you wold get if you bort it. First of all it takes quite a bit of time to build, somthing you wodnt need to wory about if you bort it, techinacal suport is harder to get hold of if you build it your self. so it is cheeper to self build(most of the time) but its also a bit of a hassal building the thing.


Thank you for reading.


George out.

A quick look inside a webcam

Yestaday i opend up this old webcam that i have had laying rowund for a good few years. I am very suprised at the quality of the constucton considaring it was cheep. I dont remeber what the make and modle as it was perches meny years ago.

The front of the bord, ther isnt realy much  on ther to talk about, other then it uses conectors to conect things isnted of just soldaring them to the bord using cheep fly leeds. This meens it wont brake as esaly.

This picher shows the ajustable lence and microphone that is on this poticula webcam. its all very nice.

The chip in the middle of the black sercal is the chip that picks up the image. I found it very intresting beacus it is glass fronted you can see the copper linkeges bitween the actual silicone and the outer casing. All ICs have this inside but not offton do you see it.(click on the picher to enlage it and you can see this)

Constucton wise it is a very nice webcam, but for actual use as a web cam the imige quality isnt the best. To give you some idiar of quality this vido was filmed using it back in 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urqP-2Y2Eeg

Thanks for reading.

George out.

casio sientific calculator revew(fx-83ES and fx-85ES)

The casio fx-85ES(left) and the casio fx-83ES(right) sientific calculators

This is a very quick revew of theas caluculators, they are very good at what they do and contane alot of feachers that I like.

First of all the 'natural display' alows for calculatons to be diplade on the screen as you wold right them down, not like on alot of cheeper caluculators that display everthing in a not very nicely formated line.(But if you preffer calcuators like that the mode can be changed so it formats it like that). One thing that I didnt like untill last week but now i love is that the ancers are first diplade as a simplifyed serd. also it can simplify fractons for you very simpily. If you want to see the desamal ancer thow you just need to press the SD button. The replay fucnton alows you to redo the same calcuaton more than ones quicly wich is quite good.

the natural display showing a calcuaton

The calculators functon more or less in the same way, but from using them side by side it is posoble to seen that the fx-85ES is quite a bit faster than the fx-83ES.  As far as casing goes the fx-85ES has a removabl cover just for the battory but the fx-83ES requiers the hole of the back cover to be removed to change the battry. The fx-85ES all so has 'two way power' as it has a small soler cell, this mees less power is drawn from the battory, the fx-83ES doesn't have this.

I higly recomend thes calulators for exams, or just genral use that requierss more than just aditon,subtracton,multiplacton and divishon.

thanks very much for reading.

George out.

my new multimeter

As some of you might know I'm in the proses of constructing a travailing fair ground stile stall. The electrics wear giving me a few problems so I thort it was about time I got a desont multimeter.

Maplin is the closast shop i know of to get one so i went in.  Thats wear the 'fun' started,up first  i wanted to get the £19.99 PG 10B but they wear out of stock, not to worry, the next upgrade avalable is the £24.99 PG 12, it has a few more fetchers so was a good upgrade, but that to was aparantly out of stock.  So I had no choys but to get the £29.99 PG 17 dispit costing me a extra £10 than i wanted to spend, it wasnt a bad price for the meter. This one was in stock at the time. It had a few more good feachers than the last to. I do think however if the product is out of stock, it shodnt be displade.

The person in the shop sead that i wold  need to get a 9v battry(£1.99) it was 2 for the price of one. But i got home to fined it had one in it. It was even printed on the back of the box it came in that it had one in! very anoying. But at lest I have some more 9v battrys rowd the house.

Just a bit of a product review, it ternd out to be a good meater in its runing. Fairly actuat rezults.  It is a bit of a shame that you have to reomve the hole of the back cover to replace that battry and fewses. With it been a low to mid priced meter i wasnent expecting much from its constucton. The cover is made from a fairly brittal but quite nice plastic. The range swich dosnt feel very flimzy, it feels very nice and givce a satasfiing click when it is ternd. The rubber outer cover is also very nice, dose its job well, bit of a luce fit but its not going to fall out. Inside it seems a bit tacky, cheep, very thin fly leeds conecting the continuetry buzzer to the case, the 9v battry clip is just solderd to the bord. however seems to be fairly good. Precision gold did well with it I think.

Thanks very much for reading, coment and rate.

George out.

knex is more then a toy

knex is extreemly usfull stuff. Out of it i have built all manar of usfull stuff. from camra stands to microphone holders.

But the latast adishon to this is a holder for mounting a extra fan in side my computer. At the moment it is quite hot,and becaus of this, my over clocked components(CPU and GPU) are at risk, so this fan helps to cool the graphics card.

hear it is

so i find that it is more than just a toy, knex is a tool for doing stuff that wold be realy dificalt and expencive to do with out it, thanks a lot knex. 

oh and yes, I did do some cable managemant to sort out that mess you can see.

Also you can now subscribe to the blog viar email very easly, ther is a litle form in the right side bar, just stick your email adress in, hit subscribe and you will be emaild when a new post comes out. good eh?

George Out

companys changeing the websites

Yes updating old websites is good, but, pleas keep old URLs compatible!!!!

A wile back i was righting a post on how to build a gaming rig with less than £500. As i have now found out, the company that i have chose to link to out of the gudness of my hart has disted to change its website compleetly so now the links dont work. like come on!!! they will loos out on a lot of trade becaus of this. broken links arent good.

In other news, Georges blabarings will be going live, evry Saturday 8pm till 10pm(GMT). This will be a live show. fecharing the rantings of me, and some good things. I will keep you posted on this. the reson that this post is so short is becaus im going to work on the set up for it. wish me luck.

Thanks for reading

George out!

eddit:
Looks like that has been fixt now, thank you dabs

A litle more on the lab power splay im building

Small post on how this project is going, well i havent done much on it at all. I have however been looking in to some parts that will be used. The first of wich is an on off swich. This one It has a buit in LED light and fits into a 20mm bore that was lookly alredy in it, the hole for the wiers to come out.

The hole for the wiers at the back of the PSU

Well, it will need a bit of paking to fill the hole but it shold work just fine.

For the conecters i have disided on using some normal 'Terminal Possts'. Unfocanatly they are qute expencive but it is the realy the only thing right for this poticlua job.


Thats it for now on this, hopfaly will have this done and sher it with you soon.


George out.

The range of computers for playing games(part 2 of 3)

 This is a follow on from: The range of computers for playing games(part 1 of 3)

Just as a disclaimer, I take no responsablity for your actions. If you want to build this its up to you, and if it dosen't work its not my fault. Im not 100% certain that it is a fully working build, it dose however work on paper. Its purely theoretical.

OK. The time is hear to make a basic gaming computer. For less than £500. It will be a chalange but lets give it a go. (all prices are bast on http://www.dabs.com at the time of righting  this post.)

The first thing I look at when building a computer is solection a mother bord. It is the back bown for the build. I profer AMD CPUs to intell so i have gone for one with a AM3 prosesser sockit. the Asus M4N68T-M LE V2(£34.99). It has the Asus core unlocker wich makes it simple to unlock cors on CPUs that have been disabled. 


The CPU will be a single core, but can be unlockt if you are lucky, the AMD Sempron 140 2.7GHz(£25.72). Not the fasters proserser avalable but it dose the job. It comes in a retale box so has a heat sink and fan along with some thermal materil.


For the memry i have chosesn 4gbs of Kingston HyperX(£39.99) ddr3.

Now for the grafics card, A gaming computer needs to have a good grafics card to run the games, for a good gaming rig you wold want to spend upwords of £130 on the grafics card alown, but for this build that is inposible, this one shold  be just as good, its the Gigabyte GeForce GTS 430(£61.27).   It comes pre over clockt from the factory and works sprising lee well for buget card(I can say that becaus I own one of thees cards.)

Lets take a look at the hard drives and optical drives now. For the CD drive i have pickt out the very nice LiteOn 24x DVD-RW. For only £18.44. It is a very ruged drive that dose its job well. As for the hard drive, the Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3 7200rpm(£39.99) will do the job.

OK, lets look for a case, I have chosen the Silverstone Precision.(£34.04) It is a mid tower case, so ower Micro ATX mother bord will fit fine. It also has enuff cooling for this prity basic system.

The precision dosnt have a power spliye so one will need to be bort sepratly. Dabs have a nice 500w one for £11.98. It shold run this basic computer fine. 

Thats all of the hard wear done, now all it needs is an oparating system, for this computer it will be Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium(OEM: £75.18). 

This dosnt inclue a moniter, key bord, mouse or sound system, but the atule tower will cost only £341.60. wich is well under ower £500 gole.


Now dont take this for gosble, its not a grate computer, im not 100% it will work to gether but im pritey shuwer, If i had the mony i wold build it to find out. but on paper it wold be a hafe desont gaming computer for the casuale gamer, It wold be able to out do alot of game consoles on the market at the moment, and it dosnt brake the banks.


Part 3 will be looking at the difrences from PC gaming and console gaming, so bee on the look out for it coming soon.


Thanks for reading, coment, and sher.


George out.

A look inside two calulators

I came across thes two calulators the uther day in my house. They looked sprisingly similer. The key pad is made of the same stile of rubber, and is lade out exacly the same, the more modne one, hase its added funcanality brot on by its 'shift' butten printed on the plastec, but i codnt see eny markings on the second one, maby a sticker was arginly on it. They didnt have eny branding, so this is yet to be confermd, but lets take a look at them.

The one on the left in thes photos we will refer to as "CA" and the on on the right as "CB"

CA is smaller than CB

Back vew, i seem to have mis plast the batry cover for CB

CA uses butten sell batrys. but the older one uses dubbl A batrys.

The cheep consturction was aparent when i opend them up and found the key pad to be re inforst with card bord, i cudnt see eny comonents as the bords wer glud down and i didnt want to bucher them yet.

I am more than serten that theys calcuaters have been made by the same manufatura, they even had exacly the same scruse. Thes calcuaters do ther job, and are dert cheep(Im asuming) but for some real use, i dont think they wold do a good job. The build quality is terable.

Thanks for reading, dont forget to coment and tell your frends.

George out!

The range of computers for playing games(part 1 of 3)

Lots of peple now have games consoles, and don't like to play games on computers. PCs can be the most powafull tool for playing games on. You can build or buy computers that will be able to beet consoles for evrthing if you know what cind of computer to get.

The range of computers expland:
Ther are meny types of computers out ther and not meny of them are good for paying games on, but if you know what you need to get amasing quality grafics and sown along with speed they are esy to find. For true gaming PCs you are looking in the price of £4000 plus but you can get away with a £500 one that i will be teling you about in part 2.

Laptops and netbooks, for games you realy want to avoid thes unless it is a disind gaming laptop. gaming laptops are very expencave and not meny good ones are out ther.

Desctops. Proper home computers. But Is yours right for gaming, chanses are it is not. it will run games, just not very well.

This is just a taster. more will be expland in part 2.

stay tuned and dont forget to coment.

George out.

UPDATE: part 2 now out

sound qwality: my opiyon

Over the yers fore some reson as audio technology has improved. The coman joe hasnt notest that the quality of the sownd has gon down. Starting with LPs, ther was a lot more before that but we will start at LPs.

LPs provide the best qwality of audio that you can get on a potable medum. Computers can do beter if they have a £10,000 sound card and even beter speakers and amplifiers, but this is in no way affordable.

Next came caset tapes, that are a way of storing dater on a magnetic tape that runs past a pick up. The quality of thes are truly terable, but the technology has had grate inpact in utehr sectors so they arnt that bad.

After a small sckip over the stuff leding up to them, came CD's. they take up more room than tapes, but the sound quality is beter that them so i can live with that. But its not a scrach on the qualitys of LPs, if you pardon the pun. Sory that was a rely bad joke wasnt it.

MP3s, extremely portable, but have about the same quality as tapes. Dude why????

So for me vinale LPs are the best quality that you can get, just live with it. Also if you are using a pile of crap to play whatever you want to play, the qwality will be a pile of crap, so dont cheep out on eny music divices, ever.

Feel free to coment and descuss thes ishues.

George out!

Inside a CD drive

A while back as I had built a new computer, the old one was dismantaled completely. I still have most of the parts. This cd drive works off old IDE tecnoligy. Lets take a look inside. sory for the quality of photos.

the front of the drive

The back of the drive with the IDE and Molex power conetors

The botom of the drive, only 4 scrues and the howl thing lifts off

the top of the drive with a fansy worning and info sticker

As the bottem cover was lifted off, i saw this chip with metale exposed. It was heat sinked to the cover on the drive thrue a pese of thermale pading material

The mane controle bord of the drive.

A full over vew of the drive

the back of the mane controle bord, it had thias very nice micro conetors and ribben cables ataching it to the rest of the divice.

and finaly this is the moveing lazer head that both berns and reads the discks. If i had more time i wold have powerd it up with the cover off but i didnt.

This is a very old drive and dispist serching the web for a wile I codnt fine alot of the individual ICs.

George out.

lab power splay from ATX computer PSU

WOW that's a long title. But to cut to the chase Im in the prosese of terning this computer PSU into a lab powersplay. It may look complex but it isnt, all that I need to do is to separate out that lage bunch of cables(2nd photo down. bot-am left) into voltages. To start the thing going All that I need to do is put a swich bitween the green whier and a grownd(3rd photo down).

Will post more on this, George out.