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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

Lots of 2.5, 3.5 and 5.25 conversion brackets, cages and hot-swap bays

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/12

To get me some ideas on what is available on the market right now: ADATA, CORSAIR, CRUCIAL, PLEXTOR, SAMSUNG, INTEL & OCZ SSD (SG OFFICIAL DISTROS WTY).

For ZFS, this seems the controller of choice:

For high-density data,

For fast data:

Everything needs to fit in something like this HP XW6600. For Raid-Z3 you need many drives according to Raid Calculator | Raid Disk Space Utilization Calculator | ServeTheHomeSTH – Server and Workstation Reviews (as it can loose 3 drives: ZFS Raidz Performance, Capacity and Integrity Comparison @ Calomel.org) another calculator for risks: RAID Reliability Calculator – Simple MTTDL Model – ServeTheHomeSTH – Server and Workstation Reviews.

You can also use the below bays for instance for Finding Uses for Old 2.5″ Hard Drives | | Que.

A few remarks on 2.5inch disk solutions:

Posted in Hardware, HP XW6600, Power User, Virtualization | 1 Comment »

Headless: PC Engines APU System Boards Feature AMD G-Series T40E APU, 3 Gigabit Ethernet Ports

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/10

Interesting for instance for a pfSense router: [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines APU System Boards Feature AMD G-Series T40E APU, 3 Gigabit Ethernet Ports.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, APU, Hardware, Internet, Network-and-equipment, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Mac (PA03656-B005) (via: Amazon.com: Customer Reviews)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/08

I didn’t have time yet to get one, but the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 (thanks Olaf Monien for pointing me at this in the first place) is definitely on my list of devices to install soon as a successor to my Fujitsu ScanSnap S510.

The S510 has a few drawbacks:

  • Only connects through USB.
  • Only has a very old version of Adobe Acrobat which – even worse – has refused to install any security updates for a while now.
  • Only scans if your PC is logged on.
  • Too often wrinkles paper or multi-feeds (from the beginning, so it wasn’t wear of the rollers).
  • Has problems scanning business cards.
  • Black&White has rough edges around scanned text.

I wanted a new scanner that gets rid of at least a few of these drawbacks.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap site already lists some compelling iX500 features (like 25 ppm, parallel OCR PDF, paper handling, ultrasonic multi-feed detection), but failed to indicate about some of the other drawbacks.

Most reviews of the iX500 were unclear about that as well, until I read the bottom of this Amazon.com review: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fujitsu ScanSnap, Hardware, ix500, LifeHacker, Power User, Scanners | Leave a Comment »

Quick Tip: Automating your Mac’s wifi power (on off through script) via: BrettTerpstra.com

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/04

Interesting commands around networksetup -setairportpower en0 : power off and on your WiFi.

–jeroen

via: [Wayback/Archive] Quick Tip: Automating your Mac’s wifi power – BrettTerpstra.com.

Posted in Apple, Hardware, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Network-and-equipment, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User, WiFi | Leave a Comment »

If you miss having the Caps Lock button on your #Chromebook… (via: Google Chrome – Google+)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/13

This reminds me about mapping the CapsLock to Windows-key on old Lenovo keyboard (you can do that [Wayback/Archive] with ReMapKey from Microsoft, the [Wayback/Archive] slightly more convoluted open source SharpKeys, or a AutoHotKey script), and a [Wayback] Mac equivalent:

MacOS:

I like to have a second Control key instead of Caps Lock.

In OS X, go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys… and change or turn off Caps Lock, Control, Option and Command.

For more radical key remapping in OS X, use KeyRemap4MacBook. Despite the name, it works on non-Macbook machines, too.

ChromeBook:

If you miss having the Caps Lock button on your #Chromebook, you can turn the Search button into a Caps Lock button in a couple steps: find “Keyboard Settings” under the “Settings” menu, and select “Caps Lock” under the “Search” drop-down menu.

Or you can use this quick link on your Chromebook: chrome://settings/keyboard-overlay

Chromebook has [Wayback/Archive] quite some different keys than a Windows keyboard.

Ben Ostrowsky has a nice post with an SVG drawing of the [Wayback/Archive] Chromebook keyboard layout.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Chromebook, Google, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Fixing Inverted Caps Lock on VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or Remote Desktop (RDP/MSTSC)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/10

Every now and then my Mac RDP program will suddenly turn on the CAPS LOCK on the connected Windows terminal.

It happens on different OS X versions, and different Windows versions. I haven’t figured out the steps to reproduce yet. I will amend this post when I have (:

I also have it occasionally fail when I RDP from a physical Windows system to another Windows system, but far less than from Mac OS X.

You work around it using the On Screen Keyboard tool in Windows like Josh Adams explains:

  • launch the On-screen Keyboard application (generally this can be done by choosing Start ==> All Programs ==> Accessories ==> Accessibility ==> On-screen Keyboard; as noted by DrFooMod2 in a comment below, you can also bring up the On-screen Keyboard by typing “osk” without the quotes in the Windows Run… box) and
  • toggle Caps Lock by clicking on the virtual “lock” button in the application.
  • The On-screen Keyboard application shows–and can change–the state of Caps Lock

The easiest way to start the On Screen Keyboard is to create a shortcut to this:

%windir%\system32\osk.exe

–jeroen

via: Josh Adams’s Blog: Fixing Inverted Caps Lock on VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or Remote Desktop.

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Remote Desktop Protocol/MSTSC/Terminal Services, Windows | 1 Comment »

OS X menu keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl-F2 and Shift-Command-?

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/04

So I don’t forget:

Often, Ctrl-F2 (^-F2) fails to show the menu, but ⇧ ⌘ ? (shift+command+/) works all the time.

You can navigate the menus in the menu bar without using a mouse or trackpad. To put the focus in the menu bar, press Control-F2 (Fn-Control-F2 on portable keyboards). Then use the key combinations listed below.

Left Arrow and Right Arrow Move from menu to menu
Return Open a selected menu
Up Arrow and Down Arrow Move to menu items in the selected menu
Type the menu item’s name Jump to a menu item in the selected menu
Return Select a menu item

–jeroen

via:

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User | Leave a Comment »

To force-quit Mac Applications: the Mac equivalent of “Ctrl Alt Delete” (via: eHow.com): Option-Command-Esc

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/03

Once every while, a full screen app on your Mac hangs, and there is no way to Command-Tab to another application.

PC addicts then press Ctrl+Alt+Del, to either get to the Task Manager, or to logoff/reboot.

For a Mac, there are two:

  1. Force Quit Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Mac function keys (F1-F12) in remote desktop (Windows RDP/MSTSC) – MacRumors Forums

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/01/24

The F keys on a Mac still perform the Mac OS X specific function, even in a full screen RDP session, but you can get their Windows functionality back with ease as MacRumors user blindzombie shows:

I got it to work with fn – command – F9

or just command – F9 if you set your keyboard preferences to use F1, F2, etc as standard function key

–jeroen

via function keys (F1-F12) in remote desktop – MacRumors Forums.

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Remote Desktop Protocol/MSTSC/Terminal Services, Windows | Leave a Comment »

SoftPerfect Network Scanner: fast and free network scanner

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/01/17

On my list of things to try: SoftPerfect Network Scanner: fast and free network scanner.

–jeroen

Posted in Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »