The monitor is a television-like box except it is used in a computer for display. You can't use the computer at all without a monitor. The monitor is different from the television is many ways. It is flatter compared to the television. Television refreshes the screen by interlacing while the monitor is using non-interlaced functions. Monitors uses pixels to display, making it finer and better to display text.
Larger Resolution, Smaller Display
One thing you should know, since monitors measure by pixels, you should always set the resolution right. A larger resolution uses smaller pixels, making everything smaller but you have a larger view. The default is 640x480 but most prefer 800x600. For larger monitors, you can decide on 1024x800 or 1280x1024. Also remember, since there are more pixels, the higher the resolution, the slower the screen refreshes.
Decide On A Screen Filter
Although computer screens are just 30% of the radioactivity from the TV or less, you still might want to consider a screen filter. It helps filter up radioactivity. Never settle for a cheap screen filter. A lousy one won't filter the screen - it just darkens it. Always make sure that it won't make everything look dark. Some good screen filters provide a wire to clip it at the back of the casing to lose the radioactivity.
On the other hand, you should also make sure you don't need one. Here are a few points to guide you.
- Your computer (& monitor) is placed under a bright place and can balance with the brightness of the monitor
- Your monitor is anti-glare and non-reflective.
- Your monitor produces little static and radioactivity.
- Your monitor produces clear, crisp and not-too-bright images.
- You won't have problems staring at the monitor for a long time.
If your monitor fits that criteria, you can forget the screen filter.
Blink Your Eyes!
This is not actually a hardware tip, just to let you know how important it is to blink your eyes. Your eyes don't actually get strained staring at the monitor, just loses moisture and making the eyes dry. It has been proven that people staring at the monitor for a long time has the tendency to blink less than the normal rate. Make an effort to blink your eyes. If not, try eye moisture drops.
Degauss
Degauss is a very important function that helps you restore your monitor when colors are distorted or you noticed weird colors at the corners of your monitor. This is cause by magnetization that can be caused by jerking the monitor, shifting to a different direction or moving it across the globe (different magnetic field). The degauss control removes magnetization from your monitor
Use the degauss control lightly. You should only degauss if you see color purity problems. Otherwise, don't use it. Too much degaussing stresses the circuitry components and overheats the large coil around the CRT. If possible, when the display clears up, shut down the monitor/computer for a while to let it cool down.
Take Control
When your monitor comes, modify the factory default setting of your monitor! Get more colors or brightness. And stretch the screen to the fullest! Although this may sound trivial, a lot of people just think it's alright to follow the original setting, losing valuable screen space, you will be surprised to know how much bigger you can stretch the screen. A bigger display is always better.
Sound Card
A world without sound is boring. The same goes to computers. Imagine playing quake with the beeps from the PC speaker. The sound card is a piece of hardware to generate high quality sound. It enables your to listen to your CD, record voices with the microphone and playing your sound files.
Don't Throw Away Your Old RAM
If you have and old PC that utilizes old 32 bit RAM, don't throw it away. If you have and AWE (advance wavetable effect) sound card, with empty memory slots, you may plug it into your soundcard to load more instruments. Very useful. If you want, you can go to computer junkyards or dealer with old computers to find some old 32 bit RAM. You can get it for almost nothing.
More, more!
If you are using an AWE soundcard, you might want to get more voices or instruments. Go to your manufacturer's website and search for sound fonts. Like fonts, they are the same instruments but produces different sounds. The amount of sound fonts you can load at a time depends entirely on how much memory you have.
No Sound From Mike
An ageing sound card probably doesn't supply the DC voltage needed to power a new electrets microphone-the kind with a mini-stereo (ring-tip-sleeve) plug on the cable. If so, you'll need either an inline battery pack to power the new microphone, or an older dynamic microphone that doesn't need DC power. But the best bet is to throw it away and get a new one.
RAM Won't Work On New Motherboard
If you upgraded your motherboard and CPU to a brand new one, you might encounter with some RAM problems. Either the system seems slower or the total amount of RAM is displayed less than the actual amount during bootup (when you just power-up the computer).
The problem usually occur if you upgraded from a 486 to a Pentium or from non-EDO RAM to EDO. There are a few things you should know. In the older motherboards, you can slot in any RAM of any amount and run them smoothly. However, newer Pentium motherboards handle EDO RAMs differently. Every EDO RAM slots must run in pairs. For example, you can't plug in a 8 meg RAM with a 16 meg RAM and expect them to run together, producing 24 meg. Instead, you must have 2 RAM slots that contains the same amount of RAM (8 meg+8 meg or 16 meg+16 meg e.g) to have them running together.
Also a reminder, you can't plug in a single 32 meg RAM to produce 32 meg. You need 2 16 meg RAMs to produce that amount. So if you need 96 meg, you must fill the the RAM banks with a combination of (16+16 meg) + (32+32 meg). In short, every RAM must run in pairs. They must be placed side-by-side. You can't place a combination of 16+32+16+32 to get 64 meg. You need to place the same amount side-by-side like this: 16+16+32+32. Most motherboard has 4 empty banks for you to place your RAM. Newer motherboards has 6 empty banks. Still, you have to run them in pairs.
Older motherboards and non-EDO RAM don't have to run under this principle. That is why when you upgrade to a newer motherboard, it might not work. Now, back to the problem. Open the cover of your PC and check whether you RAMs are place in pairs side-by-side or not. If not, rearrange them. If you found out you have a combination of a mixture of amounts like: 4+4+8+16 meg, you have to plug one out, buy a new matching one, and replace it. (In this case, take out the 8 meg and by a new 16 meg to produce 4+4+16+16. You can take out the 16 and buy an 8 but that will be downgrading, isn't it?)
This should solve the problem. Also another reminder. SDRAMs don't have to run in pairs. Older motherboard only has 1 empty bank for SDRAM (however, newer ones have more banks). If you want 64 SDRAM, just buy one single 64 SDRAM slot, plug it out, and there you are! But, remember, SDRAM won't work together with EDO. If you plug them in together, the computer will either identify the amount of EDO RAM or SDRAM you have, not both. And it will also only utilize one of them.
More Than 64 Meg RAM On HX Motherboard
It has been a myth that Windows 95 won't work with more than 64 meg RAM. That is not true. But older motherboards do have problems with more than 64 MB RAM.
Motherboards with the Intel HX chipsets is one of them. You can upgrade to more than 64 meg RAM but you must be careful. the Intel HX chipset is built in such a way it requires an additional tag RAM chip used to cached the main memory. The main memory is cached to speed up memory access. Now the problem here is, the tag chip is only capable of handling a maximum of 64 MB. If more than 64 MB is installed, only the first (from the bottom) 64 MB is cached.
Most operating systems uses RAM from top to bottom and since only the bottom one is cached, the OS is using the top uncached memory thus slowing down your system and not utilizing your RAM to the fullest.
Some motherboards have no spare tag RAM socket so I'm sorry to say, you only have a limit of 64 RAM. Some motherboards have an extra tag RAM socket. Just order one from your computer dealer, plug it in, and you can happily increased the maximum of cached RAM to 128 MB.
In short, always check how many tag RAM chips you have before buying more RAM than the maximum allows or it might slow down your system instead of speeding it up.
Fighting Unknown Problems
Hardware problems are quite difficult to tackle, worse if under Windows. There was once when installing a software, I accidentally inserted the Audio hardware diskette. Thinking it was harmless, I went on, thinking I can always "undo" everything again. How wrong was I. The next moment I restarted Windows, I got the blue screen of death. Yeah, Windows is very nasty when it comes to hardware.
Find The Culprit
Always calm down. Try to solve the problem yourself before resolving to formatting or sending to your computer dealer. First, know what's happening and the cause of it. In my case, the installation must have overwrite my old setting and replaced the wrong file. There must be a reason why Windows is acting improperly.
Logging Back On
First, try to log back on. If you can't log into Windows, don't panic. Restart the computer. When the text "Starting Windows 98..." appears, press F8. A menu will appear. Choose "Safe Mode" to continue. Safe mode will take some time to load. When you are in Windows, go to Control Panel, System. Click on the Device Manager tab. Find the faulty hardware driver and delete it. Open autoexec.bat and config.sys (both are hidden files in your root directory) with notepad. If the hardware is a CD-ROM or sound card, it will probably write add some lines. Check whether there are backup file (autoexec.bak, autoexec.b~k e.g.) since most installation will back up the 2 important files. If there is, simply replace them with the backup files. If there isn't, put "REM " in front of every line that loads the hardware.
Repairing
When you restart, your computer is probably ok, since you have deleted all instances of the hardware drivers. But the hardware isn't functioning. re-install the hardware drivers, restart and you're done! If the problem persists, your probably have a system conflict go to the next page for more.
When Your Printer's Buffer Overflows........
Yes, the printer isn't perfect. When you give the printer more load than it can "remember" from it's memory buffer, it will either hang, stop, pause or abort the print and give you an error message. Here are a few ways to fight the problems.
Compress
From experience, I found out that a printer seldom or never encounter any buffer overflow from printing text. Rather, it is graphic files (up to 5 MB at a time) that crashes the printer. If you are printing multipage when you get errors, print one at a time. It may be painstaking but it sure beats having an error message. Now if a huge graphic file still makes your printer's buffer overflow, try to compress the current format you are using. If you are using Photoshop, save it as a normal or "flatten" (without layers) to lower the file size. You might want to try using GIF or JPEG. JPEG is a high-color compression method that can reduce up to 90% less. But saving in this format can be "lossy" (image looks a bit different than the original). I prefer GIF. Although the file size may be bigger in high-colors, but it looks better.
Go For The Upgrade
Most printers allow you to upgrade the memory. The more memory, the less buffer overflow. This is the best solution. Go to your nearest computer dealer to ask for a memory upgrade. Make sure they can get the exact company and model. It might cost a bit but hey, that's what upgrades are for!