km790816 writes: "In this post I joked about wanting an optical bus on my PC. In the last week I've seen two articles from The Register and EETimes discussing the real possibility. Both mention high bandwidth and lower heat and power usage. Sounds good to me."

iCharles writes "According to this SEC filing per this Palm Infocenter story, it would appear that Palm is spinning off its OS devision. I'm a Handspring user, so it sounds quite interesting to me."

A reader writes: "There's an interview with Glenn Summerfield, Senior Sales Associate for Alpha Novatech (USA) that talks about heat sinks and where some of it is going." Alpha Novatech is one of the big boys in the field of heat sinks - the responses do have a bit of "salestalk" for Alpha Novatech, but seeing industry thoughts on watercooling vs. aircooling and such is interesting, nonetheless.

carbon60 writes: "Proxim seems to have very quietly released 802.11a based products. 54 Mbps in standard mode and 100 Mbps in "2X" mode. The main website lists the products." They're a little more expensive, and I dunno about Linux drivers, but still, that's some fast wireless action.

tzanger asks: "There's a vast quantity of SpeedStream 5250 and 5251 SDSL modems on ebay. These modems are actually ethernet-to-SDSL bridges and could be used as cheap point-to-point links. I say could because Efficient Networks has defaulted the configuration to CPE-only and they have made their configuration utility '5250dnld.exe' disappear. I've tried dozens of search engines, Usenet and about twenty FTP search engines without luck. I thought Gnutella might be a good choice but there is a Gnutella virus which propagates itself as whatever application you try to grab!"

-homb- writes: "Finally, Handspring has done it before everyone else: The Treo, a combination cellphone, wireless POP3 email, and PalmOS PDA. Plus, the first version comes with or without a keyboard. I love my Blackberry, and it looks like the keyboard is the way to go for email. And the next version coming later on next year will have color." We mentioned these earlier.

Filly-O-Fish asks: "By ironic coincidence, the day the IBM Deskstar Failures story was posted, both my 40 gig 75GXP drives failed. Whilst I don't have the cure for cancer on there, I do have some personal data that I'd really like to try to recover. No way could I afford to have it recovered by a professional data recovery company. I looked at a few software packages, the most promising one being ACR Mediatools, the demo version available only shows you your lost files though, you have to register($499) to actually recover them. Yes, I realize I should have backed them up regularly.. but I haven't had time to back 80 gigs up to CDR, and I can't afford one of these babies. Are there any alternative cheap(!)/free solutions to get my data back?"

savaget points to this Linux Journal article which covers building a superior personal computer for general usage. See if you agree with the choices that Rick Moen, Daryll Strauss and Eric Raymond made in building their dream box.

Isotopia writes: "This article from the NY Times is very cool. It's about this guy from IBM who was able to put voice recognition on his Palm III and it talks to him! It can remind him about meetings and it will tell him when his battery is getting low." I bet if you used this much, it would tell you how low the battery is -- frequently. That aside, it's amazing that IBM has been able to squeeze this onto a Palm.

matthew.thompson writes: "Nokia have released a phone to give the RIAA nightmares - it includes built in MP3 playing AND encoding and an FM stereo radio - so you can MP3 up tracks from the Radio or from an external source via a line in jack. It's also got a full qwerty style keyboard and GameBoy Advance style layout. RIAA headache inducing features here and piccies etc here." I'm not quite sure how this works - Nokia's page says the gizmo plays "secure" mp3 files, which sounds to me as if it is crippled. Here are some hi-res photos. Update: 10/11 12:59 GMT by M : Ahh, my misreading. It says "secure AAC and MP3 files", and apparently "secure" is intended to apply only to AAC. According to the FAQ, the phone is crippled - only stores crippled AAC files, not unencumbered mp3's. A shame.

Fletch writes: "I received an email from Samsung today announcing the release of 'America's First GPS Phone.' The phone does appear to have some neat GPS-based services, such as restaurant and traffic info. Those of you with privacy concerns need not worry. According to the manual (p122, large pdf file) the user does have the ability to turn the 'Position Location' off. (it will be automatically turned back on when/if an emergency call is made)." The manual doesn't say whether the phone initially defaults to "Tracking On" or "Off".

I never quite thought I'd see this in my life time, but RAM is now cheaper when it comes to memory-per-unitofcurrency than hard drives. Of course, those of you who have noticed this have also wondered, quite reasonably, that it might be cheaper to start building Solid State Hard Drives entirely out of RAM, rather than using the standard ole platters. Is there anyone in the market who also has noticed this and is attempting to market a product that will fill this need? Remember this puppy from 2 years ago, and this story, mentioned a year ago? While the first one was a bit of a laugh, the second article does mention a limit to the lifetime of the current MO Hard Drives. Are we closing in on that limit, now? Update: 10/11 2a EDT by C :I apologize for not catching the erroneous statement above, earlier. What I had meant to say was that since RAM is at its cheapest point in price in recent years, not to say that it was cheaper per-unit-of-currency, which is absolutely false. Chalk this one up to too much creative writing in college, lack of sleep, and a long frustrating day. Thanks to brian@pongonova.net for pointing out that error.

Yoweigh asks: "Are there any advanced calculator programs out there for PocketPC handheld devices? Specifically, any TI emulators available or under development? I've seen quite a few emulators for desktop PCs under several OSes (including Linux), but none for handhelds. It seems to me that this could easily be the most useful application of calculator emulator software. I just paid quite a bit for my pretty color iPaq... why pay $200 more for a TI-89?"

slazar asks:"I accidently reversed the polarity on the DC power input on my Archos Jukebox 6000. Smoke rose and now it won't charge anymore. I opened it up and found that a chip had been fried. Could any of you possibly tell me what a certain chip is and who makes it? The chip I need to replace has been damaged beyond recognition. This chip is a 8-pin surface mount chip, on the same board as the Stop, play, plus and minus buttons. It is nearest the stop button. It is also near the chips labeled ' IR 1F ', ' I 385-2 2AUXV ', and ' IR 022H 3XSD F7416 '. The chip is on the same side as the LCD connector. The reverse side of the board is depicted here. A great website depicting the Archos taken apart is here, except that it doesn't have the picture I need. I have tried contacting Archos but they are completely unwilling to help me. Any compassionate hardware hackers out there?"

Bill Kendrick writes: "ZDNet reports that Sharp is getting ready to make its Linux-based PDA available to developers in the next few weeks. They'll include a 206MHz StrongARM, 32MB (in the cheaper, developer edition), a JVM, the Opera web browser, and a slide-out keyboard. A profile of the device is available at LinuxDevices.com." We've mentioned this before, but it looks like it'll be here soon.

Xenographic writes: "Apparently, someone in the UK got the idea to build a school entirely out of cardboard and Westborough Primary School decided to implement it. The students are even recycling their trash to help construction!"

dev0 asks: "I have been spending some time looking for data gloves with no success - and I had been thinking they existed already. About the best things I have found so far are from Fifth Dimension Techonologies. However this does not seem to be bulk stuff. What I would like to do is to find something with open specs, and cheap price. One thing that I have been planning to do, is to do a virtual keyboard for my PDA. So that I can hit a real-size virtual keyboard in air and type faster. Who really needs to see the buttons? Hints, anyone?"

Quadropleen+ asks: "I work in a lab where we do real time control of industrial hardware. To this point, we've been using several old A/D and D/A boards to control these processes under DOS, due to the anti-real time properties of Windows. Well, our cards are beginning to fail, and we're looking for replacements. I've been trying to get my advisor to move to Linux, and I see this as a great opportunity to leverage a better OS onto our machines. Does anyone have suggestions/experience with using A/D & D/A boards with Linux? What are the best and worst ones out there?"

DonaldP asks: "I've been making head-mounted displays for wearable computers for a couple or three years now; I think my latest and greatest 3rd Generation display is a big step ahead! It fits inside a normal-looking pair of sunglasses. Why would I do something like this? As far as I know, this is one of the only ones available out there - the only others that come close are made by MicroOptical Corporation, but it's been years and you STILL can't actually BUY any of their products. With large companies like Xybernaut holding plenty of patents on wearable computers and going strong, is there a place for my little one-man company? Any tips for making it on my own? Or is my best hope to hook up with a giant?" I've been waiting for a nice and portable HMD for years, and this has the advantage of not making you look like a Borg reject (although some of you might like that look). HMDs still have a way to go to be practical for everyday use (many still require perfect vision or contacts because they are clumsy with glasses) but I'm sure these drawbacks will be fixed with time.

rotifer writes: "Compaq is recalling 1.4 million power adapters as fire hazards. I have one of these sitting on my living room floor right now. Compaq says in their FAQ on the subject "Compaq urges customers to discontinue use of the recalled AC adapter and to order a replacement adapter immediately." and that "We expect customers to receive their adapters within 5-10 days". Which means, of course, 5-10 days of not being able to use the computer. Has anyone had one of these things blow up on them? How dangerous is it to keep using it while waiting for the replacement part?" Only you can prevent notebook fires.