Amazon Kindle 2 (eInk) eBook Reader, Unboxed
The Amazon Kindle 2 is a light, slim electronic e-book reader that can be used to read newspapers, magazines, and books purchased from Amazon.com or free e-books downloaded from the Internet. The Amazon Kindle has a 6″ diagonal Electronic Paper (e-ink) display that can be read in direct sunlight. The Amazon Kindle eBook reader experience was designed to be very similar to reading a trade paperback book. The screen and printing contrast is a lot different than a computer screen and is more like reading a slim paperback book – except the Kindle lets you choose 5 different font styles – and can automatically *READ* the newspaper or book to you with the integrated speaker.
Amazon Kindle users can immediately download books using a built in Wireless Cellular Modem using the free Amazon Whispernet (with service provided by Sprint EVDO). The Amazon Kindle can also be used for free web browsing anywhere a Sprint EVDO network is available. The Amazon Kindle web browser is mostly for text, and the e-ink screen doesn’t update quickly enough to display YouTube or other video. Still, the Amazon Kindle Web Browser is adequate for reading text websites.
The Amazon Kindle and the Sony Electronic Reader share the same electronic e-ink screen. in 2007, I bought a Sony Electronic Reader shortly after it was first revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show. I always travel with my Sony Reader (both the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle are small enough to fit in vest coat pocket). I use my Sony Reader at least several times each week at home to read away from the computer. In a future articles, I’ll tell you how to get free eBooks and I’ll compare my old Sony Reader to my new Amazon Kindle. In short, I bought an Amazon Kindle for a few features that aren’t available on my frequently used Sony Reader: The Amazon Kindle has faster page turns than my Sony Reader. The Amazon Kindle has a built in keypad for text searches. The Amazon Kindle has free (simple) web browsing through the Sprint EVDO network with no Wi-Fi connection required.
Click this link to learn more about the Kindle at the Amazon Website
My Amazon Kindle 2 was delivered by US Mail in a somewhat typical corrugated box.
The Amazon Kindle’s box interior is black and simple. The Kindle is in a tray wrapped with a back plastic sleeve.
The box contained A (paper) printed copy of the Kindle manual, the Kindle, and the Kindle charging cable. It came pre-loaded with my Amazon user information and pre-loaded with the manual and a sample book.
Take a sheet of letter sized paper. Fold it in half. The Amazon Kindle’s dimensions are slightly smaller than that. The Amazon Kindle is slightly thinner than a CD jewel case. The Kindle 2 specifications are 6″ diagonal, 3.6″(W) × 4.8″(H). The e-ink screen is 600×800 pixels or 0.48 megapixels, 167 ppi density, with a 16-level grayscale.
Look ma! No Power brick! The Amazon Kindle has a very small light charger that is about twice the thickness of a key fob. You can either use the Kindle’s USB cable to charge the Kindle from your computer’s USB port, or you can plug the USB cable into the Kindle’s very small wall charger. The Amazon Kindle’s charger is much more elegant than the brick-style charger that came with my old Sony Reader (although the Sony reader can also charge via the USB cable from my computer).
The Amazon Kindle is beautiful. When standing back several paces, In typical roomlight or daylight, you can easily mistake the electronic screen for a printed page.
In the upcoming days I’ll write about my experiences with Amazon Kindle including hacks and how to find free books and periodicals. Click this link to learn more about the Kindle at the Amazon Website
Chuck Eglinton
How Do I Change, Reset or Hack a Windows Administrator Password? (recovery)
Follow these steps to change, reset or recover a Windows Administrator Password in just several minutes.
You may own an old PC that you’ve not used for a while and you may have forgotten the Administrator password. Or, like my friend below, you may have inherited an old computer and you need to use Administrator functions and you’ve never known the Administrator password so you need to hack it to get access to Administrator tools and utilities.
Note that if you use this method to change the Administrator password, any previous administrator would no longer be able to log in with their old password because you’ve changed it.
The method I describe is used to change an unknown Administrator password to something you know – or this method can elevate any windows user to administrator permission level.
My Friend Jim S. wrote: “I recently obtained some cast-off PCs. One that I checked, running XP, has 4 previous users and the administrator. Of course, I can only get on as “Guest” The hard drive does contain several programs which I would find useful. So a wipe and reinstall isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. I wondered if you might know a way to get administrator access.”
…
…
Instructions
Summary: Windows Nt/2k/XP/Vista
Operating Systems: Windows Nt/2k/XP/Vista
Difficulty: Moderate
Time: 10 minutes to make boot disk. 10 minutes to follow screen prompts.
Things you’ll Need
- A writable CD, or a USB flash drive, or a Floppy disk (Depending on your computer)
- A disk writing program can write an .ISO file to one of the above (such as Nero)
Part A: CREATE then BOOT FROM the “Change Password” CD (or Floppy or USB)It’s probably easiest if you create a bootable CD or Floppy disk. However, some newer computers support booting from a USB flash drive. |
|
| Step 1 | Download the “Offline NT Password & Registry Editor” bootdisk zip file |
| Step 2 |
Unzip the downloaded .ZIP file to create an “.ISO” file on your hard drive |
| Step 3 |
Burn a bootable CD: Use a CD burning program, such as “Nero,” to write (burn) the .ISO file to a bootable CD, USB flash drive or floppy disk. Be sure to use the burn program’s option to make the target disk bootable. |
| Step 4 |
Set your BIOS BOOT Order. Your computer’s BIOS menu allows you to set the order in which your computer tries to “boot,” or start up. For this program to work, you must set your computer boot order to the CD (or USB or Floppy) before the hard drive then save the bios settings. For example, the key to access your computer’s BIOS could be [F1] or [F2] or [Del] . Press the appropriate key to access your computer’s BIOS when powering on your computer. Note: |
Part B: RUN the “Change Password” programTip: You must run this program from a bootable CD, USB drive or floppy as described in Part A. Part of the reason that this program can reset the Windows administrator password is because it boots your computer in a non-windows operating system, Linux, then it allows you to use the Linux boot to “Hack” the Windows Administrator password. |
|
| Step 1 | STEP 1: Mount the drive.When you restart your computer You’ll see a black screen with a lot of moving plain text scrolling by. Many people freak out when they see text and words go by on the screen that they don’t understand. Don’t be alarmed… Tip: I rarely read everything displayed on the screen. Read from the bottom up. See if you can understand the text displayed on the screen where the cursor is flashing. If you don’t completely understand, read from the bottom up until you do. Ignore the text that is confusing, and see if you can understand the task using the context of the text you do understand.The text will stop scrolling for a moment and “boot” will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. Press [Enter] or wait 60 seconds. A few more seconds will pass while the program tries to “mount” (or connect to) your hard drive. Finally, this text will be displayed: —> “0:0:0:0 [sub] Attached SCSI disk”If the text below is displayed, press ‘y’ then [Enter]—> “Press [Enter] Do you wish to force it> (y/n) [n] y”  …  |
| Step 2 |
Step 2 Select Path and Registry File location Most Windows computers have the Path and Registry files located in Windows/system32/configIf your computer is typical, just press [Enter] when the dialog below appears…  |
| Step 3 |
Step 3: Password or Registry Edit. Note in the second screen below that the Password Menu has a couple of useful options. The BEST approach would be to use the menu to ELEVATE some typical user to Administrator, then use the same method to clear that user’s password. You’ll probably want to try this approach FIRST, before changing the Administrator password because if you make a mistake, then the Administrator password is still untouched and intact.Not that the user names and administration level is displayed in table on the Main Interactive Menu.  Try option 3, “Promote user (make user an administrator)” before “hacking” the Windows Administrator account. Because if you make a mistake, you’ll likely still have other accounts to work with and the main administrator account will still be untouched. If you feel completely confident, you can select the Administrator account and select 1 to clear the Administrator password.
|
| Step 4 |
Step 4: Quit the Interactive Menu. Save Changes. Quit The ProgramPress the exclamation point, then [Enter] to quit the Edit Password menu.Then press “q” to quit the Main Interactive Menu, as shown below. You will be asked “if there is something to save”.  |
| Step 5 | Step 6: Remove the CD and Reboot your computer After completing step 4, remove the bootable CD and restart your computer. When Windows restarts, you should be able to access the Windows Administrator functions through the Windows account you altered. |
| Done | |
Resources
- Offline NT Password & Registry Editor (to change Password)
- Nero CD Burning Program
Photo Credit
Photos by Chuck Eglinton
How can I Secure Erase (Wipe) My Hard Drive before I give my Computer Away?
My friend Karen recently wrote, “A friend is moving out of state, and has some old, old, old equipment. Is there any use for a pentium computer? What is the best way to dispose of it… and how do you wipe off the hard drive, before doing such a thing?”
Yes, even some very old computers can be reformatted and used for simple word processing and for Internet browsing. But in this post, I’ll cover how to completely and securely erase your data from the hard drive.
You probably know that “deleting” a file from your hard drive really doesn’t delete it. Deleting a file will remove the file title from your hard drive (so you won’t see the file title when you “explore” your hard drive), but the file data remains on your disk and in some cases can be recovered by savvy computer technicians. Likewise, using a hard drive “format” command also does not fully remove your files. If you keep any medical, business or personal information on your computer, a simple deletion or hard drive format isn’t’ enough to completely remove your data when you dispose of your computer, but it can be done…
To securely dispose of an accountant’s hard drive a few years ago, we first used one of the secure erase programs listed below, then we used a drill press to physically drill through the drive case and shatter the hard drive platters inside it. We physically damaged the hard drive because we were protecting financial information for many accounting clients. Our physical damage to the hard drive was probably unnecessary, but it gave us visual confirmation that the client data was virtually unrecoverable from the hard drive.
A “Secure Erase” function is built into all hard drives since 2001, but you have to use a computer program to access it. A hard drive’s “Secure Erase” function is recognized by the US Government’s National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) as the same as magnetically erasing a hard drive (degaussing) or physically destroying it.
So, with a hard drive’s “Secure Erase” function available, drilling a hole through a hard drive is certainly overkill for most folks who simply want to make sure that their personal documents, financial information, and family photos won’t be recovered from their old hard drive. Instead, if you erase your hard drive using a recommended secure erase program, you can be fairly certain that your data won’t be recovered and you can avoid physical damage of drilling so that your old hard drive can be recycled, reformatted, and safely reused by someone else.
You can pay for commercially available “disk wipe” programs, but the free “secure erase” programs, listed below, can just as well do the job of securely erasing your hard drive by accessing your hard drive’s hidden “Secure Erase” function.
DARIK’S BOOT AND NUKE
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
ACTIVE KILL DISK
http://www.killdisk.com/features.htm
DISK DRIVE SECURE ERASE
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
Wiping older ATA hard drives is fairly easy with these programs. Wiping clean newer SATA drives may require a few extra steps that are described in each program’s instructions.
In an upcoming post, I’ll write about where you can donate used computers. When you donate a used computer, it would be helpful if you taped a note to the computer box stating that you’ve securely erased all data from the hard drive.
Where can I buy a Cheap Network Laser Printer – Wired or Wireless?
I bought one of these $60 (after rebate) laser printers in 2007, and liked it so much that I bought a second one for my mother a few months later. THE $20 OFF CODE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST IS VALID ONLY ON 2/14/2009. If you want this printer deal, then you have to act fast.
Y’all probably know that laser printers are much cheaper to operate than ink-jet printers. Typically LaserJet pages cost about about 2-cents per page for laser toner versus twice as much for inkjet ink. Sure, I understand that you may use an inkjet printer because you want (or need) color printing, but at $60, you may want to consider adding this cheap laser printer to your office, since it will likely pay for itself in what it saves in printing costs versus your inkjet printer.
No matter which methods I’ve used to preserve the inkjet cartridge, if I didn’t use the inkjet printer for a few weeks then the cartridge would become dried and useless. I’ve never been keen on refilling my own inkjet cartridges and it’s well known that printer companies charge excessively for replacement ink cartridges. If you have similar problems with your inkjet printer cartridges drying out, you may want to consider trying this wonderful $60 laser printer from Brother.
I own a couple of fancy printers, but I also own two Brother printers that are very similar to this one. I bought the first cheap monochrome (black and white) laser printer a few years ago to replace a color inkjet printer I used occasionally when visiting our vacation home (which nearly always needed a cartridge replacement from drying out as a result of infrequent use). The cheap Brother laser printer performed so well that I bought another for my mother. It has performed well for her, too.
I paid about $60 (after rebate) for my Brother Laser printers in 2007. The model at the link below is a bit nicer than the ones I bought; The printer has built-in 802.11b/g and ethernet network interfaces so you can share this printer with others on your computer network or to print wirelessly from your notebook computer. If you don’t want to connect this inexpensive computer to your network, you can just connect it to your computer like any ordinary printer.
This cheap Brother laser printer features a print speed of up to 23ppm with a maximum resolution of 2400 x 600 dots per inch.
As is with most of the deals I post, supplies are limited and if you snooze, you lose.
Pay $130. Use $20 off code 46289 at checkout (expires 2/14). Mail in Rebate $50. With free shipping your net cost is only $60 for this good quality, inexpensive (refurbished) laser printer.
Laser printer (with Network printer sharing) Only $60 with free shipping (after rebate). Click Here.
P.S. For more deals like this one, follow me on TWITTER.
http://www.twitter.com/chuckegg
$80 Slim, Portable Cheap TomTom GPS systems
[Update: The price has dropped another $20 since I wrote about the TomTom several months ago. I like the Tom Tom because of it's portability (it's flat, you can stick it in your vest pocket). It's a great starter GPS. I like some of the features of the Garmin more, but I'd still recommend the TomTom as a starter GPS because it's easier to hide in your glovebox or in a vest coat pocket.]
Click here to see the $80 TomTom GPS (free shipping)
Note: Be sure to select “Budget Shipping” for free shipping
You still don’t own a GPS ?
Tsk, Tsk. You don’t know what you’re missing.
My brother-in-law Jim says, “Having a GPS means ‘I’m only minutes away from a Starbucks and golf course in ANY major city!”
My 70 year old mom says, “Did you know they have CASINOS in that thing?”
Yes, my 70 year old mom has one, and she uses it. You should too.
Refurbished TomTom One, only $99 after rebate. Be sure to select “budget shipping” on checkout for FREE shipping
This is a flat portable model that you can easily take with you when you travel. Plug it into the cigarette lighter or operates on rechargable battery. The $20 rebate expires 5/31/08
A couple people asked me off-list if the refurbished TomTom included all the accessories. The answer is “yes.”
My refurbished TomTom arrived from Buy.com today with the GPS, the windshield suction cup, the 12V cigarette adapter, and everything wrapped up, like new, in a shiny retail box.
Click here to see the $80 TomTom GPS (free shipping)
Note: Be sure to select “Budget Shipping” for free shipping
The exact GPS model you choose today will work differently than the exact same model from months ago because of changes in components and software. So, don’t expect that a 2 year old review you read will be valid for the same GPS model you buy today.
Our family car has a Garmin c320 which is now a couple years old. My mother has a TomTom One. I just purchased another TomTom One for a second vehicle for $99.
Sure, the two recently purchased TomToms have much better reception than our Garmin c320 because they have more advanced electronics. The newer TomToms consistently receive more satellites more quickly and more strongly than our Garmin c320. Our Garmin was $350, the TomTom is now $99. Does this mean that Tom Tom always has better reception than Garmin? No. It depends on the model and the date the GPS was manufactured.
Also, Our two TomToms Ones (both the same model) have slightly different software menus and options. I could probably upgrade both TomToms so they have the same software, but they’re both working well for now, so I likely won’t mess with what is already working well.
If you have the means, and want to have the “best thing” for a finite about of time, you can get GPS units that display live traffic, give weather reports, play music
In my opinion, owning a cheap GPS is better than having no GPS at all.
Free Tech Help Newsletter…
