Buying used PC's **WARNING**

Buying used PC's, Security warning.
You can find some really good deal on eBay for used PC's and if you need one for school or your business this could be a cost effective to do it. I bought a used HP 8000 Elite for $110, great little machine and small, perfect for a project I am working. One of the reasons I bought this PC is it had Windows 7 installed and the COA sticker, Windows 7 Pro can cost $100 so this is like getting the OS with a free PC.

Now for the Security warning part, the seller of the PC I bought said Windows 7 Pro was installed and it was, so I decided look into this OS and check it. I wanted to make sure the installed OS was safe and not modified and legitimate. The first thing I did was to find the CD key in the installed OS and see if it matched the COA, the CD key in windows 7 is encrypted so you need a third part application to display, I used Magical jellybean key finder and the key that this OS had was not the one on the COA, this leads me to believe that this is not a legitimate OS and may be modified and cannot be trusted.

 The easy solution was to download Windows 7 Pro from HeiDoc.net, these are legitimate versions of Windows 7 via Microsoft Azure, look at your COA and download the same version, if your COA says Windows 7 Home your CD key will not work if you download Windows 7 Pro.

 Summary 
If you buy a used computer, do not automatically trust the OS that installed on it, it may be modified or even hacked and you don't want use an OS that could be compromised and lose personal information.

iTunes 11

If you have iTunes 11 update and on your Mac and you use the Radio option to listen to internet radio shows, you may have noticed that the Radio icon under library is gone. it used to be under the Library section in the left tool bar (notice that is gone by default now too, you can enable it by clicking View and selecting show sidebar). To find the internet radio icon click the Music icon under library and you will see Radio at the top.

Propagation index and info

ICOM IC-7000 Cooling

I have the ICOM IC 7000 HF/VHF/UHF radio, one of the issues is that it runs hot, the good news is ICOM was thoughtful enough to put a tempter gage on the display, I don't know if this is a worry gage or just something to keep an eye on but from my experience, electronics and heat are not a good mix in some cases.

I did some experiments with a 12V fan and will post the results.

in normal operational conditions, monitoring for about an hour

Adding this fan on top of the radio

this is results after about 30 minutes.

Conclusion

By adding a 120MM fan on top of the radio, the temp is kept low and stays low, of course some mods can help and reduce noise.

I will be doing more work on cooling for this radio and maybe modifying the top cover to add a fan that is low noise and high cooling.

73's

Backup that boot drive

I am posting this so that my process may either inspire or save someone from hours of work.

On my system I use a 120GB SSD for OS and Apps, data and all other items are stored on secondary hard disk. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make backups of my SSD onto an inexpensive USB external HDD.

Yesterday my Mac locked up and when rebooted would not load, took SSD out and could not mount it on my MBP or MacMini, couldn't mount it on Windows7 to even reformat it. Its under warranty so no beg deal there, I have a spare HDD and restored my backup clone to that drive and I was up and running except for a few small things that need to be done.

What could have been hours of down time was mitigated by keep an up to date clone of the boot drive. It only takes about 20 minutes to clone your boot drive. I do it when I go to lunch and its done.

Enjoy

related link - free software

http://www.bombich.com/

Baofeng UV-5R

As others have said, this cannot be compared to other HT's from the big manufactures. this must be compared with other HT's that are $52 with free shipping and come with all the accessories. once you do that you will find that this unit is a great value and works very well. I have a Quansheng TG-UV2 and the USB programming cable worked with this radio.

Read through the reviews and you will see some mixed experiences with this radios, weakest part of this radio is the antenna, if you are going to buy one of these get the SMA Female to BNC adapter and use a better antenna. the programming cable will make programming the radio easier but it can be done without it, some videos on youtube on programming the radio will help with this.

iPad 3rd Generation

The new iPad 3rd Gen has been announced and I have mine on order, I skipped the iPad 2 knowing that Apple would do something like this with the high res display and quad core A5X chip.

In addition to the new iPad, Apple has released iOS 5.1 and some OS X updates as well; the good news is that with iOS 5.1 we can now edit delete photos in photo stream.

Head over to Apples to site for all the details