Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage

If you’ve experienced some shockingly slow results from your Windows Home Server-based unit, we’ve one question for you: do you have Power Pack 1 and the HP add-ons installed? If so, you may not be alone in your frustrations. Apparently a number of users have seen dramatic slowdowns that have rendered their WHS devices nearly unusable. It seems that all the “bloatware” really takes a toll, as the hard drives are constantly pounded and console menus take ages (minutes, to be more precise) to appear. According to Within Windows, the only real solutions are to install more RAM and / or tweak your pagefile configurations afterwards. Anyone else raging mad about the performance issues? What are you going to do about it?

[Thanks, Bryant]

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Filed under: Laptops

Not particularly thrilled with the performance of your HP Mini-Note 2133? If you’re vigorously shaking your head up and down as that render chugs along in the background, take a listen at this. The folks over at HP 2133 Guide took the time to benchmark their Vista / XP systems and then apply VIA’s recently released drivers for the CN896 chipset and Chrome9 integrated graphics. Not surprisingly, they found the update totally worthwhile. Based on pure numerical changes, there’s not a lot to phone home about, but critics did note that “video playback was improved quite a bit on each OS,” and that YouTube / Hulu vids were actually watchable post-update. Not a lot of downside to upgrading, so head on over and see what the new drivers have in store for you.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

If you’re a musician of any type, odds are you’ve found yourself on stage more than once desperately hunting for some variety of esoteric adapter which is supposed to plug into a connector you’ve never seen before. Well, for those who’ve mounted Orbital style goggle-lights and gone digging into bottomless bags only to come up empty handed, today is your day. Enter the Electronic Musician’s Emergency Adaptor kit — a little red bag containing all of the connectors, adapters, splitters, and couplers you could ever want or need. With a wide variety of XLR, 1/8″, 1/4″, and RCA plugs, your excuses for sucking are probably going to get a lot more complicated.

[Via Gear Diary]

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