Thursday, August 9, 2007

SST-ST30NF fanless PSU

Wow, the ST30NF from Silverstone is a fantastic power supply. I've been using it in my HTPC for over 2 months and it has worked perfectly.
  • The powersupply produces no noise (not even electronic buzzing unless you ear is right on the casing)
  • The powersupply was half the price of my original SilenX powersupply (which despite the advertising produces a heck of a lot more than 14dB of noise)
  • Produces a suprisingly little heat (Core 2 Duo system).
  • Although rated at only 320W, the power supply actually uses a 520W core and is configured to automatically shutdown if it is loaded to over ~400W.
I have two intake takes that blow air through the powersupply. The fans are undervolted to 7V and produce nex to no noise when running. I use the fans to promote air flow and reduce stagnant pools of warm air, not to actually perform any direct cooling.

Felt Tips & Nibs for Tablet PCs


I recently upgraded from an NEC litepad to an ST5112 tablet PC. The Fujitsu ST5112 is an amazing tablet and although is thicker and weighs more than the Litepad, it is jam-packed with features (including a fingerprint reader, PCMCIA slot and 6 hour standard battery!).

I wanted to get some replacement felt tips for the pens in order to get that ever elusive "pen on paper" feel rather than the "plastic on glass" feel which comes standard.

It turns out that most Wacom pen nibs are compatible with Tablet PC pens. The Intuos3 pen accessory kit comes with 5 standard tips, 5 felt tips and 5 stroke (spring loaded) tips.

The tips arrived this morning and after a few minutes of testing, I can say that the felt tips feel like, well, felt pens (and they sound like them too -- funny that). They're a small improvement over the plastic pens (I wouldn't say much). They give slightly more resistance/precision allowing me to write words smaller. I would be interested to see what a tip with a more rubber feel is like.

I think the best way to get that paper feel is probably to get a soft screen protector; however I don't like the quality of just about all the screen protectors on the market. The "raised" nature of most tablet PC screens means that most screen protectors use four poorly measured strips of double sided tape to attach themselves to the screen and it result looks amateur and messy.