HardQare

Hardware, Software, Games, Retro & More

As Time Goes By…

Do you remember the first decade of Internet? Some of you were to young or not even born. Internet boomed in the middle of 90’s. I used Internet for the first time 1995. I was going in school and we had 486 and Pentiums connected to the Internet. It was really slow and that’s why chats like IRC was to prefer. It was a time of pranks and anarchy but after downloaded low-res photos of Pamela Andersson 1000 times we were really serious. The IRC platform were great for chatting with other nerds as well as arrange spontaneous parties. Soon Mirabilis ICQ become popular, but IRC never died. You can still use and enjoy IRC.

Asus did it again!

After years of quality products Asus is back as a potential untrusty hardware company. I can stil remember Asus P5N-E SLI from 2007, the motherboard from hell! And before that in the early 2000 we didn’t suffer from Y2K, we suffered of bad cheap capacitors from China! Of course Asus didn’t jump over this opertunity to produce puking motherboards! After that brands like Asus and Gigabyte had to work to get our trust and they got it in the same time MSI was doing some other shit. They changed to better capacitors and learned from misstakes. Well Gigabyte lied about motherboard power phases, but no one complaint.

And now 2023 Asus did it again with ASUS X670E Crosshair Hero motherboard, what a mess! This time bios and power issues. But atleast Gamers Nexus got some nice content! I don’t think that Asus doing only shortcuts with new premium AMD motherboards. I really don’t care about latest fire torches, but I do buy new accessories. I have spent the latest months with 1 x ASUS ROG Falchion 65% MX Brown Wireless and it is probably the worst keyboard I’ve owned.

I bought the keyboard in November 2022. I started to use it for a couple of months ago. Immediately I experienced problems with the keys selfrepeating. I downloaded Asus crate and flashed firmware. I also tried to register it as elite but it didn’t work out. I registered the keyboard and my ROG mouse with Asus website. I received a warranty for the old mouse but not for the keyboard! Later on the keyboard triggered the PC from hours in hibernation with repeating 333333. I flashed firmware again but strange things happened. I reseted the keyboard but after months of problem I gave up and did a RMA to the vendor. The vendor replaced the keyboard but in totaly silence. Since I don’t trust Asus in the moment I will sell it to someone else. Since it’s a premium product I was expecting more.

A blast from the past!

Do you remember old VirtualDub? For 20 years ago it was the perfect tool for trimming AVI and sometimes MPEG4. In this video I do a clean install of VirtualDub2 64-bit in Windows 11. Then I also do the tricky MPEG4 trim. Actually it’s easier now since the MPEG4 support is built in. I recommend to install K-Lite_Codec_Pack_1760_Full before installing VirtualDub2.