how to dissasemble a TomTom GPS

my loved GPS just went crazy this morning, this is my third one, (long story short, they keep falling down from the windshield) , well , on this one I noticed the GPS was having trouble to get a fix on the satellites signals, and the only way to go was to wait for the battery to drain itself out and then start over, ( a soft reset and a reboot and a restore factory settings didn't seem to work )
so I said to myself, let's see what are you made off, ok?

nah, my real thinking process was "well, if your battery makes me wait between 5 minutes and 2 hours to get you back operational, then I'm taking your battery out, then I will have an instant hard reset everytime I pull the plug off WOW, I'm SO smart! :)

for the complete series of pictures, click here:

I found really interesting the same type of touchscreen is used for this and in the palm 3XE models. at least it looks pretty similar, I mean, the kind of technology. I have been trying to figure it out how they manage to sende an entire screen with just 4 cables?

new TV install, for ZIP work orders, piece of cake

this is not my regula line of work but I had a free day so I said to myself, why not? for a person who is fixing laptops a TV install might look like asking a nuclear physicist to repair some plumbing, (he may not know, though) and the payment was good, 133 Dollars for a couple of hours? lets go for it!

t!

Thermal inertia, thermal avalanche, thermal breakdown, thermal design for failure.

I'm not sure if it's me or every equipment I happen to put my hands on these days is working on the edge of the design? at leat thermally speaking (I know, silicon has a very high working temperature on the die level,although some 95 celsius is considered normal sometimes, I had a few graphic cards tested and running around 60 to 75 degrees, and a CPU heatsink in a IBM compact desktop model around 56 degrees celsius, I have this little gem I use every day to check on my equipment, but is my believing the manufacturers are (and this could sound machiavellic) plotting to get your system to get thermally exhausted byt the first year so when your warranty is over, so it is your chip. :) , anyway, check the picture, and let me know if you think that's normal.

thank you.

dear samsung saga creator

did you ever thought I need the weekday names in the calendar?
and what about NOT having to press a bunch of buttons or clicks to get where I want? I didn't tried the new web OS but I remember my pleasant times using a palm kyocera 6035, black and white screen and real felt touch screen, not the thing I have in my habds now, where the touch feels like half an inch below the glass, urgh. of course in those times I was unaware of the things these little microprocessors are capable of, but right know, knowing the power and the real kind of power I can have in my hands, that I feel half betrayed and half dissapointed by the design engineers teams and think tanks and the people who build our phones, I can't talk about the iphone or the palm pre, but I'm sure the thousands of compliants about the battery life on the pre and the lack of certain features in the iphone aren't irreal, and worst of all, they are both proprietary arquitectures, meaning not everyone can do whatever they want, some areas of these OSes have boundaries, more loosen on thighten, depending on how that feature interfere with their manufacturers business model. well, why just don't go the bazaar way and let the people have what they want? is that too hard?

about solar powered refrigeration

so the new prius has solar powered air circulation and cooling? well, I know the time to market from idea to a product is more than a year, at least for this kind of products or "features" well, I (and probably another million of inventors out there before me) had that idea between 6 and 12 months ago (others surely years ago), somewhere in the middle of a awaken dreaming about using my just arrived peltier modules to cool down my old car , or at least to manage to keep it a little cooler when not inside and the car is under direct sunlight. I thought a piece of new generation solar cell could help me, in a way to maintain the system independent of the car's electric system to be able to maintain the battery charge.
well, solar powered AC? well, at least I know my dreams CAN become true! hahahaah it doesn't matter if it's me or prius, it doesn't even matter if it's me or somebody else the one who develops or implements it, the only important thing is: the world must be helped. I hope I will have the strong will to maintain my position and keep dreaming till my last day in life.
the story doesn't end here, I sold my old dodge neon and got a honda civic instead, but i still have the plan to put some passive cooling system in it. this might help me.

to tatoo or not, HP

I was requested a "suplemental" disc today while doing a HD swap in a KT334AA HP Media center system. I wonder if the previously required tatoo procedure was performed in background by the HP restore system. I will know in a couple of minutes. if I get no purple screen, then I'm good to go. although I'm required to stay just until the recovery procedure is at 33 percent, I love to stay so I'm sure the computer is useable before I leave.

why is not safe to trust any online service for too long

I went over my email and membership list and discovered avantgo is not more an available service, despite the promises made by sybase, as the company said in this article: http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsid=11906

anyway, another surprise was to find msn groups are no longer something you can use, now the site redirects you to windows live or somewhere else.

well, I remember a lot of similar cases, for me, there will be never more reliable things as my backups and my NAS and my hard copies (yes, a piece of paper) of the info I consider valuable enough.

cloud? oh my cloud. :) ...dear cloud, I'm not ready to be "clouded" yet.

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