On Monday, the courier dropped off some new toys for me. I’ve been quite excited to install my new CPU fan– the Volcano 9 by Thermaltake.

The only drawback to having a super fast computer is the noise. With all of that processing power, you need some heavy duty airflow inside the case. I almost envy my clients running an old Pentium, as they are so quiet compared to my beast. That is what prompted me to try the Volcano 9.

This product is designed to have a 3-speed fan with an auto sensor that will adjust the fan speed according to the heat level of the CPU. It’s designed to have this capability, but I’m here to tell you that there is some serious flaw in the design!

I took my old CoolMaster heat sink/ fan off of my CPU, and following the directions, I applied some thermal paste to the CPU and put the sensor in place. Then I put on the new Volcano 9 fan and fired up the machine.

The fan started really quiet. I was delighted! Then, it started to roar like an airplane taking off. It was considerably louder than my old $6 CoolMaster fan. Then, the fan slowed down and got quiet again. At this point, less than a minute after I’d turned my computer on, the computer froze.

The long and the short of it is, the Volcano 9 fried my new MSI K7T Turbo2 motherboard, and my Athlon 1700+ processor. Unless Thermaltake wants to offer some recompense, I’m now the owner of hundreds dollars worth of junk.

My advice: do not buy any products from Thermaltake.

Here is a quick guide to watching movies from the Internet. Note: Beware of pirated Hollywood movies, because you wouldn’t want to watch blockbuster movies for free, or you might upset the MPAA! &nbsp

Here is what you’ll need:

A fast internet connection. Downloading movies over dial-up is no fun, trust me on this one.

A good file-sharing program. I recommend Kazaa-Lite. If you use the regular Kazaa, you’ll be seeing lots of unwanted pop-up windows and other annoyances. Uninstall it, run Ad-Aware and then install Kazaa-Lite, which you can download here. For hard-to-find movies, try using Overnet (requires patience).

You need codecs to watch the movies that you download. This can get tricky, but if you download and install these four packages, you should be able to happily watch 98% of the movies out there.

(I recommend installing them in this order, and rebooting before installing ffdshow).

1) Nemo Codec Pack  

2) DivX  

3) Xvid  

4) ffdshow.

A good media player to watch the movies in.

(Windows Media Player can play most movies you’ll find, and is now available for Mac and Linux as well as Windows. If your movie won’t play in WMP, try opening it with the DivX Player that comes bundled with the DivX codec).

Someone to make popcorn. A microwave will work okay most of the time.

The J-Walk Blog is a steady part of my internet diet. When I started this online journal, I was very much influenced by J-Walk. This John guy, I don’t know what’s up with him, but he has to be one of the most prolific writers and rehashers of interesting links on the ‘net.

If you are into computers, you will want to occasionally re-visit my site; but there is something for everyone on the J-Walk Blog.

Click on John’s face to see his site.