Nvidia Announces A Bug In Drivers

It was announced yesterday to discontinue use of the 196.75 WHQL drivers. This is believed to also apply to the Linux drivers 195.36.08 and 195.36.03. If you are using these drivers it is recommended to revert back to an earlier version such as 190.53. The bug is reported to shutdown the fan causing the gpu to overheat.

Ubuntu Update Gone Bad?

Ubuntu, like most other distros, prompts you to install system updates. You can control the schedule using the Update Manager and set it for daily, every two days, per week or every two weeks. I prefer the weekly updates. There are other options as well but I will not be highlighting them at this time. Typically the defaults on most options will work for most users but they are fairly straightforward and do not need much explanation. Most of the time updates will install just fine. However once in a while the internet or your computer just doesn't cooperate. The update then gets hung and maybe the system will not even boot fully. It is times like this that a little knowledge of the command line will be very beneficial. If possible boot to the prompt and issue these commands:

sudo apt-get update 
(password)
apt-get upgrade -u

This will perform the rest of the update just as you were using the gui's Update Manager. It will be important to note that wireless users may or may not be connected, so it might be wise to connect via a cable if possible. Running the unfinished upgrade this way just may prevent a needless re-install of the OS. But you have /Home on a separate partition anyway, right?

Bargains Just For Geeks

I want to introduce a new site I have just created that will highlight bargains just for us geeky types. Yes this is a shameless plug. There are literally hundreds of deal sites. Some are good and some not so good. But what will make this one different is I am going to focus on the tech category for 90% and the remaining 10% of posts will fall in the home electronics category. You won't have to wade through the endless posts for vitamins or a sample of this or that. In these uncertain economic times, a bargain is always welcome. So please visit my new site www.geeky4deals.com. I am shamelessly asking all my readers to add this to their RSS readers. You never know when that one deal will roll by that might save you a bundle. Lastly I want to thank everyone who has read this far, both this post and all the previous posts here on Techbits. I really appreciate your support.

Deal of The Day Western Digital Storage

Storage is always a key factor to consider with computers. Our lives contain so much digital media than ever before. I have a 12 mega-pixel camera and the files are usually 6 to 8 MB. I also have a large music collection that seems to increase every year. Here are two deals from Amazon and Western Digital for internal and external storage. These drives will fill the storage needs of most of us, at least for a while.
These deals won't last forever so if you are in need of extra storage then these deals could be perfect for you. Also both of these drives received positive customer reviews.