Prior to the internet things were pretty easy after you kicked the bucket - your photos, home movies, telephone contacts, correspondence, little black book and everything else were solely in a physical form. A quick dig through a closet or shoe box would reveal the mundane and the scandalous, and life was easy for the newly departed.

Crucially, and unlike every online repository today, this collected material could just sit around and happily gather dust for decades. Today these same snippets of life are often digitally stored by third parties on servers with virtual countdown-to-erasure clocks hanging over six digit password protected accounts. Or worse yet, until the IT company goes belly up. At the very least, your own computer may chocked full of family history - you know, the PC that holds everything that only you have the login for?

On the plus side, shoe boxes don't wipe out all your Kodachrome prints if you forget to open them for a couple years, nor cite privacy policies if your relatives go snooping around after you die. Online email accounts, photo and social networking services are certainly the modern equivalent of an empty Converse shoe box, but see how far you get trying to crack a deceased relative's account open.

Get the drift? We store thousands of emails and family photos on the internet, while social networking sites like FB catalog the mundane day-to-day records of our lives. Ditto times ten for home computers and notebooks. All of this is protected while we're alive and kicking by passwords, privacy clauses and encryption nine ways from Sunday.

The key to Managing Your Digital Death is having the foresight pass along these keys to the collected works of YOU, on. Assuming you do, want to pass this information on that is. A list of websites and login details written down on a sheet of paper & kept up to date is usually sufficient. It may be wise to include the lost password questions/answers too... This paper should be stored somewhere very safe along with other important personal papers. Just be sure to tell a trusted family member these details exist and possibly where they're kept.

We'd like to hear what you think about this subject and your suggestions for Managing your Digital Death, so please drop us a line.

Thanks for Reading,
Max Page
Editor-in-Chief - PCSTATS

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Canada Computers / Gigabyte G1 Motherboard LAN-Party Event

In case you missed it, Gigabyte hosted an exclusive LAN Party in partnership with Canada Computers and the Canadian distributor Supercom a few days ago in Markham for its new line of enthusiast grade G1 Killer gaming motherboards. These gaming oriented boards start with the G1.Guerrilla and work their way up to the performance tuned G1.Sniper. The flagship, extra large XL-ATX sized G1.Assassin motherboard is a force to be reckoned with.

Expensive hardware... sure, but that didn't stop Gigabyte from giving away a complete G1.Assassin gaming system to one very lucky gamer who attended the free event. The computer system came complete with an Intel Core i7 950 processor, 6GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3, an Intel 80GB Solid State Drive, nVidia Geforce GTX570 videocard, Thermaltake Element V case, Corsair H70 watercooling system, Antec 750W earth watts power supply, Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and LG BluRay optical drive! For good measure, Gigabyte even tossed in copy of the game Call of Duty.

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ASUS P7P55D Premium Intel P55 Express Motherboard Review

While much of Intel's world has been thrown into a tizzy by the Q1'2011 Intel P67/H67 chipset recall (initial B2 stepping only), we thought it timely to look in on Intel P55 motherboards from ASUS that offer some of the bells and whistles of Intel P67 platforms, with none of the bad recall aftertaste. The ASUS P7P55D-E Pro is one such board to consider, this review is going to focus on its nearly identical twin, the P7P55D Premium.

ASUS's P7P55D Premium motherboard supports socket 1156, 45nm Intel 'Lynnfield' processors like the Core i5 750 & 760. The ASUS P7P55D Premium isn't merely a cardboard cutout, but a good representation of overclocking tools, power saving features and tweaking tools. We'll touch on TurboV Evo, Hybrid Phase, ExpressGate, MemOK, EPU, Fan Xpert and Stack Cool 3+ in moment.Redesigned memory slots and over-volting controls are up right after the jump.

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LiteON iHAS424 Dual-Layer DVD Writer Review

If you're in the market for a speedy new dual layer DVD burner the LiteOn iHAS424 is as good a choice as any. The SATA optical drive is one of the new generation of 24x DVD writers, so it's easily fast enough to handle both movies and data discs. The drive that PCSTATS will be testing today is a retail model, which means it comes in a box along with a manual and some SATA cabling. The iHAS424 DVD writer is compatible with DVD-/+R Dual Layer media at up to 16x write speeds. Next up, drive speed benchmarks.Continue Here>>

Intel 6-Series Chipset Recall - Sandy Bridge Intel P67 & H67 (v2.2)

(Most manufacturers will not begin replacing affected motherboards until late April 2011. If you are concerned about the SATA II issue in the mean time PCSTATS advises you to switch your hard drives over the integrated SATA III ports which are unaffected by this 6-series chipset flaw.)

On January 31st 2011, Intel announced a silicon level problem with its latest 6-series motherboard chipsets - the Intel P67 and Intel H67 for 2nd generation Intel Core i5/i7 2xxx series (socket 1155) processors. The design problem with Intel's 6-series chipsets is specific to the 'B2' stepping of Intel P67 & H67 chipsets. The flaw may result in 3Gb/s Serial-ATA II (SATA II) ports degrading over time, in the words of Intel "potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives." The issue is specific to SATA II ports within the Intel P67 & H67 chipsets only. The SATA III 6Gb/s ports provided by the Intel P67/H67 chipset are not affected. The Intel 'Sandy Bridge' Core i3/i5/i7 2xxx series microprocessor is also not affected.

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AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition 3.6 GHz Socket AM3 Processor Review

AMD's Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition is a quad-core, 3.6GHz socket AM3 chip with 6MB of L3 cache and 512KB of L2 cache per core. It's being released in tandem with the AMD Phenom II X4 840 CPU. Both processors are ideally suited to socket AM3 motherboards built around the recent AMD 890FX or 890GX chipsets. The Phenom II X4 975 BE is backwards compatible with socket AM2+ motherboards and forwards compatible with the as yet unreleased socket AM3+ platform which is anticipated for release in mid-2011. The upcoming Socket AM3+ platform is for AMDs upcoming 'bulldozer' architecture that will see AMD processors with up to eight cores and a rumored new iteration of TurboCore dynamic frequency adjustment. Next up, PCSTATS tries its hand at overclocking the AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition processor past 4.5GHz, then it's onto the benchmark portion of this processor review.

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