11 posts tagged “hardware”

 So I've been meaning to get a new CPU for quite a while now. Like, since I got the computer. I've upgraded pretty much everything else since I got it over a year and a half ago. Pretty much everything except the motherboard has been replaced, but the last thing that I need to change was the CPU. I worked a little over March break and went out and bought an AMD X2 4200+. It's not all that much much faster then my old 3200+, but it is Dual Core, which should speed things up like "backing up" DVD's *wink, wink* and things of that nature. I also fried a stick of RAM a little over a month ago, so I have to replace that, but it's only going to be about $15. After that, I might upgrade the RAM after that, but that's it for this box. After that, it's not really worth it in my mind to upgrade to either Intel Core 2 or AMD Phenom. That would involve getting a new motherboard and processor and possibly new memory, which I might as well go and get a new computer. No, I think go for a Mac for my next computer. Probably a Macbook, get a nice 20" display and be done with it. I'll keep the PC around, but I really don't think that it's worth it for the amount of effort and money  that's required to play games and such. I've never really been that kind of a user anyway, I always prefered to work with Digital Media such as music and video's.

  

 Over the past several years, I've performed a large amount of work on computers. I've installed memory, graphics cards, power supplies, almost everything in fact. Tonight was optical drives. The old computer (read: 5 year old Dell) only had a CD Burner inside and we need to backup stuff so Mom went out and bought a DVD burner. I'm used to having some gliches when installing stuff, but all I can say is I pray that the industry speeds up it's move to the SATA interface. Because I HATE IDE jumpers. They caused quite a few issues, including the fact that neither of the drives in the computer where recognized.So I had to bring them out again and change jumpers around. Not a HUGE deal, but enough of a pain to be a major inconvenience. Needless to say this will be great experience when I go to my work placement (fixing computers). So that's my Day, How was your guys' day?

 As you know, I talked about moving back to XP late last week. The move happened yesterday. Let me say this: It was less then smooth. First, the backup utility in iTunes refused to work, so that delayed it by a day. Then once it was installed, I had to go out and hunt for drivers. Not a huge deal, really, just a minor pain. However, my large pain at the moment is the fact that my monitor will not fit at it's native resolution. Let me explain. Unlike a CRT display, LCD's have what is called a native resolution, that is, a resolution that fits better then all resolutions, the resolutions that the panel is built for. Most TV's have a native resolution of 1366x768. My monitor has a native resolution of 1440x900. However, whenever I apply the settings, the screen does scale itself, which leaves me to have to scroll back and forth across the screen, which can be incredibly annoying. I tried everything, looking for a new driver, changing settings, but nothing seems to want to work for me. I emailed XFX support and hopefully they'll get back to me soon.

This is Part 1 of a series on building the best budget PC.
Much like starting a new business or any new project it is essential to choose a supplier. There are several factors to determine who your supplier will be. First, and formost, it's essential to choose a supplier that has a good reputation. I've used several in the past little while. Canada Computers most recently but I've also used Mysterybyte and Robotnik as well. It's also essential to choose a supplier that has half-decent prices. Tiger Direct has some of the lowest prices I've seen, but apperently they're customer service isn't that great. NCIX services both the US and Canada, has middle range prices and has great customer service. If you live in the US you also have the option of places like ZipZoomFly and Newegg which have great hardware and great customer service, so I'm told. The best in the world of buying new technology is to price around. If you need anymore comparrison, check out your local computer shop. They might have a better price.In the end it's up to you. Secondly, you can choose to go with either a single supplier (you'll get your order faster.) or you can go with many suppliers and save money on parts. However, beware, if you buy from multiple, your surplus of cash could be sucked up by shipping and handling costs. Just fair warning. Here's a list of the best stores by reputation.
1. Newegg*
2. Canada Direct**
3.NCIX
4.Tiger Direct
5.Canada Computers
* US Only
** Canada Only
I'll be back in a few days with another post in the series.

 It's that time of year when you clean out. Your room, your house, your closet, whatever. But that doesn't mean that should limit it to the real world. Take it to your digital life as well. Here's how:
Organize- Take all those files that are scattered around your hard drive and centralize them. Take all of those music files you got off of the Interweb and put them all in one place. Create sub-folders for all of your specifi

c fil es.
Delete- Don't be afraid to get rid of old files. It's possible to save quite of a bit of Hard Disk space from just deleting old files. Take for example, when I cleared out my downloads folder, as well some excess files in my documents I saved just over 3 GB of space! I haven't yet cleared out my temp folder but I imagine that will get me a few more megabyes
Defrag- Most computer guru's recommend that you defrag every six months to a year. What a better time to defrag your hard drive? It'll speed up search times as well as launching applications and files.
Upgrade- Aren't getting enough millage out of your Hard Drive or your RAM? Maybe it's time to upgrade. Considering that Hard Drive space is something like 1 dollar for 3.5 GB there's no reason why you shouldn't go from that sturdy 80 GB to a 250 GB or even 400 GB. I'm not saying that everyone should upgrade, but if you need more storage space, there really is no reason not to get more.
Backup- Continuing that line of thought, you could keep the small hard drive in your computer but invest in an external hard drive for backup. Backup is one of the most critcal thing that you must do with your data. Do it at least 1 once a year, if not sooner.
If you want to go a  step farthur, open your case and clean out all the gunk and stuff that's built up in they're over the past few months. Use these instructions to properly clean your computer without damaging it.
These are the steps that I take to do my "spring cleaning". I hope they helped!

    Finally! These past few days have been amazing. Warm, sunny, almost July like. It was 19 (Celsius) yesterday and was 20. Much better than a few weeks ago when we had snow. It's bee absouletly beautiful and I'm enjoying every minute of it. It's times like these that I think I should have bought a laptop. Granted, I wouldn't have had the specs that I have in my destkop, but it would have been more convenient in terms of mobility. I also spent some time tonight laying out my long terms goals for the next 5 years. Mostly, it involves making sure that I make deadlines (scholarships and the like) as well putting in place a schedule for purchasing my Macbook and a upgrade cycle. The first phase will be next year with the replacement of the CPU and GPU and possibly some more RAM. This will be followed in late 2008 with the purchase of a Macbook. Finally, in 2009, I will invest in a completely new computer system, weather AMD or Intel, PC or Macintosh, I cannot tell yet. By that time, we should be moving to 6 cores per chip or whatever and software should have caught up. I do not intend to go more than 3 years without upgrading my system, since the technology changes so rapidly. And heck, I might even build my own system. I was a tad chicken this time. Anyway, other than that, my life has been pretty uneventful over the past few weeks, I hope all my friends and neighbours are doing well!

 Windows Vista was released 4 weeks ago. It was Microsoft's major release in 5 years. Needless to say, it's packed full of features. With the shiny Aero glass, Bitlocker drive encryption, a redesigned media center, there is definitely some incentive to upgrade. But is it worth it? Let's take a look at this?
 4. Hardware Unless you have a machine that's been made in the last year, to year in a half, your going to need a hardware upgrade of some kind. And even if you have a new system, your going to need a hardware upg

rade of some kind. I have 1 GB of RAM in this new system, but in order to get decent performance out of any app (like Audition, Photoshop, etc.) you need 2 GB of RAM. And on top of this, if you invested in a new shiny DX 10 graphics card, you have to wait for Nvidia to get off it's but and write proper drivers.
    In comparrison, Mac OS X can run on a G3 (366 Mhz) 128 of RAM and a Radeon 7xxx to 9xxx  with most of the shiny Aqua based effects. What does that tel you? Mac. If your just a casual computer user,  go to your friendly Apple Store or Authorized Apple Reseller and get yourself a Mac Mini or iMac. Considering the amount you have to spend on hardware, plus a copy of Vista, a new mac is looking pretty good.
3. Software: Currently there are around 900 "Vista Certified" applications which is just a fancy of saying that the companies that make the software payed Microsoft a few thousand bucks to say "Yep, we'll make sure it works with Vista". Many of the apps that previously worked with XP no longer work Vista. It's only a matter of time, but it's still a pain in the butt. Adding to the misery, to get apps like Photoshop and Audition to perform decently you need 2+ GB of Memory. In contrast you can run most apps on Mac OS X with 1 GB of memory. Some apps require a bit more, but in the grand scheme of things, you don't need much memory
2.Virtulization: Here's where Microsoft screws you over big time.If anyone likes to use virtualization, stick with your copy of XP Pro. If you like to virtualize Linux or any other operating system, you need to go out and buy a copy of Vista Bussiness or Ultimate. Guess what? You can get Parrallel's for Mac to virtualize Windows, Linux, OS/2 (why?) and other opearating system. And it only costs you $79 and an Intel based Mac.
1. Next Release: Windows Vista is the lastest release and matches the features of OS X Tiger. But Tiger is reaching new of Life and the next release is on the way. OS X 10.5 Leopard promises to have updated Spolight, Dashboard, and new features included Spaces,Time Machine, iCal, iChat and many others. Apple will probably release Leopard in the next few months with 10.6 coming in early or late 2008. So once again, Microsoft is going to go play catch up.
    That's my take on Vista vs. OS X. What you buy is your business, but I urge casual computer users and non-gamers to swtich to Mac to avoid the deathtrap that is Vista.

As I promised last night, here are some pics of my recently updated workstation. Here's a pic of what it looked like this 2 weeks ago.

As you can see, there's a sad, strack contrast right there as I have a really nice case with a really crappy looking 15" CRT and a decent optical mouse and keyboard. Well things have changed around here since that photo was taken and if you look below, here is what my work/play are looks like now. As you can see, things look much better. My Samsung 941BW is an awesome moitor and I love both my new set of speakers and my new keyboard and mouse. My keyboard is sitting in my room and my sister is using my old mouse. I love my workspace now. I find that the hardest component to find when your building a system is a monitor. When I attempted to build my first system. At the time I only had about $500. That wasn't nearly enough to get my own system. I went out his summer and earned almost $1000 and spend that on my system. Only thing is, I didn't have any money left to get a monitor. I heard one of my friends had an old 15" that he had to spare. I asked if I could use it and he said I could. So for the past few months, I've been using the old 15" CRT. So I was extremly glad was when I got my 19" LCD. My advise to people running on an old, small CRT. Go to a hardware site like Newegg if you live in the US or Tierdirect or NCIX in Canada, and find a 19" LCD for under $200. It's possible. I've seen them advisertised for under $170 if your lucky. It'll make your experience so much better and save you tonne's of space. You won't regret your investment.
    I'm off to bed, I'll talk to you guys when I can spare a moment this week.

  Apperently according to the very respectful Dltv internet exploder explorer has a release date for XP SP2 next Wendsday, October 18th. Why am I mentioning this when  I have mentioned many times that I hate internet explorer. The reason I am mentioning this is so I can mock it. Let's have a look at features in Internet Explorer compared to Firefox and Opera.
1) Tabbed Browsing - There just now  gettiing around to putting this in Internet Explorer? Firefox has had it for the almost 3 years it's been out while Opera has had it even longer. Needless to say, the UI makes everything really had to find. But more on that later.
2) UI- The general UI of Internet explorer is horrid. In compairison to

the Firefox User Interface. It looks like the took all the buttons put them in an air cannon and fired them onto the Browser. There is absolutely no organization with the buttons. Instead of having things organized and easy to find, in true Microsoft fashion they have to bury everything and come up with something new to make everything as hard to find for the end user. The UI goes to Firefox
3) RSS- Another feature that most browsers have had for the past several years, this is one of the good features in IE 7. The RSS reader is more organized that that of Op era of Firefox. As I do use a lot of RSS, I have not experienced this first hand, however I have heard that that it is the most organized RSS reader for the PC.
4) CSS Compliance-Not really a feature that you'll see unless you compare the web page your viewing with another browser such as Opera, over the past several years, IE has been critisized for not compling with W3C standards. As well, IE has yet to pass the Acid2 test. The only browsers that have passed this test are Opera,Konquoror and Safari. Firefox comes closer than IE7.
These are just a few of the features. I don't have time to go through all of them right now. To get a full list of the features click here.
     Moving onto hardware, as I have mentioned quite a few times, I just purchased a computer a little over 2 weeks ago. I bought hardware that is of an older model, but it's more modern than the hardware that was in the old family Dell. Here's my advise on hardware:
   1) Buy from a Smaller Shop if Possible- Generally, smaller shops gets have a slighly better price for hardware than the larger stores. And you don't have to go through the hassle of rebates and crap.
   2) Wait Until after a Big annoucement- Last July, Intel released it's Core 2 Duo chips. In response AMD chips took a massive price cut to compete. That's what you should wait for. Buy your hardware after the fact as prices will drop. It's the same thing with mostly any compoenet. Video and Sound Cards, Hard Drives RAM, anything, prices will drop, sometimes hudreds of dollars after a company makes an annoucement. Wait until then.
3) Upgrading-Make sure the motherboard your getting is upgradeable. If possible get a PCI-E chipset so you can upgrade your video and sound cards at a later date. Also ask what the conditions for upgrading are. Does it void the warranty if you put in new Hardware? Is the processor sodered into the motherboard? that kind of thing.
3) Compare Prices- Some shops are cheaper than others. Don't just go to one shop and say "That's the best price, I'm getting that now". Look around, that's how I got a good deal on my computer. If I hadn't of done that I would have ended up spending a lot more money.
Just my two cents on Hardware and software.
Later,

    

In case you havn't noticed yet, I am something of a geek and I enjoy joining tech communities Currently I am a member of Neowin, a tech community that just turned seven years old last week. I've only been reading it for a year (that's how long I've been a serious geek) and it's a great community. There are litterally thousands of members and the forums are a great place to get advice on technology. They have an awsome front page that deals with news on mainstream stuff and a bunch of catagories on stuff about things like software,games and a section on forums. They used to have a section on Apple, but they

axed it when they went through the redesign this past. I think it's one of the best communities on the web. And according to the almighty wikipedia, it has the 5th largest forums that are hosted by Invasion Free. That says something about Neowin. I would recommend to all the geeks in my readership that they go and join Neowin. It's  completly up to you and the forums are especially helpful with diagnosing problems with your hardware and software. It's completly up to each and every one of you, but I think that if you join Neowin, you won't regret it. Other communites I recomment you join are  Anandtech and Digg. Digg is great way to find new content and learn things you didn't know already. Some of the stuff I've learned about Linux has come from Digg and it'll come in handy when I get that bug in Ubuntu ironed out. I've heard great things about Anandtech. In case you don't know the story behind it, it was stared by Ananad lal Shimpy, who is an immagrant from Iran. He started it when he was 14 and it has grown into one of the largest computer hardware and software sites on the internet today. Anand himself is very well respected in the tech world for his insight and expertise with hardware and software. My cousin has done quite a bit of bussiness on Anandtech and gotten some pretty good deals. I just joined the forums today, but I've been reading them for a while and they know what they're talking about when it comes to hardware. I also recommend a few other sites that I won't go indepth about here. Ars Technica, Lifehacker, Free Mac Blog.