Well, I've gone and done it. I have just now registered on Yelp, signed up for Twitter and now have a Facebook page.
I guess I've truly joined the 21st Century now.
You can expect to see new posts there as often as there are new posts here...
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Amd vs. Intel
AMD has long been the second-best CPU maker in the computer industry, behind Intel (maker of Pentium CPU's). A few years ago, when AMD came out with its Athlon line of CPU's, they took first place in the race to be best chipmaker.
After the release of the Athlon CPU's, Intel came out with several less than outstanding chips, allowing AMD to rest on its laurels as fastest chipmaker.
But, while AMD was resting on its laurels, Intel came out with a plan to release newer, better and faster chips every year and a half, while shrinking the size of the CPU and adding more stuff to them.
And so Intel has done exactly what they said they would, much to AMD's chagrin. In order to catch up, AMD has done several things, some very risky, which has led to new and underperforming CPU releases.
But now, it appears that AMD may finally have caught up to Intel with their new Phenom II CPU.
Revies are underway; if you are a gamer, you may want to check this chip out for your next system.
After the release of the Athlon CPU's, Intel came out with several less than outstanding chips, allowing AMD to rest on its laurels as fastest chipmaker.
But, while AMD was resting on its laurels, Intel came out with a plan to release newer, better and faster chips every year and a half, while shrinking the size of the CPU and adding more stuff to them.
And so Intel has done exactly what they said they would, much to AMD's chagrin. In order to catch up, AMD has done several things, some very risky, which has led to new and underperforming CPU releases.
But now, it appears that AMD may finally have caught up to Intel with their new Phenom II CPU.
Revies are underway; if you are a gamer, you may want to check this chip out for your next system.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
More Windows 7
Once i fixed my boot problems, the actual installation of Windows went fairly smoothly, wiuth the exception of one error message saying that my blank hard drive was not bootable. Once I got that issue sorted out, the install went quickly.
There is not alot of movement on screen to make it look like something is happening; you sort of take it on faith that Windows is doing its thing.
There are three steps Windows goes through in its installation routine:
Gathering information, Installing, and Finishing Up.
The installation is said to take about a half an hour. I didnt time mine so I cant say whether that is true. The installation did take a lot less time than Windows XP, and I was able to walk away without fear that something horrible would happen if I did not babysit it.
Once installed, Windows asks for the serial number ("Product Key") asks asks a few general setup questions, including 'do you want to activate the first time you are online?'
When the desktop comes up, which seems quite quick compared to Vista and XP, the default resolution (with a video card installed but no drivers) is a reasonable 1024 x 768. With drivers installed, the resolution increases to the native resolution of the monitor; in my case i have a 15 inch monitor with a 1200dpi resolution.
There is not alot of movement on screen to make it look like something is happening; you sort of take it on faith that Windows is doing its thing.
There are three steps Windows goes through in its installation routine:
Gathering information, Installing, and Finishing Up.
The installation is said to take about a half an hour. I didnt time mine so I cant say whether that is true. The installation did take a lot less time than Windows XP, and I was able to walk away without fear that something horrible would happen if I did not babysit it.
Once installed, Windows asks for the serial number ("Product Key") asks asks a few general setup questions, including 'do you want to activate the first time you are online?'
When the desktop comes up, which seems quite quick compared to Vista and XP, the default resolution (with a video card installed but no drivers) is a reasonable 1024 x 768. With drivers installed, the resolution increases to the native resolution of the monitor; in my case i have a 15 inch monitor with a 1200dpi resolution.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Installing Windows 7
I've just installed Windows 7 on an old computer to see if it could be done.
The installation is large enough that it requires a DVD, and a DVD drive. The only problem with that is that older computer generally cant boot from a DVD.
Windows 7 was designed to be installed on top of (or beside) an existing operating system, one that has DVD drivers already loaded.
To get around this limitation, I found it was possible to use a Vista Repair Disk that Microsoft provides. It has the bootloader and DVD drivers necessary to load Windows from the DVD.
My Windows 7 installation is running on an AMD Athlon 1.1 Ghz cpu, with 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 9550 video card.
The installation is large enough that it requires a DVD, and a DVD drive. The only problem with that is that older computer generally cant boot from a DVD.
Windows 7 was designed to be installed on top of (or beside) an existing operating system, one that has DVD drivers already loaded.
To get around this limitation, I found it was possible to use a Vista Repair Disk that Microsoft provides. It has the bootloader and DVD drivers necessary to load Windows from the DVD.
My Windows 7 installation is running on an AMD Athlon 1.1 Ghz cpu, with 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 9550 video card.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
People Search Engines
There are new search engines on the Web now that will attempt to find anyone based on the information you have already given out in various locations.
If you have a Facebook page, a Twitter account or other type of publicly available account where you list things you wouldnt normally want strangers seeing, be careful to adjust your privacy settings.
One such search site, Spokeo, boasts that it will "uncover personal photos, videos and secrets" that are "juicy" and "mouth-watering." If you dont want to be the next person who inadvertently ends up on the evening news, be careful what you put online.
If you have a Facebook page, a Twitter account or other type of publicly available account where you list things you wouldnt normally want strangers seeing, be careful to adjust your privacy settings.
One such search site, Spokeo, boasts that it will "uncover personal photos, videos and secrets" that are "juicy" and "mouth-watering." If you dont want to be the next person who inadvertently ends up on the evening news, be careful what you put online.
Trojan Troubles: The Results
My customer had an ultra-portable laptop (that I had initially confused with a netbook) that he thought had trojan horse programs on it, and he wanted them removed and the laptop fixed.
He did have trojans; and viruses and spyware. Multiples. One of them had lodged inside the 'winlogon' service that allows you in to the desktop, and I couldnt remove it.
Usually this calls for formatting the hard drive and re-installing Windows. Not an exceptionally hard thing to do. Except in this case. No version of Windows that I installed would work properly; none of my three versions would install properly, nor his.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that Dell had (has?) some kind of mechanism that prevents people from re-installing Windows on that model of laptop without the specific Recovery Disk that came with the computer(or Recovery Partition).
Afterwards, I returned the laptop to the customer, letting him know what I had done, what I had found out and what his options might be.
He did have trojans; and viruses and spyware. Multiples. One of them had lodged inside the 'winlogon' service that allows you in to the desktop, and I couldnt remove it.
Usually this calls for formatting the hard drive and re-installing Windows. Not an exceptionally hard thing to do. Except in this case. No version of Windows that I installed would work properly; none of my three versions would install properly, nor his.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that Dell had (has?) some kind of mechanism that prevents people from re-installing Windows on that model of laptop without the specific Recovery Disk that came with the computer(or Recovery Partition).
Afterwards, I returned the laptop to the customer, letting him know what I had done, what I had found out and what his options might be.
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