Notepad, as supplied with the Windows operating system, has been around for seemingly aeons. It’s a great little app for using to jot down written notes in text-only format and save as a text file. It’s also useful for writing and editing batch-files; if anyone still codes in dos, (‘Shows age yet again.) and you can also edit html and php files in it, by converting the file extension from .htm or .html to .txt, editing the content, and then changing the file extension back again to .htm or .html.

That’s some of the benefits of it. – But there are also drawbacks too; especially when editing code. They say that a picture speaks a thousand words, so let two screenshots do the talking. The first screenshot is of the html code of the first part of this post as seen in Notepad supplied with Windows XP. The second screenshot, below it, is of the html code of the first part of this post as seen in Notepad++

‘Not a fantastic example, perhaps; – but imagine if you were working with a larger html file, perhaps even a page of php code, which editor would you find it easier to use? Notepad; without any clear indications to where sections or lines of code are on the page; or Notepad++, with clear indications as to where sections or lines of code are on the page, and I didn’t mention the colour text options yet either, or any other available features.

- And since this is an unscheduled extra post that I decided to write on the spur of the moment, I’m not going to go into detail either. – Instead, what I’ll do is suggest that you download and install Notepad++ and try it out for yourself. If you’re not happy with it then simply uninstall it. – Target neutralised.

That was short and sweet. There are other notepad substitutes out there besides this one. Which do you use, and why; or are you still using the original?

With a trade-name like “be quiet!”, you’d expect products to be noiseless. – Which is pretty much the case with the Dark Power Pro 650W power supply unit.

Its 120mm fan makes almost no sound at all, cooling the internal components as they transfer up to 650 watts of power to the box, along modular cables. The fan remains spinning even after the PC is shut down to clear any residual heat left in components.

Four 12-volt rails, rated at up to 20 amps each, or a combined maximum of 52 amps jointly, make up to 624 watts of power available on these lines. The unit is ideal for SLI and Crossfire, with 2 PCIe cables ready to power your graphics.

It comes with a standard 20/24 pin P1 plug for the motherboard, a 4-pin and an 8-pin plug for the CPU’s supply, – No matter how modern your motherboard, this PSU’s ready to plug-in and power-up – 8 Molex plugs as well as 8 SATA power connectors too.

Its output is very stable and well within the standard ATX specifications. Overall it’s a very efficient mid-end unit. PC builders who are looking for a great PSU deal to power a powerful PC take note.

Bearing all the above in mind, you might expect to be looking at a price which matches the other standards; that is to say, high: You’d be mightily surprised to learn that this silent-but-deadly powerhouse actually can be bought for less than £102.00UKP Inc VAT at time of writing! (Around $160USD.)

What do you think? ‘Good value? – Or do you know of something better? If so then please do tell.

Windows 7 comes with a solid disk management tool that should suffice for most of your basic needs. You can create/attach/detach VHDs (Virtual Hard Discs) from the Windows Disk Management tool without using any third party applications.

Creating or deleting a partition is simple. To create a new partition you need have unallocated space to create the new partition in. When deleting a partition, you need make sure that the partition has no irreplaceable and/or personal files in it before deleting it. If it does, then it’s your loss; but you probably won’t be happy about it.

.

How to create a partition in Windows 7:

1. Type diskmgmt.msc in Start menu search field and hit enter to open the Disk Management window. As an alternative, you can right-click on the desktop computer icon, select Manage, and then select Disk Management (under Storage).

2. Right-click on the unallocated space and select New simple volume option to see the New Simple Volume Wizard. Click Next to proceed.

3. Enter the amount of disk space that you want to create, and click Next.

4. In the next step, assign a drive letter. Click Next again.

5. Enter a name for the new volume and click Next.

6.Select the formatting type you wish to use and complete the format of the partition.

7. Click Finish button to complete the procedure. Your new partition is ready to use.

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How to delete a partition in Windows 7:

1. Type diskmgmt.msc in the Start menu search field and hit enter to open the Disk Management window.

2. Right-click on the partition that you want to delete, and select Delete volume.

3. You will see the warning message. Click the Yes button to continue to delete the partition.

The partition will be deleted immediately with the minimum of hassle.

Microsoft have put a lot of thought into this version of Windows, and tasks that were once complicated and cumbersome; where you needed to be gifted with a technical mind and a large memory simply to remember and/or discover where the right part of the GUI was so that you could access the task, have now been made much more accessible and user-friendly to complete. This is just one example of such an instance. I think the dysfunctionality of Vista combined with the increasingly ever-heavier and hard-to navigate Windows GUI over the years have forced Microsoft to rethink things in what essentially amounts to a case of sink or swim.

It demonstrates that they can produce an excellent product when they try.

Can you make it to the kkomp.com Top 10 with your guest-post? Two people have already done so, one of them is still there (Not any longer, unfortunately.). Can you equal that, or even do better?

At the time of writing, the guest-post from Misca Nicoleta; “Install Windows 7 on your Portable Device and Increase Battery Life” is still in the kkomp.com Top Ten: It’s made it to Number 8 so far, and is currently staying put in the Number 9 slot. (It’s since dropped out of the Top Ten.) The other guest-post, from Kyle Potts; “Linux For Everyone?”, made it to Number 10 on the first day, but has now slipped back to Number 16 when I last checked. These posts will be included in the following mission.

What exactly is the kkomp.com Top 10?

The kkomp.com Top Ten is a selection of the ten most popular posts, according to readership, over the period of the last seven days. It is calculated on page load by complex algorithms, and is displayed in the sidebar on almost every page and post.

Your Briefing: -

For the most part of this year, the Number 1 slot has been occupied by a post called “Computer Can’t See BT Home Hub. – Updated.”; a post that I wrote last year (2008), and which has proved to be by far the most popular post on this blog to date. During July 2009 it was overtaken by a post called “The Vista Black Screen of Death – A Fix.”, but this didn’t last, and within a few days it was back at Number 1.

Recently it was trounced and replaced in the Number 1 slot by “Using Windows Automated System Recovery With No Floppy Drive: Is it Possible?”, “How to Uninstall IE8 in XP”, and again by “The Vista Black Screen of Death: A Fix”. – Despite this it never left the top 4 positions, and has now just found its way back to Number 1 again!

I’m fed up with that situation. – I think it’s time that the long-time chart-topper was deposed once and for all, so that a new and better post can reign supreme. It is with this in mind that I propose a legal coup, in that a fresh and new post will replace it and assume dominance of the kkomp.com Top Ten chart.

Would you believe it?! – About 5 hours before this post is scheduled to publish, an obscure post titled “Weekend Boob Sorted”, which I wrote over a year ago and has recently been linked to in a gamer forum and soared up the charts in the last few days, (Probably due to the picture of the soft upper parts of a woman, posessed of large boobs, inside a Blue-Screen-Of-Death-T-shirt. (This post did a similar act at the end of last year come to think of it.)) has budged “Computer Can’t See BT Home Hub – Updated” off the Number 1 spot after a struggle.

Your mission; should you choose to accept it, is to write a guest-post that is so excellent and proves to be so popular, that it replaces “Computer Can’t See BT Home Hub.- Updated” – or whatever – at the Number 1 position at the top of the chart, and remains there for at least three months.

The Prize: -

Should you succeed in your mission; you will be rewarded by being paid the sum of Fifty Pounds Sterling (English money.), or the equivalent thereof, in a currency of your choice, via PayPal. (Currently around $75.00USD)

This mission may appear to be a difficult one; but it is achievable, (I’ve already succeeded in it myself.) and it is not illegal; in that It does not violate the principles of kkomp.com in any way.

However there are a number of rules that must be adhered to: -

THE RULES

In no particular order:

*) The guest-posts submitted for publication must be written to cover a technical issue, be about an item of technology, a tech how-to, or be a news item with a technical flavour. Guest-posts that are not of this type will be disqualified. (They may or may not be retained and posted elsewhere at a later date.)

**) Whilst any one person may make any number of submissions of different posts, no one single identical or extremely similar guest-post will be re-entered into the running after its first publication.

***) Any guest-author may submit their entry, either under their real name, an alias, or an assumed name. – Unless they have been banned from doing so for whatever reason.

****) Video and audio files, such as podcasts, mp4, mp3, wmv, wma, etc, files, may be submitted as a part of an article. (Please try to avoid using Apple Quick Time files.) The entry/ies that you submit must be on a page or pages; meaning that they cannot be a video alone, or a podcast alone, but must be encrypted or hard-coded, using html , javascript, and I will accept a hard-coded .flv inside a player, particularly You-Tube. (No php hard-coding please.) onto a page. Please remember that if I can’t publish them fairly easily then I won’t do so. (Don’t forget to attach your files to the submission email if they’re not available to be streamed straight from the web.)

^) Posts that are considered to contain deliberately incorrect or misleading information, or where the author simply doesn’t have a clue, will be disqualified.

^*) All posts submitted must be accompanied by a valid PayPal-registered email-address. If they are not then I can’t pay you if you succeed in your mission. – However your post may nevertheless be published if it is deemed suitable, yet you will receive no reward should it get to and remain at the Number 1 slot for the specified period of time. Unless you submit a post accompanied by such an email address, I will not associate forwarded email addresses with posts after the event of first receiving your post: The rule is simple. – Post without email wont get paid for even if it succeeds.

^**) Any post that contains spam, too much self-promotion, insults or language deemed to be offensive; including racist, sexist, discriminatory, or pornographic material, as deemed to be so by myself, will be instantly erased from my computer(s) without even being fully read.

^***) Posts that are not deleted under the provisions of the section immediately above, will all be considered for publication. However the decision of whether or not to publish any given post at any given time will be solely at my discretion.

^****) All entries/submissions must be received on or before Friday 11th December 2009. Any such submissions received after that date will be considered for publication, and may or may not be published. – However no prize will be awarded to any late entries, should they achieve the objective.

~) The closing date for this mission will be March 31st 2010 at midnight. If nobody manages to complete the mission to my satisfaction before then, then a consolation prize of twenty-five pounds Sterling or the equivalent in a currency of their choice will be paid, via PayPal, to the individual whom I consider to have come nearest to doing so, unless the mission should be aborted for reasons ( Specified or unspecified.) as mentioned herein or otherwise.

~*) The winner of the main prize, should the goal be achieved, OR the winner of the consolation prize, to be decided by myself in the event of the goal not being achieved, will be announced on this blog and subsequently awarded their payment during the month of April 2010, on a date yet to be announced during that month.

~**) My judgement in deciding the outcome of this mission’s rewards is final. No correspondence, by email or otherwise, will be entered into.

~***) Disclaimer: Although every effort will be made to keep my part of the bargain; please bear in mind that under extreme circumstances brought upon this agency, (Namely myself.); you are, as an agent of this agency, dispensable under this contract, should this website or its associates come under adverse attack from any given source at any given time. – Therefore it is possible, though improbable, that your mission may be terminated without notice at any time before its conclusion and that your efforts, however impressive and successful, would under those circumstances go unrewarded despite their effectiveness or lack thereof. I stress that this will only occur under extreme circumstances, and is most unlikely.

~****) In the event that a disqualified post, disqualified for any reason stated on this page or elsewhere in any official amendments to these terms, achieves the desired objective and is not eligible for payment, then the consolation prize will be awarded to the writer of the submission that I deem to be the runner-up.

~^) Further, possibly time-sensitive, instructions with regard to your mission briefing, may be posted clearly on this blog at any point in the future, should this be deemed necessary for any reason. Any failure to co-operate with any instructions given in the allotted time frame may result in the disqualification of your post from receiving any reward; should said post be successful in achieving its purpose.

~^*) Unless this mission should be terminated under the most extreme of conditions; which is highly unlikely, somebody (Somebody who submits a post that isn’t disqualified or ineligible to be considered for reward due to the circumstances outlined herein.) will get something. (Either the £50 main-prize, or the £25 consolation-prize.)

~^**) The above rules may be subject to change and/or partial or complete edition/addition/deletion, at any time and for whatever reason, as I see fit. Posts that are submitted other than in accordance with these rules will be disqualified.

~^***) In the event that more than one guest-post fulfils the mission, the £50GBP prize will be divided equally amongst the multiple winners. Remember; to win this prize your guest-post must climb to and remain at the Number 1 spot in the kkomp Top Ten for 3 calendar months or 90 days; whichever is the shortest.

~^****) Any submitted post that is discovered to be plagiarised, (Copied identically, word-for-word, either in full or in part from somebody else’s work.) will be instantly disqualified.

#)…Blah blah blah. – So to cut to the chase; if you want to be in with a chance of making some doshy-poos; get writing: You gotta be in it to win it.

Here are a few facts, for your information: -

No; facts, not fax!

1) No matter how many times I, as author and owner of kkomp.com, view any post, it does not count towards readership totals, and is not taken into account by my software used to calculate the kkomp.com Top Ten. – Therefore I am unable to artificially inflate the readership figures associated with any post, by design or otherwise.

2) All posts submitted that are posted will be credited to their respective authors. A link back to the author’s website will be included; provided that the author includes a location/URL to link to, as well as a short 160-word bio, in their submission email. Any posts posted elsewhere other than this blog; such as in ezine articles etc, will also be credited to their author, and, in addition to a link to this blog, will also have a link to the author’s site included.

2a) – In other words; posts submitted that are disqualified, or indeed any posts submitted, become my property; inasmuch as the fact that the submitting author grants a waiver of rights of copyright inasmuch as to the fact that I will be permitted, at my discretion, to post the article anywhere at any time, once only. When posted the original author will always be given credit. I reserve the right to add “Edited By:…” to the credits.

3) Posts submitted containing spam will be reported to the relevant authorities as having been authored by a suspected spammer.

4) Posts submitted that contain extreme defamatory, obscene, pornographic, racist, or hate-filled content, will be reported to the police along with the senders details including their ip address etc.

5) Make sure that the draft you send in the case of submission of an individual article is the final draft copy. Different versions of the same theme are acceptable, but any number of virtually identical multiple posts, overly erroneous, incomplete, or illegible, entries, will be disqualified and deleted.

How to Submit Your Draft Guest-Post(s)

*** The method that you should use to submit your guest-post is outlined below. Submissions that do not meet these criteria may still end up being published if at all possible, but will not be eligible for any payment, should they succeed on achieving their goal.

1)Write your guest-post using Windows Live Writer in edit view.

(If you don’t have Windows installed on your computer, then you’ll either need to install a Virtual Machine and run Windows in it, so that you can use Windows Live Writer, or dual-boot with your existing OS and Windows, or do the equivalent operation on whatever word-processing software, (Not Microsoft Word) that you’re using on your Linux or Mac OS.)

I’ve been looking at some of the search terms from Google that have led people to this blog, and I’ve noticed a few terms that, while sketchily or partially answered in places herein, nevertheless don’t have a section or article dedicated to them.

With this in mind I’m going to talk about the subject of voltage, in terms of the voltages found inside a computer, and the matter of which components use what voltages.

As you may or may not know, the power supply unit or PSU inside a computer supplies a number of different voltages to certain components. In the older computers; and this is going back a number of years, from the early 1990s to around the turn of the century, computers relied a lot on the 5 volt supply from the PSU, particularly in the case of the motherboard; therefore the 5 volt rails in older PSUs provided a lot more in the way of wattage than it does on the newer PSUs.

Conversely, the newer computers; from just after the turn of the century until time of writing, rely a lot more on the 12 volt rails from the PSU; and therefore the bulk of the wattage is provided via these rails in newer PSU designs.

Let’s not forget the VLT or Very Low Tension supply rails which directly supply the processor itself with current, though.

On older motherboards; where the processor was a lot less powerful than its modern counterpart would be, a less direct method of powering the processor or CPU was used; that being that the 5 and 12-volt supply rails provided the supply to the motherboard, and the processor’s supply of power was extracted from the onboard continuation of those rails, regulated down to 2 volts or below, and applied to the processor itself.

With the greater power-demands of advancing processor technologies, however, this method was abandoned, on more modern motherboards, in favour of a more direct approach; that of powering the processor with its very own VLT supply provided by the PSU itself, which is then further regulated and stabilised by onboard power-regulation components, and applied to the CPU as a perfect, smooth, and flawless DC voltage.

In this VLT supply, a substantial amount of power is required to be supplied to the processor: A substantial amount of wattage could be drawn at any given time by any given processor, and that amount of power has to always be available should the CPU require it. At such low voltages, a wattage of 50 watts or more would mean that a substantial amount of current, 25 watts or more, would be required to flow in circuit: A PSU has to be able to provide these variable amounts of high-current at any time; particularly on its dedicated VLT supply rails. This is one of the reasons that a separate dedicated supply to the processor has been introduced.

Moving on, and as we go up in voltage we come to the… No, not the 5-volt supply yet: There is, in fact, another, perhaps little-known, voltage range in between the 5-volt supply and the former VLT supply to the processor; and that has to do with the dedicated SATA power connector(s) from the PSU.

At this point I’m going to quote from Wikipedia ( link ), with the particularly relevant parts enhanced to bold type: -

“The SATA standard specifies a different power connector than the decades-old four-pin Molex connector found on pre-SATA devices. Like the data cable, it is wafer-based, but its wider 15-pin shape prevents accidental mis-identification and forced insertion of the wrong connector type. Native SATA devices favor the SATA power-connector, although some early SATA drives retained older 4-pin Molex in addition to the SATA power connector.

SATA features more pins than the traditional connector for several reasons:

• A third voltage is supplied, 3.3 V, in addition to the traditional 5 V and 12 V.
• Each voltage transmits through three pins ganged together, because the small contacts by themselves cannot supply sufficient current for some devices. (Each pin should be able to provide 1.5 A.)
• Five pins ganged together provide ground.
• For each of the three voltages, one of the three pins serves for hotplugging. The ground pins and power pins 3, 7, and 13 are longer on the plug (located on the SATA device) so they will connect first. A special hot-plug receptacle (on the cable or a backplane) can connect ground pins 4 and 12 first.
• Pin 11 can function for staggered spinup, activity indication, or nothing. Staggered spinup is used to prevent many drives from spinning up simultaneously, as this may draw too much power. Activity is an indication of whether the drive is busy, and is intended to give feedback to the user through a LED.

Adapters exist which can convert a 4-pin Molex connector to a SATA power connector. However, because the 4-pin Molex connectors do not provide 3.3 V power, these adapters provide only 5 V and 12 V power and leave the 3.3 V lines unconnected. This precludes the use of such adapters with drives that require 3.3 V power. Understanding this, drive manufacturers have largely left the 3.3 V power lines unused.”

Now we move up to the 5-volt lines: The P1 connector, which is the large power-connector which is attached to the PSU’s output leads and connects directly onto the motherboard, carries 4 x +5V pins and a single –5V pin. This has to do with a dual-balanced 5-volt supply, using the ground pins as a 0V source. (See here.) (The –5V line isn’t actually used very much, if at all, by a lot of modern motherboards.) I won’t go into exactly how the motherboard utilises the 5-volt supply, as that’s beyond the scope of this article.

Finally; the 12-volt rails: On modern power-supplies there are a number of 12V rails, and with good reason: These rails power optical drives, hard-drives, and sometimes a graphics-card will require a dedicated 12-volt supply too. – With all that load, especially if you’re running a RAID array with any given number of hard-drives attached, the overall 12-volt power-requirement can be quite large.

If you want more detail on a power-supply-unit itself, then I suggest that you follow this link. Comments are invited.

Article 500? What the –! What sort of title is that for a post?

Is it some declassified US Government document? An intercepted secret communication between Heads of State perhaps? A UFO conspiracy? An addition to the Geneva Convention?

Nope. It’s the 500th post on this blog. – Well it’s somewhere around the 500th: Probably more like the 501st to the 503rd; but a couple may have gone missing over time.

It has been about 15 months, almost to the day, since I wrote the very first post on this blog. In those days blogging was totally new to me. To be honest I didn’t have a clue; either about what direction this blog was going in, nor about the art of blogging itself in reality.

It all started back in the days when PC Mech Live was presented by both Rich Menga and David Risley. – June 2008. (Now it’s just Rich Menga only; (Wednesdays, 8PM EST.) as Dave is working his ass off on his various enterprises. – All of which, as far as the ones that are published go, have been to this day extremely beneficial, both to the author and to the customer; myself included.)

In May of that year I’d been subscribing to PC Mech as a free subscriber for quite some time; years in fact. I found out about the live show that they did at 8PM EST on a Wednesday night during a conversation with Dave. I also showed him my website, kustomkomputa.co.uk, (Which hasn’t been updated since as far as I remember.) and he said that I’d be better off with a WordPress blog than doing all that messing around in html.

I had a look at some people’s blogs, studied their source-code – Which worried me a bit: All scripts and php; both of which I was rather inexperienced in –and decided to make the jump to a blog; a WordPress blog, as Dave had recommended such and appeared to know what he was talking about when he said it was the best one to go for.

When I started I had no idea what I was doing. I’d fretted myself into a cold sweat just installing the blog on my domain. I’d created this domain, kkomp.com, especially for the purpose of putting this blog on it. – You see my original intention was to make this an interactive website as an extension of my computer-building business; and since kustomkomputa.com was already allocated for future expansion in tandem with kustomkomputa.co.uk – even though that never actually happened – I chose the next-best thing that was available at the time, kkomp.com: A massive abbreviation, and an easy-to-type name, which I assumed would help visitors to remember it.

Possibly I got that bit right; but most other things I got totally wrong: Like eventually choosing a theme: The one I chose; Serenity Pink, was quite girly and seemed to be rather me at the time. Unfortunately it wasn’t very appropriate for a computer blog of any kind. I looked at it with a view to customising it; but my php skills were virtually nil at the time, css likewise, and I didn’t know which files to edit even. – So I was between a rock and a hard place so to speak. – Neither of which were very comfortable.

I tried to run before I’d learned to walk and did everything I could to make the blog more attractive, despite in many cases having the opposite effect.

I did notice that a few of my articles were pulling most of the audience, though; and those were the computer-help articles and the electronics articles. The news articles, despite being the easiest to write, were pulling in the least readers, and even when I expanded them and added my own personal slant on them, they failed to do the business.

Content was the least of my worries at the time: I was determined to make the theme look nice, and I was studying hard with the help of Google in order to be able to do so; so rightly or wrongly I eventually built up enough confidence and knowledge to have a go at customising the theme. – With strange results.

Anyway; to cut a long story short it took until July 2009 before I was happy with the way the blog looked aesthetically. In January of 2009 I’d started paying more attention to content and a bit less to the theme files; and as I began to add more value to posts with better pillar-content, so my audience began to reach a decent size.

I’d been using social media; especially Twitter, as an advertising medium, so it hadn’t been that nobody knew about the blog, it was just that, initially, the look and content sucked due to my naivety and inexperience.

Now we jump forwards to today; and as you’ll note from the blog’s footer, I’m currently on David Risley’s Blog Masters Club course and things are running along swimmingly at present; having encountered and dealt with server issues last week. – Which could have cost me anything up to £120GBP, but didn’t –’ Long story. Let’s just leave it there for now. I’ve already done Yaro Starak’s Become a Blogger course; which was most helpful.

(If you yourself are interested in either of these courses, then it looks like the doors will be opening early in 2010 to new admissions with regard to both courses. Both have my personal recommendation; but in my opinion, beginner bloggers should enrol in Yaro’ s Become a Blogger course; whereas more advanced bloggers who want to go problogger and make a successful business from their blog would be better of attending David’s course.

To be in with a chance of a place on enrolment day, as places are already under high demand on both courses, click on the linked course name(s) above and register your interest.)

You’ve no doubt noticed, and will no doubt continue to notice, improvements; given time + a little trial and error combined with various tactics.

As for the future: Well with two main milestones drifting into the distance; those being both the 500th post, and the blog’s first birthday – back in June 2009, it’s time to up the ante somewhat and put a bit more in to it on my part; hopefully to get a lot more out of it in the future: That goes for both myself and my readers too.

This blog started as a mess, became something worth reading, underwent a little enhancement, and in the next chapter it’s time to take it to the next level.

I’ll say no more for the time being; as every time I announce plans or make promises, something beyond my control crops up and ruins all of it.

That’s it for this post: I thought of taking the day off in celebration; but that would just be unproductive or counterproductive. – So with nose applied to grindstone once again I bid you all farewell until the next article; coming very shortly on Beyond: -

Hardware + Software + Practical Electronics + more

- At kkomp.com; with that little touch of magick.***

Anytime what?!

It’s late October 2009, or maybe later: You have your new Windows 7 installation in your computer and you’ve already seen the benefits gained by upgrading to 7. You bought the Home Premium edition because you were told that’s all you needed, or maybe that’s all you could afford at the time. Now need more: Now you want the XP Mode and the Network Domain Support feature of the Professional edition, also you’ve decided that you’d like to be able to use the Bitlocker Drive Encryption feature of the Ultimate edition too.

- But you bought Home Premium. You just don’t want to face the prospect of having to reinstall the OS or go through the palaver of buying a new disc, with all the associated time and expense added to your computer’s downtime while you upgrade…

You’re in luck; because with Windows 7’s Anytime Upgrade, you can upgrade to a higher version of Windows 7 instantly without having to reinstall any software, lose any files, or anything like that.

All you need to do is to buy a new license key. You can upgrade Home Premium to Professional or to Ultimate, and you can upgrade Professional to Ultimate in this way also.

FINANCIAL-PITFALL WARNING: 

Upgrading from Home Premium to Professional, then from Professional to Ultimate  will incur extra unnecessary expense: To upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate costs £125GBP, while to upgrade from Home Premium to Professional costs £120 GBP, and then from Professional to Ultimate a further £85 GBP. Resultant extra expense = £80GBP.

Why can you do this with 7 but not with Vista?

The short answer: Vista was/is crap. – And that’s all you get on that question.

OK. How do they manage to work this upgrade thingy?

When you buy a Windows 7 disc, you buy all the files, the Ultimate edition in other words, but when you enter your licence key, it tells the installer which edition you actually paid for, and, unless you actually paid for Ultimate and received and entered a corresponding licence key, the installer will lock out some of the features, corresponding to which version your licence key says that you bought. – Easy really isn’t it?

They should have done this with Vista; but Vista was a mess from day 1: It had a hotch-potch of different versions that weren’t directly upgradable to the next version up: For instance, every version of Vista except for the Business version had Media Center built in…

So how would I go about performing this Anytime Upgrade?

OK; first click on the Start thingy (You’ll always get the best technical terms on this blog.) and type “Upgrade” into the Search… thingy. (This is becoming a habit.) Select “Windows Anytime Upgrade”, and follow the prompts from there. It’s fairly simple. – Just that you need to know where to start; and, as usual, Microsoft appear to have kindly buried the starting-post again.

I apologise that this article is a bit vague towards the end; but this sort of information wasn’t that easy to get hold of at the time of writing. As a little compensation I’ll reveal to you the pricings for Windows 7 in the UK: -

Home Premium has an upgrade price of £80GBP and a retail price of £150GBP.

You save £70GBP by upgrading from XP or Vista.

Professional has an upgrade price of £190GBP and a retail price of £220GBP.

You save £30GBP by upgrading from XP or Vista.

Ultimate has an upgrade price of £200GBP and a retail price of £230GBP.

You save £30GBP by upgrading from XP or Vista.

I can see that Microsoft’s crazy pricing technique here is put in place to stop people from working the system: For instance; if you were to get Home Premium at its upgrade price of £80, it would cost you £5 extra to then upgrade to Ultimate than it would to have bought Ultimate at its upgrade price in the first place. If I remember correctly; Microsoft have been caught out like that before, and aren’t going to let it happen a second time.

- Do you think this pricing is fair? How does it compare to the pricing of Vista in your opinion? Please comment.

Recently I’ve talked about some fairly decent components in both the budget and performance range on this blog. In this article I’ll mention a few more in the budget range, as well as some others, and I’ll be doing so with a view to including them in the construction of a budget PC.

The cost of computer hardware has plummeted recently; and whereas a few years ago it might have cost over £500GBP to build a half-decent machine, these days it can be done for a fraction of the cost. In fact I’m going to show you how you can build a decent budget PC, decent by today’s standards that is, for less than half of that cost.

This PC will be reasonably cheap as PCs go; but I don’t want us to end up with a piece of crap that’s slower than a 386-powered machine, or anywhere near that, at the end of the day; so I’ll be utilising components that are well-priced but have a bit of oomph behind them.

I don’t intend to talk you through the process of actually building this box in this article; that’s your pleasure to do all by yourself: I’m just here as your personal shopping assistant, to guide you to getting the best value for a little money.

Choosing the Processor

Let’s start with a processor and build around that: Normally I’d go for an AMD processor to incorporate in a budget-build; but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the way it is: There are a number of well-priced Intel processors on the market at the moment, as well as some budget Intel-socketed boards. We’ll go on to choose a motherboard in a while: First, let’s find a reasonable Intel processor: -

I like the look of the Pentium Dual-Core E5200. – Don’t let the name put you off there. – The Pentium Dual Core range are more akin to the Core 2 Duo range than their single-cored predecessor-namesakes. – The main difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Pentium Dual Core is that the latter has less L2 cache. – But we can live with that to keep the price down. The Pentium Dual Core E5200 is a fast chip, nearly as fast, in fact, as the Core 2 Duo E7200, but just over half the cost at only around £46GBP. Being of the E5000 series, it is manufactured using a 45nm process, so it’ll not be power-hungry. It’s a Socket LGA775 CPU, so that’ll make it easier to find an inexpensive-but-not-ancient board to run it on. – Let’s use that chip in the build.

Picking the Motherboard

Now we’ll need a motherboard to run it on. There are so many to choose from; many are far too expensive for what we’re after though; so let’s have a look at the cheaper end of the LGA775 marketplace:

We want something basic. – Not too basic though, and something that has decent performance. I’m now looking at a couple of Micro Star International’s boards. – I have to say that I’ve never been overkeen on MSI boards, and one of them I’m looking at is probably a bit too basic anyway. I want to keep the cost below or at £100 GBP for the processor/motherboard combination. – Aha! I do like the look of this one: It’s an Asus P5QL/EPU. I used to use Asus boards almost exclusively until I changed to Gigabyte, because Gigabyte were slightly better in my opinion – however this board has what we’re looking for by all accounts: -

It’s a socket LGA775 board that’ll accommodate pretty much any 2 or 4-core chip from Intel with that socket designation. It has 2 PCI ports and 2 PCIe x 1 ports; which should be everything needed for any expansion cards on this budget-build. There’s no RAID controller; but since we’re only looking at adding a single SATA hard-drive; who cares? – Even though it has 6 SATA ports; which could be useful if adding extra drives at a later date. It has no onboard graphics capability; but a cheap and cheerful 256MB  graphics card, which we’ll choose later, will put paid to that. It uses Intel’s P43/ICH10 chipset; which isn’t a bad piece of kit either. The BIOS has overclocking features; but to keep things simple we’ll stick to stock speeds; as the cooling might not be quite up to the overclocking requirements possibly anyway?

On the back panel  there’s a PS2 port to connect a keyboard to – but nothing for a mouse, so we’ll need a USB mouse, which we can run from any one of the six USB ports. 7.1 surround-sound and optical S/PDIF are featured; but nothing else.  – No worries: If FireWire or something is required at any point; we can always utilise the PCI or PCIe x 1 slots and fit an expansion card.

This board will support 1,066MHz DDR2, as well as a 1,600MHz FSB. All this for just £56 GBP makes a total, thusfar, of around £100. – Excellent! Get it from http://www.digital-fusion.co.uk if you want to be sure of the price.

Just in Case

Now we’ll need a case: You choose; it’s your budget machine, so decide how you’d like it to look. I’ll suggest, though, the Casecom Black Midi Tower Case – With 450W PSU 20+4pin with 1x SATA which is available from Ebuyer.com for £26 GBP. Yes, this is the case that I built my Phenom-powered 8GB RAM 64-bit Win 7 box with. – From experience I can say that for a budget box it’s not bad at all. It does utilise a cheap Casecom 450 watt PSU though; so don’t expect much more than 300 watts continuously from it. It powered a triple-cored 65nm Phenom + a 250MB graphics card, along with 2 SATA drives though, and is still working well after 6 months, so it should be good enough for our budget dual-core machine with 45nm technology and running a single SATA drive.

I’m going to assume that you bought that; and therefore the total cost thusfar is around £126GBP Inc VAT.

RAM it in

All-righty: We have a PSU, a case, a mobo, and a CPU – all for £126; now we need some RAM. Let’s use DDR2, 1,066MHz, since our board can run it. I like buying RAM from ebuyer.com; because they sometimes run out of what I have ordered, and give me something far better than I ordered, or better-looking but with the same specs, for the same price… Well it’s happened twice so far. – I’m not complaining.

(I know: Everybody bulk order DDR2 1,066MHz; then I’ll order before they manage to put up an “Out of Stock” notice…)

I see a nice Kingston 2GB kit; (2x1GB sticks) DDR2 1066mhz Hyperx Memory Cl5(5-5-5-15). – And it’s only £31GBP. That’s going to fill both RAM slots on our board; and make a memory upgrade a little more expensive should it be undertaken: However we’re looking at running Windows 7 (RC) Home Premium 64-bit on this PC; and Windows 7 64-bit will work quite happily on 2GB RAM. (Alternatively we could always run Linux on it.) We could use a load more RAM if we wanted; but this is a budget machine; so it would just add to the cost. For now let’s just KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid – that is, before you start getting any ideas.

‘Nice work: I make the total cost so far only £157GBP Inc VAT. Moving on…

Getting the Graphics Going

As we saw earlier; this motherboard has no graphics capability, so we’ll need a PCIe graphics card: Ebuyer again; and I’m going to suggest the same card that I used in my last personal build; that being the Gigabyte nVidia 7200GS 256MB GDDR2 VGA DVI TV out PCI-E Graphics Card at, currently, £20.03 GBP. Yes, there is something slightly better available from ATI; that being the Sapphire HD 4550 512MB DDR3 VGA DVI HDMI HDCP PCI-E Graphics Card including Low Profile bracket. – But it’s over £16GBP more expensive. Whichever of the 2 you get; the overall cost of the machine minus the hard-drive, including sundries such as a case-fan, leads and adapters, etc, should be less than £200GBP; unless you splash out on fancy accessories, which seems a bit pointless on a budget PC.

I’m going to assume that you decided on the nVidia card; making a total spend so far of £177.03GBP.

Driving up the Cost With a Hard-Drive

There’s no way that you’re going to get a decent brand-new hard-drive for under £23 at this point in time; so it’s a foregone conclusion that this machine’s going to cost us more than £200. It’s still cheap, though; particularly bearing in mind that this is a well-specced box for the investment.

Let’s find a hard-drive: What we’re looking for is something that won’t fill up quickly and will last a while. – Up to 5 years. 500GB capacity seems a good size for a budget machine; so let’s have a look at what’s available: -

This one looks good: Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache – OEM.

Seagate have been making drives for years; and most of their products, apart from their Chinese-made products a couple of years ago, are top-rate. This one has a 3-year-warranty on it, as well as Seagate’s reputation, so it’s well worth the £35.97.

In Conclusion…

That brings us us to a total cost so far of £213.00 Inc VAT. With sundries added that’ll probably come to a grand total of £225 Inc VAT. – Not a bad price to pay for a perfectly good machine that has pretty much everything that the average user would ever need.

You have all the parts for: –

A dual-cored Intel processor-driven machine, capable of running a 64-bit operating-system, with 2GBs DDR2 1066MB RAM in dual-channel configuration, 256 MB graphics capability with VGA, DVI, or TV out, 7.1 surround sound, 500GB quality SATA hard-drive – All for £225GBP Inc VAT.

If you intend to build this machine for yourself then happy building! Personally I haven’t built it yet; but I’ll probably do so if someone asks me to build them a cheap PC. (For a profit, of course.) Do let me know what you think and how you get on if you embark on the project.

People who aren’t building it but have suggestions/criticisms etc; please do comment below.

A question for you computer repair people and builders: How long does it take you to fit a stick of RAM? 2 minutes? Less than that?

My web-hosts; fasthosts.co.uk, probably the slowest hosts in the known universe, must hold the record for the longest time ever taken to fit a stick of RAM, with the assistance of some red tape: -

(Actual times are approximate and recalled from memory to the best of my ability.)

Monday 14th September 2009 – Day 1

After a weekend of repeated sudden server crashes I hire an engineer at fasthosts.co.uk – my web-hosting company – to look into the matter and try and sort it out. He reports back that my blog is overtaxing the server with its current resources, and says that although he has managed to suppress the Apache’ server’s processes somewhat, he recommends that I either reduce the complexity of the blog, or have the server upgraded.

My experience with servers, prior to hiring this dedicated Linux server, is nil. My experience with Ubuntu Linux prior to hiring this Ubuntu Linux server is not a lot to say the least.

As a Fasthosts customer; a Google for “fasthosts are crap” will terrify you more than the first time you watched the film “The Evil Dead” as a teenager back in the 1980s, and then walked home alone across a dark deserted heathland in the early hours of the morning straight afterwards. (– Yes, I did exactly that, and ruined a pair of knickers doing it.)

Monday 14th September 2009 – Day 1 22:00 HRS: 

Having given the engineer’s report a lot of thought, combined with my own findings, I decide to have the server upgraded. Having just shelled out one hell of a lot for the engineer’s fee, I contact Fasthosts, and  as I arrange to have the server’s RAM upgraded I am told that the fee for doing so is more than it would cost me to buy 3GB of DDR2 1200MHz.

The upgrade is seemingly a necessity, and is agreed upon anyway eventually after negotiations. I am told that the job is queued.

Tuesday 15th September 2009 – Day 2 11:39 HRS:

I notice that the server has crashed again. I reboot the server from my remote control panel and phone Fasthosts to enquire when the RAM upgrade is scheduled for. Their answer is vague; only that it is queued and will be carried out ASAP.

Wednesday 16th September 2009 – Day 3: Time relative

An uneventful day as such, where the server behaves itself and doesn’t crash. Visitor numbers are back to normal due to the absence of downtime. I notice that the RAM upgrade still hasn’t been carried out, and so I chase it up. I am informed that the matter has been referred to a manager to give final approval to the result of the earlier negotiations over the exorbitant cost of the operation. I am told that it’s almost a certainty that this will be approved; though I feel a little uncertainty due to this extra unexpected piece of red tape.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4: Time unspecified.

Another server crash in the early morning goes unnoticed by myself until around 14:00 hours. I reboot the server and once again phone Fasthosts; who assure me that the upgrade operation has been given the green light and is queued. I phone again at around 18:00 HRS: The result of this call being that the upgrade itself is scheduled by negotiation between myself and their dedicated server support representative to take place at 23:00HRS BST, and should take no more than 1/2 hour. I write a post informing my readers of this and publish it.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4 22:21HRS:

The server goes offline while I am uploading files. I am unable to gain access to the controls to reboot. I phone Fasthosts asking if they have started the upgrade operation early. I am told that the Ubuntu server went into a kernel panic and that everything has now been restored.

I begin to monitor the server, expecting to be taken offline, as agreed, for the upgrade to take place at 23:00HRS. This doesn’t happen.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4 23:55HRS:

I phone Fasthosts and ask why the schedule has not been kept to. I am informed that the engineer is behind schedule as he had to do unexpected maintenance on some of the shared-platform servers. I am assured that my server will be taken offline and the upgrade carried out within the next 15 minutes.

Friday 18th September 2009 – Day 5 00:36 HRS:

The server; which I am monitoring at 5-second intervals using a FireFox add-on which refreshes the page automatically, is taken offline, the upgrade performed, the server reconnected and rebooted. An email arrives almost instantly confirming this; along with another from around 18:00HRS asking me to confirm that I am willing to accept the extra server-hire charges incurred due to the increased amount of RAM, which I’ve already agreed anyway.

British business – the leading force of the economy: Part of the reason the UK is in billions of dollars of debt.

This last week has been fraught with server problems; resulting in a certain amount of downtime. I apologise for the downtime, and i trust that it wasn’t too inconvenient to you.

The server problems appear to have been caused, in the light of an engineer’s report, as well as in the light of my personal analysis, by an “unable to allocate memory” error on the server, caused by a combination of heavy traffic, including spiders, spammers, and hackers trying to exploit patched weaknesses in WordPress, with a heavy server loading due to plugins causing conflict with one another – as well as the overall complexity of the blog structure.

In remedy of this issue, I have removed or deactivated a number of plugins, and have asked engineers at my web-host to upgrade the server. These remedial actions should negate any future downtime for the time being at least, and hopefully also for some time into the future also.

It has been a rather worrying time for me, having just moved the blog over to a new, dedicated, server. Clearly I didn’t take into account all of the factors during the initial setup, and therefore the server setup was insubstantial for the load put upon it.

I’m writing this post at a time before the hardware upgrade has taken place; but you will note from the Service Announcement posted earlier on this blog that the work has been scheduled and should have been completed by the time you read this post.

On another front; you may have noticed that I have started to produce reviews of certain hardware components: -

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3; A Budget-Board +

Intel Core i7 920: The Premium of Hi-Performance Processors

and

Gigabyte P55M-UD4: Another Gigabyte Mobo Without Graphics Capability

Although this is more like a test-sample of such posts at this time; I will be observing the reader statistics to see, in short, whether these posts are a hit or a miss. If they prove popular than I shall produce more posts of this type. – So if you like what you see then do click on more posts of that type, and do also comment on them. (That’s what that box below them from Disqus is all about.)

There have been a couple of guest-posts since the last Public Newsletter: The last one was by 16-year-old Kyle Potts from America. This budding Linux guru gave a few reasons why certain types of people should use Linux. He also explained that many of us use Linux-based apps without even realising it too: -

Linux For Everyone?

In the other guest-post, Misca Nicoleta from Romania explains how installing Windows 7 in your portable device can extend battery life: -

Install Windows 7 on your Portable Device and Increase Battery Life

(It’s September 17th; yet I’ve just heard someone letting off the first firework of the year outside! Why don’t they just start Valentine’s Day on 5th January, after the 12 days of Christmas are up, then start Easter on the 15th February, immediately following which comes the long haul to Father’s Day, followed by the same for Mother’s Day, then combine the preparations for Halloween and Bonfire Night immediately after that, and on 6th November start Christmas?.. Actually that’s almost happening already: People must have such small lives these days!

What am I on about? – Think about it: An entire year to prepare for 8 or so days at their risk of financial ruin every time; repeatedly until death do us part. That amounts to an actual “life”, not including preparation for “life”, of around 640 days, consisting of nothing but avoiding total bankruptcy. – That sucks!

- Oh; I forgot to include the person’s birthday too: ‘Add another 60 to 80-odd days then. – It still sucks!)

- OK back to topic; and I’ve also included a few more delectable morsels for your edification since the last Public Newsletter: -

It’s Probably Not My blog… – Speaks, again, to you myriad of people who are still using IE6 out there, and getting a less-than-perfect browsing experience as a result. IE6 is old hat; and using it can, in a way, be likened running your car on square wheels.

Hard-Drives Are Unreliable – Fact Warns you to be prepared for one of the worst computing disasters happening at any point in time: That being your hard-drive packing up.

Hold a Micro-Party and get a Free Copy of Windows 7 Ultimate – What’s this? An extra day to add to the “700-day-“life””, perhaps?

How to Install WordPress on Your Domain

and

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer : Free WordPress Plugin Are a couple of WordPress-related articles that are fairly well explained by their titles.

…And finally there are the articles related to kkomp.com’s recent short-lived outages: -

Kkomp.com is Under Attack

and

**Kkomp.com Service Announcement**

- I think that just about covers everything.,, Oh and there’s also…

64-Bit – NOW 

– Please let’s bury 32-bit computing in its grave once and for all, as soon as is practically possible. – It’s too limiting and older than IE6!

OK I’m fed up with writing right now: I need a coffee + Also I want to get this post queued on the server before the planned outage where my server is upgraded. Also I need a cigarette: -

Enjoy the weekend; whatever you’re doing.

Planned Downtime… Today

Please excuse the short-ish notice; but I though it prudent to advise you that there will be a period of server downtime with regard to this blog and all my other domains except kustomkomputa.co.uk. This downtime will be occurring from 11PM UK time (6PM EST) to approximately 11:30PM UK time (6:30PM EST) today, Thursday 17th September 2009. This planned outage will be due to engineers carrying out an essential server upgrade, which will hopefully end the unplanned downtime which has been occurring of late.

I apologise in advance for any inconvenience that this may cause; but I am hopeful that this upgrade will negate any further unplanned downtime from that point onwards.

During this period; your computer will not be able to connect with this or any of my other domains except for one which is hosted on a different server, as specified above.

Please bear with me through this, and with a bit of luck this blog will be up and running again on a permanent basis soon.

Thank you for taking the time to read this notice.

Kind Regards

Sharron Field – Owner & Creator of kkomp.com.

Since March I’ve proudly mentioned my 3-core box, which I built, a number of times; in both articles on this blog as well as comments on other blogs. As a quick rundown, the box uses an AMD Phenom 3-core chip on a Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 motherboard. It’s currently running Windows 7 Ultimate RC 64-bit, and I’ve fitted 8 gigabytes of DDR2 800MHz RAM.

Since I used that board in the construction of my box; which, prior to the advent of Intel Core i5 chips, was the only Gigabyte board I know of without built-in graphics capability, it appears to have risen in popularity. (The price has also dropped by around £10 GBP too.)

Since the board is becoming such a great budget-build accessory, I felt that it deserved its own little mention on this blog.

Its on the small-side of ATX-size, with an AMD socket AM2+ processor socket; which means that a Socket AM3 processor will fit nicely into the socket, but will be nevertheless restricted in operation. (Socket AM3 has one less pin than Socket AM2+, so while AM3 fits an AM2+ or even an AM2 socket, (Despite being thus unable to run at its full potential in AM2+ or AM2.) AM2 and AM2+ won’t fit an AM3 socket. – This is probably a good idea too, as AM2, and probably a lot of AM2+ chips too, may well get into difficulties when it comes to utilising DDR3 RAM.)

As far as I am aware, many Phenoms are available in a Socket AM2+ package at the time of writing, so finding a new chip to fit shouldn’t pose a problem. Whilst I run 3 cores on it, the board is capable of allowing a 4-core Phenom to run on it without any problems whatsoever.

It has an nVidia nForce 720D “chipset”: The reason why I put that word in inverted commas is because it isn’t really a chipset at all; more of a single chip. – However it does the business, although doesn’t provide any onboard graphics capability. – On that note, unless you’re using the board to build a server, (Which is a feasible suggestion, especially as time marches on and the board falls out of mainstream popularity.) which you’re only going to control remotely from another computer, then you’re going to have to fit a PCIe graphics card to the board’s single PCIe slot and output graphics from that. No worries there though: I’m currently running a Gigabyte GeForce 7200 GS card on it: 256MBs of dedicated graphics and no problems. The card cost under £25 GBP.

The “chipset” does tend to run rather hot; partially because it has no substantial cooler on it; just a small passive heat-sink. To offset this it’s best to ensure that there is a case fan attached to the box that you’re going to run this board in.

There are also 2 PCIe x 1 slots in addition to 4 PCI slots. I sometimes wonder about PCIe x 1; although a smaller and neater slot, it doesn’t appear to have much advantage to PCI, and the PCIe x 1 expansion cards seem to always be slightly more costly than their PCI counterparts. – Having said that, there’s probably a number of factors that I haven’t accounted for here. Perhaps maybe readers would like to expand on the subject?

Although I’m running 8 GB of RAM, the four memory slots can accommodate up to 16 GB of DDR2 and support the faster 1200MHz DDR2 9600 sticks.

The six SATA ports give it the ability to utilise currently up to 12GB of storage. The BIOS allows for RAID configuration also. There are also a single PATA port, and a floppy port too; should you feel the need for some retro-storage.

On the back panel there are 8 USB 2.0 ports, as well as a 4-pin and a 6-pin FireWire port. Despite there being no eSATA port, there are 2 x PS2 connectors, so the older mouse and keyboard still have their uses here. (I run it with a PS2 keyboard and a USB mouse without any problems.)

The analogue 7.1 audio outputs are from a Realtek  ALC888 codec. There are also optical and co-ax S/PDIF outputs.

A UK computer magazine is so impressed with this board that they have given it their Best Buy award even.

Have you used this board at all? If so; what do you think. Do comment. Also please comment with regards to PCIe x 1 ports too.

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3; an amazing budget-board.

Questions: Should I use Linux? What is Linux? Is Linux for me?

If you’re a bit more than the average computer user, ‘chances are you have at least flirted with the idea of using Linux.

Linux, to me, is more than just an operating system: it’s a tool to helping you understand the true power of your computer.

Most of the people reading this article are probably running Windows; whether that be 98, NT, ME, XP, Vista, or 7. Windows has been around for a while, and the cries of it’s users just as long. Even with the problems associated with Windows, people still tend to stick with it. I am not sure if this is just because they don’t know that there is a perfectly good alternative out there, or if they do know there is an alternative out there, but don’t want to change because they are dependent on Windows applications.

Either way they still aren’t running Linux. I am not saying they every person running Windows should run to Linux. – That certainly isn’t true. In fact I still have Windows Vista on another hard drive on my computer just so as I can run applications that run in Windows, but won’t run in Linux.

What I’m saying here is that there are certain people who could easily move to Linux and people who can’t. Here is a small list of people who I think can and can’t move to Linux:

The Student

The student could easily move to Linux. As long as they do not have Windows-only applications that the school demands they run. They could type off their reports with OpenOffice, browse the web with Firefox or Chrome, IM friends with pidgin, and listen to their music with Songbird.

The Artist

The graphic artist will probably have the hardest time converting to Linux. That’s because industry standard programs such as Photoshop, and Illustrator are not supported in Linux. There are open source programs but they do not compare to the big guys. For example gimp is nowhere near as good as Photoshop, so unfortunately the graphics artist will be stuck in Windows or Mac land for a while longer.

The "Grandma type"

We all have heard of these people, the ones who have no clue how to use a computer, but still want to.

I think that Linux is almost perfect for them. (Some may disagree though, for Linux can be complicated.)

If you set them up with a web browser and a word processor; then they will have all that they need. – You may have to set up their wireless once, and their printer. – After that, though, they are set up and raring to go.

Also you don’t need to worry about them calling you up one night saying that they download a video and got a virus since Linux is almost virus free. [Sharron disagrees.] – So, for the "Grandma type", Linux can definitely work for them.

- These are only a few groups of people that Linux does and does not work for. There are plenty more people that Linux will be perfect for, and probably even more that Linux would be bad for. – It all comes down to choice: If you want full control of your computer with a little frustration, and lots of open-source applications then go Linux. If you want moderate control of your computer, with tons of good and major supported applications then go Windows… Or get the best of both worlds and dual boot.

Of course there are plenty of applications that people use that are not  Linux operating systems, but more utilities. – Such as Gparted (A bootable Partition editor.), Clonezilla (A great backup programs with clones your hard drive.), System Rescue CD ( A general purpose rescue CD). These are only a few of the applications that people use, that are really Linux underneath.

- So to the question: Can anyone use Linux? The answer is, in a way, yes!

In March of this year (2009) I built a new box using one of AMD’s 3-core Phenom chips on a Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 Socket AM2+ motherboard. Unlike most if not nearly all motherboards, this board had an “incomplete” chipset – in that no graphics capability was included in it. – The only way to get graphics was to plug in a PCIe graphics card. This I did, using a fairly-cheap 256MB nVidia card with dedicated DDR3 RAM onboard, and the box is still working well, running Windows 7 Ultimate RC1 without even a single blue-screen (BSOD) yet, as far as I can recall.

The graphics-less motherboard appeared to be a one-off as far as Gigabyte was concerned; until the launch of the first of Intel’s new Core i5 family of processors, that is.

In order to accommodate yet another socket designation; Socket LGA1156, the second new socket in a row from Intel, Gigabyte produced the P55M-UD4. This board appears, from all reports that I’ve seen to date, to be the current forerunner for running the new Core i5 technology. – And well it does so too.

The board utilises Intel’s P55 chipset, which isn’t possessed of a Northbridge; Why not?  Because the Core i5 family are the first chips to have the Northbridge functions fully integrated into the processor itself! – How’s that for a technological leap? ‘Good thinking Intel.

(In all honesty I did suggest the idea to myself earlier this year; but not being a chip-designer I was totally miffed on the inherent practicalities of the idea, and forgot about it as quickly as I’d thought of it. Did I cheat myself out of a copyright by doing so? I very much doubt it: I’m sure that Intel’s plans had been on the drawing board long before then. I could suggest at this point integrating both Northbridge and Southbridge, memory controller, SATA controllers, audio codec, BIOS, even the graphics card itself, and why not? I see that coming in the not-too-distant future too: An entire computer integrated into a single 3D chip… And why not have a monitor on the chip too? – After all an LED monitor is just a collection of light-emitting transistors wired as diodes to a greater extent; exactly the same components as found inside a processor; but with their substrates doped with extra chemicals so that they produce light/change colour, whatever, when activated in whatever way. Think: An entire mini-computer on a single chip. – All it needs is a power supply and a cooler! (See this article.))

I’ve just wandered right off-topic there. Back to the old – er – new, motherboard:

Core i5 integrated memory controllers support DDR3 RAM only: Intel appear to have gone right off DDR2; which can’t be a bad thing, as it means that DDR3 prices can only fall eventually. The memory controller also supports dual-channel configurations, rather than the triple-channel configurations of the i7 on the X58 boards, and the mobo reflects this with only 4 RAM slots.

Although there are no outputs for onboard graphics/monitor sockets on the board itself; once again the addition of a fairly inexpensive PCIe card should put paid to this. – The processor has, in this case, direct control over the two PCIe slots, and a single slot will run at X16 while both slots will run at X8 individually; so there should be no problems whatsoever if the builder decides to incorporate SLI or CrossFire.

(Why ATI had to make their technology sound like something from the Klu Klux Klan I have no idea. – But anyway; moving on…)

Just to enforce my position as one of the net’s technologically-predictive geniuses; AKA I made a good guess that anyone with half-a-brain could have made, I’ve just read that Intel propose, in their forthcoming “Clarksfield” chips, to also integrate the graphics into the chip. – No word of a lie: That’s going to give rise to a rather interesting chipset, don’t you think?

The P55M-UD4; the board that this article’s meant to be about – Although you wouldn’t think so from the way I keep going off-topic, has only a single PCI slot, and also a single PCIe X4 slot. – This might sound rather strange, bearing in mind that the Southbridge is capable of controlling 8 PCIe lanes. However, being a micro-ATX board I suppose space is at a premium. There are, after all, 2 PCIe X16 slots; so maybe if planning more than 2 expansion cards the builder will have to stick with a single graphics card.

The chipset supports 5 SATA II ports + a single eSATA port on its RAID controller. With the addition of a second controller, however, Gigabyte have provided 2 more SATA II ports as well as a PATA port. – Useful for the old IDE DVD drive no doubt. These extras are separately capable of RAID 1 and 0 support.

Ten USB 2.0 ports on the back panel compliment the single PS2, FireWire, and the ethernet port, the latter of which supports Gigabit Ethernet. – All this; plus a BIOS that supports manual overclocking, causes Gigabytes second board-without-graphics to weigh in at a price of around £116GBP or more; depending on where you get it from. – Not cheap by any means; although it’s reportedly the best board to run a Core i5 on at the moment. No doubt this may soon change; but if you expect me to keep up with all technology at all times I’d need a large data-centre powered by a supercomputer. – And nobody’s even offered to buy me a Mac yet.

Have you anything to add? If so then please do so in that largely-unused box marked ‘comments’ below.

…that looks weird: It’s your browser that’s making it look weird.

In this article I’m talking to everybody; geek and technophobe alike. In this article I’m going to try to avoid being technical, for the sake of the technophobes. In this article I’m going to be concentrating upon facts rather than explanations. In this article I’m going to help those of you who still use Internet Explorer 6 to get a better browsing experience.

I’m not going to suggest you learn techy things and fiddle with your code and settings all day. I’m not going to present you with any magic pre-written fixes to make IE6 work better. I’m not even going to give you a simple magic-bullet that anybody can use to improve an utterly useless browser such as IE6.

No, no, no: All I’m going to do is suggest something. – Whether you IE6 users do it or not will affect how your computer sees this and most other sites, such as Google, for instance, who have themselves stopped supporting IE6.

(Yes, it is true that I’m an anti-IE6-campaigner; and you’re about to find out why.)

Before I do I’m going to tell you just a little about IE6 in layman’s terms:-

It sucks! Yes, it’s a nightmare. Coders and webmasters hate it, people who use XP and are in the least tech-savvy commonly rarely use it; or upgrade to IE7 or IE8, and other than that it appears lazy people and the non-tech-savvy who use XP just don’t bother at all, and then complain when a website doesn’t resolve properly in their browser.

What they don’t realise is that the website looks crappy because they’re viewing it in IE6.

- So why did Microsoft supply IE6 with XP then?

‘Good question. In his article “Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer” from June 15th 2004 on his Lockergnome blog, Chris Pirillo, himself a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), puts it this way: –

“…  but not in IE. Ask yourself why a company would choose not to support standards that benefit everyone? The way I see it, it’s for precisely one of two reasons – either they [, Microsoft,] are unable to, or they don’t want to. Given the fact that they are a multi-billion dollar company (one of the richest on the planet), I can’t help but lean toward the second option. Without going into too much detail (See Longhorn), they have their own plans, and those plans involve implementing their own standard and forcing it upon the world. Call me a geek/hippie, but the idea of a multi-billion dollar corporation snubbing its nose at agreed-upon standards is nothing short of infuriating.”

IE7 was another non-standards-compliant browser to some extent; but only partially so: A kind of IE6-with-the-major-bugs-fixed, and it shipped with the calamity that Microsoft called Vista. – At least IE7 was a step in the right direction if nothing else.

In IE8, however, Microsoft have worked long and hard in recoding the entire thing from scratch, and ditching most of the problem code that caused the issues in the first place. Whilst IE8 is nothing special, it is almost like you would expect a normal browser to be in 2009. – And it works in XP, Vista, and ships with Windows 7.

- So if you’re determined to use Internet Explorer, do yourself a favour and upgrade to IE8… Unless you’re using Windows 2000 as an operating system; in which case you’re stuck with IE6; but you can always download FireFox, Opera, or Safari. – And/or a number of others if you prefer.

- And that, everybody, is how you improve your browsing experience: Upgrade Internet Explorer to IE8, and/or download another browser and use it.

I use FireFox mainly. I also have Safari installed; which I find useful for watching online video in due to its larger screen area. I have upgraded to IE8 on my XP machine, but I hardly ever use it. I think I have an obscure browser called K-Meleon installed too; which, in all honesty isn’t that bad a browser: It’s open-source; so you might like to give it a spin, contribute towards development, or even, if you’re a coder geek, help develop it.

On that note I will close this unscheduled notelet that I allowed to fall into my blog for your enlightenment this weekend.

Enjoy your Sunday.

For those constructors wanting to build a top-end performance box that won’t set them back a small fortune, the Intel Core i7 920 is a good place to start from: With 4 cores capable of processing eight threads simultaneously, due to the re-introduction of hyperthreading technology, last seen with the Pentium 4, Intel’s budget i7 chip scores well in all performance trials. At only £200 UKP inc VAT, the baby of the bunch, although still rather costly, provides the punch that any top-of-the-range system would currently ever need.

As with all the other i7 family, manufactured using a 45nm process, it has a 256KB Level 2 cache, as well as a further 8.192 MBs of level 3 cache which is shared between the cores. This amount of L3 cache improves performance by reducing the need to access system RAM. At a little less than half the price of the next one up in the i7 bunch, the 2.66Ghz 920 is only marginally slower than the 940.

The i7 processors use a technology called Quick Path Interconnect. This replaces the usual front-side-bus with a memory controller integrated into the chip itself, reducing bottlenecks where both the processor and also other components make system requests on a single bus.

With the advent of the Core i5 on the horizon, in fact some already in production, some may think it prudent to wait a while and see how the new range’s price will compare, as well as to hope for a price reduction in the i7 family’s costs. For the time being, however, if a new hi-performance box is a must in the now, the socket LGA1366 i7 920 is a good choice that won’t set you back financially as much as the other family members.

If it’s extreme overclockability you’re looking for, then it’s going to cost you a little over £500 extra for a 3.2 GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition with its unlocked multipliers.

When it comes to the matter of system memory; the Core i7 chips can only utilise DDR3 RAM, which doesn’t help towards the overall cost either at time of going to press; but for the extra performance many will think that the financial sacrifice is well worth the investment.

Have you built a new system using an i7 chip? Did you use a 920, or did you shell out a load more dosh for the extra overclockability?

If I remember correctly it was during 2007 that Google released a paper on the reliability of the hard-drives that they use in their data centres. Google, being Google, quite obviously have a lot of hard-drives working away 24/7 in their servers and data-storage centres, and therefore didn’t need to be interactive with the public to carry out this analysis. Their purpose for doing this was to discover trends and traits regarding performance and failure rates in these components.

They found that, on average, one disc out of 14 that was 2 years old or more, failed. I don’t imagine that Google would use cheap and nasty hard-drives either; so we can assume that the discs studied were of at least average quality.

Numerically we can work both forwards and backwards from that statement with at least some degree of accuracy and say that for discs that are over 1 year old there would be 1 failure in 28, and for discs over 3 years old there would be 1 failure in 7. Working this way, the figures indicate that, whilst the usual maximum life of any hard-drive in use 24/7 is six years, there is the odd 1 in 333,333 case where the drive could continue to function perfectly for 25 years or more.

(As partial testament to this I have a few working hard-drives in my spares cupboard that have less then a megabyte’s capacity and have been removed from people’s computers in the last 2 years while upgrading the hard-drive to a secondhand PATA drive of around 20MB capacity bought off eBay for a few pounds sterling. Those replaced drives must be getting on for at least 10 years old!)

(Note: I build computers only: I normally don’t do any upgrades or major repairs of any kind for anybody (Because all I get is hassle that the computer’s not exactly as it was before and/or that the person doesn’t like this or that new or different behaviour or feature… (Even if the machine’s better than it’s ever been before.) Moan, whinge…), except either under warranty and/or for close friends and/or long-time customers that I trust. – Even then they must assure me in writing that they have a full backup of all their data at home beforehand, just in case the worst happens. (A lost or defunct rebuild can be put right; even though it may leave me out of pocket: A hard-drive that goes down with all of a person’s data on it that is not backed-up can never be fully replaced.))

- Which brings me on to my usual nag: Always always back up your data regularly or you’ll end up very sorry that you didn’t. It’s a case of when not if. New hard drives are fairly cheap and getting cheaper by the day, whereas a large proportion of your data can only increase in value over time.

Back to the main thrust of this article: The Google study also indicated that the SMART technology, (Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology.) wasn’t exactly reliable in predicting when or if any given drive was about to fail. They found that a number of drives reporting SMART warnings lasted for quite some time, even years, while other drives gave no SMART warning prior to failure.

Those results indicate that you can never tell exactly when your hard-drive is going to fail. (I’ve even heard of a brand new hard-drive failing on a brand new computer (Not on one of my builds. ) within the first day before now.)

What should people do, then, to avoid the worst happening?

Answer = Hard-drive failures are unavoidable, and can happen at any point, either with or without warning.

If that doesn’t scare you then you’re made of stronger stuff than me; and that’s saying something. – So there is but one answer: <nag time> Backup, backup, backup. </nag time> – End of story.

Personally I’ve been using WordPress since June 2008. Many other bloggers have been using it a lot longer than that. Since I started using WordPress the initial process for getting it onto your server, setting it up, and getting started, has remained the virtually same: -

Getting ready

First you’ll need to download the latest version of WordPress in the form of a zip file. Following that you’ll need to unzip it, using a program such as WinZip, which is built into Windows from XP onwards. The folder that WinZip creates will contain all of the necessary files and folders for WordPress which you just unzipped from the zip file.

The next part of the mission is to transfer all of those files and folders to a directory on your server. Your server will need to be php-enabled, and should be running MySQL or equivalent in order that you can create a database. I recommend a Linux server for running WordPress: Red Hat Linux is a good choice, although I am currently running this blog in Ubuntu. The main thing is that Linux is better than Windows all round if running WordPress. Linux is generally a better platform for servers in the first place; despite my continued use of Windows on my computer terminals. This doesn’t cause any conflict, and a Linux dedicated server can easily be controlled and operated from a Windows computer.

If you’re intending to set up your blog on a shared-platform server; where a number of other domains share the server with yours; ensure that your domain will not at any point in the future hog the shared resources of the server. – Your hosting company may get funny if it does this. Here I cite a number of instances where this blog was on a shared Red-Hat Linux platform in the past, and, due to its high resource usage, the hosts placed the domain on a backroom scripting server with other domains that also overused their share of server resources; causing this blog to become very slow indeed, to the point of totally unresponsive to web requests. The third time this happened I moved to a dedicated server, where I also placed my other, inactive, domains for the time being. (Except for kustomkomputa.co.uk and it-blo.ws; both of which are still on shared platforms, and one of which is still totally inactive.)

If you’re intending to create a professional blog then it would be best to place all those files and folders in the root directory. That doesn’t mean your server’s root directory, it means the root directory of your web space itself: The root directory available to you to upload files and folders to. Whether or not you already have subdirectories in the root folder, it’s always a better idea to install WordPress as low in the directory structure as is possible and reasonably practical.

The way to transfer the unzipped files and folders is via an FTP client to your FTP server section. Your web-host should have given you the login details, or in many cases you are able to create at least a password for yourself. I use FileZilla as my FTP client on my computer; but there are many other FTP clients out there; some are free and some are charged-for. Consult the program’s documentation or Read Me file for usage instructions of whichever client you choose to use. Upload the WordPress files and folders to the root directory of your web space.

Now we come to the setting-up of WordPress. – But first you’ll need to set up a database. Most shared-platform hosting packages come with an included database space, and you can create a database easily on a dedicated server using either MySQL or whatever tools your hosting providers make available to you. Remember the name and password of your database: Write them down; you’ll need them in the following section. You’ll also need the “hostname” of your database, so write down the IP address of your database, which you can use for this purpose.

Setting-up WordPress on your server.

If you look in the root-directory of your web space, you’ll see a file called “wp-config-sample.php” This php file has to be configured in order for WordPress to work. If you download and open the file on your own computer, it’ll look something like the example below. I’ve highlighted the bits that you need to worry about in bold type. I’ve filled in the values between the ‘ ‘ marks with examples for you. The piece in dark-blue doesn’t have to be changed, but it’ll improve the security of your blog if you do change the values where it says ‘put your unique phrase here’. – Anything will do: ‘Andy-Pandy’, ‘1234567890’, ‘eat sh*t and die’, or even ‘strjsdagohjvr5[0gte#’, whatever you like.

The entry for DB_HOST is set by default to “localhost”. This will work as is 9/10 times; but I’ve known it not to, so it’s always best to put your database’s IP address between the ‘ ‘ marks here, just to err on the side of caution. Nothing else other than the values as mentioned above need be changed.

If you want your blog in a language other than English, you’ll need to set up the line define (‘WPLANG’, ”); correctly, plus install the correct corresponding MO file for the chosen language, as per the instructions.

Finally; rename the file to wp-config.php and upload the altered file to the root web space with all the other files and folders. You can now delete the original file named wp-config-sample.php if you like, as WordPress doesn’t need it.

Finally

You’re ready to go. Open your web-browser and type your domain name followed by /wp-admin , like this: –

http://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin

WordPress will set itself up and present you with the login page. WordPress will have generated a long complex password, which it’s best to write down just in case. Log in to WordPress by pressing the Login button. The WordPress dashboard GUI will appear. 

– And that’s it: You now have a working WordPress installation. I suggest that you go into your profile and change that password to something you can remember that’s more familiar to you; but keep hold of the old password for a while just to be on the safe side.

That’s pretty much it. – Happy blogging.

Comments are invited. – Please retweet this post. Thanks.

Ping Optimizer? – What is “Ping”?

Although the future-post ping problem has now been fixed in recent versions of WordPress, the update pinging problem still exists.

The Solution:

• When you create a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that it has been updated. This encourages search engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly.

• When you edit an existing post, it won’t send an unnecessary ping to any ping services and saves your blog from getting banned.

• When you post a future post by editing the time stamp, it will ping only when your post appears in future. It won’t unnecessarily ping many times when you schedule posts as WordPress does by default.

The plugin is free; but it’s released as “Reviewware”: This means that if you find the plugin useful then a decent review of the plugin in your blog would be highly appreciated by the writers. Not only will this give due credit, but it’ll also spread the word and thereby notify others who would also benefit from installing the plugin. If you don’t want to write a review than it’s not compulsory to do so; but it would have been appreciated.

- So how do I get hold of this plugin?

Easy: Click thisdownload link. It’s free and, unless you really want to be in constant danger of being labelled a ping-spammer, it’s a must-have.

Feel free to comment.

I’ve just read an article written by an author who is currently running 32-bit versions of Windows on hardware that is capable of running 64-bit versions. He says that his major concern is about compatibility were he to go 64-bit when he installs Windows 7, although he would find the vast amount of RAM that he could use most useful. He’d nevertheless, until recently, been planning to stick to 32-bit because one of his most-used applications didn’t have a 64-bit version available. This situation has recently changed; and therefore he is now considering running 64-bit Windows 7, although still with some trepidation as far as hardware compatibility is concerned:

To quote: “Hardware vendors need to update their drivers for 64 bits, and some have not. Hopefully, more and more will over time, but it’s the most likely area of concern, particularly for older machines. Hardware vendors will of course focus their efforts on newer hardware and are less likely to provide updated drivers for their older equipment.”

That is to my mind a defeatist attitude: It’s saying that since hardware vendors can’t be bothered to update their drivers for their hardware; we have to stick to a 32-bit operating system, with its memory limitations, and put up with it, because it makes things easier for existing market forces.

I think that’s totally the wrong way to look at it:

If we’d have said “OK; we’ll stick with 32-bit single-core processors because it’s easier on Intel and AMD,” then we’d still all have slow computers, incapable of running multiple programs efficiently, with less than 4 gigabytes of memory, to this day. The gaming industry’s innovations would have been snubbed, and people would be getting fed up with computers by now due to technological stagnation and blockage.

- So why, then, should we say die on moving to 64-bit just because the hardware manufacturers and vendors can’t be arsed to write 64-bit drivers for their products? IF, rather than lying down and accepting it, we refused to buy any piece of hardware that didn’t have a 64-bit driver accompanying it; and I’m talking about secondhand as well as new here, then the hand of manufacturers and vendors would be forced into action; and they’d have no choice but to provide 64-bit drivers with their products.

The same goes for programs: If everyone who owns a computer capable of running a 64-bit operating system did so; and those whose computers were incapable of doing so bought or built new machines capable of doing so and did so, then 32-bit would be no more: This would make all 32-bit drivers, and, to a large extent, 32-bit programs also, virtually worthless to anybody: Therefore industry would start turning out all 64-bit application software and all-64-bit drivers for hardware. 64-bit Windows is backwards-compatible with 32-bit applications; so where there is no choice but to use a 32-bit program or driver, it could be done in secret, while at the same time rallying and hassling manufacturers and vendors to hurry up with their new 64-bit drivers.

- Remember; under this plan, nobody would buy any hardware that didn’t have a 64-bit driver available. Existing hardware, however, would continue to be used in 32-bit-mode if at all possible until a compatible 64-bit driver was released. – So unless a device was sold with a 64-bit driver; the manufacturer or vendor wouldn’t get a sale at all. If something was so old that it just wasn’t worth writing a 64-bit driver for it, then with the low-price of hardware these days it wouldn’t hurt the owner to recycle the old unit(s), or donate them to a museum, and upgrade their hardware to something newer.

I realise that this plan would hit secondhand hardware traders such as eBay and the like rather hard in a number of departments. I realise that it would also hit a number of users too; and force them to dump old but working hardware and spend a little cash to buy new; but isn’t it worth a little sacrifice in the name of progress?

Here I’m going to do something unusual for a Wintard and praise the Mac: Macs are all 64-bit. The Mac OS and all the related software are 64-bit, as are pretty much all the new Linux distros which are being produced these days. Windows is probably the only operating system which is encouraging hanging on to 32-bit. That is not acceptable; especially in the light of the fact that Windows has the largest market share, and should be leading the progression; rather than dragging behind.

But that’s the way things are: Microsoft; for reasons best known to themselves, have always been a little slow on the uptake recently. Perhaps if they did but realise that they’ll never be able to keep up with the running pack if they keep shooting themselves on the foot; they’d be able to be the true market leaders that they should be.

-For example: They do what they should have done ages ago finally and ask their customers what they’d like in the next operating system. (It took Vista to teach them that; and as a result they probably lost billions of potential dollars in revenue as a result.) When it comes to pricing it however, they use the same type of system that they used with Vista; various “versions” with x number of features disabled in proportion to the level of cost. That is a stupid marketing strategy; and I’ll explain why:-

All the various versions are sold on an almost identical disc. That disc contains a full-featured Windows installation of Ultimate edition; regardless of which “version” it is. The only difference between the Ultimate disc and any other is the number of features disabled: It costs them exactly the same to produce the most disabled version as it does to produce the Ultimate version. By disabling certain features they’re cutting the sale value of the product.

If, instead of doing as they are, charging $300 for the ultimate version, and say, $75 for the most-disabled version, they instead sold nothing but Ultimate and charged $188 for it; then they’d make exactly the same sales revenue, yet not have to spend a bit extra to produce discs with features disabled.

If my information is correct they’re packing both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version of 7 into a single DVD case also. – Again this is counterproductive: If they sold nothing but 64-bit Ultimate for $188 they’d cut their production costs dramatically. – PLUS anyone who is still running a 32-bit processor/motherboard setup wishing to run 7 would have to get a new setup or upgrade their existing system by necessity: Think of all the benefits to hardware manufacturers plus the extra number of sales of preinstalled Windows 7 installations!

- But Microsoft aren’t that good at thinking ahead, as can be seen here.

“Wait a minute…” You interject. “Not every computer is capable of running Windows 7 Ultimate: What about netbooks, for example?”

You would be mightily surprised: Rich Menga of PC Mech.com recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate RC (32-bit) on his Dell Inspiron mini 10v. I can’t link to the article really, as it’s in the PC Mech Premium section, so it’s not free to view. (What I will say; however, is that it is well worth joining PC Mech Premium. I won’t advertise too heavily here; but that is a fact.) I’ll give away a couple of tiny snippets of information from the article, and I do hope the guys at PC Mech won’t be too annoyed by my doing so: -

“Problems encountered[:]

None.”

- No word of a lie: That is directly copied & pasted from the article. – As is the following:

“System Performance[:]

Shockingly good. You’d think with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom mobile processor and 1GB of RAM with a 5400rpm hard drive that Windows 7 would run as slow as molasses. Not true. In fact it runs about the same speed XP did. In some instances even faster.”

- I don’t see any problems there, do you? These “versions” appear unnecessary; they’re just marketing hype. – A load of BS with the intention of making more money? Probably; but despite the intention, it doesn’t appear to be working. Agreed that some comps won’t be able to run certain features perhaps. – Even in the light of the above. There’s a simple enough solution to that: If your computer can’t run something then don’t try to run it. – Easy, isn’t it?

Microsoft must be a centipede or a millipede; as it still manages to stay upright despite repeatedly shooting itself in the foot.

- So a draconian plan has been hatched to kick-off the 64-bit revolution. ‘Too radical? Well it needs to be; or Microsoft will have us lagging back in the 20th Century for the rest of this century.

Backwards-compatibility is never a bad thing: In fact it’s probably one of Microsoft’s leading qualities. – But backward-thinking and everything associated with it is something that technology could well do without.

What are your thoughts on all this?

If you want to get your hands on a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate; forget bit-torrents, there’s no need to staff-pilfer from the shop you work at, nor to pay the ultimate price either: All you have to do is hold a party!

Whether or not the doors and the window-frames are painted by Picasso, the party decorations are by Michael Angelo, the fine music that you hear is by Stravinsky, the overall design is by Leonardo DaVinci; Microsoft is offering you the chance to get free limited Signature Editions of the Ultimate version of the Windows 7 Ultimate operating system if you hold a launch-day party.

Apply now to host a Windows party between 22nd and 29th October 2009, – link is for UK applications – and you’ll be in with a chance of getting not just the OS itself; but also a fabulous limited-edition Windows 7 Party Pack!

But that’s not all: The excitement mounts yet still further: The theme for your Micro-Party can be selected from any one in the following list of super-exciting scintillating themes: –

There’s Media Mania, as well as Setting up with Ease. There’s also Family Friendly Fun, (The mind boggles!) and, lastly there’s also one called "PhotoPalooza" – It all sounds just too thrilling for words!

I can think of some better themes that would be great alternative advertising for Microsoft; such as “Windows 7 Runs this Rave”, or even “7: Wonder of the World” – Where the entire world is linked together across the internet by Windows 7-powered technology… But hopefully Microsoft know what they’re doing; even if you have to forget names such as Vista before you are able to put the slightest iota of belief in that assumption.

So it might be a safe bet that there’ll be a party in your street soon.

(Source: Tech Radar.)

What do you think about all this: Is it too much, or are you even the slightest bit tempted?

Two weeks ago today my hosting company took this blog off its usual shared-platform server and put it on an inaccessible backroom scripting server for the third time in 14 months. – This meant that kkomp.com took ages to load on anyone’s computer if it managed to do so at all.

The reason for this was that the site was using too many resources on the shared server. Being a British host; they don’t have the decency to email first and inform you that they are about to do so, thus giving you a chance to do something about it. Rather they plonk the domain on a server with a number of other sites that are also using too many resources; and the server’s resources max out and it’s hardly possible to get through to your site for testing purposes. – Although the ftp server is still fully responsive, and, late at night, the main web server becomes partially responsive when the load on it decreases.

Anyway after they’d done it a third time there was only one decent solution: get it on a dedicated server.

The reason too many resources were being used this time was because of the universal translator plugin I’d installed caching all of the translations it made to disc and referencing them when an identical translation was required. According to Fasthosts, (A Google of the phrase”Fasthosts are shit” will reveal several rather frightening horror-stories about the UK’s most incompetent hosting company.) I was utilising over 50% of the CPU at times.

Having got this domain onto a dedicated server I found that nothing except for the home page worked; every link I clicked and every URL I typed in resulted in an error 404.

Read “August 29, 2009 – I Turned 404 into 200 With a Tiny Bit of php – Part 1”, and part 2, and you’ll see how I put things right.

”Whatever did happen to shazzalive.com anyway?”

Well it’s on my server, and it has something on it; basically just a bare WordPress framework with a default theme currently. I was going to go live with it in January 2010; bit that’s now cancelled for the foreseeable future. I’m sticking to this blog, and, having debugged it, I’ll be developing it further.

I apologise for the recent downtime; but as you’ll clearly understand, it was due to circumstances beyond my control mainly.

After I’d got the blog partially functional I started to panic when the techs at Fasthosts told me that; while the engineers maintained the shared-platform servers, they didn’t do anything at all to the dedicated servers: It was all down to me to sort out any problems, despite having very little knowledge of servers or Linux.

Fasthosts supply a dedicated server with seemingly all of the basic functions, including

mod_rewrite, switched off for security purposes, and won’t help with anything more than less-than-complete basic advice, unless you pay them £60 + VAT per half-hour.

In my panic I put out a call for help from the online Linux community: –

As you may or may not know, I have an old IBM ThinkPad laptop. This article is for all laptop/netbook users out there. In it I’ll show you how Windows 7 will increase your battery life with its new and better advanced power management features.

Microsoft recently released a new 14-page whitepaper entitled “Windows 7 Power Management” (link- http://www.microsoft.com/environment/windows7.aspx) to outline the power management technologies in Windows 7 that reduce power consumption.  For those curious as to how exactly Windows 7 will use less power, this is your answer. For those who just want the quick scoop, here are 9 different ways how Windows 7 will save battery life:

9 Examples of How Windows 7 Will Save Your Battery Life:

This code has been designed to be run on a WordPress blog.
(You can see this code working in the header of this blog.)

I positively encourage everyone who reads this blog to show their support for the "IE6 Must Die" movement by displaying the anti-IE6 twibbon on their Twitter avatar: http://twibbon.com/join/IE6-Must-Die

As with all ancient and obsolete objects, IE6 must eventually become extinct: And the sooner the better.

I urge everybody to assist devoted web developers to hasten that demise, and stop this retarded relic from holding up progress on the internet.
There follows a download link to some code that you can add to your header.php file, or elsewhere, if you like.

(From version 1.0 (No longer available.) documentation.): -

This code will display a small line of text (Ariel, font size 10) stating: -

"This blog does not support Internet Explorer 6 or earlier. If you are using IE6, please upgrade to a decent browser: – "

Immediately underneath this text will appear four tiny linked symbols: FireFox, Opera, Internet Explorer 8, and Safari. The links allow the reader to download the latest version of any of those browsers.

Current version documentation: -

This is version 1.1 of the code: Download URL.

*This code is designed to be run on a white background: Spacing characters are camouflaged against the background. If running on a coloured background; please alter the hex code #ffffff to match the hex code of the colour of your blog’s background.*

What’s New in v 1.1?

The browser icons now have their names printed underneath them, and the spacing + the design/appearance of the entire piece has been improved. The wording has also been slightly altered to

"This blog does not fully support Internet Explorer 6 or earlier. If you are using IE6, please download a decent browser: – "

Also the font size has been reduced.

This code is supplied totally free of charge and under my own "Open Source" license: You may copy and distribute this code at will. You may also alter it in any way you want. I rescind all rights of ownership of this code. This code is not supplied with any warranty. The browser icons themselves are downloaded from my dedicated server. – However I make no guarantee that this service will be continuous at all times, nor do I give any warranty that the service will continue indefinitely. You are advised to download the icons themselves to your own web space and alter the URLs within the code so that the icons are downloaded from your own web space when the code is run on your page.

Caution: Bug detected. Unidentified. Causes some pages to use all font size 1.
Version 1.2 out soon. – When I’ve found & cured this bug.

Version 1.1.1 Released

What’s New in 1.1.1?

The piece that wrote the browser names underneath the icons was causing the bug. I haven’t identified why yet; but I’ll hopefully come up with a fix for version 1.2.

For the interim I’ve released version 1.1.1; which is v 1.1 without the browser names underneath the icons: Otherwise it’s identical.

Version 1.1.2 released

What’s New in 1.1.2?

A bug caused by a piece of badly-formatted html code has been removed, and the entire display has been made more compact.

Download only. ‘Same URL.

In Part One I had a moan about people still using Win 9x; followed by talking about those XP users who are still running XP on the original equipment that they bought with XP preinstalled on it when it first appeared. – How their hardware is becoming old, and will probably encounter problems if Windows 7 is run on it.

I went on to talk about how many manufacturers saved themselves a few squid by not including any installation media with their new machines; rather just a ghost image CD of the original state of the drive at point of sale at best. I talked about how I myself fell victim to this and how I got around it with XP.

Now we’re going to take a look at a similar situation with Windows 7. – There’s a problem: There is no i386 folder in Windows 7; nor is there one in Server 2008 or in Vista for that matter. – So; unless you have installation media, you’re kind of scuppered from the start: You’ll only be able to install 7 from the original installation media, and if you need to do a reinstall and don’t have any installation media then you’d better hope that you have a ghost image of the disc as it was at point of sale

- However a ghost image of the disc as it was at point of sale is not good enough in many cases; as you may previously have spent ages removing all the crapware that the manufacturer included preinstalled at point of sale; and now you’re going to have to do it all again.

Of course; if you’ve been good then you’ll have been making regular backups of your entire hard-drive and keeping copies of them: Therefore if things screw up you’ll always have a backup or two to fall back on. Despite much sorrow and heartache, though; people still don’t learn. I guarantee that at least 75% of computer users either don’t have or don’t have a current backup. Hopefully you’re not one of them: A little time spent now making a current backup will save you a lot of time in the future when your hard-drive dies. It’s not a matter of if but rather when; so always have a recent backup to hand.

- But that’s still not really good enough; even if you have made backups as you should, you’ve been cheated by the manufacturer and/or the retailer if you don’t have proper installation media. The remedy is up to you: What you must do is insist that you’re not going to buy unless you have proper installation media included in the deal. Ignore the silver-tongue of the sales people and don’t let them fob you off with second best; which I guarantee in many cases they will attempt to do. – Either you get proper installation media from them or you go and buy the product from somewhere else. – Even if this company are the cheapest you’ve found. (Now you know why.) No ifs and no buts: Installation media included or I walk. End of story.

If the sales  people try to charge you extra for installation media over and above the agreed cost of the deal then you are being ripped off; and you’ll also probably end up with unoriginal installation media anyway: Walk out. Bid them farewell and leave: They’re con-artists, whether they’re an established company or a backstreet computer shop. Take your business elsewhere, to somewhere that supplies original installation media with the product.

- Remember; there is no i386 and there is no back-door installation method any more. If you don’t have your original Windows 7 CD then you may well have problems at a later date.

This article would be quite enormous if I was to detail every method of transferring data between computers: Nevertheless, the major methods of doing so are worth a mention, ignoring the various data transmission protocols, such as TCP/IP, FTP, etc: –

Quite obviously there’s the internet – which is all very well and good, and a lot of the time is the only method available for transferring data. – For instance in the event of transferring an amount of data across the pond between America and the UK. – But the internet, although getting slowly faster, is, to the average consumer, quite slow. My personal internet connection has rarely peaked at a speed of 1 megabit of actual data transfer per second: That’s approximately a megabyte in 8 seconds. Now if I were transferring a gigabyte of data from America to my box here in the UK it would take me 1000 gigabytes X 8 seconds = 8,000 seconds, or 133.34 minutes. (2.223 hours.) – That’s if the connection reaches the highest speed that it’s ever reached and stays at that speed for that period. Normally it’s an average of about half that speed; so a gigabyte of data would take about 5 hours to transfer in this way. – That’s assuming that the gigabyte of data is a single huge file. 10.000 smaller files would take even longer.

I use BT Broadband as my ISP in the UK; which means that the data is transmitted to me via ADSL over the UK copper-wire telephone network. This limits the transfer speed too: Fortunately I live within a mile of the local telephone exchange. In that fact I’m lucky as maybe as much as two-thirds of the UK population live more than a mile from the telephone exchange and can’t get decent speeds at all via BT Broadband. Also Bt have kindly refused to enable broadband in a number of its smaller outlying, less-used exchanges. Most other ISPs use BT’s copper-cable network to transfer data also.

There is also Virgin Media’s cable broadband in the UK, which boasts download speeds of up to 20 megabits/second (Although in reality it’s usually quite a bit slower.); but the percentage of homes within the UK where this is available is also rather limited. If a home is more than 5 miles outside of a town or city centre then it’s very unlikely that a cable internet service would be available currently in the UK.

Then there’s also satellite internet; such as Sky Internet in the UK. This is usually used by people who live miles from a telephone exchange and well out of town. It’s commonly faster than dialup by a number of times, but factors such as atmospheric conditions and topographical features can interfere with the signal at times and on occasions.

Whilst some countries, such as Thailand, have an internet network second to none; many countries, including the UK and the USA have, to a large extent, a slow network that lags well behind the capabilities brought about by technological advancement, mainly due to lack of investment and political difficulties.

In fact, when I was last  in Africa some 30 years ago, the telephone service kept dying because the natives chopped down the telephone-line poles in the jungle to use as firewood. – I kid you not. That, though, was back in the 1970s, well before the internet was even heard of in Africa. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it still happens today though. – Or some warlord blows up the local telephone exchange and the entire community’s dial-up goes out for a few weeks.

Moving on; let’s take a look at short-range data transmission.

So transferring data long-range via the internet is always currently going to be a slow process. Transferring data locally, however, can be a totally different ball-game.

There are two main methods of data transfer that will get your data transferred to another computer fairly quickly: Both of these involve being on a local network and transferring data via the ethernet connection of your computer, which is at time of writing, still the fastest data-transfer connection on any computer.

An office network can be used; where data is transferred fairly quickly between local machines via a central server, which also acts as a repository or storehouse for much of the data.

Faster yet, though, is a home network: This can be as simple as a pair of computers connecting with one another via a patch-lead, or any number of machines doing so via a router.

Personally on my home network I’ve achieved transfer speeds of 12 megabytes-per-second; which still takes over 1 1/2 minutes to transfer a gigabyte data file; but it’s a lot faster than the 5 hour internet comparison.

Wouldn’t it be good if…

If one was able to transfer data at that speed via the internet? Actually I see no reason why the internet has to be so slow; other than a lack of investment. Indeed it should be possible with today’s technology to transfer data in one’s local area at that kind of speed across the internet without all that much investment; just a bit more than is currently being put in to improving the internet infrastructure.

Even internet data transfer for long-distances and overseas could be faster; perhaps as much as 1 megabyte per second. Indeed it’s feasible that a dedicated data pipe connected to the UK telephone network via BT Broadband could be capable of a much faster local-transfer speed, within an area of, say, 5 square miles. With the proper investment I see no reason why the internet as a whole couldn’t be at least 10 times faster than it currently is. (Except, perhaps, in Thailand.)

When it’s quicker to burn 100 DVDs and send them by snail-mail than it is to transfer the data over the internet, then there has to be something lacking.

What are your thoughts on this subject?