Vista ARTICLES TOP 50 Spyware Virus Vista SOFT Vista HELP

Computing

You are currently browsing the articles from MS Windows Vista Compatible Software matching the category Computing.

PC Build Recommendations

I am often asked by friends and colleagues to make hardware recommendations for a new PC. PC Building has long been a hobby of mine, and something I think I will always love. I love keeping up with the latest that the hardware manufacturers have to offer, even if I’m not in the market to build a machine.

Even though I’m no AanandTech or Tom’s Hardware with hardware manufacturers sending me awesome gadgets to benchmark and make build recommendations off of, I decided to put together a few recommended builds for my readers. I will “spec out” 7 different machines for you:

Intel Power Build

AMD Power Build

Intel Mainstream Build

AMD Mainstream Build

Intel Budget Build

AMD Budget Build

The “Bare-bones Budget” Build

All of the entries should be fairly self explanatory, however I want to explain that the “Bare-Bones Budget” build will be just that – what I feel is the cheapest possible, usable, modern computer one could get away with at the time of writing.

These builds are simply for the computer only. I’m not including Monitors or any peripherals such as Keyboards and Mice. I’m also not including the OS or any software. These are all very personal choices and thing you are all educated enough to choose what best meets your needs in these areas.

First things first, let’s start with the drool educing “Intel Power Build”

So, let’s get started with the Intel Power Build. This is not a collection of the higest end of the highest end parts available (if so, I’d have the new Hexacore chip on here). This is a machine that is as affordable as possible, and a machine that will provide excellent performance to a power user such as a Musician, Videographer, Photographer or Developer. This is a balanced machine that will not only be fast, quiet and stable as well.

CPU
Intel Core i7 930 (2.8GHz Stock Speed)
I chose the 930 simply because it’s a nice little speed bump above the very popular 920. It’s a fairly new CPU and will provide a touch better raw CPU performance for those who choose not to overclock. Also, be sure to pick up a XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler and it’s Core i5/i7 Bracket Kit for optimal cooling, and best Turbo Boost performance

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD5
I have long been a fan of Gigabyte motherboards, although I’ve had good experiences with ASUS as well. Honestly, I tend to lean towards Gigabyte for Intel Builds, and ASUS for AMD builds. As for this board, it’s a solid board built on the 5th Generation Gigabyte Ultra-Durable design and has USB3.0 and SATA 3.0 (6Gbps).

Memory
Patriot Extreme Performance Viper Series 12GB (6 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
I really only included memory here for completeness – honestly, memory prices change so rapidly, please simply research and find yourself the best 12GB kit with 1.5V and a low CAS rating. This is CAS 7 at 1.5V and rated at DDR3 1333. I have had good experiences with Patriot memory in the past, and have no problems recommending this kit.

Boot Drive
WD SiliconEdge Blue 128GB
Honestly, I almost didn’t even include an SSD, simply because I still don’t quite feel that the technology has fully matured. Honestly, you could keep this off if you needed to save $450, and add one later as the technology matures more. SSD’s are a very complicated technology, and there are lots of variables that affect performance. I recently read a nice review on these WD devices on Anandtech (who has the best SSD articles on the web) and it seemed like a solid, and safe pick. Another good option would be one of the OCZ devices or the Intel drives. Your mileage may vary depending on your usage patterns. Option 2 for me would be a 300GB WD VelociRaptor 10,000RPM HDD.

Storage Drives
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb (x2/RAID-1)
This is the latest incarnation of Western Digital’s awesome Caviar Black series drives. You still get the awesome performance from the dual controllers, plus it’s been upgraded to SATA 3.0 and 64MB of Cache. For ultimate stability, substitute this drive with the Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB – slightly lower performance, but it’s designed for RAID use.

Optical Drive
LG Black 10X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Disc Combo Model UH10LS20
Any modern system at least needs the ability to read Blu-ray disks. This is an excellent LD drive with a 4MB cache buffer and also serves as DVD/R-RW drive. You may double for extra pleasure (some folks prefer 2 optical drives, although I would just go for one personally).

Graphics Adapter
GIGABYTE GV-R577UD-1GD Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0
Although this isn’t a “gaming” system, it still needs a decent card – something that would handle casual gaming as well as excel in HD video playback. The ATI 5770 GPU gives everything you would need, and it’s Gigabyte since the Mobo was Gigabyte and I’m anal retentive about stuff like that

Power Supply
CORSAIR CMPSU-750HX 750W Modular PSU
Corsair makes an Awesome PSU, however you can’t go wrong with Antec, PC Power & Cooling as well as several other brands. This guy has a peak output of 750W, a massive 60A 12V Rail (Single Rail) and is modular. Personally, I prefer a beefy single 12V rail over multiple rails. Just remember, this is often a rookie mistake, never skimp or cheap-out on your PSU.

Case
Antec P183
Computer cases are kind of a personal choice – everyone has different tastes. You can’t go wrong with almost anything from Antec, their enclosures are always of highest quality – across all price points. The P183 is a nice mainstream tower with is well designed, easy to work with, quiet and will provide ample cooling.

And there you have it. Priced out on NewEgg.com at the time of writing this, the machine above would run you $2259 before shipping. This would be an excellent development box, digital audio workstation, as well as a graphics or video workstation. Sure there are higher end parts available, however I feel the above is an excellent mix of price and performance without going completely overboard. My only hesitation would be on the SSD drive – I personally might would swap that out for a 300GB VelociRaptor 10K RPM drive and then add a SSD in later, but it’s up to you – it’s your build, enjoy!

Written by jaysonrowe on March 14th, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and Computing and Hardware.

Is “Default” really “Best”?

When I first made my switch to Mac, I spent a lot of time noodling around with settings, reading about different customizations, and basically just feeling my way around this new environment.

After all of this, I’ve discovered that Apple really did a very nice job out of the box. The first customizations I did centered around the Dock – I moved it just about everywhere it could be moved, different sizes, magnification on, off, hidden with and without magnification…I even used Onyx to get some configurations not offered by the standard Apple GUI. After all of this, what did I discover?

The dock looks and works best right where Apple had it at the very beginning – unhidden at the bottom of the screen (sized down a LOT mind you from Apple’s default).

Why does this work? Well, when you minimize windows to the dock, it is just natural for them to go “down” – and not swooosh to one side or another. Also, whenever you “hide” the dock, you simply lose one of the dock’s most important features – the ability to notify you when an application needs your attention. Also, I noticed that a lot of the time when hidden the dock would pop it’s head up when not needed or wanted- I even accidentally “poofed” a few applications out of my dock and had to go add them back.

So…yeah…after configuring the snot out of my dock, and back, it’s right back where nature, and Steve Jobs intended…

Honestly – same goes for most of the other “tweaks” I wrote about after making the switch. Mac OS X is honestly just about the most perfect OS I’ve ever used – I just can’t imagine going back to Linux or Windows ever again…

Written by jaysonrowe on February 23rd, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and Apple and Mac and Computing.

Do you need an App for that?

I tend to flip-flop when it comes to using a desktop client, or app for Gmail. Recently, I also found NetNewsWire which syncs to Google Reader in an IMAP kinda way (I know it isn’t actually IMAP, but that’s what it reminds me of).

On both of my Macs I have my Gmail account set up in both (Apple) Mail and Thunderbird. Before that I used the web interface for Gmail for quite a while, and before that even, I used the command line “pine” or sometimes “alpine” client. So, here I was using desktop applications that consume both RAM and CPU cycles on my Macs for something that could be done just as easily (if not better) on the web.

I switched back to the web. I like it better. What are your thoughts? Do you use the web, or a desktop app for Mail and RSS?

Written by jaysonrowe on February 9th, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on cloud and google reader and otherSoftware and gmail and google and Computing.

Browser Wars

We are really lucky to have so much competition in the area of Web Browsers – regardless of the platform you run, you have many choices of programs to browse with. For years, I surfed with nothing but Firefox (and Netscape Navigator before that), however when Google released Chrome for Windows, I started experimenting with it, and also started running the Chromium daily builds on the Linux box I was using as my main workstation at home. Recently, I switched to Mac full time, and I had a new choice in the mix: Safari. Yes, yes, I know Safari is available for Windows, but it’s never felt right too me, however Safari 4 seems much better on Windows than any version before it.

On my Macs I’d settled in on Chrome – however, regardless of what OS I’m on, I’ve never felt like I could really “trust” Chrome. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that anytime something doesn’t work right, or a page doesn’t load correctly, the first thing I think is “Is this page borked, or is this a Chrome problem?” Recently I started doing all my surfing in Safari, and I do have to say, I like it much better than Chrome. They are both based on Webkit, however Safari seems far more polished, and perhaps a tad faster.

Things I still miss from Chrome? Tab handling and the combined address/search bar…

Written by jaysonrowe on January 26th, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on Chrome and MacOSX and otherSoftware and safari and Firefox and Computing.

Vertical is the new Horizontal

As you have probably read by now, I’m a new Mac OS X convert and I’ve been wrestling with my dock…well, no not literally, that would look kinda funny – I’ve been experimenting with it and trying to decide what was the most comfortable way for me to use and interact with it.

Personally, I think in it’s default state, on any size or shape display it’s simply hideous. It’s set way too large by default on first-boot, and honestly, it simply doesn’t fit in it’s default bottom location. Perhaps it made more since way back in the dark ages of the early 21st century, but Hey! Get with the program! We are now in the 2nd Decade of the 21st century and 4:3 screens are so 2002!

Seriously though, 16:10 or more recently 16:9 displays are becoming the norm. At work I use a 13.3 Macbook which has a 16:10, 1280×800 internal display that is connected to a 22″ 1920×1080 (1080p) 16:9 external display. At home, I use a Mac Mini that is connected to a 22″ 1680×1050 16:10 main display and an old 17″ 1280×1024 4:3 display. This is the only capacity in which I feel I could comfortably use a 4:3 display – it’s kind of a “sidebar” off to the left of my main display, usually displaying Tweetie, a Mini-iTunes and Mail along w/ the occasional Terminal window. Also at home I use a PC connected to an odd 15″ 1280×720 (720p) 16:9 display – this PC is running Windows 7.

Given the current “shape” of my displays it simply makes more sense for the Dock to go Vertical – it uses less pixels, and vertical space is far more precious than horizontal space…Sure, sure, I could hide the Dock at the bottom of the screen…I tried that. I liked it, as it gave me the most unobstructed screen space, I lost the functionality of the Dock, because once it was hidden, it was gone, and I seldom made it show it’s face. I lost the notifications, and the ability to see at a quick glance what Applications I had open at the time. Placing the Dock vertically, on the Right hand side of the screen just feels right – The “Finder” icon is at the top and that Trash icon is at the bottom – it reminds me of the old Icon placement of the HDD on top and Trash on the bottom in the Classic MacOS.

Also, I’ve gone to a vertical taskbar on my lone Windows 7 PC. I’ve seen people use vertical taskbars in Windows before, and it just doesn’t look or work right. The start button didn’t “fit”, and neither did application buttons on the taskbar. Also, gradients and highlights were very off giving everything a very odd look. Sure, you could “make due”, but it was painfully obvious not only was it not supposed to be like that, MS had no intentions of even making it look somewhat normal. With Windows 7 however, Microsoft has redeemed itself – they realized that people were not only making their taskbars vertical, it actually made sense. I even read a blog of a MS Developer a while back that said the first thing he does on any Windows 7 PC now is make the taskbar vertical.

Try it – regardless of your OS – make your Dock/Taskbar vertical – it might feel weird for a day, but afterwards, you’ll love it – I’ll almost guarantee it!

Written by jaysonrowe on January 26th, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and Computing.

The power of the CPU

A really good friend of mine posed a question recently. He was in the process of planning to build a PC for his in-laws…folks who are very much your “average computer user”, and his question – his first thought in planning the new PC was what CPU he should go with.

I’ve said it before, that I think the CPU should actually be one of the last things you spec on a PC. I wrote that over a year ago, and I believe it is even more true today. Obviously other component choices would depend on what CPU you choose – especially when deciding on “AMD vs. Intel”, however I still feel that other components such as enclosure, optical drives, hard drives, graphics cards, etc. should all take precedence over the CPU.

Just today I was reading an article on the performance of Intel’s new Core i3 530 CPU. Now this is very much a mid-line CPU, and I really got to thinking – this thing isn’t THAT Much slower than some of the higher end chips, especially considering that Anand got it up to a cool 4GHz it’s stock cooler w/ just a very minor voltage injection.

I used to be a real hardware junky – I read sites such as Anand’s and I kept up with all of the latest CPU’s – they were the big thing – they were what made a PC. Nowadays, a good SSD will make far more difference than ANY CPU would in general use. The only real areas where CPU speed is of supreme importance is in digital content creation such as Video, Music and 3D rendering and to some extent to Gaming, however the latter is also far more influenced by GPU speed. I still say for a cool 90% of computer users, any currently sold, modern CPU will serve them and their computing needs as well as any other.

What are your thoughts? Are CPU’s getting boring? They sure aren’t the star of the show like they used to be – that’s for sure!