Haibane.info

Category: Geek service

  • hardware update

    I’ve taken the plunge, and ordered the ASRock mobo I mentioned earlier, as well as a Dual Core chip (E7400). I went with the E7400 instead of an E5200 (about $40 cheaper) or an E8400 ($50 more expensive) because it was matched to the FSB speed of the mobo, at 1066 MHz. The board does support the slower FSB (800 MHz) for the cheaper CPU but i want to broaden my upgrade path. The more expensive chips run at 1333 MHz so that (or higher) will have to wait for my next upgrade cycle which is not going to be for a long time.

    As I mentioned earlier I bought some DDR 400 RAM to upgrade the pc earlier which I can still use with this new board. In fact I have a plan; this PC is the second kids pc, which I have now outfitted for gaming and processing, but the original kids PC (whose temporary death motivated me to start this whole journey) is a really ancient dell that originally came shipped with Windows Me. So, what I can do is take the mobo and present P4 chip from the PC i am using now and use those to give it a boost as well. I can wait on this for a year or so, at which point i will also transfer over the old DDR 400 ram and the AGP graphics card too, and buy new DDR2 ram and a PCI-e graphics card for the more powerful machine. so, I will have have upgraded two PCs and not wasted anything. I’ll put Vista on that one too – its running Win 2K at present. at that point ill have two systems:

    1. kids PC alpha – ASUS P4s533-e mobo, P4, 2 GB DDR 400 ram, AGP 4x
    2. kids PC beta, gaming rig – Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2, DC2, 2 GB DDR2 667 ram, PCI-e

    its a little less than optimal but i think it worked out well, especially since i dont need to upgrade both systems right this minute but can wait on it a year or so, by which time the DDR2 and the PCI-e card should be even cheaper, and I’ll probably spring for a new hard drive for system 2 and transfer its IDE hard drive to system 1.

  • system rebuild, need mobo advice

    my upgrade of the kids’ pc went well – especially since the older kids PC started working again too, so now I have two extra PCs. I am going to take over the newer system (newer being a highly relative term) and want to upgrade it even further. Earlier I just added an AG video card and some more RAM, but what I’d like to do is move away from the P4 platform and go dual-core. So my dilemma is that I need a mobo which:

    – supports dual-core processors (Intel, my preference)
    – supports AGP, not PCI Express
    – uses PC 3200 RAM (DDR)

    in other words, a board which supports modern processors but last-generation video cards and memory. Is this possible? Anyone have any suggestions? I am overwhelmed by the choices on newegg thus far and need some help here. I did find this board by ASRock which seems promising, but was hoping for a few more choices.

  • oh, all right

    My daughter’s first PC is an old Dell that, when new, was pre-installed with Windows Me. It’s got a Socket 370 motherboard, probably some aging celeron inside. I’ve upgraded its RAM and stuck my valid license of W2K on it. A few weeks ago, it mysteriously stopped working, so I took another old PC from my father, this one with a P4 CPU and an AGP slot ((ASUS mobo P4s533-e, to be exact)). I had a valid license of Vista so I decided to install it, even though the integrated graphics chipset means it won’t do any fancy Aero tricks. And all was good. (Though I did need to order a DVD drive from NewEgg so I could actually do a clean Vista install).

    Strangely, after all of this, suddenly the old kids’ PC started working again. Dunno what happened there, but oookay. So now, might as well let my daughter have that one back, and spruce up the other one. So I am ordering some PC 3200 RAM to bring it up to 2GB, and am trying to sort through the various AGP video card options. I’ve decided that this is as good an opportunity as any to test the World of Warcraft waters, so I need an AGP card that is compatible with the board, will run WoW or similar games with enough juice, and ideally cost under $100 (actually, hitting the $50 mark would be even better).

    I spent/wasted an hour on newegg and I am hopelessly confused. ATI or nvidia? 256 or 512? how many vertex shaders do I need? so far I’m somewhat tentatively interested in a radeon x1650pro manufactured by Sapphire (100175L). it’s about 50 bucks. is this too much? nowhere near enough? Ive no clue. Help!

    UPDATE – anyone have any WoW guest passes?

  • Plasma vs LCD for HDTV

    It’s time to start thinking about an HDTV. I probably will buy one this year (though not for a few months yet at minimum). The main question of course is what sort of HDTV to get; the Laser HDTVs have not yet made an appearance and would probably be too expensive anyway. The main choice seems to be between plasma and LCD. Thanks to this article on the 9 advantages of plasma over LCD, it looks like plasma is a no-brainer… assuming that by the time I am ready to buy one, there still are plasma TVs left on the market to buy.

  • Roku digital video player: game-changer for home entertainment

    Digital video has its advantages over discs, but also suffers from a major flaw. I have to admit that (unlike others who are more diligent) I haven’t taken full advantage of the Netflix streaming video service, because I find that being tied to the PC screen just isn’t the most convenient location for watching movies. I do use Hulu.com a bit but still, it’s being tethered to the PC that really inhibits usage. I’ve found that I do watch a lot more anime now, though, because I can torrent the AVI files, put them on a USB jumpdrive, and watch them on my DVD player (which has a USB connection). However, that process is time-consuming since you need to download the whole video file before watching, and of course there’s the inconvenience (not to mention legal gray area) of finding torrents in the first place.

    Roku digital video player
    Roku digital video player
    This is why Roku’s new digital video player
    box is so exciting. Unlike the latest piece of s^&t from Sony, the Roku player is a simple and small box with the standard video outputs (component, HDMI) and an ethernet jack, plus built-in wifi. It connects to the internet over your home network, plugs into your TV, and brings Netflix streaming-on-demand and Amazon.com’s video store right to your living room. The concept works because it’s so simplistic and cleanly executed – it doesn’t do anything else. Even the remote is a piece of utilitarian art.

    There are other ways to get Netflix streaming onto your television – for example, the Samsung BD-P2500 Blu-Ray player, which adds the streaming capability. But at $300, it’s three times the cost of the Roku (and doesn’t support Amazon). Amazon’s video store lets you rent or buy movies and television and rivals Hulu.com and the iTunes store for selection, so the Roku really almost replaces the need to go to a retail video rental store like Blockbuster in a way that Netflix alone never could.

    If digital downloads are going to really kill off the physical-disc format, it won’t be until devices like Roku become mainstream. And at the price point of $99, that’s not too far off at all.

  • how Skynet and the Cylons got started…

    Astro’s media PC has … evolved.

    All this has happened before and will happen again.

  • Amazon launches Kindle 2

    OK, this is definitely going on my wish list:

    Amazon Kindle 2

    I did the math and I figure that I can pay for one within 5 months if I reduce my Starbucks consumption by two-thirds. They probably won’t even be available due to demand for twice that long.

  • How will I resist Amazon.com’s Kindle v2.0?

    OMG these leaked photos of Amazon’s second-generation Kindle ebook reader are unbelievably alluring:

    I have a feeling that I am going to have a hard time resisting the urge. Especially since books are about ten bucks – or two Starbucks lattes, it’s down to the realm of impulse purchase. Once you get past the $360 hardware, that is.

  • Mac myths: virus immunity

    Apple still touts the Mac's supposed immunity to viruses as an advantage over Windows
    Apple still touts the Mac’s supposed immunity to viruses as an advantage over Windows
    An inconvenient truth, indeed:

    For the first time, Apple is recommending the use of anti-virus tools to protect Mac systems.

    Long something of a phantom menace, strains of malware capable of infecting Mac machines have gradually been increasing in prevalence over recent months. In addition, VXers are making more use of web-based attack and applications specific vulnerabilities to infect PCs whatever their underlying operating system might be.

    Windows-specific malware attacks are still orders of magnitude greater than assaults on Mac machines, but the risk to Apple fans is now enough for the Church of Jobs to admit a risk exists.

    The admission that security scanner software was a good idea for Mac users came in an unheralded update to Apple’s support site made on 21 November, first picked up by Brian Krebs at Security Fix on Monday.

    Apple goes further than just recommending the use of one scanner to advise the use of multiple tools. “Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple anti-virus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult,” it said.

    The supposed invulnerability of Macs to viruses has long been a selling point and marketing mantra for Macs’ superiority over the Windows world – as the screenshot I’ve taken of Apple.com’s “Why a Mac” page demonstrates (see above). The idea that you need two anti-virus tools by Apple’s own recommendation is actually pretty funny; if I were Microsoft I’d cut an ad saying that the Mac platform is so unstable, just one virus scanner doesn’t cut it!

  • energy alternatives

    Solar power is good enough for the biosphere, so by golly it’s about time it was good enough for human industry! Of course, photosynthesis is only 6% efficient. That number includes the biological losses, the absorption ratio (if I understand the numbers from that link correctly) is 34%. According to various sources the absorption efficiency of solar panels seems to max out around 40%, with power conversion efficiency of 6%, so state of the art is roughly comparable to nature (though of course, manufacturing cost is another matter). However, a new nanomaterial-based coating seems to have been developed that boosts absorption by ~40%:

    The new RPI solar cell is a normal cell covered in a special anti-reflective coating which traps sunlight from nearly every angle and part of the spectrum. The new cell is near perfect; it absorbs 96.21 percent of the sunlight shined on it, while a normal cell could only absorb 67.4 percent. That 43 percent efficiency boost, coupled with mass production, if properly implemented could place solar on the verge of competing unsubsidized with coal power, at last.

    Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation describes the breakthrough, stating, “To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky. Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.”

    This is pretty exciting, especially if the mass production can work out. Even if power conversion efficiency stays the same, improving absorption by 40% should boost the total power output by the same amount.