PC

ssdhh

Why aren’t we seeing hybrid hard drives?

I’ve been seriously considering replacing my MacBook’s regular spinning hard drive with a fancy new SSD drive, then sticking an external case to the old 320 GB hard drive and using it as external storage. I can get away with just 32 GB on the SSD drive, more than enough for the OS and all my apps, and I would put all the other space-taking media on the spinning drive. Not a bad idea, seeing as I travel a lot with my laptop, but why isn’t the whole concept of having two drives in computers now a days, a spinning and a solid-state drive, a standard? Perhaps a hybrid SSD/Spinning drive would fit the bill. (more…)

Tethering a Windows Mobile to any OS

I’ve gotten lots of questions regarding the tethering of a Windows Mobile phone to a PC. There are lots of tutorials out there but I will attempt to show you how to do it regardless of the operating system. I’ve tried it with a Pantech Duo and a BlackJack, and it will work as long as you can find the IntShrUI executable under the Windows folder of your phone. I will not get into specifics, but rather give a general outline of how it is done. Disclaimers: 1. Make sure you have an unlimited data plan. 2. For OSX and Linux, you need bluetooth connectivity, so if your computer doesn’t have built-in bluetooth, pick up a cheap USB dongle from your favorite store. (more…)

AVOID AVG 8.0 AT ALL COSTS!

I hate to use caps in a title, but this time I’m forced to. Whatever you do, avoid AVG 8.0 which was released yesterday (2/28/08) . For that matter, avoid AVG altogether. I installed AVG Antivirus Network Edition on all the workstations at a clients’ and everything started to crash. EVERYTHING! Servers and workstations. I can only blame myself for installing a brand new version without testing (bad, bad mistake). I’ve used AVG extensively in the past, and I’ve never encountered any problems. As a matter of fact, I prefered using AVG because of its easy to administrate (install, monitor and update all the clients from the server) and because of its small footprint on the systems. My second choise has always been Bitdefender, and only because it costs about twice as much as AVG, but now it is my only choice.

Again, avoid AVG 8.0, at least until they get their act together. I believe they rushed version 8.0 out the door and therefor delivered an extremely buggy program. I can’t trust company like this anymore. It was nice to know you, AVG.

My new favorite antivirus is Avast. They offer a free version, but it really shines when you buy More >

Settting up and maintaining Mozy properly

I’m a big fan of Mozy backup. I use it on my personal server to protect and secure all my personal files (read more about my home setup here), I recommend it to all my home/small office clients, and I install Mozy Pro on most of the servers I maintain. It pretty much runs automatically and its just “set it and forget it”, except for a couple of reasons, which you should keep an eye out for. (more…)

Build an inexpensive Vista PC for $500 – revisited

About a year ago I wrote a pretty successful article (it got Dugg over 1000 times and I still get traffic via search engines) and I’ve decided to revisit this article and update it a bit with fresh hardware. In a year, memory and processors got cheaper, so I will be including these in this new build. This time, we will be building the computer for about $500 (without tax) with Vista Home Premium included. I don’t get into the specific of building the machine itself (more…)

123»