Tag: computers

Keeping my desktop computer fresh with recent upgrades

Yes, I still have and use a desktop computer. This post might be a little geeky for some of you, but I wanted to document this!

I bought my current desktop computer back in June 2010. It’s a Dell Studio XPS 9000 and I paid just over $1,500 for it at the time. I ordered it with a Core i7-920 processor (it’s a quad-core) and 12 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, so it was pretty powerful right from the start. I also included an NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240 video card and 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive.

Dell Studio XPS 9000

I have upgraded it over the years, which is one of the great capabilities that a desktop offers. I’ve added additional hard drives for data, I updated my dual monitors to 23″ displays, and I’ve added lots of peripherals like webcams, and various mice and keyboards. I have also upgraded the OS of course, from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1, and I plan to upgrade it again to Windows 10 when it is available later this year.

My desktop will be five years old this summer, and I have thought about replacing it. But I have also thought, as a I do more with mobile devices, that perhaps I don’t need a new desktop. Maybe I could extend the life of this one instead?

The main limitation to further upgrades is the motherboard, which only supports the LGA 1366 socket for processors. That limits me to Core processors built back in 2011, as it has now been replaced by LGA 2011 and LGA 1150. I think the best processor I could get to replace my existing one is the Core i7-990X, released in February 2011, but availability is limited and prices are high. It just doesn’t seem worth it.

So after I eliminated the processor as a potential upgrade, I started to think about what else might give me a performance boost. The first thing I decided to do was add a USB 3 controller to make importing photos and video quicker.

inateck usb 3.0 expansion card

I did a bit of research and landed on the Inateck Superspeed 4-port PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card, which I got for $26.99 CDN on Amazon. I wasn’t familiar with Inateck, but their stuff seemed to have a ton of positive reviews. Installation was quick and straightforward, and Windows 8.1 recognized the card right away. I did experiment with a couple different driver versions, and found the best performance using the latest driver (unsurprisingly).

I have both an external USB 3 hard drive and a USB 3 hub hooked up to the card now, and everything has been working great. Even though it is hidden away under my desk, I like that the card has a dark face; it’s interesting and different. This was definitely a worthwhile and pretty inexpensive upgrade.

Speeding along with an SSD

After I had the USB 3.0 upgrade working, it didn’t take long to land on the hard drive as a possibility for the next improvement. I had been reading about solid-state drives and I knew that having an SSD could make a big difference with start and load times. I’ve always marvelled at how quick my Surface Pro starts up and I’m sure the SSD plays a big role in that.

So I decided to purchase an SSD. I went with a Samsung 250 GB 840 EVO, which I got at Memory Express for $149.99. It seemed like pretty good price for a reasonable amount of space and solid performance. It’s not the biggest or fastest SSD, but it’s definitely not the smallest or slowest either.

samsung evo 840 ssd

I already had one drive for the OS and applications and one for data, so I just replaced the OS drive with the SSD. I decided to do a fresh install of Windows 8.1 and all my apps, because I had read some negative things about trying to do a migration or backup/restore. Now clearly a fresh install of Windows 8.1 will make a difference when it comes to performance, but not this much!

Before the upgrade it took:

  • 43 seconds to get to the login screen
  • 23 seconds to get from the login screen to the desktop being visible
  • 2 minutes, 46 seconds until startup was done

After the upgrade (and after installing all updates and all the usual software I use) the times are:

  • 23 seconds to get to the login screen
  • 4 seconds to get from the login screen to the desktop being visible
  • 23 seconds until startup was done

That’s a big, very noticeable improvement (and yes the stuff running on startup is comparable if not identical). Application launch times are also noticeably quicker now that they are running from the SSD. Overall I’m really happy with the upgrade. It was definitely worth the money!

Will I have a desktop computer in the future?

This may be the last desktop I’ll ever own, actually. The performance and capability of mobile devices has come so far, there’s less and less need for standalone desktop machine. I can already use my Surface Pro for pretty much everything. Combined with external displays and input devices, it could definitely serve as my one and only computer.

On the other hand, the cloud is (for me at least) dramatically changing how I think about my devices. The days of “that’s on my desktop” or “that’s on my laptop” are long gone. So are the days of “that’s on my USB key”. Now my stuff is available on every device all the time, and the definition of “my stuff” is expanding too. With OneDrive, my files are accessible no matter where I am. When I log into Windows with my Microsoft account, my settings and apps are also available. When I sit down at my desktop computer, it looks pretty much the same as when I am working on my Surface. In other words, there’s no need or advantage to having just one computer.

So maybe it does make sense to have a computer that just sits at my desk, permanently hooked up to large displays and the ergonomic mouse and keyboard that I love. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that the my current desktop is the last “tower” that I’ll ever own. I have been looking at is Intel’s “Next Unit of Computing” or NUC form factor. The idea is basically to shrink the desktop down into something that fits in your hand. I can imagine having a powerful, tiny box on the corner of my desk to drive a few large displays. They’re relatively inexpensive too. One day maybe.

Until then, I’ll make the most of these recent upgrades to my desktop!

Still Trending Down: Computing-related graduates in Alberta

If we’re serious about shifting the Alberta Advantage, I think we need to focus on technology. If we really want to be in the sweet spot of adding lots of value, participating in the economy of the future, and being globally competitive, we need smart people who can be creative and innovative in the appropriate sectors and industries. Technology is absolutely going to be at the heart of any sector or industry that will enable us to be world-class and trendsetting, there’s just no question about it.

That’s why this graph absolutely shocked me:

The data comes from the University of Alberta, but I think it is representative of the province as a whole.

The number of students graduating in the fields of Computing Science and Computer Engineering in Alberta is trending downward, with no correction in sight. How can we build the economy of the future when the picture looks like this?

Here’s a bit more detail – with the number of graduates broken out by degree/program:

I haven’t looked, but I suspect enrollment numbers would be similar (that is, I don’t think an incredible number of students register in computing-related programs and then switch out).

Bill Gates has been talking about the need for more students to take up computer science for years now. There’s more demand than supply, even when you factor in immigration. The need for us to stay competitive in this regard is well-documented. It looks like we’re falling further behind.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how we get more students interested in computer-related degrees. But I do think it is important to consider this data when we talk about the success of our provincial technology sectors, and indeed when we consider shifting the Alberta Advantage.

Windows 7 on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

Two years ago I decided to upgrade my tablet PC to Windows Vista, a process that I detailed here. I don’t use my tablet very much, but I do like to get the pen out from time to time to do some scribbling. The improvements in Windows Vista made the tablet much more usable, and though it wasn’t without problems, I wouldn’t have gone back to Windows XP. Slowly but surely I’ve replaced or upgraded the rest of my computers to Windows 7, and I love it. It’s a great operating system that just works. I decided to see if Seven could breathe new life into my tablet too.

Windows 7 on Toshiba Portege M200

The first hurdle was the same as last time – the lack of a DVD drive in the tablet. Fortunately it was much easier to deal with this time! I took the installation DVD and put it on a USB key, something that appears to be quite common given all the tutorials available online. Here’s the TechNet guide and here’s a useful guide from Ars Technica.

The install proceeded normally, and as quickly as I had come to expect from Windows 7. All was going well until the first boot up after installation, when the machine froze. I restarted it, but the same thing happened. I decided to try to boot into safe mode, which didn’t work because the machine had not yet been setup. I searched around online and found many people talking about removing unnecessary hardware. The only extra thing I had was the D-Link Wireless card I had added (you can see it sticking out in the picture). I removed it, restarted, and everything worked fine! Success!

After all the Windows updates were finished, I installed a couple more things. First was the Toshiba Value Added Package for Windows 7 (click on Downloads), which is meant for the M400 but works fine on the M200. Second was the NVIDIA ForceWare driver. The 96.85 version worked reliably for me, enabling Aero without transparency. After that it was pretty much good to go!

I ran the Windows Experience test, which resulted in an overall drop from what I had under Vista:

Oddly enough, the gaming graphics score went up slightly! A score of 1.0 is a far cry from the 5.9 my desktop computer gets (and that’s just because of the hard drive score, everything else is 6.9 or higher), but considering how old the tablet is, I guess I can’t complain.

Under Windows Vista, everything worked as it did in Windows XP except for the external display. I haven’t tried that under Windows 7 yet, but a few other things no longer work, such as the buttons on the side of the screen, and more importantly, screen rotation. I’ve looked into a few threads where some people have successfully made it work, but I haven’t tried any of their solutions just yet. I’m not sure I want to mess with the video drivers too much now that I have something stable. I never take my tablet with me anymore anyway (I have a netbook for that), it’s strictly a home PC, so I’m not too worried about it.

There are some nice improvements to the tablet functionality in Windows 7, and combined with how much better the OS is than Vista in general, I’m happy with the upgrade! I’m not sure how much life the hardware has left though – I suspect Windows 7 will be the last OS it runs, but you never know.

My Dell Inspiron Mini 9

On January 1st, I decided to order a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. I had been reading a lot about netbooks, and was in the market for something smaller to carry around. My aging Toshiba M200 Tablet PC is fairly small and light, but it’s still quite big compared to a netbook. I went on the Dell site, customized my order, and waited for my new netbook to arrive.

And waited, and waited.

After my original ship date of January 21st was delayed, I tried to be patient. When I called for an update mid-February, I learned that my order was going to be cancelled and re-entered because of a software conflict with Adobe. I told Dell to forget it, and I cancelled my order completely. I then hopped on the Future Shop site, and ordered the same computer (minus the integrated Bluetooth) for about $100 less. It arrived a week later.

My Mini 9 has the integrated webcam, is black, and runs Windows XP. I upgraded the RAM to 2 GB, and the hard drive to 32 GB (the Mini 9 uses an SSD). Even with the extra components and shipping, the total price was only about $500.

I’ve been using it for a little over a month now, and I really like it. In no particular order, these are my favorite things about it:

  • Small and light. The main reasons for getting a netbook, obviously!
  • Clean, solid design. So many netbooks have a big gap between the screen and keyboard, and that just drives me nuts. The Mini 9 is solid with smooth, rounded edges.
  • Quiet and cool. Partly because of the SSD, the Mini 9 doesn’t have a fan. It runs extremely cool, and never makes any noise.
  • It’s fast! Resume from standby, boot up, shutdown, etc. are all fairly quick. The only slowness is from some applications that don’t work well with SSDs, such as Outlook.

Nothing is perfect – here are the things I don’t like about it:

  • The battery life is pretty good at about four hours, but I wish it were much longer.
  • The keyboard is small and hard to get used to. I still have to hunt for the quote key, located at the very bottom. I often close windows by accident when I try to type an exclamation point and hit the Esc key instead. There are no F11 or F12 keys or functions. If I could redesign the keyboard, I’d get rid of CAPS Lock and the context-menu button, would move the quote key to it’s proper place, and would give the right Shift key more space.
  • There are two LEDs on the front, one with the power icon and one with a battery with a lightning bolt in it. The battery light only comes on when the device is dangerously low on power…I’d rather it lit up when the battery was recharging too.
  • It has an external display port, but the resolution it outputs is pretty weak.

Overall, I’m quite happy with my Mini 9. It was relatively inexpensive, comes with me almost everywhere, and works perfectly for surfing, checking email, blogging, and Twittering.

Netbooks are trendy

dell inspiron mini What kind of computer do you use? Most of my work is done at a desktop or workstation; a tower attached to three monitors. The rest of the time I’m using either my laptop or tablet. I’ve also got a little Sony UMPC but it doesn’t get used much. It was kinda cool for a while, but it’s not all that fast. And once I got my iPod touch, that pretty much fulfilled my small device needs.

My favorite to use is probably my tablet, even though it’s the slowest of the bunch. I think I like it mostly because of the form factor – it’s pretty small for a laptop (at 12 inches) but large enough that I don’t sacrifice a keyboard or full operating system.

A couple years from now though, my tablet might seem rather large thanks to the netbook trend. What’s a netbook? From Wikipedia:

A netbook is a small to medium sized, light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient laptop, generally optimized for internet based services such as web browsing and e-mailing. Netbooks are also sometimes, but rarely referred to as a sub-subnotebook.

The form factor of a netbook is smaller than that of a notebook and they are very light in weight (usually 2 to 3 pounds). Common features include a small screen (usually around 7-inches to 10-inches diagonal), wireless connectivity, but no optical disc drive, and a smaller sized keyboard (usually 80 percent to 95 percent of normal size). There is also a trend of using solid-state drives instead of traditional hard disk drives.

Maybe it’s just me, but every second article on technology these days seems to mention netbooks! The blogosphere made a big deal this week out of the fact that Windows boss Steven Sinofsky demonstrated Windows 7 running on a netbook. And today, PC World declares that netbooks will soon cost just $99:

Subnotebooks like the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Mini 9 and the HP 2133 Mini-note will soon cost as little as $99. The catch? You’ll need to commit to a two-year mobile broadband contract. The low cost will come courtesy of a subsidy identical to the one you already get with your cell phone.

A monthly service fee for mobile broadband doesn’t appeal to me at all, but a $99 netbook certainly does. Heck, I’m already tempted by the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (pictured above) and it’s nearly $500! If the cost of components fell enough so that a netbook was about half that price, I’d have no hesitations about picking one up and I doubt anyone else would either.

Netbooks are definitely trendy, but I think this is one trend that will last. A small device to check email, read and post blogs, and update Twitter is something that appeals to lots of people. Okay maybe not that last part 🙂

Making an effort to use sleep mode

sleep mode Events like Earth Hour raise awareness about our “planet in peril”, but as I’ve said in the past, they don’t have a positive impact on the environment. You need to do the little things to truly make a difference. I try to do my part. I always take a stainless steel mug to Starbucks in the morning, for example. There’s always room for improvement though.

For a little over a week now, I’ve been trying to break one of my worst habits. I don’t know how it started, but I’m one of those people that never turns the computer off when I’m not using it. For some reason I just got into the habit of always leaving it running. Laptops are a different story, because you shut the lid and it goes to sleep, but I’ve always left my desktop on for some reason. I’ve always had it configured to turn the monitors off after a while, but never the computer itself.

I guess I like having the computer immediately available when I want to use it. Really though, waking up from sleep mode doesn’t take very long at all. Slightly longer on my desktop than on either of my laptops, but still not bad.

I’ve been really good about using sleep mode for a week now, and I think I can keep it up. I’m going to kick my “leave the computer on” habit for good.

Windows Vista Ultimate on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

I’ve had my tablet for few years now and I just love it. I don’t know why these things haven’t taken off in the marketplace! They’re a bit more expensive than normal laptops, but it’s definitely worth the extra cost in my opinion. Mine is a Portege M200 from Toshiba (a “convertible” tablet). It came with the first release Windows XP Tablet PC edition. That worked okay, but SP2 definitely made it more usable. Technical specs include a 1.6 GHz Intel Centrino package (only 802.11b though), 512 MB of RAM, and a 60 GB hard drive.

As you can imagine, I filled that hard drive pretty quickly. And even though I had formatted and reinstalled Windows XP once already, it was pretty slow compared to the other computers I use on a regular basis. I started thinking about what I’d do with it. I really didn’t want to lose the tablet, but it was becoming less and less usable for me.

So I decided to upgrade it. I had purchased Windows Vista Ultimate back when it RTM’d, but I hadn’t installed it anywhere. I’ve literally had the DVD sitting on my desk for over a year, just waiting to be used. Why not on the tablet, I thought?

Windows Vista Ultimate on Toshiba Portege M200

As you can see, I got it working! Here’s how I did it:

The first step was to upgrade the hardware. The hard drive was old and small, and 512 MB of RAM was definitely not enough to run Vista. I also wanted to add a new wireless card that used 802.11g. I went to Memory Express and got the parts: 2 GB of Kingston PC2700 RAM, a new Seagate 160 GB hard drive, a D-Link AirPlus wireless card, and a Samsung external DVD-Writer. I also decided to get the extended warranty (which I don’t usually). Total cost: $450.

The reason I bought the external DVD drive was because the Portege M200 doesn’t have a built-in drive. So I plugged it in and started the Vista setup, only to find that it was really slow. I stuck the Windows XP disc in just to make sure, and yep, still really slow. I searched for something to fix the problem, but came up empty. The drive worked fine on my desktop, so it had to be the firmware on the tablet or something.

I looked for another solution, and eventually found this post by Ryan Adams. His solution is to use something called TFTP to install Windows Vista over a network connection. All you need is a computer with a working DVD drive that you can share, and a crossover cable. His instructions are excellent, so if you need to install Vista on a machine that doesn’t have a DVD drive, give it a shot. That’s how I got mine working.

The install was painless and pretty quick, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Vista booted up successfully. I was almost there! The next step was drivers. I found this page on the Mobile PC Wiki really useful. You can use some of the original M200 drivers. Additionally, you can install the M400 software updates that Toshiba has released for Windows Vista: one is the “Value Added Package for Windows Vista” and the other is the “Tablet PC Extension for Windows Vista”.

driverI didn’t mess around with the video too much at this point, and instead downloaded Windows Vista SP1 from MSDN and got that installed.

Since then, I have been messing around with the video drivers. I was determined to get Aero Glass working! I read Scott Hanselman’s post and was a little worried – I’m not sure he’s ever gotten it to work. Anyway, I eventually got the NVIDIA 97.59 driver installed and working properly!

It took me a while to figure out, but I can’t use transparency. If I turn on transparency and then open three or four windows, the Desktop Window Manager service crashes and everything reverts back to Vista Basic. If I turn off transparency however, Aero Glass works just fine. Here’s the non-transparent look:

not transparent

And here’s what it looks like with transparency enabled:

transparent

Having the transparency is nice, but it’s not a deal-breaker. And I’d much rather have Aero Glass than Vista Basic (which is ugly and pale blue by default).

Today, I finally ran the Windows Experience test:

vista rating

That’s pretty much the same as I’ve seen around the web for other Portege M200 owners who have upgraded to Vista. If Toshiba and NVIDIA released better drivers, I’m sure the rating would be much higher. Ah well, they want you to buy new machines I guess.

Based solely on my perception of how well the tablet performs, I’d say it’s much faster and more responsive with Vista then it ever was with XP. Surely the 2 GB of RAM and new hard drive help, though. The one negative is that the battery lasted far longer under XP. I’m talking like an hour and half longer!

That said, I am really glad I decided to upgrade my tablet to Vista. It kicks ass! I’ll save that for another post, but if you’re an M200 owner wondering whether or not to move to Vista, my advice would be to do so. The Tablet PC functionality in Vista easily outshines XP, you won’t regret the upgrade.

Blast from the past: hard drives

The computer industry changes so rapidly that it’s easy to forget about the hardware and devices we had just a few years ago. I’ve been cleaning up the office, getting rid of some junk that we’ve had lying around for years, and I’m amazed at some of the hardware I’ve found. Hard drives best demonstrate the difference between then and now – they’ve had the same form factor for years, but the capacities are vastly different.

For instance, the hard drive from an old Toshiba T4900CT laptop is only 810 MB! Technically that’s 770 MB I believe, yes megabytes. I don’t know why I’ve kept this laptop for so long, it hasn’t worked for years. I guess I’m a bit of a digital pack rat. It was the first laptop I ever used. My family used it at the pet store back in Inuvik when I was a kid, and it worked great. I even took it on a field trip back in high school (Dickson reminded me that we played Grand Theft Auto on the bus).

I found this description on the Toshiba Europe site:

The T4900CT and its 75 MHz Pentium processor will give you such speed and power when you’re out on the road that you’ll really move along the data super-highway. Back in the office, there’s hardly a desktop that can keep up with it.

How times have changed! Not only does it weigh about 15 pounds, but it’s a good four inches thick! The last thing that processor makes me think of is speed and power.

Here are a few photos I took tonight: the 810 MB hard drive, a 9.1 GB SCSI hard drive, and a 20.5 GB IDE hard drive.

810 MB hard drive 9.1 GB hard drive 20.5 GB hard drive

I wouldn’t consider buying anything smaller than a 300 GB SATA II hard drive now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that seems tiny in a couple years. Hard to imagine that a hard drive with only 770 MB was ever actually usable!

Tutoring CMPUT 101 – Introduction to Computing

Post ImageA few months ago I was walking through HUB Mall at the U of A when I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen since high school. We had a brief chat, and I of course told her about all of the geeky things I do. Turns out she was taking CMPUT 101 this semester (spring term), and asked if I’d be willing to tutor her. I said sure, not knowing what I was getting myself into!

Her final exam was today (hopefully she did well) so our last session was yesterday. Throughout her course we met twice a week for roughly two hours each time to go over the concepts she was learning in lecture, and to work on her labs. It was a really good experience for me, and she said my help was really important for helping her understand the material. Actually, she told me yesterday “you have a gift you should share! maybe you should join the tutor registry.” I think she was being overly nice 🙂

Here are some thoughts:

  • As this was an introduction course (that I never took actually) I really had to refresh my memory on some of the topics (like Two’s Complement). Mostly it all came flowing back to me though!
  • There were definitely some frustrating times, for her and for me! She would have trouble grasping a concept and I would have trouble explaining it. We worked through it though, and found a way for it to make sense. So I learned that tutors need patience.
  • I get the feeling that taking a computer course in a compressed term (spring or summer) is quite hard, especially if you’re not a computer-person! The content is just rushed.
  • I think tutoring a higher level class would be fun, where the student already knows the basics.

I know she’ll pass the course, so I am just eager to see how well she does! She gave me a gift card for Starbucks yesterday as a thank you – incredibly nice of her, but completely unnecessary!

I don’t know if I am going to join the tutor registry, but I’ll definitely considerate it now that I have some experience.

Coming Soon: Dell Tablet PC

Post ImageAs you may know, I am a big fan of the Tablet PC. I’ve had a Toshiba Portege for a few years now, and before that I had the first Compaq model. Unfortunately, most people still buy regular laptops. I think there are two reasons for that:

  • Tablet PC’s are a little more expensive than regular laptop computers.
  • Computer stores don’t showcase tablets, so not as many people know about them.

Both of those things might change in the near future! According to a post on Dell’s blog today, the rumored Latitude Tablet PC is real. There’s a short video with a few details. I think there’s hope that Dell’s tablet will be cheaper than the competition, taking care of point #1. And as for point #2, I imagine the tablet will be included in Dell’s mailouts, which are kind of like the old AOL disks – everyone gets them!

Elsewhere in the world of Dell today: some really nice LCD monitor technology and design.

Read: Direct2Dell