Based on the Part 1 article I wrote, you know that I did not have a great start with Haswell. After returning everything back and getting all new boards and CPU’s, I was now ready to tackle another round. I was not going to rip apart my main systems as did the first time, so [...]
The reason this a part one is that this saga will actually continue into at least one more part based on the number of problems I had. I was pretty excited when Haswell was released. It had been awhile since my last upgrade of my main machine and depending on the outcome I was planning [...]
For many years I have typed my notes directly into a laptop or tablet device and was quite content using that approach. As many of you know, there are times/places when that is not an acceptable practice. There are still companies, meetings, or educational seminars where typing on keyboard is viewed as disruptive, unacceptable practice, [...]
Here is a quick view of my new Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook. The performance you see here is after the SSD and memory upgrades. Other than slightly lower battery life than I would like, this is an awesome device for this price range. Samsung Series 5 with Corsair SSD Upgrade The first thing [...]
Tech Support Scams do not appear to be new, but I wanted to share this with everyone as a reminder that there are unscrupulous people out there. Here is the sequence of events that happen to me this week. On Friday (4/26/13) I received a call from someone that that claimed to be from the Windows Resource [...]
Introduction I have been an original SlingBox user for a number of years and overall have been happy with it. Though the interface was very laggy, it served a purpose of watching live or recorded TV to a mobile device. Recently I redid my entertainment setup and switched everything to HDMI connections. Since the version [...]
If you are like me you love to stream your content to other devices both inside and outside your network. The issue is the typically convoluted and unstable packages such as Twonky, tVersity, or PlayOn. There are obviously solutions like Windows Media Center or XBMC but they do not stream or transcode to mobile devices. [...]
Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Microsoft store in San Diego California. I was wondering around looking at the different laptops and testing out the type cover for the Surface. In the process I ran across the new Microsoft Wedge Mobile Keyboard. I had seen pictures of this before however this was the [...]
As part of my continual migration into virtual machines, I have slowly moved all of my running tasks to the VMs I created (see my earlier article for more information). One of the recent tasks that I ported over was the Eye-Fi Center which is the software used to control your Eye-Fi SD card. It [...]
As many of you have seen by now, the app selection for Windows 8/RT is growing in availability, but not necessarily in quality yet. There are still tons of third party developers that are releasing garbage apps which is making it hard to sort through and get something worthwhile. In my recent search, I came [...]
If you read my post on the StarTech USB4000IP USB IP Server, you know that I was not impressed with the device. I am happy to report that with the recent software updates that things have changed. The device is now very stable and has been working wonderfully in both Windows 8 and Windows 7. [...]
A topic I have struggled with for a long, long time has been the use of virtual machines in an actual home environment. In the past VM’s where limited to enthusiast but now that Hyper-V is bundled with Windows 8, I wanted to revisit the practicality of using a VM in a home environment to [...]
It is inevitable that at some point you will loose a hard drive. Recently I upgraded my servers to 3T Seagate drives so that I could get the same storage with less drives, faster performance, and more room for expansion. As luck would have it, one of the new drives died after only a couple [...]
I think we have heard the theory about always making sure that we have enough memory for our computers and our servers. I have been recommending it for years however I was more than surprised at the actual difference it made on my server running Hyper-V. The impact of RAM on VM’s is far more [...]
Being a avid podcast and music listener, playing content in my car is extremely important to me. Since I spend close to 2-2.5 hours a day commuting on the Southern California freeways, listening to the content I want is a priority. Considering I cannot stomach mainstream radio, I rely totally on my phone for podcasts, [...]
