Wedding

The lack of recent posts to this blog is for a real good reason. Just over a week ago my son got married in Holland to a wonderful girl. It was a really enjoyable time and everything was perfect. They were married in a famous Dutch castle which is in the village where we once lived. He was born, raised and schooled the the village so it was great to back and see him married there. The receptions were in the bride's village and then in a chateau nearby.

Weather was beautiful, just right for the photos and to drive the open-top Aston Martin car that he used for the day. The families got on really well, had a great dinner together and then partied until the early morning. We stayed a few days as well and even watched Holland lose at football to the Russians in Euro 2008.

Since getting back, I've obviously been very busy, but will start to think and write about my experience in this blog.

PSUs do matter

I've had a busy week and one of the many things I had to do was upgrade a gamer's graphics card. An hour later I received a telephone call that the PC had 'blown up' with a load bang, tripped the domestic circuit breaker and caused the owner to spill his cup of coffee.

I'd checked that the card was acceptable for the 350W power supply as stated on the box, but obviously with the 3.4GHz Pentium 4 and two WD Raptor drives had taken more power than was available. I'd replaced the PSU in the last year so it wasn't old and filled with dust. Luckily, further investigation had shown that the other components had not suffered in the massive electrical trauma.

I installed a 500W quality PSU that cost almost three times the original one, and I trust that the gamer will continue to play for many happy hours. He certainly likes the new graphics card, but wishes that the explosions were not so close. So I'll remember to upgrade the PSU as well, when I upgrade the graphics.

That HP server that could

Following my disappointment at trying to create a gaming system from a cheap HP Proliant ML115 server, I've persevered in trying to improve the system. So I have removed 512Mb from my new DELL server to increase the HP's memory to 1.5Gb, installing a Creative Audigy SE sound card and finally adding a proper gaming graphics card, the Sapphire Radeon HD3850. Plenty of room in the small chassis to fit these and plenty of power from the PSU as well.

Amazingly this has improved the potential somewhat. The quiet graphics card has not increased the noise level which though not silent, is subdued for a games PC. The graphics performance of this card are also great for a mid-price model. The disk RAID sub-system performance is now increased to over 110Mb/s. The computer is much more responsive and able to handle today's games such as Crysis, Company of Heroes and Flight Simulator X.

Altogether it gives a quality feel. A small box which can handle most games that you throw at it and has become something that I can sell with confidence. Not as cheap as I originally envisaged but fair value for money and a configuration that I'm happy with.

Thank you AVG

Grisoft's recent announcement to end support and updating of AVG Free 7.5 has lead to a surge of business for me. For years now I've been loading AVG Free on people's computers (and also removing Norton in its many guises), telling them that it is better and free as well. So now they are all calling me asking what they should do.

To be fair, I've been emailing instructions on how to remove the old version then download and install the new version (with telephone support), pay the upgrade cost to the complete version or arrange an appointment for half an hour to do it for them. Most people have taken the later option causing me to travel around Basingstoke for many short appointments. Saying that of course when you are there I can also fix the printer, email, broadband, slowness, etc.

So thank you Grisoft, and I'd appreciate it if you don't make this occurrence happen too often as it creates a lot of work for me. Good money though, even for you as quite a few have taken the complete upgrade solution.