Bioshock Infinite and Forge of Empires

I've just finished playing Bioshock Infinite and thoroughly enjoyed it. The latest game in the Bioshock saga was different to the others but captured the strangeness of the flying city Columbia with some great weapons and magic effects. The star was Elizabeth, the young girl that you have to find and then release from capture. Her animation and voice effects were sublime and her usefulness in supplying you extra ammunition and health packs when required a real benefit.

I started the game at my son's house last year and then bought my own copy just before Christmas. So it has taken me a while to finish it. At the same time, I've been playing Forge of Empires which is very addictive and takes up far too much of my game playing time. It is a typical build a city by working resources, trading goods and some battles. The recent Guild versus Guild wars are not to my liking though so I might be ceasing to play shortly, giving me more time to play the other games that I received at Christmas. Worth a picture though:

Intel Pentium G2020 disappointment

I had a spare Socket 1155 motherboard which I had bought for a customer's Intel Core i5 processor only to find that the CPU seemed to be broken. He decided to go for a completely new system to house his newly bought graphics card. I decided to purchase a cheap (£38) Intel Pentium G2020 CPU to make use of the excellent MSI B75MA-E33 Micro-ATX (£40) motherboard.

I assembled the system with 6GB of 1300MHz DDR3 memory and an OCZ Vertex 2 120Gb SSD. The system seemed responsive enough, but when I started benchmarking it the difference in CPU grunt compared to a modern Intel 'Haswell' Core-i3 4130 was obvious. Typically the older Pentium scored less that half that of the Core processor. This is also reflected in the prices of the two.

Also, if you buy this CPU and consequently Socket 1155 motherboard, you lock yourself into the older technology and the upgrade path is limited to the expensive, remnants of the 'Sandy and Ivy Bridge' Intel processors. The new Intel 'Haswell' chips use the Socket 1150 allowing a greater choice and any future developments in CPU technology.

Overall this was a disappointing build and I doubt if I will use a Pentium brand CPU again. The higher speed, Hyper-threading (adding an extra two logical cores) and larger cache of the Intel Core i3 CPU and hence overall performance is well worth the difference in price.

Windows XP slow due to update of Internet Explorer 8

Over the last couple of weeks I have been getting complaints from customers that Windows XP on old systems is running a lot slower than usual. I did some investigation as to what was causing the apparent slowdown and determined that Windows Update was running shortly after the system started and the svchost.exe was taking 100% of the CPU time. Clearly not a good situation.

Trying to stop svchost.exe did the trick for awhile, but back it came. I was really concerned when I had to rebuild a Windows XP system and it happened when I installed all the latest updates. Further research via Google pointed to a problem Internet Explorer update. If the Update service detects you do not have the latest IE update that is currently available it starts to search the whole IE updates tree to see what you need - instead of just offering the current cumulative update for your system. But if you manually install the update yourself the Update service finds Internet Explorer is fully updated and doesn't search for any IE updates.

The temporary fix is to load the Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP (KB2898785). This was released on December 10th but could only fix the problem until Microsoft releases a permanent fix in a future monthly cycle.

DELL Optiplex 3020 review

I was shipped a new DELL Optiplex 3020 mini-tower last week and as it is the replacement of the successful DELL Vostro 270 I thought that I would have a closer look at it. The basic configuration was a 'Haswell' Intel i3 4130 CPU at 3.4gHz, 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 memory, 500Gb hard disk drive and Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (of course).


On ordering the system, I noted that:
- there is no wireless card included (as in the Vostro 270) and it could not be added by DELL.
- there is no option for a media card reader.
- the price was £75 more expensive.

The system was aesthetically pleasing and looked the business. The performance in general was good (WEI: 7.3, 5.9, 5.1, 6.5, 5.9); note here the better performance of the Haswell integrated graphics.

On opening the system case:
- no DVI connection at the rear of the system. The monitor did have a connection and the cable was included.
- no extra hard disk drive caddy. The user cannot upgrade the system with a second hard drive.
- there is no dedicated space to put a 2.5" SSD (strange on a modern desktop system).
- no additional PCI-E graphics power connector, limiting your choice of graphics card expansion.
- no easy mount for a media card reader or floppy drive.
- non-standard motherboard power socket and PSU. Back to the bad old days of DELL proprietary hardware.
- there is a small speaker for Windows clicks, dings and pops.
- only two memory slots, only one available for expansion.

Also for this particular system which was delivered three working days late; there was a dent in the side of the case, no power cord for the monitor (no, it wasn't in the system packaging) and no Windows 7 license sticker.

I feel that this new DELL is an expensive replacement for the Vostro 270 that doesn't have the same design, capabilities and expansion potential. A poor start for the newly privatised DELL.

My Haswell Upgrade

The time had come to upgrade my gaming system. It had served me well for the last couple of years but compute power was lacking for modern games. The obvious upgrade for the best bang-for-the-buck was an Intel 'Haswell' i5 4670K which could be overclocked nicely. I saw an offer from Novatech for £25 off leaving £155 to pay for the CPU. You don't often get really good offers on latest generation Intel processors, so I went for it.

Leaving me with a choice for a new motherboard. I like MSI motherboards and my existing system had one in; unlocking an AMD Athlon X3 to a Phenom II X4 and overclocking it without any problems. I needed an Z87 chipset to be able overclock, so the budget MSI Z87-G43 seemed to hit the spot and gets many good reviews. An order to ebuyer for £88 obtained me one. I intended to build it in my old Chieftec Mesh case which has now held its third set of upgrade components. I replaced to old energy inefficient 600W power supply with the Corsair CX500M modular PSU. The Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz HyperX Blu Memory Kit will move directly into the new motherboard which will now recognise the XMP settings. A new Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7,200rpm 64Mb cache SATA-III will hold my data for now though I intend to get a 250GB SATA-III SSD in the near future as the system drive.

Construction went well and overclocking to 4GHz went smoothly with MSI's OC Genie in the BIOS. I upgraded the BIOS to the latest version as I couldn't fingd the way to overclock it any further. Still no good as the CPU ratio would not move off Auto. A quick search revealed the trick to use the +/- keys to adjust this value. So now the system is running reliably at 4.3GHz with SpeedStep energy saving and adapative voltage control. I haven't tried any higher as I've achieved my goal with air cooling provided by an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro rev 2. It is quiet and cool at 60 degrees C.

Performance is amazing, really responsive. I should also mention that I'm still using my old AMD Radeon HD6870 graphics card. I'm having more problems trying to re-install my games than building and setting up the new system hardware and operating system (a brand new copy of Windows 7 Home).

Office 2010 Starter Edition: File type associations missing

After last month's Windows Updates the file type associations for Microsoft's Office 2010 Starter Edition went missing or at least changed into an orange blob that when clicked on claimed that the license key was invalid and you needed to purchase a new one. Quite a number of my customers had this problem as Office Starter was loaded by DELL on its Vostro systems. For a couple of weeks Microsoft refused to admit that there was a problem at all and it wasn't until 18th September that they released the 'fix' statement here.

Unfortunately, this fix did not work in all cases and takes a long time to apply, especially on a slow broadband connection. The simple, more effective solution was to change the file associations back using Start -> Default programs -> Associate a file type or protocol with a specific program. Just scroll through the list and change the Word and Excel file associations back to what they were.

I expected Microsoft to 'fix the fix' in October's Patch Tuesday but they didn't. Yet again Microsoft is loosing touch with its consumer roots.

Windows 8.1

I upgraded my Windows 8 support system to the latest 8.1 release. It hasn't seemed to improved much as the focus of the changes seems to be to make it more acceptable in the business and commercial environment rather than the home environment. Yet again Microsoft is losing contact with the consumers that helped it gain the predominant position in the IT market.

As I said before in my previous post using IObit's excellent free Start8 utility to boot directly into the desktop and reinstate the Start button functionality works better than Microsoft's weak effort. Plus using 'control userpasswords2' to stop requiring a password every time and disabling the password required following a screensaver or hibernation helps a lot in recovering the Windows 7 appearance and interactions.

Microsoft continues to loose the plot in the desktop and laptop market and Windows 8 (and 8.1) is major contributor to it's decline. They would have been better off to port Microsoft Office to Apple OS and Android environments starting five years ago. Probably made more money too!