A traumatic day

Finally, I've transferred operations to my new DELL Vostro 430 and shutdown my trusty Dimension 4550.

It's all to do with decorating! The big desk had to go so that we could paint the rest of the room. The small table can be moved around, so the Dimmension 4550 under the big desk had to be removed and the smaller Vostro 430 could take over email, web browsing, photos and bookkeeping duties.

All the documents, music, photos and favourites were transferred. Emails were a problem as there was no real equivalent to Outlook Express in Windows 7. Hence an Outlook XP database was created on the old system and then imported to Outlook 2003 on the new system and then will be upgraded to Outlook 2010 when it is available later this year. Shame on Microsoft for not creating an easier path to transfer an Outlook Express email database, address book and email account settings directly into the new Windows 7. Anyway it is about time that I upgraded to the real Outlook!

What a difference in performance! Everything is immediately responsive again. Four cores rule!

Old 4550 being retired

My old DELL Dimension 4550 is just about to be retired! I've already received its replacement, a brand new Vostro 430 i5-750 with 3Gb RAM and Windows 7, I'm just waiting for my office to be redecorated and the new desks installed. Yes, I paid Intel's £100 premium for a future-proofed i5-750 processor.

The 4550 was purchased on 25th February 2003 then upgraded to 1Gb RAM and a couple of 160Gb hard disk drives a couple of years ago, but it just doesn't seem responsive any more and multitasking with the old Pentium 4 2.53GHz is not really possible. So the DDR RAM will be used for spares along with everything else in the quirky old case.

I'll be sorry to see it go. Seven years is a long time in computers. Many a character has been typed and many a word read on it.

Return to Rapture

I've just started playing Bioshock 2 which was released this week. it is really great to back to the experiences of one of my favourite games. The wondrous visuals and atmosphere, the music and sounds, the ghostly voices in my head helping me unravel the secrets of the underwater city. I even bought the strategy guide as well to help me make the most of my journey through the splicer infested realms, and more effectively use the traditional weapons plus plasmids that add another dimension to the combat.

I'd been trying Dragon Age Origins which I got at Christmas, but I've been frustrated by being a mage with weak spells, leveling up decisions and the random game play aspects. I'll probably return to this highly rated game after I've enjoyed the delights of Rapture once again.

It is difficult for me to describe to anyone who doesn't play such games the escapism, fantasy experience of being in another imaginary world, interacting and fighting the inhabitants and solving puzzles and exploring the sights and sounds that lead you to the next challenge.

All I can say is that it is good to be back in Rapture!

Wireless N is a WiNNer!

I admit I've been a bit slow in jumping on the Wireless N boat. My excuse is that I was waiting for the draft IEEE 802.11n specification to be ratified. Also to spend upwards of £100 for a router and receiver adapter just to try it out was a bit expensive for me.

So when ebuyer offered a Tenda Wireless N cable router (I'm on Virgin Media cable) for just £15 and an Edimax USB adapter for £13, I could not resist any longer. They were easy to install and though they only offer 150Mbps (actually 135Mbps), this still tripled my bandwidth. It seems to be snappier accessing the Internet and I'm sure the backups to the Windows Home Server will be quicker too. Now if only it had a Gigabit Ethernet switch as well, I'd be really happy.

I'm a Wireless N convert!

Intel's Core iX policy

Now that Intel has released its full range of Core i processors it is interesting to see how and where system vendors are positioning them. For example DELL offers the consumer oriented Inspiron 580, the small business Vostro 430 and the gamer oriented XPS 8100 boxes. All are over £400 in price, leaving the lower ground to the Pentium, Core 2 Duo and Quad CPUs. These are seriously over performed and under priced by the new AMD Athlon II and Phenom II processors which DELL also sell in Inspiron 570 boxes.

So typically there is a £100 premium for buying a Core iX-based system. Granted you do get slightly better performance and a motherboard that should last as long as the venerable Socket 775 ones have. I can only think that once the older Intel CPUs, have gone from stock and the manufacturing has switched over fully to Core iX then the prices will drop considerably. But it seems difficult to recommend buying one at the present time unless you really want the latest technology and are willing to pay for it.

Dual core systems again

I've just upgraded a system from a Pentium 4 3GHz to a 'cheap as chips' Celeron E3200 (see previous posts) and what a difference it has made. Both these CPUs were slightly overclocked by 15% to 3.3GHz and 2.77Ghz respectively. Some preliminary testing showed that the integer performance has gone from 8,017 to 21,179 (Sisoft Sandra Arithmetic), an almost threefold amount.

I view the more general PCmark05 type of benchmark as more representative measurement of a system's responsiveness however. It shows weaknesses and bottlenecks in a systems configuration. Here then the difference was even more amazing from 2,280 to 6,328. Again an almost threefold improvement. Just by changing a CPU to one of the cheapest modern ones available.

I used to think that adding memory to a PC was the easiest and most cost effective way of improving an older system's performance. The computer equivalent of a mid-life upgrade. Though it is still effective upgrade, memory costs have gone up considerably in the last few months and now a cheap dual core CPU upgrade to those Socket 775 systems looks an even more effective alternative.

A cautionary tale

One of my customers gave me his Fujitsu tower that was giving him trouble after I installed his new DELL. It was only a couple of years old and had a reasonable spec. So I thought that by replacing the scruffy old case with a new shiny black one (£16), an a extra stick of 1Gb DDR memory (£23), SATA DVD writer (£18) and a better 400W PSU (£17) should fix the problem and make it resaleable. I was wrong it continued to crash indicating that the strange Fujitsu version of an Asus motherboard (P5SD1-FM2) was the culprit. Interestingly this had been replaced just recently under the extended warranty but was still giving problems. It was an Intel socket 775 with DDR memory which is also a bit rare.

So I replaced it with a cheap Asrock motherboard (£31), and two sticks of 1Gb DDR2 memory (£35). Because the Windows XP installation was keyed to the old Fujitsu BIOS, it needed a new copy of Windows 7 (one of my preordered £45). The Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz CPU was a bit weak but at least the system worked reliably. All was well for a while, but I wasn't able to sell it.

Then another customer gave me an overheating DELL 5150C SFF computer with a passively cooled Radeon X600 graphics card and an Intel Pentium D 3GHz dual core CPU. I removed the graphics card and used the integrated graphics, but it still ran warm due to the powerful and hot CPU. I then decided to swap the CPUs in the two systems. The DELL accepted the single core Pentium 4 CPU without a murmur and was a lot cooler. Then I put the Pentium D onto the Asrock motherboard and mounted a good size Akasa fan (£10) on top to take care of the cooling. It ran for about 10 seconds just booting into Windows and stopped. No lights, no fan, no power and a faint acrid smell of burnt electronics.

I checked the power supply, no problem. So I'd blown the motherboard. Upon checking, the Pentium D 830 was not on the approved CPU list as the motherboards maximum TDP was just 105W. As are most cheap Socket 775 motherboards. Pentium D's are probably the CPUs with the highest TDP ever and are certainly way over 105W! So I have now bought another motherboard and CPU. This time an Asus KP5QPL (£38) and a new Intel Celeron E3200 CPU (£35) to get the computer going again.

My exploits have cost a total £268 and I'd have been better off if I'd have just bought a new, faster DELL with a warranty and be easier to resell. Let this be a lesson to us all that resurrecting an old system is often definitely not worth it.