Winnipeg Experts

Even though there are a million reviews out there on the new Windows Vista Operating System from Microsoft people keep asking “should I upgrade?”, “What Hardware will I need?”, “Should I Buy a Mac?” and what are the “Myths about New hardware requirements”.

What Kind of hardware will I need?

Well. This is an easy question. You should have at a Minimum:

• Pentium 4
• 1Gig of Ram
• 30GB Hard drive
• A Video Card (Not on-board Video)

If you are not sure what you have in your machine microsoft has a program that will easily tell you if your machine can handle Vista and some suggestions to get the most out of the software. The Vista Upgrade Adviser can be downloaded from here.

Should I Buy a Mac?

Now why would you ever do a stupid thing like that? Well I wouldn’t actually say. I would most likely thinking it however. ;)  I always tell people that out of the box a Mac does most things pretty well. You are EXTREMELY limited on what programs you can ran run on a Mac. In fact programs like photoshop CS2 are actually being emulated when they run on a Mac! It is totally Hog wash that a Mac is faster when compared to the same spec’d PC running windows.

I hear that the new hardware requirments are huge for Vista. Why doesn’t Mac OS X need something like that?

Yes the requirments for Vista are much higher then Windows XP. They are a tiny bit higher then the Mac OS. There are many reasons for this ranging from the 3D interface to extra security features that come out of the box.

RAM - There are so many additions added to Windows Vista. Things like Defender are now automatically running in the back ground. Just imagine your house. If you were to leave all the lights on in your house on and leave the water running non-stop the money you’d spend on your house would be a lot more. Most people don’t need to leave the lights on always and we always try and find ways of conserving water. The same thinking holds true for an computer whether it  has Windows, Mac OS X or Linux running. The more bells and whistles that you want on your machine the bigger the budget you will need.

Although most people think that Computers and Technology is very much a magic trick, everything is based on math. For example if you were to want to run:

• Internet Explorer
• CD Burning program
• Outlook

You have to consider each program uses “X” amount of RAM. So just say for example each program on this list were to use “20MB” of Ram, You’d need at least 60MB of Free ram on your system for things to run smoothly. If you don’t have enough ram your OS is now smart enough to toss the un-used information to a thing call “Virtual Memory”. This process slows down your machine a bit but it at least allows you to run the program. Because Vista is a next generation Operating system there are more things it can do.

I will be creating in my spare time a hot-to setup a network training program. The technology and software I will be covering will be:

• Windows 2003 Server
• Creating a Domain
• Setting Up DNS
• Installing Exchange
• securing OWA with a CA
  
• Setting up a VPN
• Setting up Routing so that there is 3 subnets and all machines on every subnet have internet access through a Router.

I am hoping this will be a great learning tool for any new network and system admins out there. You can find this info in my paid FAQ section.

I have posted 2 new FAQ’s.

1. How to setup WordPress on a Windows machine using IIS, PHP, and MySQL.
2. How to upgrade WordPress to a new version on any server.

If you have a subscription to my FAQ you can find it here. Look in the WordPress section. Remember most of the “How to” articles that I create come with full descriptive documentation. I also include as many screen shots as possible so that the instructions can be followed easily by anyone that can see.

Well I finally bit the bullet. I have started to buy the parts for my new gaming machine. I am going to do a review on the unit once I get it made. The thing that excites me the most about this computer over all the others is my lovely girlfriend is going to build most of the machine with my supervision. How sexy is that? My budget for this machine was to be around $1000 before taxes and shipping. I came in just over budget at almost $1100. I was able to use a couple of spare parts like a video card and DVD burner I had kicking around. The video card will be upgraded over the next month to allow me to play Battlefield in all of it’s glory. So far here are the parts I am using:

• Antec Nine Hundred Mid Tower Gamer Case 900 ATX 9 Drive Bays
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Dual Core Processor (2.40GHZ 1066FSB 4MB Retail)
• ASUS P5B ATX Motherboard
• Corsair PC2-5300 1X1024MB DDR2-667 240PIN DIMM
• OCZ GameXStream 700W

This video is awesome. I wish I could get one of these babies. This little HP number really looks awesome. The only thing that is a little flaky about the system is the speed. It would do the system some good if they beefed it up. The loading times of the programs seem a bit long. Other then that the device is very pleasing to the eye.

According to PC Magazine LG is going to be producing a drive that will support both HD-DVD and Blueray disks. They will be showing off the drive at CES.

The cells have already been used in mice to grow neural cells in subjects with degenerative brain disease, to grow bony tissue and liver cells were able to secrete urea, which the liver produces from ammonia. These cell have bee nput in HP cartridges. Click link to see what they did with it.

Link to CTV

Here’s a great article on Flash Hard drives. Flash hard drives although are more expensive they are more reliable and quicker. The articles says that by using a flash drive the boot sequence for XP almost decreases by 1/2!!!!

 I wish I could get one of these badboys!!!

Link

Here’s the link to someone doing it

Here’s a link for the software