I have been getting a fair number of service calls this summer where the client states that their, “wireless network keeps dropping the signal” or “the wired performance is slow late in the day.” There are many confounding issues that can affect both of these situations, but heat is the one that is most commonly overlooked. Here are a few typical examples:
Read More
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Cold Beer Is Good, Cool Chips Are Better!
4
Quick Fix – Add Windows Movie Maker to Server 2008
I sat down tonight to craft a video for my brother’s upcoming wedding and realized that Windows Server 2008 did not have Movie Maker – ugh. I did a quick search and trial of a half dozen free alternatives and could not find anything suitable. I am actually kicking myself for taking my Hackintosh offline as iMovie makes tasks such as this stupidly simple to turn out an elegant product. Lacking access to a Mac at this hour, here is how I quickly added Movie Maker functionality to Windows Server 2008…
Read More
Blackberry Facelift
Comments Off
My trusty Blackberry 8830 World Edition phone had become heavily scratched, dirty, and generally yucky so I decided to do something about it. I gave it a facelift – and here is the why and how…
Netbooks – a blurred semantic line?
Comments Off
Filed under Commentary, Hardware
What exactly is a netbook? Who uses them? How do they use them? Are they going to erode the laptop market? Are they simply a fleeting marketing exercise? The list of questions goes on and the buzz continues to grow, but here is the thing – netbooks are here to stay. Pandora’s Box has been opened and consumers like the thought of being able to buy a computer for ~ $280.00 USD.
Intel Xeon Nehalem + Noctua?
Comments Off
Filed under Hardware
Recently I was hired to build a high-end workstation for a local university researcher. After going over what the workstation would be used for and how it would be used, we settled on a design built around Intel’s latest Xeon processor, the “Nehalem”. I selected a pair of Intel Xeon E5540 CPUs to be paired with a Supermicro MBD-X8DAi-O motherboard. The researcher in question wanted to have the workstation to be as far down the quiet and low-energy spectrums as possible which was part of the motivation for choosing the 80W Xeon E5540s. Since these do not come with an OEM heatsink, I opted for a pair of Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 heatsinks due to their cooling and acoustic profiles. This is where the fun began…
