Tag Archives: “PC”
Dell Drops XPS Gaming Line in Favor of Alienware
Well as the title says, Dell will be dropping it’s high-end gaming systems branded under XPS and letting it’s Alienware division handle these systems. It’s about time. I often wondered why the heck they continued to produce their own XPS gaming systems and competed with themselves (Alienware). I figured the whole point of buying Alienware was to increase penetration into the PC gaming market and also to buy the strong brand equity that Alienware has in that market. But they kept producing new XPS gaming systems which didn’t make much sense.
Speed Up Your PC by Defragmenting Your Hard Drives
Most people don’t know that defragmenting their computer hard drives can significantly boost performance, especially on older computers or if you haven’t defragged in a very long time. Data gets stored in bits and pieces all over your hard drive and this gets worse as time goes on, as files get written or modified. So now your hard drive is looking all over the place to read a file which slows it down. Defragmentation puts those bits back together, right next to each other so reading that file now becomes faster.
New PC Build
So I received all the parts for my new PC about a week ago but I didn’t have to time to put it all together. Today I went apple picking, but then I literally spent the entire evening lapping my heatsink (Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme). Not the best way to spend my Saturday night but I’ll only have the free time to build my PC on weekends and I HAVE to put it together now to make sure everything’s working and that I don’t need to return anything. Then I can send in the UPC labels for rebates.
(Pictures on Page 5)
Here are the specs of the system:
New System Build Soon
I’ve been planning a new custom PC for a while and it finally seems to be the right time to build it. The quad core Intel Q6600 has dropped significantly in price and has become a great value considering the performance you’re getting from a sub-$300 CPU (that’s also highly overclockable). While a majority of programs and games are not multi-threaded, the quad is great for multi-tasking and content creation. I multi-task a lot and I use Photoshop everyday (which IS multi-threaded) so I’ve decided to get the Q6600. More programs will become multi-threaded so the quad will hold strong for quite a while.
Good Old PC Cleaning
Starting about 2 weeks ago, I was noticing that whenever I put my video card under load (while gaming), my entire computer would crash. My video card is a rather old ATI Radeon 9800 XT. I had some problems a couple months ago with the video card fan not working but I was able to fix that with some cleaning. This time when I looked inside, the fan was spinning so I figured it was a problem with outdated drivers. So I updated them but no luck - still crashing.
I Need a Backup Solution
I’m beginning to realize I definitely need some type of data backup solution. It’s not good that I’ve waited so long to implement something. There is a lot of data and documents on my computer that is really important to me personally and professionally. It would be absolutely devastating if something happened that caused data loss *knock on wood*. There are a bunch of online services offering backup space and “online hard drives” but I don’t trust my private data/documents in someone else’s hands. I’m looking at probably an external hard drive and usb flash drive combination - basically some kind of redundant, 2-tiered backup system.
Firefox Rules Them All
Firefox is the best browser on Windows PC’s. I say PC’s because I’ve never used a Mac (and don’t plan on doing so in the future either) so I can’t comment on Safari. But Firefox is the best standards-based browser out there. The one flaw it has is the memory leaks, which they’ve been working on. If you’ve been using Firefox during a long session and opening a lot of tabs/windows, the memory usage starts going up and doesn’t come down unless you restart Firefox. But I have plenty of memory so it doesn’t matter.
It Came Today!!
My new computer came today! Man, this machine is NICE. I’m going to wait until tomorrow to set it up. I have to move a hard drive on my current computer to the new one. Then I have to format my old computer and set up all the programs on the new computer. It’ll probably take most of the whole day. But who cares! My new computer is here!
Here are the specs:
New Computer
A week ago I ordered a new computer from Dell. I emailed customer service today asking why it hasn’t been shipped and they said it will be put on priority. I actually ordered a refurbished system from Dell Outlet. Refurbished systems are computers that people have returned and get put back into production and testing. Even though nothing is wrong with it they just can’t sell it as new, so they sell it in Dell Outlet for big discounts. These babies usually sell fast but I was able to find a configuration I wanted at the right price. I had been scoping out the Dell website for weeks, just waiting for the right deal to come along.