Hop'n Rabbits, Leap'n Lizards: A Kingston 64G SSD Install!

Ever see an old and useless Dell pop out of its shell and hit the ceiling with raw speed? Unlikely event, I would have said...until today...and I'm still looking for a ladder to pry Dell down. 


Screeching tires, jet propelled Windows [finally]! Yikes! 30 years of speed-craved assembling and abandoning, loving and leaving PC's never prepared me for this jolt juice. As they say of a few other really good things in life such as Verizon fiber optic internet (FIOS), once you've had an SSD boot, you'll never go back! But unlike fiber, you can take the SSD with you, especially when installed in a a laptop.

The cause for this lift-off: Kingston Technology sent me a 64 gig solid state disk upgrade kit, on my qualified request to improvise an "old computer resuscitation strategy" for these turbid economic times.  Given the domestic tech budget, my biannual upgrade has resorted to miniature i-products, rather than desk tower upgrades. However, having finally managed to properly equip my principle computer into doubling as the living-room entertainment center, I decided to dust off a 6 year-old, defect-ridden, very dog Dell to serve only my book writing needs while the TV is sucking up all available desktop & bandwidth.

What is a "Solid State Disk" and why put such an expensive beast in Grandpa Dell?  Speed, speed, speed.  45 second boot.  5 second program load.  Details next installment.

Software Minefields, by Name.

By prime example, let's start with Outlook.

Gates Returning to Microsoft?

The richest man on the planet has got to be having some sleepless nights.  We bless his soul for going charitable as the alternative, following in Andrew Carnegie's footsteps as he has done so well, but giving away money is a slow, relatively pedantic process, one which absolutely demands too many chicken dinners away from home.

And guess who is having all the fun?  His buddy and confidant, Steve Jobs.  Virtually waging war on the the world's wireless phone systems, and now declaring the demolition of Google's phone...he's having a blast!  All the while, the internet is replacing traditional media as the people's voice, with exponentially larger selective audiences and less than tabloid journalism standards, leading to the type of virile reporting I'm practicing right here.  No triple confirmations on this rumor.

Yes, Bill is contemplating a return.  He sees chaos at the factory.  The problem is most of that chaos is his legacy and unlike Jobs, his return won't fix it.  Don't mistake my admiration for Mr. Gates' bottom line success; this is the Prime Mandate of a public company; return on investment.  Who to say the hundreds of genius millionaires he graduated from Microsoft aren't an even bigger world blessing than the overly pernicious Windows itself?

More to follow.  I'll try to talk it over with Bill, I know he's got some specific concerns before making the leap backwards.

The Building of HomeBrew10

New iQuality project, a hands-on evaluation of building your own PC, versus purchasing Dell or HP.

This is titled "HomeBrew10".  It is probably my 5th or 6th build, starting with small, early Z80 based-boards in the 60's, then a Heathkit H-89 computer, for which I'll add a link.  This was built up from individual electronic components on up, including motherboard and printer. This unit was based on the CP/M Operating System ["OS"] battlefield, which required the builder to construct a portion of the Bios [Initial turning on sequence of a computer, specifying what's attached, etc.].  Fun.  


I'm fundamentally friendly to any OS after it, although I do expect the same leap as from it...at least every decade.  I won't even evoke Moore's "Law" on operating systems, although they are created purely from human gray matter and have no physical restraints.

Speaking of Moore silicon, did you hear this one: We might hit a computer Peak Silicon at the same time we hit Peak Oil.  Intel, on the other hand claims 2029.  Who knows?


Our basic criterion for HomeBrew10 is instant load, access, operation of day-to-day office and internet access programs, full Windows Media Center integration and performance, and -- after over 10 years of use -- peak perfect operation of my most uniquely useful software, Dragon Dictate.  It makes the strongest computing demands of just about any program I use, save large imaging processes.

In addition to stringent evaluation, we'll list specs and explain at a semi-novice level what everything means; this is to open a door for the average PC user, and not leave you where Microsoft's obtuse, insulting "Contact your IP manager..." error solution message does. We also refer you to "Tom's Hardware" as one of the best resources for detailed, competitive technical reviews in the fast computing arena.  We aim to  impart how easy it is to assemble a computer, you need little more than a screwdriver and an afternoon.  Your family will be impressed and you'll gain at least a 50% operating margin over a same-price built unit.  We don't exclude built, but point out cutthroat competition has heightened with with the financial crisis, and you're getting less and less for your buck from the name brands.

Some products we use will be manufacturer supplied, this will be clearly indicated.  Our first such product, and one still in the "unusual" category, is a Kingston SSD, a solid-state hard disk.  When it and the other parts arrive, all will be given greater detail.

Here's an earlier interview we gave a few items: http://bit.ly/CNNdch.

Keep an eye out, "HomeBrew10" will soon be arriving.  The pieces are drifting in on the daily boat.  And my Win7 beta is slamming the lid down every 2 hours, no warning; make sure your fingers aren't in the way and that you saved whatever a good 10 minutes before!  Nasty people when you don't have your credit card out!

Microsoft Software & Bosch Appliances: What do they have in common?

We rely on them daily, yes.  Especially to save time.  In my single days, I could not retain civilized habitation without my Bosch dishwasher.  I confess to abject failure with dirty dishes.  For many reasons, love at the top, I married a wonderful woman who has spent the last decade teaching me how.  Such a patient angel!

Today, however, it turns out our trusty Bosch ran its drain pump on and off all night.  Amazingly, the master switch was off and even the door opened a crack!  This a mechanical device defying both its safety over-ride and the on/off control.

Microsoft?  We need it every day, too, but it never works properly for any length of time.

Once again Microsoft beats us about the head with a big stick and a black hole. It seems desperate to prove each and every product must be user tested for even the most squalid of defects. This involves several generations of use and exabytes of crash reports uploaded to HQ.

And after all is said and done, we have such gems as Outlook, AKA LookOut! It cannot find a contact by first name if you have chosen last name order. Even though you choose first name order upon entry, it still defaults the LookUp name to last name order, to be changed manually. My lsit of such featiures is at least 25 entries long, yet the master chef, Bill Gates, blogged a few weeks ago that Outlook remains the center of his daily desktop activity. One hour with the Outlook overlay software, NeoPro, and you'll never open Outlook again. Try it, Bill.

Today's topic, an ongoing report, is the fresh adventures of "WHS", that is, "Windows Home Server". I apologize profusely for the following. I do not like curse words in print, and I don't use them in person, unless I am hammering bent nails by myself. Nevertheless, I do have this private category for special software, and sometimes hardware: P.O.S.S. Piece of Shite Software; the lowest of the low.

We have in WHS a prime candidate. Not solely for its defects, but as well for the distance of the fall from its immense promise, that of advertising your grandma to backup her iTunes collection and photos of the grandkids from all the computers connected to her LAN. I start my review with a recent (two years after launch, three major revisions) user review from NewEgg -- whose automatic Buy This makes the recommendation that other buyers also bought both a Seagate hard disk and a Green hard disk!

To his gracious credit, this guy doesn't curse. Losing entire photo or music collections to a computer touted specifically for backup is tough to take, although he headed this common WHS occurrence off at the pass. This is the HP version of WHS. They are a company that frequently takes a Microsoft product and produces its own parallel software to make up for the holes in the original. After one or two versions of such torture they usually drop the product, as they just did with their quite good Media Extender.

HP EX 485

Reviewed By: NJ computer guy on 3/25/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: I installed a WD HDD and now I have no problems, can’t stress enough how highly recommend you get rid of the Seagate drives that come with these units! When paired with good hard drives the EX485 goes beyond my expectation and works flawless! The boys and girls at HP do need to product test more effectively before shipping off to customers, I do think considering that this is simply a revision product they should have done a better job.

Cons: These ship with Seagate 7200.11 drives and the firmware as we all know, well it doesn't work and the new firmware to fix these issues is just as bad! HP Tech support spent well over 20 hours with me before anyone said “hey maybe it's the firmware”! They really really don't want to replace these drives and do everything in there power to drag out the process. I think both HP and Seagate know they have a major problem and they are not sure yet how to fix this issues. I am glad to see most people have not experienced this problem, just be aware it is out there and when it does happen it makes you loose everything on your server! I lost everything twice before I told HP no more and switched to a WD drive. Basically I bought software and a Box to hold a drive, HP was not willing to send me anything other than a Seagate drive and I just can’t afford to loose my information for a third time!

Other Thoughts: Before you buy the EX485 just beware that there is a firmware problem with the hard drives in these units the 750GB Seagate drives that HP has used do have a firmware bug! Also be aware that green power drives are not recommended to be used in these servers and they also say Spinpoint drives have had problems as well as RE3 drives and any drives specifically used for a RAID setup! HP recommends using a non power saving SATA model not specifically designed for a RAID setup! If you have any questions call HP Tech support they will confirm this information. I find it a shame HP shipped these servers knowing there were firmware issues, this could be such a great product, but it has been marginalized by using Seagate drives. I understand that HP has a contract with Seagate and they are going to stick with them, bad move especially since a lot customers are not buying in this market environment! BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE

Web 4.0, where are you?

Web 4.0 has arrived.  The need for it, that is.

The iPhone suggests Web 4.0 with EverNote, which uses geo-location ToDo list entries, i.e., when near the location of X, remind me to do X task.    

EverNote captures and indexes all your media, handwritten, text, web and even reads photos, looking for text.  A screen capture of an email on your iPhone (hold down both buttons briefly), for example, when then transferred to EverNote will be read and indexed.  All entries are cloud synched.  It is a major organizational tool and the genius behind it is adding new bells and whistles every few months.

Happily, another powerful data/document organizational tool joins my TopTen Software List, along with X-1 and NeoPro for Outlook.  I could not sit down at my desk without.  Nothing even approaches the List unless bug-free (or have eager upgrading &/or support), have a well-designed user interface, and innovative functionality.  This eliminates all Microsoft products prior to 2008; they'll be on another list.  That List is now led by Windows Home Server, but this diatribe is saved for a really lousy rainy day.

Back to Web 4.0.  As an ex-photographer, both scientific and commercial (& some art here and there), I've been looking at digital organizational tools for twenty years:  http://tiny.cc/PC1985DEC

I've been craving this for awhile:  http://tiny.cc/DCHCNET

Maybe "Web 4.0" isn't the right acronym.  It is a meta-structure as Windows is, combining multiple functions in an efficiently accessible manner.

These tools are just starting to appear, way behind the actual capacity of the PC to perform them.  

Since each will almost inevitably be of proprietary format, 95% of said formats rarely lasting longer than half a decade, we will require universal access to our various indexes, an Indexing Indexer, much in the vein of social network conglomerators glued together with the lowly macro. 

I'm not holding my breath!  "Hazel" for the Mac hints at this, so along with Evernote and Jott, Web 3.0009 does exist.  In the meanwhile, archive output everything in TXT or PDF.