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Awesome Videos

August 19th, 2007 · No Comments

This month, I came across some amazing videos that I would like to bring to your attention.
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Dead man talking

August 12th, 2007 · No Comments

I told you, even the dead talk on the phone! Don’t believe me? Check this out.

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Virtual Machines

July 17th, 2007 · No Comments

I don’t know if any of you use virtual machines or use a second PC, but I would suggest you get into the virtual machine world sooner than later. It’s definitely a money saving option. A decent amount of CPU power and RAM will save you hundreds of dollars and lots of deskspace! If you are interested, I can build you a ready-to-go custom built system or upgrade your old one at a fraction of the cost you might find in places like BestBuy or Futureshop. Did I tell you I am an A+ certified hardware technician too? You can count your dollars for a solid and stress tested PC from me.

Virtual PC 2007

I have been using Virtual PC 2007 ever since it was released. I have to admit it’s a simple and solid product and performs well. In addition, it’s free! I use it within my Windows Vista Business environment to run Windows Server 2003. So far, I have not noticed performance issues because my host system (Vista) runs on a dual-core AMD Athlon X2 2.2 Ghz with 2 GB RAM. I rarely hit 60% of RAM usage. As for the CPU, I have hit 100% on 1 core whenever I am encoding video in the background and doing something else. The only issue I am having right now is that the sound card doesn’t work on the guest (Windows 2003). Currently, it’s being detected as Soundblaster 16 and Windows can’t find a driver. Unfortunately, Creative no longer offers this old driver on their website. I can live without the sound for a while, but it’s a nagging issue that needs to be fixed. I primarily use Windows 2003 in Virtual PC to learn, test and do other things that I can’t do easily on Vista.

I have also run Ubuntu 7.04 on Virtual PC with minor incompatibilities that are related to the X server. Particularly, mouse and screen resolution changes are not as smooth as Windows 2003. What I am desperate for now is a bigger hard disk. My current 120GB Seagate SATA is showing it’s age. Last time I checked, the disk was 75% full. I could really use a 500 GB one as soon as I can afford one. Good thing I have my 120 GB Toshiba USB hard disk which is giving me breathing space. In case you are wondering what eats up my hard disk- it’s photos, music and virtual machines! I was surprised when I found out that I have 10GB of photos, 20 GB of music. I tried cleaning up my hard disk as much as I could and it’s such a time consuming process that I am starting to hate it. Just today I deleted around 500MB of files and it was tiring.

Don’t forget the following that will come in handy when playing with virtual machines:

  • VHDresizer is a drive resizing tool for the VHD files that are used as virtual hard disk in Virtual PC.
  • You’ll also need a disk partition tool. I don’t have any preference, so download your favorite.
  • Copy of your operating system- If you want to install fedora go here (torrent) or ubuntu go here to grab the iso images.
  • Use any BitTorrent client to download the fedora torrent. My favorite is utorrent.
  • VMware Workstation 6

    Another virtual machine software I tried out was VMware Workstation. This product is also solid with lots of options, however, at US$189 it’s a bit too much for me. You can still use the trial for 30 days to check out the features and functionality.

    → No CommentsTags: Software