Thanks for the heads up, I may get a solid state drive, they sound awesome!
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Alex Stanley" <j_alexander_stanley@...> wrote: > > About a month ago, a few sectors went splodey on my hard drive, so I backed > up all my data, figuring it was on its way out. Sure enough, when I got back > from a recent trip, my PC was dead. The system had been running XP, and the > 750GB HD had been divided into a small C: drive for the OS and programs, with > the rest in a large data partition. What I've done so far is replace the hard > drive with a 90GB OCZ Vertex 2 solid state drive and load it up with Win 7 > Pro. OMG, what a difference! > > For one thing, solid state drives are screaming fast. And, the Win 7 > installer automatically detected and ran all my hardware. I haven't had to > manually load a single driver. Oddly enough, a couple years ago, the NICs on > the motherboard had stopped working reliably, and I switched to using a USB > NIC to connect to the Internet. I had assumed that it was a hardware failure, > because a fresh install of XP did not fix it. Well, Win 7 is running the > NICs, and they're working perfectly. Go figure. > > I buy my computer stuff at NewEgg.com, and they sell OEM versions of Windows. > As far as I can tell, the only difference between the OEM and retail > versions, besides the price, is that with the OEM versions, any OS tech > support is the responsibility of the PC's "builder" (i.e., me). So, for > simply being my own tech support, my copy of Windows cost only $140 instead > of $300. > > Next up is installing an external SATA drive for data and figuring out how to > map the "My Documents" to it. I'm also intrigued by the concept of network > storage and subnet file sharing. I have a bunch of IP addresses at my > disposal, so I just give my handful of Internet connected devices their own > IP addresses; I've never messed around with subnet interaction between > machines. It looks like Win 7 machines play nice with other Win 7 machines > with respect to sharing, so I've ordered another copy of Win 7 that I'll put > on an old Dell Latitude D610 and park it down in the basement. > > I'll also see if I can migrate the post count script to the laptop, because > it's currently running on my old web server, a noisy desktop PC running > Win2000 that I bought back in 1999. I tried to get the script to run on the > new iMac web server, but dealing with OSX's unixy innards is bloody fucking > hell, and I'm just grateful that I was at least able to get Apache running. > > And finally, last night I successfully upgraded my HTC Desire to Android 2.2 > using the installer HTC released specifically for US Cellular's version of > the phone. It has a WiFi tethering feature that had previously only been > available to rooted phones, and I'm pretty sure I could have easily bricked > my phone if I'd tried to root it. That'll come in handy in airports, where > there's usually only pay-for-play Boingo hotspots. WiFi tethering will turn > my phone into my own personal hotspot tapped into Verizon's 3G. >
