And I'm pleased with it.
Performance:

The overall Windows Experience Index is 5.4, which I believe is pretty good. The limiting subscore (5.4) is the disks, actually, and they are very high-speed SATA II 7200-RPM drives, though you can get 10,000 RPM drives which should be faster yet. The highest subscore is the Windows Aero graphics, 5.9. Everything else falls between, so the system is reasonably well balanced.
Quietness:
When there is
nothing else going on in the room, TV and the old computer turned off, sitting at my desk, I can hear a faint, low-pitched roar similar to the sound you hear by holding a large seashell up to your ear, but certainly not that loud. It has a resonance to it, despite my efforts to dampen sounds inside the box. I think that the rear fan is the origin of most of the noise. It's not objectionable, because it's faint, but I will probably try to do more to limit the sound, such as:
Click to continue reading "The Computer Is Built!"
Written by Don on November 4th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on quiet and otherSoftware and hard drive and raid and vista.
You cannot imagine life without Firefox but over time, your favorite browser keeps getting slower and slower.
Not only is it slow, Firefox sometimes hangs for no reason, consumes a large amount of memory and CPU usage can climb to 90% or more when you have multiple tabs open simultaneously.
You have uninstalled most of the extensions and toolbars, deleted all the cookies and internet temporary files, cleared up the file download queue and disabled the background check for software updates but none of this has helped you speed-up Firefox. (more…)
cpu usage,
Firefox,
firefox add ons,
hard drive,
Internet,
new profile,
profile folder,
software updates,
temporary files,
Web
Written by Jason on November 3rd, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on software updates and new profile and temporary files and cpu usage and profile folder and firefox add ons and hard drive and Internet and Firefox and Internet and Web and Web.
The Intel E6750 Boxed CPU and three Western Digital 320-Gb SATA hard drives arrived today, and now all of the parts are here. I set everything except the case out on the picnic table for a photo. Out of several photos, my sweetie liked this one with fall color in the background :-)

Then I downloaded an Intel video that demonstrates how to install the processor and "thermal solution" (fan + heat sink) on the Intel DP35DP motherboard. After playing the video once, I played it again and did the installation while watching the video. What makes it tricky is that dozens upon dozens of tiny pins on the motherboard socket must match up with a similar number of contact lands on the CPU wafer, without bending any of the pins.
And the CPU is just a wafer at this point, not fragile exactly but the motherboard pins are. You are supposed to set the square wafer straight down on the pins without sliding it at all, but I must admit that when I set it down it wasn't perfectly aligned and it...
Click to continue reading "Everything is Here"
Written by Don on October 23rd, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on E6750 and G.Skill and mirrored disks and otherSoftware and computer and hard drive and Computer.