Speeding up an Acer Aspire One 722
I gave my out-of-box impression of the Acer Aspire One 722 last week. It’s completely unacceptable out of the box, and adequate when you do some basic cleanup on it. Now I’ve installed an Intel SSD in...
View ArticleSSDs are getting a boost
This year’s high-end laptops (such as the Macbook and Intel Ultrabooks) are going to be sporting SSDs that connect straight to the PCI Express bus, bypassing SATA altogether. Although the speed...
View ArticleMy $30 desktop PC upgrade
I built my main desktop PC three and a half years ago and have no complaints about it, save one. Hard to believe, but PC hardware has improved considerably in recent years. This weekend, I sunk $30...
View ArticleThe world’s fastest budget PC
So, a relative’s PC was getting a bit aged, and runs Windows XP, barely, so I talked them into an upgrade. I noticed that Micro Center had HP/Compaq DC5700s for $99. They were standard issue office PCs...
View ArticleWhat to look for in a motherboard
I’ve been building PCs for more than 20 years and I tend to keep them a very long time, so it occurred to me that someone might be interested in what I look for in a motherboard to ensure both a long,...
View ArticleInitial upgrade reports on the HP Stream and Pavilion Mini
Earlier this year at CES, HP introduced its HP Stream Mini ($180) and Pavilion Mini ($320 and $450) mini-desktops. They’re small, inexpensive, and in the case of the Stream, silent. They turn out to be...
View ArticleHow hard-coding your DNS can improve your security
I’ve long recommended hard-coding your DNS settings as a performance and reliability enhancement–here’s my guide for that–but it turns out it can be a security enhancement too. Botnets targetting...
View ArticleWhat to look for in a performance SSD
The Register has a nice writeup on performance SSDs. The only problem is that performance is really a matter of diminishing returns, and The Reg didn’t report on random I/O. The problem we run into is...
View ArticleNeed a good, cheap dual gigabit NIC? I have just the thing.
If you need gigabit ports for your home server or router project and you’re short on available expansion slots, I have just the thing. Home sysadmins have known for a while that you can get cheap PCI-X...
View ArticleUpgrading a Compaq Evo D510 for Windows 10 and beyond
I had an old Compaq Evo D510 full-size tower/desktop convertible PC, from the Pentium 4/Windows XP era, that I wanted to upgrade. The machine long ago outlived its usefulness–its Pentium 4 CPU is less...
View ArticleSave money on a PCIe dual NIC
I’ve written before how to get a standard PCI dual NIC for a low, low price–but what about a PCIe dual NIC? PCI Express needs love too, of course. It turns out it’s not hard to find a good, cheap The...
View ArticleGigabit card only connecting at 100mbps? Here’s the fix.
I finished a modernization project where I replaced all of my 100-megabit gear with gigabit-capable gear, including my cabling and router and access points. But after I replaced my last 100-megabit...
View ArticleMy $30 desktop PC upgrade
I built my main desktop PC three and a half years ago and have no complaints about it, save one. Hard to believe, but PC hardware has improved considerably in recent years. This weekend, I sunk $30...
View ArticleThe world’s fastest budget PC
So, a relative’s PC was getting a bit aged, and runs Windows XP, barely, so I talked them into an upgrade. I noticed that Micro Center had HP/Compaq DC5700s for $99. They were standard issue office PCs...
View ArticleInitial upgrade reports on the HP Stream and Pavilion Mini
Earlier this year at CES, HP introduced its HP Stream Mini ($180) and Pavilion Mini ($320 and $450) mini-desktops. They’re small, inexpensive, and in the case of the Stream, silent. They turn out to be...
View ArticleHow hard-coding your DNS can improve your security
I’ve long recommended hard-coding your DNS settings as a performance and reliability enhancement–here’s my guide for that–but it turns out it can be a security enhancement too. Botnets targetting...
View ArticleWhat to look for in a performance SSD
The Register has a nice writeup on performance SSDs. The only problem is that performance is really a matter of diminishing returns, and The Reg didn’t report on random I/O. The problem we run into is...
View ArticleNeed a good, cheap dual gigabit NIC? I have just the thing.
If you need gigabit ports for your home server or router project and you’re short on available expansion slots, I have just the thing. Home sysadmins have known for a while that you can get cheap PCI-X...
View ArticleUpgrading a Compaq Evo D510 for Windows 10 and beyond
I had an old Compaq Evo D510 full-size tower/desktop convertible PC, from the Pentium 4/Windows XP era, that I wanted to upgrade. The machine long ago outlived its usefulness–its Pentium 4 CPU is less...
View ArticleSave money on a PCIe dual NIC
I’ve written before how to get a standard PCI dual NIC for a low, low price–but what about a PCIe dual NIC? PCI Express needs love too, of course. It turns out it’s not hard to find a good, cheap The...
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