That's because XP used the NT kernel and 98 was a DOS shell.

Since we're on a backup jag here, how many who have claimed to have sufficient backup also have an offsite backup?

If you houze burnz down, you has no backupz.

TAPE DRIVE BABY.

Nah, I wont claim to have some crazy backup system at all. Honestly I dont have anything absolutely critical on my computer. Just some niceties really.

Tape Drive = ftl

I use Shadow Protect on my computers. Image the entire drive after software, current SP, etc is installed...and is working properly lol. Then that image goes to my folk's house. Files get backed up incrementally on an external RAID.

At home I have no vital information that if lost I would care about.
Mainly because much of my data is pictures, movies, etc. So any hard copy of that information will also go up in the flames unless I am able to acquire it before it all goes down.
We still use tape drives at my office for off site back up use, load the tape once a week and then it gets stored away. For local back ups we have gone to blu-ray as we were going through 6 DVDs minimum and we need something local that is not hard drive based.

I have a fire safe with a 2 hour rating, typical exposure time for a house fire is 30-60 minutes. If you live in an apartment/condo the fires are much bigger, so offsite is your best option.

I occasionally throw a copy of the important stuff in there, along with important documents like passports, SS cards etc. Wife stores her jewelery in there too after she had a couple of nice pieces go missing.

The online services such as mozy.com / carbonite.com are a good option for some.

Anyone ever test the backups and do a restore? You'd be amazed how many times clients of mine "thought" they had a good backup, only to find................

Speaking of backups, online storage is also very worthwhile, and has become stupid cheap.

Intel X25-M for the desktop and Crucial SSD for the laptop! :D
I still have the RaptorX for apps, games, digital audio recording/editing, and some video editing. I disabled paging for the X25-M after the fresh install, so Win7 is currently eating up 10GB. Not too shabby. Hopefully it doesn't bloat too much after months of updates.

Win7 got rid of SuperFetch? Sweet... no wonder it felt so nice. I bought 2 sets of G.Skill 2x2GB DDR3 1333MHz memory for around $140-150 total. I'm currently RMA'ing one set. Once my graphics card arrive, then I can do full blown memory testing. It's nice to be able to boot up and test the build with 1GB of memory!

Nice. I'm running a Gigabyte i-RAM, it's about 2 yrs old...time for an upgrade one of these days. Works great with WoW and video apps, though. Yeah, baby, who needs paging! Meh, 10GB these days...:tup:

I had it about 8 months ago when they were just looking for it. On top of that I have been working on computers for over 12 years and now going to school for it. Ya I own a mac but that is my personal computer. Considering I do not like working and worrying about catching viruses from other computers or hard drives I work with I use a mac for that purpose. I still will not upgrade to 7 even though the system resource usage has been cut down a lot. Also that is all it is a service pack smaller foot print and better graphics. :p

How do you like the ddr 3 as apposed to ddr 2? I was hearing that the ddr2 is actually faster to a point.

DDR2 vs. DDR3 | NordicHardware

DDR3 is still early in its life, i7 should take advantage of DDR3 nicely but 2010 will see the jump from DDR2 to DDR3 in solid testing.
If you really believe it is just a service back I am sorry, but your 12 years of working on computers might need to be reevaluated on what you know.

Ya I think with the quad core possessors and the new SATA tripling in speed and even faster graphics cards comping out we will see the full potential of ddr 3 and 7. Windows released this instead of a service pack just to put vista behind them. I look at it as being a cut down version of vista. Call it what you will but it is what it is. When I have 3 teachers all saying the same thing I have to agree with them. Than working with it first hand ya that is all it is. But I will agree too disagree.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea...nology_preview



"A service pack?
But what is Windows 7, exactly? A service pack for Vista? Well, yes and no, says Barnicle in a phone call I had with him Tuesday afternoon. “This is an evolution of Vista rather than a revolution,” says Barnicle. In his opinion, many of the things they chucked from Vista are showing up in Windows 7. Hmm. Sounds like a service pack."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1182...a-service-pack

IMO, unless I'm trying to break overclocking world records, RAM speed doesn't matter much to me nowadays. I don't even notice a speed difference. So I try to get the most economical mainstream RAM (i.e., low price) with decent speed ratings. For my Core2Duo setup, it was DDR2 800MHz with decent timings. For the i5, I grabbed DDR3 1333MHz. I don't plan on doing much overclocking. In fact, I'm thinking about UNDERvolting the CPU since this is a quiet HTPC setup. I think I notice more responsiveness with faster hard drive or SSD than I do with RAM. ;)

SATA II is definitely getting saturated with SSDs getting faster. To get the full bandwidth, one must resort to external controller cards (i.e., Fusion-IO :drool:).

I wouldn't under volt your CPU it will not be as efficient as it would be with the standard or required voltage.

Ya the SATA 2 is going to be sick, that and usb 3 "drool"

For a HTPC it does not matter as much, your goal is quiet, cool, and GPU ready. CPU power is not a huge requirement, it usually falls on the GPU and memory, and depending on other items it could be transfer speed (Both HDD & network).

SuperFetch is one of the things that makes Win7 feel fast. Superfetch learns which apps you use over time, then the OS proactively caches them in RAM. This prevents/minimizes hard faults when you access your frequently used applications. It just does it better than it did in Vista.

If you don't believe me, just try turning it off and see what happens :-)

Win7 in general also makes much better use of RAM - you will see more RAM in use for caching purposes - which is a good thing. The more memory that's on the modified or standby lists, the less the system hard faults to the hard drive, which is slow as dirt.

Huh? I suggest you learn your tech before spouting off, you're just talking baloney now.

Not really the cpu's are made for a specific voltage by going UNDER that you are starving it for power. You are not going to get it's full potential that way. It is like putting a really small intake on a hemi you are going to starve the engine.

You are half righ big well 90% right. By starving the CPU of the required voltage and what it was made to get, you are not going to get the max performance. But it will still be able to be ran. You are also going to void the warranty by doing this.

But you have to realize the purpose of what he is using the CPU for, this is not for any CPU intensive program. This is for a HTPC, which is GPU/memory first, network/HDD transfer rate next, then CPU at the end. The purpose of the HTPC is quiet/cool machines, it is very common for people buy slightly beefier CPUs for HTPCs and underclock them to create quieter/cooler results.

Negative, undervolting/overclocking does not void any warranty. It is like tuning a car, you do not void the warranty but if you go to far and fry the chip (i.e. blow the engine) then yes you are SOL.

Again, nothing personal, but what is your field? Saying you've worked on computers for 12 years means nothing to me lol. Anyone in their 20's could say that really.

To be fair, Ive been building them since I was 8 years old (Im 26 now). I mainly self-taught everything I knew including some basic programming languages until high school when I formally took 2 years of programming. I then enlisted in the military with an official job of Computer Programmer, and have 5.5 years of that under my belt. My new area of expertise however, is network security (yes, its a very broad term, but I cant say much more than that).

Im not trying to flex the e-peen here - I guess I'm just trying to prove a point: if you say you know a lot about something, but you make the most generic statements out there, you better back it up with a lot of hardcore experience and proof of knowledge lol.

So yes that is voiding the warranty if you fry the chip it is your fault. Also if you take a tuned car into the shop and something is wrong they are going to see the mods and tare going to tell you the warranty is voided. As speed said you can under clock it but it will still void the warranty because you are ignoring the recommended and required voltage regulations for that chip. But I am done, agree to disagree or what not.

Back to the subject, yes 7 is much more stable than vista and runs smoother as well.

Not at all.

If a CPU has a stock voltage of 2.5V and you can successfully run it under load at 2.0V then it will run at the same speed with exactly the same performance. Over volting it to 2.8V is the same thing, the CPU will run with identical performance (given that you don't change the bus speed), the only change is heat output.

That cool same here built my first at age 7, self taught by reading maximum pc, pc world and so on. Also bugging any computer tech that I came accost in school. Been working building and repairing them for 12 years. Now I am in school for Computer Science and Networking. I have already tested out of 2 classes and the one I am in now is pretty easy as well.

As I have already said what I had to say. I am not going to continue to hijack this thread further.

No, what you are saying is that if you under/overvolt it is voided, that is incorrect. If you properly change the voltage without frying the card your warranty is safe, just as easily you can take a tuned car back to a stock tune you can easily return a CPU back to stock voltage.

Many Mobo's, especially AMD ones, can automatically undervolt the CPU anyway to be more "green" (lawl) and quiet.

Exactly, I know a few people at AMD working with MSI and a few other motherboard manufacturers who work in the "HTPC" division. I say this because it basically has become that for the low end CPUs, and they are helping build motherboards that underclock when the CPU is below a certain usage. Also, they are helping these motherboard manufacturers build boards that are more HTPC friendly, built in HDMI (already there), proper audio outputs, and even talks of onboard storage to run OS/video playback programs.

A persistent Linux install on a thumb drive is always somewhat viable, but something that can read/write faster (USB3.0 wru?!) would be optimal...

Exactly, but a Linux distro might be a bit "confusing" or "difficult" for the average user who just wants to plug in a HTPC and be able to watch movies. I think the idea they are working towards is something along the lines where basically buy a HTPC and are 100% ready to go, ability to play all movies/music. This way the OS stays clean but can be used as a computer as well, but everything will be stored on a normal hard drive as the motherboard setup will not be writeable (other than Windows update). This idea is a ways away as it will take all sides in on it.

I got the upgrade media last night and quickly swapped out the slow as molasses hard drive in the Lenovo U330. I did the clean install followed by upgrade install from within Windows before activating the key online. It worked like a charm! :tup: The laptop is so much more responsive like a typical desktop.

Ah, I finally had time to dig into Win7 and work on some optimizations. Win7 memory management is definitely much nicer than before. I had SuperFetch disabled in Vista because it kept grinding the hard drive. I did the same with my laptop as well and I've never had any issues. It is also one of the optimization suggestions for users with SSDs.

You can't quite compare airflow and electron flow. The transistor design and construction on various classes of processors are no different. The silicon parts are speed tested, graded, and binned. For example, a 2GHz and a 3GHz CPU can technically be the same design on the same silicon and wafer. The 2GHz part may have been graded to run optimal at its specified clock and voltages. If there is a shortage of 2GHz parts, a 3GHz part can be down clocked (and specify lower operating voltage) and be sold as a 2GHz part.

I never heard of undervolting a processor voiding warranty or starving the processor. Desktop and mobile processors have the ability to change clock speed and voltage requirements on the fly depending on processor load.

True, you can starve the CPU by not feeding enough juice and render the system unstable. Well, that's because that piece of silicon wasn't one of the lucky ones.

DIGI, you are spot-on. BTW, I haven't been keeping up with bus speed lately, what are the latest specs for the front-side bus on the Intel platform? Sorry, too lazy to google, lol, gotta run out.

Spook alert ! You may have noticed bobo's location is "baltimore/dc"... the mid-point of those two towns is the NSA located at Fort Meade / Laurel, MD. :eekdance:

Im watching you, Travis...you're on "the list" now...

LOL!

I don't know if FSB is still the term to use with i5 and i7 as they now refer to QPI. However, my BIOS indicates an adjustable base frequency of 133MHz and 20x multiplier (2.660 GHz). My system is still in pieces (have to remove optical drive cage to mess with memory). [shrugs] I don't keep myself updated with this stuff either haha.

Ha! Already on all those lists! :rolleyes:

Oh I'm sure there's more we can put you on! :rofl2: