A local/internet store in my area and myself have made me a very happy techie 2day! I’ve been hunting for deals because I recently I started building a new budget, hardcore gaming system for my home. I know…. what did I say? Budget and hardcore within the same sentence? Hell yes! I’ll create a build log of everyone to follow (No0B Friendly).

Throughout the past few days I’ve been hunting for a case and through this process I came across an advertisement I could NOT pass up. The Microcenter has the Intel Q6600 monster listed at $199.99 USD! I was shocked when I saw this and didn’t believe it at all. Everywhere I checked within the same 3 hours of running into this ad, the processor was listed in between $265 to $285 USD. So what gives? When I flipped through the Microcenter’s website, I ran into other ads that had this processor listed at $265 USD. Whenever you are faced with this problem, you should talk to your community.

I went to google and researched the price. It’s true throughout the community; everyone’s talking about the Microcenter deal. I drove to my local Microcenter and got me a Q6600 for $209 USD (including taxes). I am a very happy person! I saved about $100.00 USD on this purchase! To top that off, it comes with a 3 year Manufacture warranty.

Some time tonight, I’ll create a pc build site that everyone will be able to understand (even the No0Bz), I’ll post a news item about Microcenter’s financial problems and do a bunch of other stuff.

In the mean time, enjoy this clip of my desktop/browser clip, which advertises my purchase!!!

This is the congrats on your new purchase. Let’s unpack and power up. This series of tutorials also relates to a re-installation of your machine (currently, this is my hell).

So you just bought the machine or completely re-installed everything! Now what? If you’re an experienced user, you know what you want and you will begin to customize your machine the way you want it. If you are a noob, you need help and you will most likely customize as you go.

Your first steps should be based on what machine you have and want you value. If you have a desktop, you could get right down to junk-ware removal and if you have a laptop (like myself), you could start off with the power settings.

The machine I will be working with is an HP DV6308NR Laptop.

The first thing I chose to handle after my initial power on of my machine, was to tweak my power settings. When I got past the initial setup screens and Vista was fully loaded, I went through the power options icon to tweak my power settings.

(Why do I value power options? Heat is a top killer of pc’s and laptops. Like many people who own the DV6000 and DV9000 series of laptops, my broadcom wireless adapter overheated and fried. I’m currently on the internet with a USB-wireless adapter that I keep in my PC tool box. I will now invest in a laptop cooler!)

#1= Edit HP Recommended Power Plan:

• In you lower right hand corner or your screen near your clock, look for your power options icon and click on it once. Here’s what you will see:
  
• The quickest way to access the power plan area through this window is to click on the “More power options” link; here is what will open:
  
• To tweak the “HP Recommended” power plan settings, click on the “change plan settings” link under the “HP Recommended” category. This will open the edit plan settings, within the current window you have open. Here’s the shot of what it looks like:
  

Please NOTE: I want my HP recommended plan to always be my high performance plan while plugged in and running on the battery.

• Based on my needs, I set the “Turn off the display” setting to NEVER, on battery and plugged in.
• I also set the “Put the computer to sleep” setting to NEVER, on battery and plugged in.
• Then I set the “Adjust display brightness” setting to half-way brightness, on battery and full brightness while plugged in.
  Here’s what the change will look like:
  

Just when you think you’re done, the real tweaking begins…

• To fully tweak the HP Recommended plan, click on the “Change advanced power settings” link and the Advanced settings window will open:
  

Here’s what I set all of my power options to, within the HP Recommended plan:

1. Additional Settings
   Require a password on wakeup
   On Battery: No
   Plugged in: No
2. Hard disk
   Turn off hard disk after
   On Battery: Never
   Plugged in: Never
3. Wireless Adapter Settings
   Power Saving Mode
   On Battery: Maximum Performance
   Plugged in: Maximum Performance
4. Sleep
   Sleep after
   On Battery: Never
   Plugged in: Never
   
   Allow hybrid sleep
   On Battery: Off
   Plugged in: Off
   
   Hibernate after
   On Battery: Never
   Plugged in: Never
5. USB settings
   USB selective suspend setting
   On Battery: Disabled
   Plugged in: Disabled
6. Power buttons and lid
   Lid close action
   On Battery: Do nothing
   Plugged in: Do nothing
   
   Power button action
   On Battery: Shut down
   Plugged in: Shut down
   
   Sleep button action
   On Battery: Hibernate
   Plugged in: Hibernate
   
   Start menu power button
   On Battery: Hibernate
   Plugged in: Hibernate
7. PCI Express
   Link State Power Management
   On Battery: Off
   Plugged in: Off
   
   
8. Processor power management
   Minimum processor state
   On Battery: 100%
   Plugged in: 100%
   
   Maximum processor state
   On Battery: 100%
   Plugged in: 100%
9. Search and Indexing
   Power Savings Mode
   On Battery: High Performance
   Plugged in: HighPerformance
10. Display
    Turn off display after
    On Battery: Never
    Plugged in: Never
    
    Adaptive display
    On Battery: On
    Plugged in: On
    
    Display brightness
    On Battery: 50%
    Plugged in: 100%
11. Multimedia settings
    When sharing media
    On Battery: Prevent idling to sleep
    Plugged in: Prevent idling to sleep
    
12. Battery
    Critical battery level
    On Battery: Hibernate
    Plugged in: Do nothing
    
    Low battery level
    On Battery: 5%
    Plugged in: 5%
    
    Critical battery level
    On Battery: 3%
    Plugged in: 3%
    
    Low battery notification
    On Battery: On
    Plugged in: On
    
    Low battery action
    On Battery: Do nothing
    Plugged in: Do nothing

TO BE CONTINUED…

As the title states…. grrrr, this has caused me to take drastic actions. I will update this post and relate to the title. For now, as I perform multiple actions I will post about my experience on a new laptop, software installation and customization.

On a personal note, I composed a news article about COMPUSA’s down fall within the .i.T.News site of the HoW2WiKi home. I originally, wrote the article here within the .i.T.LIFe BLOG and an update is in order.

 Systemax has purchased or…. taken over COMPUSA from the bank that probably would have killed the company. This is a good move because now there’s another mod shop that will offer competative prices. Anyway, I wanted to briefly comment on this issue before I moved on to my daily whatevers…

PS: My original article about COMPUSA’s downfall is here (within the .i.T.LIFe BLOG) and also here (within the HoW2WiKi .i.T.News) and the update is here (COMPUSA IS ALIVE, within the HoW2WiKi .i.T.News).

Posted in the .i.T.LIFe BLOG.

A little about Dell’s retail strategy.

Recent information that came my way inspired my thought’s about what Dell plans to do with it’s merchandise. Recently, a Dell representative clarified that most of their lower end and cost sving machines will be available through their retailers. One the other hand, their high end and cash burning product’s will be available through the internet. They believe, mainly sophisticated users use their site to purchase very expensive products. Why would they think in such a manner? Is it because their site allows customization of a pc and most normal users don’t know what hardware they want? They know they’ll need to type stuff, play games or music and video there lives away.

Personally, I believe Dell should have all flavors of their products available on their site for purchase. Not everyone lives near one of their retailers. If you want to fully c

Hello, today a certain local and internet store has made me a very happy techie! I’m now building a new low budget, HIGH end gaming system and I am scoring brand new parts at dirt cheap prices. I love it!

While searching for a new case, I came across an ad by the micro center. They advertised a q6600 (limit one per household), boxed proc at $199.99 (+ local taxes). That’s an awesome deal. This ad is only on their front page; www.microcenter.com and it is not listed (officially) anywhere else at this price. Of course, you’ll see everyone talking about this buy throughout the internet. Within any Microcenter paper ad and online ad (other than the initial front page) this processor is listed at $265 to $280 USD.

This is the processor I wanted. I pln on running this proc at an average speed of 3.6. I am building a liquid cooling setup and I can’t wait. Why should I pay $285.00 USD (+ taxes)

Ethernet switches…

I was recently overlooking a piece of information that discussed 10/100 Ethernet switches and from my perception, it seems the author was a little amazed that they are still in production. Hello? Where have you been for the past 50 years? ISO (Industry Standard Organization), Ethernet 10/100 is a standard that will be around for many years to come. Yes, Gigabit Ethernet is speedy and the new wave of the future. But it will not replace 10/100 anytime soon. Let’s compare this minor situation to the ATX standard. It is one of the grandfather’s of motherboard layouts. We are in 2008 and motherboard manufacturer’s are still using this layout. Roughly, the ATX standard is around 13 years old (in human years); between you and I, let’s call it 91 (you know the average doggy age 7=1), it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

I am not protesting the murder of 10/100, Gigabit is a great idea. If I ran a media company or heavy media usage at home (internally), I would have a Gigabit Ethernet network. The extra bandwidth would be beautiful. For the moment, my house is wired for 10/100 and wireless. This is sufficient for the mobile laptop usage, my home brewed game and in general file servers. I even watch and stream audio/video through my network without any problems.

I sound like I’m complaining. I’m not and this discussion is now over. If anyone is interested, come on over, I’ll host the brews and deathmatch!

A lot of people will agree that Ubuntu isn’t ready for mass deployment. Why? It’s not a 100% easy to use, user friendly— er, I mean nood friendly. Even though it does have a lot of great features that are built in, it is still for advanced techies and users. You have to know what you want with this Operation system. I love it, but I hated waisting hours trying to get my wireless card to connect at 54Mbps. I had to settle for the “restricted drivers” and operate at 24Mbps. I know, many of you will say there are work-arounds to it, well for the moment, there aren’t any for me. This is a long story that I will talk about another time.

Right now I want to focus on Beryl and Ubuntu’s visually beautiful world. With Ubuntu 7.10, Beryl is automatically installed. The only difference is the name, it’s called compiz. There are a lot of features of compiz that are not enabled or automatica

I found a great place to host my .i.T.News. The HoW2WiKi! I love the content management system they have that organizes news articles. The .i.T.LIFe BLOG will no longer be the home of any News related items. I have no intentions of running a news related site, but I need a place where I can have my news articles. I know a blog seems like a great place, but this is already crowded with other information. From now on please visit the HoW2WiKi for all .i.T.News that I feel like discussing. I’ll even copy over the existing news content from the .i.T.LIFe BLOG into HoW2WiKi.

http://how2wiki.ryanjb.com/index.php?option=com_
content&task=section&id=1&Itemid=2

.i.T.News

I’ve made my mind up on a content management system I will use on my HoW2WiKi site. I know, it took me a week and during this time I have neglected all of my sites and content (in general). I chose to use Joomla; it’s very powerful and easy to use/customize. Now I can spend hours on mastering the site instead of hours in code that gets me no where.

visit www.joomla.com and check out their product.

Also, importantly don’t forget to visit http://how2wiki.ryanjb.com