Steve

http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/

Looks like Google is experimenting with its image search technology.

-- Steve likey.

Interesting. The upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 was almost a no-brainer installation... save that immediately after reloading and setting itself up the video driver pooped out and left me staring at a black screen until I decided that enough was enough. Rebooting into "safe" mode and reinstalling the Catalyst utilities solved that problem. I'm wondering if the installer choked on my CrossfireX setup, though it's running beautifully now.

The system does feel snappier under Windows 7, and the memory footprint is down by about a quarter. I'm also noticing a lot more multi-core activity in routine work, though I'll admit that may be from me watching for it.

Oddly, though, upgrading means a demotion in my Windows Experience ranking... not because my hardware's running slower (it's most decidedly not) but because MS raised the bar on their rankings. Overall the system rates a 5.9 out of 8... but only because I didn't RAID the hard drive or use an SSD or something. Ignoring the drive read/write speed the system would be a 7.3 out of 8. For reference, Vista also rated my system a 5.9... out of 6.

The taskbar previews are very handy, and fast too. I'm definitely going to enjoy the "pin to taskbar" feature. IE8 renders extremely quickly, as well.

-- Steve's off to explore the Internet a bit more now with this thing to see what surprises await.

I'm about to take the plunge and upgrade to Windows 7.

Firstly I have to uninstall some software; two Catalyst utilities from ATI, and OneCare. (The latter is the biggie, as that's my antivirus at the moment. I'll have to download Security Essentials after the upgrade.)

Then insert Win7 disc into drive and faithfully obey all directions.

Then reinstall the Catalyst utilities and download new antivirus software.

And then check this sucker out.

-- Steve'll triumphantly post back when the upgrade is complete... or will post with wailing and gnashing of teeth if it duds outs.

I arrived home to find my upgrade copy of Windows 7 in the mailbox. I won't fire it up tonight, but I'm firing up the backup now and pushing the files off to my external hard drive.

Tomorrow night I'll do a full virus sweep and clean up... and then I think I'll wait until the weekend to do the upgrade itself.

-- Steve wants plenty of time as the upgrade advisor recommended uninstalling some pretty important utilities (including my ATI control utility) before upgrading.

Lousy night's sleep last night, to the point that I'm dragging my tail right now and am going to bust out some Emergency Coffee to reinforce the mug I've already drunk, but I did get something to grin about in my inbox this morning.

Microsoft just shipped my Windows 7 disc and sent me my tracking numbers. The estimated delivery time is in 10 days.

-- Steve'll be glad when it arrives.

Well, I'm staying home today too dammit. Throat's a lot better this morning, but head and chest are pretty rumbly-thumpy and I didn't sleep too well last night again.

I won't be napping much today... the unit upstairs is being remodelled. Much thumping of hammers and whining of power saws.

In an unrelated grump, for some reason Windows Media Centre has decided to double all the tracks on my ODST album now... so I won't be streaming it through to my Xbox until I track down why it's glitching like that. (Maybe there's a second copy of the files on my drive or something.) To suit my grumpy mood, I'm streaming the soundtrack for Evil Genius instead.

-- Steve's going to crank out some breakfast, bacon and eggs probably, and consider actually getting out of pajamas at some point in the day.

I'm overjoyed with the performance I've seen on "Dark Knight" at home, whose Core i7 processor seems to take everything I throw at it and ask for seconds. It's easily the most powerful computer I've ever owned^*, and I'm glad I bought it.

News out today boggles my mind, though, in that Intel just announced they've released a mobile version of the i7 that Dell (through its Alienware marquee) and others will build into desktop-replacement and gaming laptops. This 8-core CPU is a vast leap up in mobile processing power... though I suspect that the batteries on these devices will be mostly for show, as even the mobile version of the i7 will draw 55 watts under load. (My CPU peaks at 150W.)

-- Steve thinks there'll be a lot of waste heat coming off of these things too. Maybe "laptop" is the wrong term...

edited to add the following footnote:
^*This phrase annoys me now that I've had some time to reflect. The only computer I've ever bought that wasn't a step up from its predecessor is my Origami UMPC... which I bought for reasons other than horsepower. What I should have said is that "Dark Knight" is the most powerful computer I've owned with respect to its generation of hardware and in relation to the software available; I tend to buy second-rung to avoid the price premium at the top, but this system performs like top-rung hardware for a lower dollar cost than my previous second-rung systems. That's what leaves me breathless.

MSI's motherboard support software is a lot more mighty than I anticipated.

There's a utility you can install called "OverClock Center" that gives you real-time access to performance numbers on the motherboard (temperatures, voltages, clock rates, fan speeds, etc) and adjust settings right from Windows... no need to exit to BIOS or set DIPs or jumpers. You can create user profiles of your own, or use (or adjust) six different pre-set profiles according to your expectations of the system. (Game mode, Cinema mode, Silent mode, etc.) On top of that, OverClock Center can run autonomously and change values on-the-fly according to system load; under low-demand circumstances this morning, just browsing some html sites, I noted it'd underclocked my system by 50% without perceptably affecting the browsing experience.

I knew it overclocked on demand, as I saw it drive my 2.66GHz chip to 3.0GHz when running Crysis, but I didn't know it could underclock/undervolt to save wear and power when the extra resources aren't needed.

-- Steve loves living in the future.

I may have just wasted $30, but before I give up I thought I'd check with you.

My purchase was a USB-parallel port converter cable, as my ancient HP Deskjet 680c was sitting idle (with nearly-new ink cartriges!) and "Dark Knight" doesn't have a parallel port. However, now that I've got it installed it doesn't seem to be able to find Vista drivers for the ancient thing, and the generics don't work too well.

I sought the wisdom of Google-fu, but HP's official site didn't help (they don't have any) and all the sites listing drivers for the 680c were either for earlier OSes or came with dodgey installers or email-harvesting front faces.

So, my question to you; is there a trustworthy site for unofficial drivers for old hardware? Are there hobbyists out there making home-brew drivers for old technology?

-- Steve won't be heart-broken if the answer to both is "no", but it'd be a pity as the ol' clunker has been going strong since Windows 3.11.

While poking about on "Dark Knight" I noted that there were two icons for Internet Explorer, one of which was labelled "64-bit". Curiosity struck and I clickied it... and found that an already snappy Internet experience got even snappier.

However, I don't think I'll make it my default quite yet... YouTube and Silverlight content don't function in that browser. I'm not software-wonkish enough to know why.

Oh well.

-- Steve'll use the high-bit version for stuff with lots of text and images, then swap to the low-bit version for video and audio content.

Looks like my Sympatico (or perhaps Bell Internet, now, with the rebranding) account just got a service upgrade; I've gone from 5Mb/s (4.25 down, .75 up) to 7Mb/s (6.25 down, .75 up) this morning. And things are notably spritlier on the Internet front.

-- Steve's just hoping that this doesn't mean a fare increase is coming along with it.

Well, I guess I had to at some point or another. I downloaded and installed the Crysis demo yesterday evening just to see how this system would handle it.

As it turns out, rather well. I used the demo's auto detection and it suggested that everything be set to "high"... though it defaulted to 1024x768 instead of 1280x1024 resolution. I bumped up the resolution to the latter and turned of Anti-Aliasing, then gave it a shot.

Mechanically it was excellent; though there was no built-in frame counter I didn't encounter any slow-downs or stuttering. There was an awful v-synch artifact (horizontal lines scrolling down the screen) that I couldn't address in the settings (poor form, Crytek; poor form indeed) but it disappeared when I switched from full-screen to windowed view. Odd. In any case, though, to my eye it appeared to support a framerate higher than 30fps even in the tight-and-crazy action. (I did try it with anti-aliasing and did find some stutter in cutscenes, though.)

Case temperature remained under my scare value, with the CPU reaching 50°C, the mo-bo 49°, and the system hotspot (the southbridge) staying below 72°. And that's with a game notorious as a system crusher... so I guess I shouldn't worry so much about heat build-up.

As far as gameplay goes... well, I didn't like the earlier Far Cry very much and Crysis is basically the same game in a prettier wrapper. It's competant as a shooter and the "open world" approach does grant the illusion of freedom, but the AI seems woefully artificial to me (though I'll grant its intelligence) and I found the story pedestrian; the combat is involving, but it's just an exercise in sneeking and use of iron- (or reflex-) sights. I won't be buying the retail version any time soon.

-- Steve did find it very pretty, though, and it actted as an excellent "proving ground" for "Dark Knight".

I just finished filling out my order form for the free Windows 7 (64-bit) Home Premium upgrade. I didn't realise that I had to fill it out in advance; it's a good thing I was browsing through the boxes looking for the "Intel Inside" nameplate that I seem to have misplaced, and noted that the upgrade card wasn't a standard download code but was an order form for a DVD.

Microsoft right now is showing that my DVD will ship on November 5th; presuming the usual Canada Post delivery times I'll get it the following Wednesday. That would actually be convenient, as I have the Thursday and Friday off and can spend at least part of that time upgrading the system.

-- Steve'll now go back to looking for (and hopefully finding) that vanity plate.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/gaming/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=091&active_tab=systemRequirements

According to my former Dark Masters at Mount Doom, I can unplug the controller from my Xbox360 and plug it into my computer. Plug n' Play, too, so the drivers'll just autoinstall and away I go. Now, I wonder if it'll work with that copy of Freespace...

-- Steve was browsing online for joysticks and finding them thin on the ground these days. Maybe this is why.

I heard something on CBC radio's "Dispatches" documentary series this afternoon that suggests that "One Laptop Per Child" might actually work, much to my surprise. Apparently Uruguay has reached the mark for its students first, and their experience seems favourable even with the inevitable hiccups.

-- Steve's posting this to remind him to take another look tomorrow, and perhaps to link to the mp3 of the show if possible.

Well, final unless my other nefarious plan comes to fruition and I decide to take a shot of that. But in any case, here's a large (600x450, 80k) photo of the last cabling I did.

( Behind a cut to spare folks on narrow screens or bandwidth )
Not as neat a job as I'd hoped... the disadvantage of this power supply over the Cooler Master I'd originally planned on installing is that this has fixed (instead of modular) power cabling. So the gigantic Power Kraken had a lot of tentacles that had to be nylon-tied together and stuffed into the leftover optical bays. That, and the cables' outputs are linked four or five to a line (aside from the PCI-e, CPU, and motherboard dedicated cables) so the extra connections along the line made the bundles lumpier. Also, there's a bit of a dearth of good anchor-places inside the Sileo 500 case, and given the titanic lump of surplus cable I didn't trust the peel-and-stick hooks supplied to support the weight.

Still, I've got good airflow in the case (save for the annoying but unavoidable problem of having the southbridge heatsink, already somewhat hot, right under one of the video cards) so the machine runs cooler than even my little 40W Samsung Q1; the only after-market cooling I'm considering would be an extra clip-on fan to boost airflow over the southbridge/VGA collision.

And here the Dark Knight is in operation, in the dedicated tower slot of my faux-maple desk. Please excuse the fish-eye effect as I had to use a wide-angle zoom; the next stage is getting rid of the boxes and other detritus.

-- Steve feels a certain pride of accomplishment in designing and building his own system from scratch. Maybe he'll do the same next time... in six or eight years, hopefully.

Regarding my desktop "Dark Knight", those who've been following along may have noted my lament that the third PCI-e slot on my motherboard, into which I'd planned to fit a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium card, is masked by the coolling fan of one of my graphics cards... I didn't realise during planning that Sapphire had changed spec and made their HD4850s double-width to improve air flow.

It's not that the slot is *occupied*, mind you, just that there's a honkin' big fan overtop it so that a card won't fit into that slot. But a cable would... is there such a thing as a ribbon cable that I can slot into a PCI-e x4 expansion slot as an "extension cord", and then screw-mount the X-Fi card into a vacant bay while connected to the mo-bo by this cable?

-- Steve's Google-fu is weak, but that may be because he doesn't know the terminology to describe such a device in a technical fashion.

All hail OneCare, from which I have just managed to recover to my replacement hard drive every document from a total, physical hardware failure of the first water. I will never, ever begrudge the backup routine ever, ever again.

-- Steve hates that it took an afternoon and evening to rebuild the entire system, but at least nothing got lost save for one, lone game-save.

Just back from the store with a brand new hard disc. Apparently, the previous one physically failed in use and was actually digging the heads into the lower platters. Total write- off, and the service guy says he's never seen this model fail this way without being smashed by an outside trauma....which wasn't evident in my case.

So, back to square one on setting up Vista... let's hope I can save some time on the rest of the restoration.

-- Steve's glad he's not out-of-pocket on this, at least.

My primary hard drive in DK just absolutely failed, to the point that BIOS doesn't even recognise it. Just in case I swapped cables, power, and ever SATA port but no-go... and I was halfway through backing it up when it crapped out.

Dammit.

-- Steve'll take a shower, grab a quick lunch, and take the silly thing back.