Well, a semester's hard work paid off. I just finished the second of my A+ exams, the Operating Systems portion. I passed, by the skin of my teeth, but I still passed. The best part of it is, I completed my certification within my 90 days' probationary period with my employer, a fact that's virtually guaranteed to factor in come raise time. Now, if you'll excuse me, this new A+ certified tech needs to go take a NAP!
(Putting coin in the cup and requesting a "Linux" topic in the PC category on the forums). OK. Step one is out of the way, and Ubuntu has been installed on my Linux test machine (PIII 866 Mhz, 256 MB RAM, 10 GB hard drive). The video looks sweet; I'm beginning to think the "problems" I was told about when I bought the computer were XP compatibility issues and not hardware problems, as they do not appear in Ubuntu. That's good; I don't have to find or scrounge a video card and driver to get th...
I have been online pretty consistently for ten years now. Previously I had dabbled in computers, but only dabbled. Since March of 1997, and my 166 MhZ Acer Aspire, I have been online consistently and dealt with just about every operating system Windows has put out. Some years back I played with the idea of Linux, got a copy of Red Hat Linux and was not able to install it properly. I know what the problems were now, but with nobody to guide me I ditched the idea of Linux. Windows was easier, a...
As I'm working on the TRS-80 case mod, I'm still a bit away from doing the build I want. I have a couple of questions for any veterans that might be patronizing this board. First up is the mini-ITX. I like the possibilities it presents, but the lack of upgradeability, as well as the limited options it presents as far as PCI slots, SATA headers, etc, kind of turns me off. I'm believing I can wedge a microATX in there once I make some standouts and take out a few internal components that get in...
Unlike a lot of computer geeks, I like Microsoft. Partly because I remember a world before Microsoft, a world in which the Internet would have been unlikely due to the need to create drivers for a number of diverse operating systems, not to mention the lack of desire of the average EU to hone up on computer skills. But I am not an automatic fan of all of Microsoft's innovations. I like Vista, LOVE Media Player 11, but will not at the moment download IE7. It shouldn't matter terribly, as IE...
As a Linux fan, I am fast considering Linux to be an essential tool for a PC repair technician. While I enjoy it as a standalone operating system, I am finding it to be a helpful tool even in a Windows environment. It's not infrequent to find a computer with healthy hardware but an operating system that has somehow gone south. Longtime Windows users have probably experienced that one time or another. While I personally backup my data, not everybody does, and there may be information on the dr...
As I have mentioned several times previously, I will be purchasing a laptop that I will be using to run virtual machines. I am planning to use VMWare server to run these apps. On another machine, I have attemped unsucessfully to install Windows 95/98 (don't ask!). I am not sure but I believe the problems are related to the file format (FAT/FAT32 vs. NTFS). Assuming this is the case (please correct me if it is not), I would like to find the answers to the following: Do I need to create a pa...
As a second year IT student at a two year college, I get a lot of questions thrown at me. And since I'm actually GRADUATING at a school where graduation is, sadly, the exception rather than the rule (there are students who've been here over 5 years...as FULL TIME students...who still have not gotten a degree), my opinion among the IT students is given more weight than it should. The most frequent question I am asked is about my opinion on Windows Vista. One of the students asked me what opera...
OK, I need to ask a few questions. In a couple of weeks, I will be buying a new laptop. I need some thoughts and suggestions, with the following in mind: 1) I'm not a Mac fanboi. If you are, hey, no prob, but I assure you, Mac is not even where I am going with this. 2) It needs to be brand new. Warranty, warranty, warranty. 3) OS: Windows Vista. I have my reasons (I will be running VMWare on the machine, but I need a Vista platform to start with). 4) Memory: 2GB bare minimum (Vista a...
I've heard a lot about Dells and proprietary hardware. Enough so that when looking for more memory for my computer that badly needs upgrading from its 256 MB state, I went to the Dell site first. They wanted $90 for a 512mb stick of RAM, $150 for 1 GB. Well, I know I can beat that price. The question is, will Dell take it? So i hunted it down on Newegg, which is kind enough to feature a memory configuration checker of some sort...something that TigerDirect doesn't do, to my knowledge. My mach...
I am sick to death of Mac snobs. In variably in any discussion with Mac fanbois, they will cry about Microsoft being a monopoly. Yeah, uh huh. Keep crying because your computer manufacturer was insanely stupid. The computer company that really brought the idea of upgradeability to personal computing, now puts out boxes that can't be upgraded. The computer company that started serious work on GUI, yet didn't have the foresight to protect it so that Microsoft could use it to create competing op...
The question was asked on another blog about why anyone would insist on 64 bit computing at this time when the technology is so new and computers are problematic. The same question, honestly, could be asked about Windows Vista, as a replacement for XP, which is a capable operating system, despite what I may usually think about it. Now the question may be valid for the average end user, but for IT pros, it's a no brainer. The simple truth is, while you may make purchasing suggestions, usually ...
I have made 1927 posts before this one. But this post is different than every one of the posts before it.This post is the first post I've made on a Linux machine where I installed the OS and the NIC. This was a clean install, so there's not a shred of Windows on this machine.The OS for this machine is Ubuntu 6.06, and everything was MUCH easier than I had been led to expect from Redmondites. From the point of install to this point, the ONLY problem I had was with the codecs. That was easily over...
A couple of months ago, I built a computer on speculation, figuring to use it to make a couple of needed extra bucks. This was before the contract jobs were coming at a steady pace, when I thought we might need the extra scratch. It's a solid computer, Athlon 4400+ processor, 1GB RAM (that's what came with the package; I will upgrade later), 2-160GB Seagate SATA hard drives, and a DVD burner with lightscribe. I put it all together for $300 ($350 before rebates, but those are in now, so I can mar...
OK, Now that the dust has (almost) settled and everything came out OK, I can share a story from last week, with a MAJOR word of caution. A customer brought in a Dell Inspiron 1501 processor. The more I find out about these things (sadly, I own one), the more I am convinced they are overpriced, overhyped pieces of garbage. The computer had been running slowly and we didn't detect a problem when it came in earlier for repair. The problem was that the CPU usage spiked to the 90-100% range as ...