The Adventures of a Systems Engineer

Google has had sync available for quite some time, but up until recently it has only allowed for contacts and calendars to be synchronized between your phone and Google.The feature has been a great and allowed users to easily back their data up to the “cloud” where it will forever reside. Recently this feature got even better with the addition of the ability to sync mail and the addition of push. Now your phone can maintain a connection with Google allowing new emails, contact updates, and calendar updates to be automatically pushed to your phone. So far the service has been great (flaky at times though). The only down side- watching your cellphone battery die much faster.

Apparently Firefox developers have implemented some state of emotional being into the latest version of Firefox.

I got back from my trip to Europe about a week ago. I have to say the MSI Wind U100 worked amazingly well. It was great for checking email and even doing some like php coding and photo editing with photoshop. The Wind’s card reader was also very good for unloading the 3,000+ photos  from camera memory sticks as they filled up. This of course all ended about a week and a half into the trip. I happened to get off a train at what I thought was Rome, but was not. After realizing that it was the wrong stop I ran back toward the train while my netbook flew out of my pack in the other direction. Once I got back on the train I opened up my netbook to reveal a broken screen .

I just ordered a new screen for around $100 from eBay and it should arrive soon. It was an expensive mistake, but on the bright side I now have an excuse to rip the netbook open and replace the screen. Look for the results in a post within the next week.

I recently order an MSi Wind 10″ Netbook. I will be traveling to Europe in a week and wanted something small and portable that will let me surf the web and do some on-the-road web development. After hours of searching the MSi U100-451US seemed like the best choice. I picked one up for $279.99 at eWiz.com.

Specs

Processor: Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz (with hyperthreading)

RAM: 1 GB DDR (PC5300 (upgraded to 2GB)

Included Peripherals: On board mic, 0.3 MP digital camera, wireless, 10/100 Ethernet,  bluetooth

Adding a 1GB RAM Stick

A great how to on installing RAM in the Wind is available here: http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/msi-wind-ram.aspx. One thing that is not mentioned on the webpage is that some models of the Wind have a “warranty void if removed” sticker covering one of the screws on the bottom of the netbook.  It took me far longer then it should have to realize that there was a screw under the sticker that was preventing me from removing the bottom.

A word to the wise, do not go with really cheap RAM. I bough a cheap RAM stick from ebay for $12 and it did not work. I ended up going to the local computer store and getting a Crucial 1GB PC 5300 RAM stick for around $40.

Installing Vista

One of my first orders of business was to install Vista Ultimate on my new netbook. At this point you are probably laughing “haha Vista on a netbook, what an idiot.” I was a little apprehensive about installing Vista on such an underpowered machine (my main pc running Vista has 8 GB of RAM with a Quad core processor). I was inspired by this article: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4505 which actually says they saw an important in running Vista over XP in terms of both performance and battery life. Low and behold Vista runs like a dream, even with the sidebar running and the Aero theme running. In fact the thing that really hurt my “User Experience Rating” the most was the GPU, which actually scored respectably for a netbook. Aside from the GPU, the CPU scored the next worse which again is not surprising from the atom chip, but this is still respectable for a netbook.

These results were after I downloaded all of the drivers and MSi utilities from the MSi website. Surprisingly all of the Vista drivers are available from the support site. The version says Windows XP 32bit oallthe downloads, but they contain Vista drivers as well.

Adobe CS4

After installing Vista and downloading serveral hundred megabytes of updates I loaded up Adobe CS4. Again you are probablly saying something to the effect “Photoshop won’t run on a netbook”. That was my exact initial response, but I figured I would give it a try anyway. I was pleasently suprised. Photoshop actually ran very smoothly and the layout changed to take advantage of the netbook’s quirky resolution. Now I’m not saying that I have an amazing editing machine, but I can open and edit psd files on the go as well  as fire up dreamweaver to do some web developement.

Conclusion

The MSi Wind is a solid mobile computing solution. I find myself using my netbook more and more. Its ultraportable and ultralight design make it perfect for a college student who wants to take notes in class or those that want to be able to use the internet on the go without havng the carry around a heavy full-sized laptop. It also can run some fairly intense applications like Photoshop with only a slight delay.

I recently worked with Jim Kukunas on implementing a parallel GPGPU merge sort algorithm that utilized the NVIDIA CUDA architecture. The project and source code can be seen at: http://jamesdevine.info/index.php/projects/cuda-parallel-merge-sort.

1.) If you receive a suspicious email don’t open it! If you get an email from a website that you do not have an account at just delete it. A lot of viruses and attacks will try to look like a legitimate message from a bank or other website like EBay.

2.) If you happen to open an email you think is suspicious there are a few tell tail signs that something is not right. Look for broken English. People sending fake and malicious emails are not very intelligent and often are not from the US. An email from your bank or any account you have online will almost NEVER have misspellings and poor grammar.

3.) Never click on a link in an email or webpage unless you are 100% sure where it goes. It is possible to make a link like ebay.com go to an entirely different site. Try it- click the previous link that says ebay.com and you will be taken to my website! There is a very easy way to look out for this. Whenever you put your mouse over a link you can see the actual website link in the bottom left hand of the web browser. Take a look at the following image for a demonstration. If you see a site that does not look right DO NOT CLICK on the link. If the link contains and odd extension like .hk (for hong kong) it is probablly a site that will contain a virus. Another sign of bad site is if the link has a series of numbers such as http://10.128.11.111. The series of numbers is called an ip address which is a unique number for each computer on the internet, much like a telephone number. If you click on a link like this there is a good change you will be directed to a site containing a virus.

4.) Any time that you enter your personal information into a webpage make sure that the address bar has https:// instead of http:// (see the picture below for a demonstration). This will ensure that your information is being sent encrypted to the website you are viewing. If you do not see the https:// in the address bar then any personal information you enter will be sent in clear text across the internet. Any legitimate website with a login (such as your bank) will use encryption (the https:// in the address bar).

5.) Run an antivirus program. If you are running a PC you absolutely must run antivirus. My personal recommendation is Panda Antivirus (http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/antivirus/). I have had found Panda to work the best and its only $50 a year for a version that can be installed on up to 3 computers. If $50 a year is too much (and believe me its not) there are free programs like AVG Free (http://free.avg.com/) and Avast (http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html).

6.) Update your system. Antivirus programs should be set to automatically update and automatically scan. Windows updates should also be set to automatically update. Software manufactures put out updates for a reason. Most of the time systems updates address security vulnerabilities.

These tips are not meant to be the end all guide to web browsing safety. People writing malicious code are always at least one step ahead of antivirus manufacturers. The key is to be proactive and use caution when browsing the Internet- it can be a very dangerous place.

I am home for Spring Break this week and one of the first thing I had to do was play computer doctor for nearly all of my family’s computers. My sister got a virus on her laptop and my dad ended up with a virus on both of his computers. I do a lot of virus removal so I decided I share some very good free programs. The following are the top three programs I have found.

SUPERAntiSpyware

Malwarebytes

Spybot Search and Destroy

These programs will work wonders provided one thing, the virus/spyware/tojan that is infecting your computer lets them run. The newest breed of malicious viruses will prevent these programs from running and some will even stop you from visiting any antivirus websites. In the case that you do not have one of the very evil kind of viruses you can use the following free online scans.

Windows Live OneCare

Trend House Call

Back in September 2008 (before the severe economic downturn)  it become clear that my 2 year old laptop was no longer powerful enough to handle the average work load, let along gaming. After months of searching and price hunting I put together the rig outlined in this post. Without cutting corners I was able to build a quite powerful machine without breaking the bank (well not too much anyway).

Parts

CPU: Intel Quad Core Q6700 2.66 GHz -$215.70

CPU Fan: Thermaltake Silent 775D -$18.96 (after $10 mail in rebate)

Motherboard: XFX nForce 680i LT -$83.01 (after $20 mail in rebate)

RAM: 8GB OCZ SLI PC6400 DDR2 800MHz (4x2048MB) -$80 (after $40 rebate on each 4 GB kit)

GPU: XFX GeForce 8800 GT -$105 (after $20 rebate)

PSU: Antec BP550 Plus 550W ATX12V -$59.99

Hard Drive: 1 TB SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ -$96.99

Optical Drive:SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner -$25.99

Case: Briza 8-Bay ATX -44.99

Total: $ 730.63

All of the links above are to the actual places that I bought the parts from. There was a lot of rebates to deal with but I had shopped around for months and was convinced that the sales were good enough to warrant building my new PC. Notice that all the parts did not come from one site. I meticulously shopped each part so I could get the most out of my money.

Building the PC

I stated with the motherboard, 4 GB of RAM, the CPU, and the GPU. The case arrived a few days later. I had an old 500 GB SATAII hard drive lying around that I initially salvaged for the build.

It became clear very quickly that the 400 watt power supply that came with the case would be less then ideal. I also realized that if I wanted to get an OS onto the new PC an optical drive would be a nice thing to have. A quick order at NewEgg had the missing parts within 3 business days ( free 3 day shipping rock!).

Blood Sweat and Tears

After I had assembled the system I noticed something very odd. The system would not POST with both 2 GB RAM modules installed. Hours on the phone with OCZ (their support staff is amazing) lead to the recommendation that I send one of the RAM modules back. After receiving the new RAM I still had the same issue and the system was very unstable with just the one module.

Another hour on the phone, this time with XFX, yielded the suggestion that I return the motherboard to TigerDirect for a replacement. A quick call to tiger and they emailed me a label to ship out the motherboard for free. It turns out tiger has an awesome RMA system.

A few days later I got the replacement motherboard. I slipped in both 2 GB RAM modules and the system booted up. The increase of speed from 2 to 4 GB of memory convinced me that adding another 4 more GB for $40 (after rebates of course) was well worth the money.

A few months later I decided it was time for another upgrade. The hard drive that I salvaged for the original build was very loud. I had been shopping for a 1TB for a long time and finally gave into buying one. I found a Samsung SpinPoint for $100 with free shipping from ZipZoomFly and went for it.

Choosing an OS

Due to the fact that I have a processor that supports 64-bit Operating Systems it seemed like the best idea to go 64-bit. I installed an OEM version Windows Vista Ultimate. The decision to go with Vista was based on the desire to take advantage of the eye-candy offered by the Aero theme and Direct X 10.

Results of the Build

The PC is stable and super fast. No overclocking was done because it was not justified. A screen shot of the Windows Experience Index is included below. The only thing that the system falls a bit short on is RAM. I could have easily spent a lot more money on super high quality ram, but the OCZ SLI Ready modules that I got deliver more then sufficient performance.

The blog/website for James Devine is now up on the tubes and tunnels formerly know as the internet.