Geeking it big time

MacDaddy

MacDaddy

Training wheel examiner
I'm off today, spending some extra vacation days that I need to get rid of - it is a "use it or lose it" situation where I work. Spent a couple of hours cleaning the house, and now I'm fully into:

1. Straightening up my primary music files. I have a ton of music on a hard drive, and I'm removing duplicates and moving everything over to a new USB drive that arrived today.

2. Seeing if I can figure out how to use IFTTT on my phone with some smart plugs. Not too impressed with the default (free) ap called "Smart Life", so thought I'd give this IFTTT thing a try.

3. Installing a new SSD (also arrived today) on Mrs. Mac's laptop.

I won a few gift cards at work, so thought I'd do a bit of splurging on some new fangled technology. I also have an Amazon "Echo" that arrived today, and a Google "Home Mini" that is supposed to come in tomorrow. Will try those out, along with the IFTTT, and see what is the best option. I plan to have both the Echo and Home units upstairs where they won't be able to "hear' our normal daily conversations.

Yep, fun way to spend a cold and windy day ... all in-doors!
 
Took longer on the SSD exchange than I thought. Ran into some issues with the SSD being thinner than the original hard drive. Was working fine with the USB -SATA cable I used for cloning, but wasn't being recognized when I installed it in the laptop. Thank you Google search! Found out the easy fix was to put some padding under the SSD, which did the trick. Finishing up with Partition Wizard - she now has twice as much storage and it is a lot faster!

Research with IFTT has gone well. Was able to set a time for one of the plugs to turn on, then played around with having the light come on at sundown. Got to admit, it caught me off guard when the light suddenly turned on a couple hours later ... lol

Yep, been a fun day.
 
SSDs are all I use now in laptops, and will use them for at least the C drive in desktops. The start-up is so much faster, and when used for the data too the computers seem faster overall. They have really come down in price.

In my main office computer, I use a 250 gig SSD for C drive and a 1 TB SSD for D drive. I built another one just like it, except it uses a HDD for the D drive, and the machine with all SSDs is noticeably faster. But the big SSDs are still a bit pricey.
 
I'm about to build a new PC, trying to decide if I want to pull the SSD from my son's old laptop to use in the new one. 250G will be a fine boot disk and I have a 3TB WD to use for main storage if I need it.
 
The Sound Guy said:
I'm about to build a new PC, trying to decide if I want to pull the SSD from my son's old laptop to use in the new one. 250G will be a fine boot disk and I have a 3TB WD to use for main storage if I need it.
Click to expand...

120 gig SSDs are about $25 now.
 
The Sound Guy said:
I'm about to build a new PC, trying to decide if I want to pull the SSD from my son's old laptop to use in the new one. 250G will be a fine boot disk and I have a 3TB WD to use for main storage if I need it.
Click to expand...
Depending on how he used it, you may just want to get a new one. They are pretty cheap right now, well under $75.

The SSD's do wear out, especially under a heavy write load.
 
OK for about $280, ended up with a Gamer case, 500W Power Supply, FX-8000 series 8 core processor, 16G of High speed DDR3 RAM, ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX motherboard, Gigibyte 2G DDR5 video card (DVI, HDMI and 2xDisplay Port mini). I have a 120G Kingston SSD I got for $25 from Amazon coming today to be the Boot drive and a 3TB WD drive for data.

That will work. My spreadsheets will never be slow again!!
 
The Sound Guy said:
OK for about $280, ended up with a Gamer case, 500W Power Supply, FX-8000 series 8 core processor, 16G of High speed DDR3 RAM, ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX motherboard, Gigibyte 2G DDR5 video card (DVI, HDMI and 2xDisplay Port mini). I have a 120G Kingston SSD I got for $25 from Amazon coming today to be the Boot drive and a 3TB WD drive for data.

That will work. My spreadsheets will never be slow again!!
Click to expand...
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Nerd!



:whistle: (I'm really just jealous because I have no idea how to do any of this stuff!) :thumbsup:
 
I used to build boxes and do the software...
It has kinda gotten away from me.

And besides... I have lots of young protege's that are good at it, and they always seem to owe me favors...
They call me on the phone all the time, wanting diagnostic help...
Grin

The box I am typing on now: Was built in the winter of 2009... still works just fine!
Intel '48' gaming MB... with Quadcore running at 3.0G... with 8 G of ram... (all the board will hold).
Since I am not a gamer... this box has more than enough HP (horsepower, not Hewlet-Packard) for me.
Did a software rebuild a few years ago (well, had someone do it for me)... am currently using Win 7 PRO 64... and have no plans to ever leave it.
We replaced the HDD C drive with an SSD... found an Intel on sale at MicroCenter... I think it is 256G... seems to work just fine!
The MB of this box has RAID on the board... I have a pair of Seagate Barracuda 500G HDD's in mirror configuration... and an identical spare on a shelf... if one ever crashes and freezes up the RAID.

Box does not miss a lick... once a year, I open it up and carefully go through it with a can of dust-off...
Then hook up the wires and back to it for another year.

Running 2x 28" HD format monitors: resolution is somewhere between HD and 4K... not sure...
They are high end Dell's
 
The Sound Guy said:
OK for about $280, ended up with a Gamer case, 500W Power Supply, FX-8000 series 8 core processor, 16G of High speed DDR3 RAM, ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX motherboard, Gigibyte 2G DDR5 video card (DVI, HDMI and 2xDisplay Port mini). I have a 120G Kingston SSD I got for $25 from Amazon coming today to be the Boot drive and a 3TB WD drive for data.

That will work. My spreadsheets will never be slow again!!
Click to expand...
Since AMD introduced their Ryzen processor, the prices on their still excellent FX line has plummeted. I built computers for my home and office about a year ago using the FX-8350, and they are both screamers! They handle anything I can throw at them with ease. Running both in performance mode where they operate at 4.3 ghz on 8 cores, and they can be overclocked to more than 5 ghz if desired. With prices so low now, I just built a new server for my office and a new office computer for "She who adores me" using the same processor.

I added this CPU cooler on the ones I built, and I run 4 120mm fans in the case (two in and two out). This keeps it nice and cool without any excess fan noise.
CPU Cooler

They idle well under 30 degrees C and never get above 34 degrees C.
 
Last edited:
JawJa said:
I used to build boxes and do the software...
It has kinda gotten away from me.

And besides... I have lots of young protege's that are good at it, and they always seem to owe me favors...
They call me on the phone all the time, wanting diagnostic help...
Grin

The box I am typing on now: Was built in the winter of 2009... still works just fine!
Intel '48' gaming MB... with Quadcore running at 3.0G... with 8 G of ram... (all the board will hold).
Since I am not a gamer... this box has more than enough HP (horsepower, not Hewlet-Packard) for me.
Did a software rebuild a few years ago (well, had someone do it for me)... am currently using Win 7 PRO 64... and have no plans to ever leave it.
We replaced the HDD C drive with an SSD... found an Intel on sale at MicroCenter... I think it is 256G... seems to work just fine!
The MB of this box has RAID on the board... I have a pair of Seagate Barracuda 500G HDD's in mirror configuration... and an identical spare on a shelf... if one ever crashes and freezes up the RAID.

Box does not miss a lick... once a year, I open it up and carefully go through it with a can of dust-off...
Then hook up the wires and back to it for another year.

Running 2x 28" HD format monitors: resolution is somewhere between HD and 4K... not sure...
They are high end Dell's
Click to expand...
Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 in just over a year. Might wanna consider upgrading to Windows 10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4057281/windows-7-support-will-end-on-january-14-2020
 
Guard Dad said:
Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 in just over a year. Might wanna consider upgrading to Windows 10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4057281/windows-7-support-will-end-on-january-14-2020
Click to expand...

I am thinking to take another serious look at Apple desktops...
And have an Iphone 8plus on my short list for replacement cell phone.

I have thought on and off about moving to apple for years...
The part about the OS and IOS being carefully controlled (rather than open source)... appeals to me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top