Darren's Blog

Windos 7 Preferences You May Want to Change

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:42:00 GMT

My Ultimate Home Workstation PC

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:16:00 GMT

After installing all my programming tools on my home desktop computer, the performance just isn't cutting it anymore. It has lasted me about 4-5 years now and isn't bad as a hand me down after a clean reinstall of Windows without all my junk. This whole weekend I read, researched, and speced out the best desktop computer for the money and below is what I came up with. This should last me five years easy. I'm very happy with what I came up with. A special thanks goes out to Kevin at work who gave me great specs to start from! Oh yeah, and this is for my birthday!

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 AND aftermarket fan: ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX

Video Card: XFX HD-487A-ZHFC Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

Memory: 2x (8GB) G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

Case and Power Supply: Antec Nine Hundred Case & Rosewill RBR750 Power Supply (Combo Deal!)

DVD Burner: Samsung SH-S223Q
More...

Program Install List

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 05:17:00 GMT

This is a list of software that I now need to install.

AntiVirus & Security

AVG Antivirus (free for home use!)
KeyPass (store passwords securely)

Browsers

Chrome (from Google)
Firefox
Safari (from Apple)

More...

Just Installed Vista 64-bit Ultimate Edition

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 04:32:00 GMT

I just installed Vista 64-bit Ultimate Edition on my home workstation. For the past week or two I've been dealing with a faulty system drive that had XP Pro on it. About a week ago, I went to a .net user group meeting here in Orlando, FL and won the Vista Ultimate pack (32 & 64-bit). At first I doubted my old AMD64 Athalon which I build about four years ago could handle it.

After taking a week to back up all my hard drive's file to a one terrabyte external drive (I was suprised it took this long too), I finally decided to give it a try. I opened the side door to my rather large tower case, unplugged the old IDE drive which it had been booting off of and only left my faster SATA drives in place for Vista to attempt to recognize and use.

I booted off the 64-bit disk of Vista Ultimate and it immediate recognized my SATA drives which previous XP Pro was never able to pick up when being installed. HOT DOG! More...

Site back online!

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 04:23:00 GMT

After an period of time being offline, DarrenNeese.com is back!More...