Posts tagged BLOG

Home Desktop Upgrade (Part 2)

0
December 18, 2007
by Michael McNamara in

When I last spoke about my home desktop computer I mentioned that I was waiting for the release of the new Logitech G15 keyboard. I’m happy to report that the new G15 has been released and I’m happily typing this article on it right now.

I found a wealth of plug-ins for the built-in LCD display and I’ve found some very interesting uses for the macro keys. Overall I’m very happy with the new Logitech G15 keyboard. It complements the new Logitech G5 mouse I’ve had on my desktop for the past six months. The version of the G5 I have includes two thumb buttons on the mouse, great for those of us that game.

I had the opportunity to upgrade my headset a few weeks ago. I had been using the Plantronics GameCom 1 3.5mm headset with the on-board audio from my Nforce4 Ultra motherboard. Unfortunately the cable got wrapped around my three year olds foot just before she ran out of the room. All the kings horses and all the kings men weren’t going to put it back together so I decided to order the Plantronics GameComPro 1 USB headset.

The Plantronics GameCom 3.5mm headset is definitely hands down the best value and product in the price range ($19.99). I’ve used this headset for about two years now (replacing them as they get broken) and it’s very comfortable. I use this headset in conjunction with the on-board audio from my Nforce4 Ultra motherboard. It works very well and provides good sound both as an output and input (microphone). Just remember that you’ll need either a dedicated sound card or on-board audio built into your motherboard. I know the audiophiles would argue that the on-board audio isn’t anywhere near the quality of a dedicated sound card but for those of us that just need basic audio, this should work fine.

The Plantronics GameComPro1 USB headset is also a very nice product. It is a USB solution that houses it’s own DSP (essentially it’s own soundcard). It has the same basic design as the GameCom headset above and I would rate it in line with the sound from my on-board audio. Unfortunately the DSP doesn’t have a Mixer so you might have issues trying to use a USB headset with FRAPS to record voice/sounds with various applications/games. For those that don’t have either a sound card or on-board audio from their motherboard this is a great option.

Cheers!

Home Desktop Upgrade

0
October 13, 2007
by Michael McNamara in

Last week I decided to sink some money into my slowing aging desktop computer. I upgraded my 9 year old 19″ Dell CRT to a 22″ Samsung 226BW Widescreen LCD and my eVGA 6800GS to an eVGA 8800 GTS 320MB.

I have to say I’m pleased with both components. The widescreen display is really nice when working with multiple applications and windows and the 8800GTS just about lays waste to any game that I might have (Battlefield 2142, Company of Heroes, GRAW2, Armed Assault, Half-Life 2, etc).

Here are the specs today;

  • Antec P180 Case
  • Antec Neo HE 550 Power Supply
  • EPOX Nforce4 Ultra+ Motherboard
  • AMD 64 X2 4200+ (939 Socket)
  • 2.0 GB RAM
  • (1) 250GB Seagate
  • (1) 350GB Western Digital
  • Sony CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Drive (DDU1615)
  • Sony CD-RW/DVD-RW Drive (DRU-810A)
  • eVGA 8800 GTS 320MB Superclocked
  • 22″ Samsung 226BW Widescreen LCD
  • Nvidia nForce Onboard Audio
  • Plantronics SmartCon Headset
  • Logitech G5 Laser Mouse
  • Windows XP SP2

I’m currently waiting for the new version of the Logitech G15 keyboard to be released.

The original version of the G15 seems just too big and large for me and my desk. I’m currently using an old 102-key Dell keyboard that came with me Dell 8200 almost9 years ago.

The upgrade and installation were fairly easy. The 8800GTS cards really take up some space so you need to be careful of the clearance within your computer case. They are about 9 inches long and occupy two slots sometimes making it impossible to run them in an SLI configuration. Although I understand the the 8800GTX is almost two-three inches longer than the 8800GTS.

Cheers!

It’s yet another blog…

7
October 10, 2007
by Michael McNamara in

It’s yet another blog… yes it is and will probably never go anywhere but I’ll give it the old college try and see where it goes.

I literally grew up with the birth of the Internet and while I’ve generally embraced technology I’ve never really had time for the great social craze that has spread across the Internet, Blogging. While I probably still don’t have the time I would like to share some of my thoughts, ideas, code and solutions for some of the technical problems that I encounter day in and day out in my real life job as the network architect for a large health care provider.

While I’m on the journey I’m also curious about all the great tools that the Internet offers. The Internet has certainly come a long way from it’s early heydays with NCSA Mosaic. I can still remember messing with the IPX/SPX/ODI stack in MS-DOS trying to get the proper packet driver to load so that WinSock.DLL would function in Windows v3.1 and programs like NCSA Mosaic and Pegasus Mail would function properly. I’m sure there are those of us still around that can remember messing with HIMEM.SYS for hours until we were able to fit everything into memory when it came to Novell’s ODI stack.

I’m also setting up a website that is designed to host some of the scripts and tools I’ve written and developed to help make managing a large network easier. I’m a staunch advocate of making the computer do the work. To that end I personally employ Perl, PHP, SNMP and Bash scripts. I do the majority of my development work on CentOS Linux. If your looking for a solid, reliable Linux distribution then you should definitely check out CentOS.

Lately I’ve begun to explore the world of DHTML and how I can re-write some of my traditional console based scripts and applications into web applications. I’m quite familiar with static HTML and somewhat familiar with CSS but I’m clueless with respect to DHTML and JavaScript. I’ve also finally starting using MySQL as a way to store my data sets (I know I’m probably the last person in the world to stop using flat text files).

If your interested browse over; http://mysite.verizon.net/michaelfmcnamara/

Cheers!

Go to Top