I recently had to assist my 75 year old father with an issue he was having and it was a struggle to get through the “Buy Now” banner ad that was popping up from Teamviewer. I probably use Teamviewer 1-2 times a month for 20-30 minutes so I can’t justify dropping $49/monthly on that solution. So I did what any techie would do and I took to Google in search of a new solution.

I stumbled across a solution called AweSun by AweRay. I’ve never heard about AweRay so I dug a little deeper and found the domain name was registered in May 2019 and their first news release was in April 2020. So they are a fairly new player in the space from what I could learn. I also noticed that their infrastructure is housed in Google Cloud Platform.

I’ve spent a few days with the solution and it worked really well. I was able to quickly and easily connect to my parents computer using their Device ID and Passcode very similar to how Teamviewer works. The product also supports copying clipboard data between the local computer and the computer you are remote controlling, so you can cut and paste between computers with ease. When I rebooted my parents computer AweSun properly started itself back up and allowed me to remotely connect after the reboot without any issues or problems.

Looking through their pricing and features list it seems like the “free” version is extremely functional.

The pricing is definitely much better than many of the competing solutions on the market. Obviously you can’t beat free, but even at $9/month – it’s definitely feasible to throw the company some business for a month or two in order to support the product without breaking your wallet.

I’m curious if anyone else has tested AweSun?

Cheers!

In November I got a call from my parents that the desktop I built for them back in 2014 was not booting up. After talking my father through opening the case and sending me some video, it appeared that the case and CPU fans would start but then stop, only to start again and then stop again, rinse and repeat over and over. I had seen this symptom before and thought the issue might be with the power supply so I ordered a new EVGA 500W power supply and had it shipped to their house. Kudos to my 70 year old father for replacing the power supply by himself, unfortunately the problem persisted so that likely meant that the motherboard had failed, although the motherboard looked fine and there were no obvious failed capacitors or other damage.

That machine had lasted them six years, so that was a pretty good investment in my honest opinion and I could likely reuse the case, power supply, CPU and memory from that computer on other builds or projects my daughters were working on. In the end I decided to just build them a new machine, swapping the SSD from their old machine, this way there would be minimal change to them. All their email and shortcuts would be there, all the software would be the same, the icons would all be in the “right” place. It would just make things super simple for them as the user, especially since both of my parents are in their 70s.

I went and ordered a bunch of new components to build them a new machine.

• GIGABYTE H370M DS3H (LGA1151/Intel/H270/USB 3.1 Gen 1 (USB3.0) Type A Type C/Micro ATX/DDR4/Motherboard)
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz C15 Desktop Memory Kit – Black (CMK16GX4M2B3000C15)
• Intel Core i5-9400 Desktop Processor 6 Cores 2. 90 GHz up to 4. 10 GHz Turbo LGA1151 300 Series 65W Processors BX80684I59400
• Thermaltake UX100 5V Motherboard ARGB Sync 16.8 Million Colors 15 Addressable LED Intel/AMD Universal Socket Hydraulic Bearing 65W CPU Cooler CL-P064-AL12SW-A
• Thermaltake Versa H18 Tempered Glass Black Spcc Micro ATX Gaming Computer Case CA-1J4-00S1WN-01
• Thermaltake Smart 500W 80+ White Certified PSU, Continuous Power with 120mm Ultra Quiet Cooling Fan, ATX 12V V2.3/EPS 12V Active PFC Power Supply PS-SPD-0500NPCWUS-W
• Windows 10 Home 32-bit/64-bit – OEM – (Product Key Code Email Delivery)

With the help of my youngest daughter we assembled the the pieces of the new machine and then tested that everything was working properly using a spare SSD that I had available.

My parents brought the old machine over to my house, I removed the SSD and installed it into the new machine, cleaned up some of the drivers, installed a new Windows 10 license key (OEM version would not re-activate) and they were back up and running with minimal fuss to them.

Let’s see how long that machine lasts them.

Cheers!

Unfortunately the wife’s computer recently died so I gave her my desktop (swapping SSDs and hard drives) and went about putting together a new desktop for myself from the following purchases;

• ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero Z270 LGA1151 DDR4 DP HDMI M.2 USB 3.1 ATX Motherboard
• Intel 7th Gen Intel Core Desktop Processor i7-7700K (BX80677I77700K)
• Noctua NH-D15 6 heatpipe with Dual NF-A15 140mm fans
• Corsair Vengeance RGB 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4-25600) C16 -Intel 100/200 Series PC memory CMR16GX4M2C3200C16
• EVGA 850 GQ, 80+ GOLD 850W, Semi Modular, EVGA ECO Mode, 5 Year Warranty, Power Supply 210-GQ-0850-V1
• Corsair Crystal Series 570X RGB – Tempered Glass, Premium ATX Mid-Tower Case Cases CC-9011098-WW
• Microsoft Windows 10 Pro | Download

I decided to stay with Intel for now and passed on AMD Ryzen and Threadripper. I also decided that I’d be more than happy with an Intel Core i7 series processor, no need to look at the recently released Intel Core i9 processors. I did decide that the old Antec P180 case needed to be put into the scrap pile so I ordered a Corsair Crystal Series 570X RGB case. Since I swapped the SSDs and hard drives I ran into the dreaded Windows activation issue since the original product keys were OEM versions. I didn’t want to go through the time and effort of re-installing Windows 10 so I purchased 2 retail copies of Windows 10 Professional and applied those product keys. While the hardware supports overclocking, I’ll probably run it at stock until I need more performance or I find the time to start testing the overclocking potential of the hardware.

Now I need to spend sometime finding a replacement for Crashplan. Any recommendations?

Cheers!

In any case I thought it was high past time to give Windows 10 a spin so I went out and purchased a 512GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD. I did this so I could clone my 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD, providing me a very simple backout plan if I didn’t like Windows 10 or something went terribly wrong. I fired up Clonzilla Live via a USB flash drive and quickly cloned the 256GB SSD to the 512GB SSD. I installed the 512GB SSD and put the 256GB SSD in a safe pace. The computer booted up to Windows 7 fine on the new SSD and I upgraded to Windows 10 with no problems or issues. Fast forward almost four months later and I’m pretty happy with the upgrade. I’m not sure I gained a whole lot from a technical standpoint. Windows 7 had worked pretty well for me the past few years and I suspect Windows 10 will do the same but if the upgrade hadn’t been free I’m not sure I would have made the jump myself.  About four weeks ago I upgraded my Lenovo T430 to Windows 10 without issue. It helps that I replaced the hard drive with an SSD about a year ago.

Windows 10 is a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users until July 29, 2016 so time is running short.

Have you made the jump to Windows 10? At Home? At Work?

Cheers!

Here’s what I purchased from NewEgg;

• Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000
• ZALMAN CNPS9900ALED 120mm 2 Ball Low-noise Blue LED CPU Cooler
• 2 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory Model F3-17000CL9D-8GBXM
• GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
• SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5″ 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
• Western Digital WD Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive – OEM
• LITE-ON Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM SATA 12X Blu-ray Burner with Blu Ray 3D Feature IHBS112-04 – OEM
• Antec P280 Black Super Mid Tower Computer Case
• CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit – OEM

I thought about going with water cooling but eventually decided to stick with air cooling and purchased the Zalman CNPS9900ALED .The Zalman heatsink is insanely huge, words just don’t do it justice. While the Antec P280 case is fairly large itself, the Zalman heatsink quickly fills the case making it look small. Thankfully everything arrived within a few days of ordering it and it took me about 2 days to assemble the new machine. I performed the assembly in the following order;

1. Install Corsair power supply into Antec P280 case
2. Install G.Skill memory onto Gigabyte motherboard
3. Install Intel Core i7 CPU onto Gigabyte motherboard
4. Install Zalman heatsink onto Intel Core i7 CPU and Gigabyte motherboard
5. Install Gigabyte motherboard into case
6. Install Samsung 840 SSD into case
7. Install Western Digital hard drive into case
8. Install MSI 6950 video card into Gigabyte motherboard and case
9. Wire everything together, including all power leads, front panel LEDs, USB headers, SATA connectors, etc.

The hardest part was figuring out how to mount the Zalman CPU heatsink which probably took about 20-35 minutes. Thankfully everything was working right out of the box and I had no DoAs or RMAs to contend with. Obviously I stayed with Windows 7 64-bit having heard all about the issues with Windows 8.

That leaves me with the following build;

• Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64-bit
• Intel Core i7-3370K @3.5Ghz
• 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 2133 memory (4 sticks)
• Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard
• MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB
• 256GB Samsung 840 Pro Series SSD
• 2TB Western Digital Black SATA 3 hard disk
• LITE-ON Blue Ray DVD burner
• Antec P280 case
• CORSAIR HX Series HX850 power supply
• Logitech G15 keyboard
• Logitech G5 mouse
• Logitech C910 webcam
• 2 x ASUS 27″ LCD display
• Canon i2600 InkJet Printer

Cheers!

There’s been quite a few desktop upgrades in the time I’ve been blogging. The first was back in October of 2007, then again in December 2007 I added some accessories, in January 2008 I had a hard disk die, in December of 2008 I replaced the motherboard and CPU,  in July 2010 I upgraded to Windows 7 64bit leaving Windows Vista behind, and most recently in October 2011 I upgraded my video card and replaced a dying power supply.

While I was potentially looking at building an entirely new desktop (Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz) I decided to hold off for now and instead take the leap into SSDs, replacing my trusty  Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10,000 RPM with a SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128D/AM 2.5″ 128GB SATA III MLC Internal SSD.

The choir of migrating the data was pretty painless although it did take quite sometime to run through the backups (you always make backups just in case) and then copy the partitions using Norton Ghost. When all the bits were done moving around I just unplugged the Raptor and plugged in the Samsung. Windows 7 booted right up and announced it had discovered new hardware and asked me to reboot. That was it… my desktop went from taking about 100-120 seconds to boot to taking about 30 seconds to boot.

I’ll give credit to NewEgg once again… they shipped in one day from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.

Here’s what I’m running these days?

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @2.99Ghz
• 8GB G.Skill PC2-6400 DDR2 memory (4 sticks)
• Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard
• MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB
• 128GB Samsung 830 SSD
• 1TB Western Digital SATA II hard disk
• 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green (5900RPM)
• Antec P180 case
• Rosewill RX750 power supply
• Logitech G15 keyboard
• Logitech G5 mouse
• Logitech C910 webcam
• 2 x ASUS 27″ LCD display

Cheers!

I thought I had posted about my last upgrade but I can’t seem to find the post right now. In any case this time it was the impending release of Battlefield 3 that ultimately drove me to replace my aging Nvidia 8800GTS 320MB with a MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB. I’ve been lumbering along with the 8800GTS for the past 4 years so it was time for an upgrade.

While doing my research between the NVIDIA and AMD options I came across a lot of cooling issues between both the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series and the NVIDIA GeForce 560, 570 and 580 series. In the end I decided to give AMD a try since the last few cards I’ve purchased where NVIDIA and I decided to go with the pricier MSI R6590 Twin Frozr II since it had some great reviews and in user feedback it was reported to be one of the cooler running cards on the market.

I also took the opportunity (while the case was open) to replace my dying power supply. I chose a Rosewill Xtreme Series RX750-S-B 750W power supply. I’ve gone through two Antec power supplies in the past three years and last year I used a Rosewill 650W in my wife’s computer and it’s still going strong, despite running almost 24×7.

What am I running these days?

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @2.83Ghz
• 8GB G.Skill PC2-6400 DDR2 memory (4 sticks)
• Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard
• 150GB Western Digital Raptor SATA II hard disk
• 1TB Western Digital SATA II hard disk
• Antec P180 case
• Rosewill RX750 power supply
• Logitech G15 keyboard
• Logitech G5 mouse
• Logitech C910 webcam
• ASUS 27″ LCD display

I won’t waste to much ink here but let me just say that the map(s) in Battlefield 3 beta are just spectacular with this card. I definitely need to go back and play a few rounds of Battlefield Bad Company 2 with this video card just to see what the maps really look like now that I have the hardware to play it on high settings. It amazing how much eye candy is lost when you need to dial down the settings so you can play a newer game on older hardware.

While on the topic of gaming let me give a shout out to Tactical Gamer.

If you’re a mature gamer looking for some good times and teamwork orientated tactics give Tactical Gamer a look.

I know your all embarrassed to admit it but you can’t be all work and no play.

Anyone else a gamer? If so what games do you enjoy?

Cheers!

I backed up all my files to an old server I had setup running Openfiler, it’s amazing how much space all those home movies and pictures take up. I reformatted my primary hard drive and ran through the installation. It took longer than I expected but I later found out that I had left the floppy drive enabled in the BIOS (there was no floppy drive in the desktop) and that may have had something to-do with the longer than customary installation time I experienced.

Now I’m left with re-installing all the different applications that I use from time to time. When I was younger I didn’t mind this task so much because it generally translated into a significant increase in speed and performance of the desktop (at least for a while). These days though I find myself not having the same excitement I once had in the past. I guess I’m getting old and grumpy…

While I’m rambling on let me say that Ubuntu (specifically release 10.1) is really becoming a strong alternative desktop operating system. While it still took some messing, the installation of some basic tools such as the Java Runtime Engine, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash was much improved over previous releases. I was very impressed with the performance as well.

So my question for folks… what if anything are you using at home to store your home movies and pictures? Are you using an old PC running some open source solution? Did you go out and purchase an all-in-one solution?

I  just started using an old IBM xSeries 345 with 1GB of RAM and ~ 300 GB of disk space across 6 drives. I’m concerned that my electric bill is going to go threw the roof next month if I run this thing 24×7 as my media storage server. It might be cheaper for me to just purchase a Drobo or something along those lines from an kWh  perspective not to mention the space. cooling and noise issues created by running and IBM xSeries 345 in your basement. I had accidentally forgotten to connect both power supplies when I first turned it on. The beast sounded like a jet engine running full blast until I connected the second power supply and the fans slowed down to their normal operating speed.

Cheers!

Over the holidays I upgraded my PC by replacing the motherboard, CPU and memory. I also stepped up from Windows XP to Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) and I jumped back to an Intel platform from previously using AMD.

I used the following components:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
• Intel Core 2 Quad Processor (Q9550)
• G.Skil 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC 8500) Memory

I can honestly say that I’m quite pleased with how everything has turned out. I still play a few games here and there (Left 4 Dead is just awesome and I’m a big fan of Steam) and the DX10 support in Vista is just amazing on the eVGA 8800GTS that I reused from my previous system.  There was only one small issue that I encountered that involves the rear audio jacks from the RealTek HD Audio codec which I believe is a Windows Vista 64-bit driver problem since the audio hardware works with Ubuntu Live.

I also stumbled upon Windows Media Center and I have to honestly say that I’m very impressed. I ripped a few of my favorite DVDs to my hard disk and had my own on-demand library right there on my own PC.

I’m sure there will be a few folks scratching there heads asking why this bloat didn’t just purchase an Intel Core i7 processor inplace of the older Intel Core 2 processor. Honestly, while the price of the each processor was in line with the other the motherboard and memory were much more expensive for the Core i7 platform.

Cheers!

Update: January 22, 2009

I was finally able to resolve the audio issue by installing the latest drivers (v2.14) from the RealTek website for the “High Definition Audio Codec”.

On September 4, 2008 VirtualBox 2.0.0 was released. There’s suppose to be some significant performance increases in this release including support for SATA NCQ (Native Command Queuing) when using raw disks and Nested Paging on AMD machines. This release also promises support for 64 bit guest hosts. You can find the full change log here.

If you’re looking to toy with Linux, VirtualBox makes it really easy to install Linux on top of your existing Windows XP desktop/laptop without the worry of destroying your personal computer. While I still dual boot a number of my desktops/laptops I’ve been finding VirtualBox almost indispensable in my daily work activities. There are even a number of organizations running VirtualBox as a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution from a number of different thin clients.

You might even be persuaded to load up a virtual machine to check out an upcoming clone of Microsoft Windows called ReactOS. It’s not based on Linux in any fashion but promises to be compatible with all software that can run on Microsoft Windows. While it’s still in it’s infancy (alpha) it will be interesting to see how Microsoft will respond if it ever starts to gather steam.

VirtualBox is definitely worth the time and effort to download and install if your interested in a virtual desktop solution.

Cheers!