Posted 10/23/2009 at 11:02:08am

Dave,

 Good piece!  Lot's of common sense stuff to think about and good overall advice.  I like these types of articles, it shows good insight and helps to remind people to think about the basics every now an again when the opportunity knocks to start somewhat "anew".

Posted 10/20/2009 at 05:23:08pm

The  con·trar·i·an trolls on  this site have gotten pretty bad lately. 

Sheeesh! 

What gives?

Posted 10/19/2009 at 02:48:26pm

basement dwelling pud pulling boredom set in huh?

Posted 10/19/2009 at 02:44:30pm

To anyone that says, "you don't know what you doing, my rig runs great", I would suggest you learn how to monitor your event logs...

Posted 10/19/2009 at 02:43:58pm

To anyone that says, "you don't know what you doing, my rig runs great", I would suggest you learn how to monitor your event logs...

Posted 10/19/2009 at 01:41:57pm

I'm a Windows House Party 7 host, meaning, I received a pre-release of an official copy of Win 7 Ultimate.

First I tried an upgrade, onto a completely stable and blistering fast Vista Ultimate platform.  One word - nightmare.  On the geek/proficiency meter I consider myself a 9 on the 10 scale for building rigs and configuring apps/OS's.  The Windows 7 Compatibility wizard is a joke and only flagged one potential issue out of many I experienced on the "upgrade" path.  Needless to say, I restored my Vista image and proceeded try a clean install onto a second partition - Dual Boot.  No anti-virus as it's a benign side salad build now, no apps, just a clean install with all the current Windows Updates and nothing more - not even the bogus Windows Live crap they've migrated to instead of the built in (and once handy) Windows Mail and Photo Gallery.

Even clean and pristine, I get Nvidia driver errors on each boot cycle, registry/memory leaks and some other goof crap - mind you - all utilizing the same hardware that my Vista Ultimate platform uses without such errors.  Win 7 is premature and although not Epic Fail, it just proves once more that M$ is sloppy as all get up.  Hell, HP doesn't even have printer software that's certified to work.

 ri·dic·u·lous  

I'm glad I got it for free.  This situation is no different that any prior release and demands the same prudent approach that has served me (and many others) well since the Windows Millenium debale; wait for some significant updates and/or at least until the 1st service pack is released.  Otherwise it's a situation  fraught with problems...

To anyone that says, "you don't know what you doing, my rig runs great", I would suggest you learn how to monitor your event logs...

Peace Out

Posted 10/19/2009 at 12:47:18pm

No I wouldn't, and by the way I wouldn't at 50 per year either.  The value add stinks.

Posted 10/19/2009 at 12:47:17pm

No I wouldn't, and by the way I wouldn't at 50 per year either.  The value add stinks.

Posted 09/25/2009 at 03:01:51pm

Well hell, it's about freaking time they got off their asses and worked on boot strap timing.

Glad to see it.

 Long, long, long over-due...

Posted 09/09/2009 at 12:32:52pm

Its Scorpio...