By Ryan Morse - November 21, 2010

Your operating system: it’s that collection of data and programs that makes all your desktop PC orlaptop computer hardware work together. Where your operating system is installed on your PC’s hard drive, as well as the type of drive it’s on, can have a big impact on your system’s performance.

Your hard drive is where most of your system’s data lives and, in most cases, it’s a critical component. Without a hard drive, you don’t have much of a system. Similarly, without an operating system installed on that hard drive, you’re not going to be doing a lot of computing either. Since your operating system is in charge of making your hardware work together, it’s important for it to have as few bottlenecks as possible. This means the best place to install your operating system is on your fastest hard drive on its primary partition.

Your operating system also borrows a certain amount of space on the hard drive for something called paging, which treats a portion of your hard drive as spillover for your system’s random access memory (RAM) in the form of a pagefile. When your RAM gets full, operating systems switch to using the hard drive as “virtual memory.”

Depending on how much RAM your system has, you’ve probably experienced this at one time or another. When you’ve got a lot of applications running and your system begins to hang, paging is usually the culprit. But paging is also necessary, so you can do your best to avoid it by running only a few applications at a time or adding RAM to your system, but for the time being, paging is always going to be there waiting. The secret to less painful paging is using a fast drive!

For disk-based hard drives, like most of the drives found in PCs today, speed is generally determined by spindle speeds, also known as rotational delay, measured in rotations per minute. Spindle speeds, in turn, are limited by the physical size of the disk and the power required to move it. You can compare other factors like seek time and transfer time, but the difference in spindle speeds, compounded by the many times you access a hard drive during usage, is the most noticeable difference when dealing with hard drives.

Spindle speeds range usually from 4,200 RPM in notebook hard drives and low-power computers all the way up to 15,000 RPM in high-performance servers. With higher spindle speeds usually come higher costs and lower capacities since the power requirements to spin larger disks are too high to be practical. When selecting the drive you want for your operating system, choose the one with the higher spindle speed. If you’re looking to upgrade with a different drive, make sure you go with a higher spindle speed that your previous one, but keep in mind, if power requirements are an issue (and in notebooks that depend on battery life, they are), you’re increasing your consumption with a faster-spinning drive.

For solid-state hard drives(SSDs), there are no moving parts. That means greater durability, rotational delay, and much faster access times. Unfortunately, the cost per gigabyte of solid-state drives has kept them from completely knocking their disk-based predecessors off the market. You can get a couple terabytes (1,000 gigabytes) of disk-based hard drive capacity for the price of some of today’s solid-state drives. But what they lack in storage capacity, SSDs more than make up for in speed, and fortunately, you don’t need much more than 20 GB to install Windows 7 and even less for Mac OS X or popular Linux distributions. For this reason, solid-state drives normally play excellent hosts to operating systems. If you can’t afford a solid-state drive, a 7,200 RPM disk-based drive should hit your sweet spot between price, capacity, and performance return.

Once you’ve selected the type and speed of drive you’re going to use, you’ll go through the normal steps. If you’re reinstalling, back up your data to a separate drive first! Boot into an appropriate application, usually the disc you’re installing from is bootable. If you’re starting with a fresh drive, the drive is not partitioned and you must create at least one for files to be written to it. If you’re reinstalling, you’re going to wipe away the existing partitions (and the data they contain!) and create new ones.

Partitioning will let you keep your operating system separate from your lesser-used applications and archives, which, when stored on the same partition as your operating system, can decrease performance as the hard drive has all the data in one giant clump. Partitioning a drive tells your operating system to treat each division as a separate drive with their own drive letter. If you have to wipe away the data in a partition, you can easily format it without jeopardizing the other partitions. This is handy for quickly reinstalling operating systems while keeping the rest of your data safe and sound in other partitions. Additionally, you can install more than one operating system to a hard drive if it is partitioned properly to create a multi-boot setup. Unfortunately, partitions are not actually separate drives, so if your partitioned hard drive fails, all the partitions and they data they contain could be gone. For this reason, I recommend a second hard drive, whether internal or external, as a back up option for your other files.

In most cases, the software you’re booting up with will include some partition tools, but if not, I recommend Paragon Partition Manager. It’s easy to use, works with all major operating systems and is free to download. It even gives you a few more options when partitioning, like resizing. If you’re just using one hard drive, create a small partition that will be used only for your operating system and a few of your most-used applications. If you’re using a solid-state drive, you can create a partition that uses the full capacity of the drive or reserve a small section for your most-used applications.

Check your operating system for the minimum hard drive requirements and add a few gigabytes on top of that for what I like to call elbow room. You can create another partition that will be especially for storing your pagefile, but I can’t say that I’ve noticed a significant advantage in doing that. Use the remaining hard drive capacity to create as many or as few partitions as you’d like. These will be where you will install your lesser-used applications, store larger files like music, photos, and movies, or even secondary operating systems. When you’re done divvying up your drive, format your partitions and install your operating system. Once the installation is complete, you can begin installing applications and generally filling it up with data again.

I like to keep separate partitions for music and videos. If you keep your partitions organized, your operating system should be able to perform better and you’ll be able to manage your data more efficiently.

I Hope you have enjoyed this Tech Tip on operating systems, hard drives and partitions. If you have a learned anything and would like to share it with everyone or just have a question please leave a comment!

  















  

By Mark Tiongco - November 7, 2010

In this tech tip, we expose the myth and reality surrounding some of the biggest trends in our technology-oriented world. Hopefully, this will shed some light which can help you better understand how these crazy gadgets work!

While it's attractive to see that ISPs advertise 10-15 megabits per second download speed, the reality is that you share the same network node as your neighbor (and neighborhood) when it comes to network logistics. So if you and 15 of your neighbors who have the same cable Internet provider are all online, that 10-15 mbps is split between each of you. What's worse is that if one of your neighbors is downloading 24/7, then you'll see reduced speed all the time. The highest chance of your network's peak performance is late in the evening when everyone else is asleep.

False-ish - The fine print here is that first, in order to achieve 52X speed, you would need a 52X compact disc. Second, when the cd burner starts, it begins at the inside of the disc and works its way out. That's why some burning programs that show real-time speed will say it's burning at 2.5X speed after 1-2 minutes. The 52X speed is achieved as the burner gets closer and closer to the outer edge of the disc. This is the same for burning DVDs.

False - Keep in mind that MEGABITS (Mb) is a unit of measurement for network transfer speed. Megabytes (MB) is a unit of storage such as hard drives. That's why when Internet service providers pitch their fast speeds, they always reference megabits. Therefore, a 1 megabit transfer speed does not mean being able to move 1 megabyte across a network. 1 megabit is about .125 megabytes.

Your computer reads information in different ways.

So for example:

1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 Kilobytes (KB) - BASE 2 (2 ^ 20 = 1,048,576 bytes)

1 Gigabyte (GB) - 1024 Megabytes (MB) - BASe 2 (2 ^ 30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes)

1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 Kilobytes (KB) - BASE 10 (10 ^ 6 = 1,000,000 bytes)

1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1024 Megabytes (MB) - Base 10 (10 ^ 9 = 1,000,000,000 bytes)

Because we know that 1024 Megabytes (MB) => 1 Gigabyte (GB) => BASE 2 (2 ^ 30 = 1,073,741,824), 500 GB equals 500 x 1,073,741,824 bytes or 536,870,912,000 bytes.

We also know that in BASE 10, 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes

So let's look at what we have:

536,870,912,000 (500GB IN BASE 2)
--------------------- = 1.073741824
(500 x 1,000,000,000) (500GB IN BASE 10)

And if we multiply 1.073741824 x 465, we get 499.28994816, which, if rounded up equals 500 GB

Hard Drive Manufacturers use the binary method when manufacturing their drives but Windows reads the information in the decimal format to show the size. However, which would be more attractive? Buying a hard drive advertised as a 536,870,912,200 byte drive or having it say a simple 500 GB?

False-ish - Similar to how a car with 236 lb-ft of torque provides 100% of it at a certain engine rpm speed, PSU manufacturers know that power supplies hit their max wattage at certain points in time.

For example, 750 watts might be attained with 1 hard drive and 1 optical drive while the computer is idling. Also, it's a dead give-away if you paid only $22 for a high-powered PSU. Look for a PSU that certifies their wattage. So if you see an Antec TRUE 550W power supply, it's Antec's way of saying that the PSU provides 550 watts of power at any given time. Another way to tell that a PSU is reliable is if it’s heavy. Quality-made PSUs are engineered with heavy-duty and longer-lasting capacitors.

False - Between 15.5" and 16" screen sizes, most entry-level notebooks have a resolution of 1366 x 768 which is fine but doesn't offer more space. Most 17" notebooks have 1440 x 900 resolution.

If you're looking for more viewing space, opt for a higher resolution.

15" - 1680 x 1050 or 1920 x 1080

17" - 1600 x 900, 1680 x 1050 or 1920 x 1080

The images, icons and text appear crisper and you can fit browsers side-by-side along with being able to simultaneously view all folders without having to press Alt-Tab to switch windows/folders.

False - Mathematically-speaking, more cores would theoretically yield better performance but the issue is that many simple, everyday programs like Microsoft Word, FireFox and Excel won't know to use the extra cores to run the program faster. However, gamers and graphic designers whose programs will see (and utilize) the additional cores will benefit from it. If you want more performance, focus on optimizing the hard drive such as defragmentation, reducing programs that run on start-up (which slow the system down), adding more RAM and cleaning the Windows registry. So ultimately, you really won't see much of a speed difference between a dual-core cpucomputer and a hexacore (6-core) computer both running FireFox and Microsoft Word simultaneously.

The common denominator for these tech myths is that their “validity” is usually exaggerated marketing hype and manufacturer/retailer buzz words in order to entice customers to buy their products, thus adding confusion to the reality. So the next time you’re in the market for a new cheap laptop, digital camera, phone, discount mp3 player, etc., don’t automatically digest the excessive marketing that salespeople throw to close the sale."

By Bryan Lambert - October 31, 2010

It happens to us all – we see a totally cool video on the Internet we’d like to keep a copy for ourselves*. Maybe you’d also like to convert the video to your phone or iPad – or maybe just rip the audio into an MP3 player. Now with one convenient, free program called RealPlayer SP, you can.

RealPlayer SP is simply the latest free player available fromRealNetworks Inc., made primarily for playing RealVideo encoded videos. The player also plays a wide range of other video and audio formats as well. If you have used an earlier version (and maybe been turned off by it) you may be surprised at some of the new features in the latest version. With it you have One-Click Video download ability from the Internet. You also have a nifty Mobile-Transfer feature that lets you easily move your media to your phone. Not sure what kind of video your phone can play? With RealPlayer SP the guess work is taken out as it will convert it for you before transferring. Not only do you get these features, but you can now do some simple trim edits as well as post the media to your favorite websites. Best of all, most of these features and built into both the Windows and Mac versions of the software. For a closer look at these features, click on this link.

1.) Download RealPlayer SP onto your favorite laptop or desktop computer.

2.) When Installing be sure that you keep “Enable browser download button” checked.

3.) Launch your favorite browser and go to your favorite video site such as YouTube. When you watch the video hover the mouse pointer over it and a “Download This Video” button will appear. Simply click on this button and the video will be downloaded to your computer in no time. If the button fails to appear, be sure that the plug-in is enabled. Also note that this will not work with Silverlight videos (used by Netflix) and certain sites such as Hulu.

4.) Your downloaded video will now appear in a RealPlayer Downloader box as well as in the My Library (under My Library> Downloads & Recordings).

Now let’s take the sample video that we downloaded and have some fun. First let’s do a simple edit. While in the My Library, highlight the video you want to edit and click on “Trim Video.” The RealPlayer Trimmer will appear. Here you can adjust the starting and stopping point of the media and “clip it off”. Real simple – real easy (note that the trimmer is one of the features only available on the Windows version).

Now let’s transfer the video to our phone. In the My Library, highlight the video and click on down arrow where you see “Copy to Apple iPad” – there you can select your mobile device. The RealPlayer Converter will then pop up and start converting the media to something that your device can handle and then start transferring it (be sure that your device is plugged into yournotebook computer or desktop).

Of course you can simply convert the media to another type easily by clicking on the “Convert to …” button while in the My Library. In this example, we are converting the video into an MP3 track (ripping the audio). When the RealPlayer Converter box comes up, click on the “Convert To” button and choose the format you want the source file converted to (don’t worry, the original file is safe). After that, click on Start and in no time you have your new file in the format of your choosing.

To post the image to the Internet, while in the My Library area, click on the down arrow next to “Post to Twitter” and choose the site you’d like the video posted to. In our example, we are going to post it to Facebook. After logging on through a pop-up window, it will ask you for permission (the first time you use it) to post and then you click on the share button.

The newest version of RealPlayer is not only fun and powerful, but extremely easy to use. So the next time you see a video you JUST HAVE TO HAVE, with RealPlayer SP, not only can you grab it, but you can edit it, convert it, move it and keep it too!

*Please be sure to respect the copyright laws of your country.

By Ryan Morse - October 17, 2010

If you’re not a dedicated PC gamer, chances are you haven’t been paying attention to the advancements in video card technology over the years. In a short time,video cards have gone from simple add-on cards with a single graphics processor, a tiny heat sink, and some RAM chips, to full-on computers in and of themselves. You may also not be aware that you can install more than one video card in a desktop PC so their graphics processing units (GPUs) work together to provide what’s known as “performance scaling.” In this week’s TechTip, I’ll discuss some different multi-GPU solutions available, why you might want one, how can go about getting one, and why you might be using one before you know it. 

Traditional multi-GPU solutions, ones that involve two physical add-in cards, are available from the big two video card developers, NVIDIA and AMD, with each using their own method of implementation.Generally, the two cards split the workload and render frames as a team to provide close to double the performance as a single GPU system.  NVIDIA’s solution is called SLI, which stands for Scalable Link Interface, and AMD’s is called CrossFireX. To use either solution, you need at least two PCI Express x16 slots on your motherboardand a supported northbridge chipset. With this being the case, a multi-GPU setup is something you need to plan for before building a desktop system, it’s not something you can easily fall back on for an upgrade if you don’t already have an SLI/CrossFireX-ready motherboard. For an NVIDIA-basedmulti-GPU system, you need two cards with identical GPUs. You can use cards from different manufacturers, but if you have aGeForce 9800GT, you need another GeForce 9800GT to go with it.CrossFireX allows for a little flexibility in its pairings, letting you to pair cards that are within the same subseries (e.g. HD 4870 will pair with HD 4850). Unfortunately, these traditional solutions are can be buggy and are not widely supported. That makes traditional multi-GPU solutions an expensive venture for something you might not even be able to fully utilize. Video cards can be expensive enough, buying two or more can be left to the bleeding edge enthusiasts.

Luckily, multi-GPU solutions have evolved to overcome the hindrances of the traditional setup. Each solution offers a Hybrid variant (Hybrid SLI, Hybrid CrossFire) that is designed to incorporate the use of an integrated graphics processor already on the motherboard to handle light-duty graphics tasks along with the much better performance of a GeForce or Radeon GPU. These hybrid solutions are perfect for notebook systems that usually are already using low cost integrated graphics, providing extra graphics processing power when it’s needed. You can find these multi-GPU solutions in place in a number of notebooks already on the market, but, like traditional SLI, these hybrids are not without their drawbacks.

  

The first drawback is that powering two GPUs at all times when you’re only really using one can drain your battery quickly and the second is that you’ll often need to reboot your system when you enable or disable the extra GPU. This second drawback will probably be overcome by technologies likeNVIDIA’s Optimus and Apple’s “automatic graphics switching”found in their current generation of MacBook Pros. 

These multi-GPU solutions will seamlessly switch between energy-efficient and performance modes without the need to reboot by powering down the unused GPU. This gives you the convenience of a virtually instant performance only when it’s needed, consuming less power, and translating to better battery life for mobile applications. This best-of-both-worlds solution is definitely something I am interested in and I expect to see solutions like this to become widely available in the near future.

If seamless multi-GPU switching doesn’t take over, it will be due to the fact that integrated graphics are gradually being moved from the motherboard’s northbridge chip to the CPU itself. Technically, it can still be a multi-GPU solution, but the hardware is much different and the GPUs aren’t working together. Intel’s Core i3 and i5 CPUs already feature a graphics processor integrated onto the die and AMD is planning on releasing the Fusion series, their incorporation of Radeon technology with AMD CPU microarchitecture. As CPUs have hit a ceiling as far as clock speeds and moved to including more cores, you can expect GPUs to take a similar path. There have already been a few high-end video cards released with two GPUs stuck together, and it’s only a matter of time before they’re small enough to fit many GPU cores alongside the multi-core CPUs of today.