Thursday, May 15th, 2008
This one is for those people out there who know about computers. When people are searching for a new computer, they usually ask me what to get. I say something like, “I design websites, what the heck do I know about computers?” That usually gets some mean look and the person walks away. I haven’t been known for my bright attitude at times.
Well, I usually do ok, but I am getting a little tired of buying computers. I want my next one to last. I bought the one I am working on about 6 months ago. I am going to keep this one for something, but I need a monster. Here is the issue…I work with tons of files. One of my sites has 59,000 image files that I need to copy/paste, delete, move, whatever. That’s just one example. I also have very large files that I need to open/close, etc… My problem isn’t the need for processor power to run huge applications or for gaming, I just need something for big, and lots of files. Uploads and downloads are my middle names. I have been working on getting the fastest servers available and now my bottleneck has become my PC.
Here is what I am thinking:
- Dell Precision T7400 Workstation
- Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333) (Do I need a 2nd processor?)
- Genuine Windows Vista® Business, with Media (I’m willing to move on from XP. Plus, Vista actually puts the computer in sleep mode, like I never got XP to do. Big power savings.)
- 3 Year ProSupport for End Users and 3 Year NBD On-site Service (This is important because I want someone in this house if the computer breaks.)
- 256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, Dual Monitor DVI Capable ( I know absolutely nothing about video cards.)
- 4GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS) (I want more.)
- C23 All SAS drives, RAID 5, 3 drive total configuration ( I also know nothing about RAID. I basically want the speed of SAS drives, the speed of two drives working together and the redundancy of a third drive. I don’t know the difference between RAID 0 and RAID 5.)
- Three 146GB SAS Hard Drives, 1 inch (15,000 rpm) (How much faster are SAS drives than SATA drives?)
- PERC6/i SAS/SATA Hardware RAID Card - For Connecting Internal Hard Drives
- Dell 1505 Wireless-N PCIe Card
So there you have it. I already have a monitor, so that’s cool. I think I can save a few bucks by switching out the SAS drives for SATA drives. It depends on what I find out about them. I want more RAM, but didn’t see the option for more. I am wondering about another processor and the video card.
Well, any advice? Am I missing anything?
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Posted in Business, Computers | 4 Comments »
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
Pardon me, I am just venting. I really have never, in my life, used an operating system as buggy as this. It’s like I am in constant wonder about what is going to happen the next time I restart the computer. Yes, that’s right…restart, just like the good ‘ol Windows 98 days. Boy, that was fun.
What was the purpose of this version of Windows anyway? I had been happily using Windows XP for years when my hard drive went bad. Every computer Circuit City sold had Vista installed on it, so I didn’t think anything of it. Man, what a mess. I remember writing something like this a few months ago, you know, complaining about Windows Vista. I said that it is slow (which it is). Someone responded by telling me it isn’t Windows that is slow, it’s my hardware. Gee, that’s weird. My last computer with XP blew this thing away (and still would) and that computer is now about four years old. I now have a dual core processor with the same amount of RAM. How is my hardware worse?
All I know is that someone over somewhere better get something done. I may just have to ask for my money back. Do they do that? I know about the Lemon Law for cars, but…
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Posted in Computers, Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
I run a bunch of servers for my business. One server, in particular, is better and more advanced than the others. Well, the server isn’t more advanced, the software installed on it is. On that server, I am running Plesk, which I have learned is fantastic.
I recently began automating many of my more boring tasks by using cron jobs. A “cron is driven by a crontab, a configuration file that specifies shell commands to run periodically on a given schedule.” Basically, if you have an application that needs to run on a schedule and is capable of being triggered by a cron job, using this feature can be a real time saver.
One of the reasons I didn’t start using this nice little feature sooner is because I had no idea how to set it up through SSH. When I got the new server with Plesk installed on it, setup became very easy. I Just used the “Scheduled Task” feature and it was all done.
Well, that’s all fine and dandy for the capable applications on the server running Plesk, but what about the other servers not running Plesk? I would still have to setup the cronjobs using SSH. Believe it or not, I have been avoiding setting up those jobs to this day. Just a bit of background…these jobs only need to run every few days or so. What I am about to suggest is not really suitable for jobs that need to run every few minutes.
Last night, I started fooling around with “Windows Scheduler.” The link I just gave you is for XP…the information I am going to give you below is for Vista. I am sure you will get the gist. Windows Scheduler is a great feature similar to cron that is installed on your own computer, not the server where your website is being hosted, but does something very similar. It automates those boring tasks that you and I would forget about very easily.
So, how do you run a cronjob with Windows Scheduler? If your cron enabled application has a file that needs to be visited (usually something like cron.php, or something along those lines), it’s quite simple. All you need to do is tell your personal computer to wake up, open a browser and visit that page. Here is how you do it:
The first thing you want to do is to open your control panel and click on “System and Maintenance.”
Then, on the next page, click “Scheduled Tasks.”
After you click that, you will be brought to the Task Scheduler screen. It’s a new window. I am going to go over how I set up a new task this morning. As I said above, all I wanted to do was to have a browser window open and automatically have it visit a particular URL.
The first thing I did was to click on the “Task Scheduler Library” and then on “Create Basic Task.” The Task Scheduler Library is where I am going to store these tasks.
After you click “Create Basic Task,” a window will open with space for you to describe your new task.
Fill in the information so it’s recognizable to you. Then, click next (down at the bottom). The next window is going to ask you when you want your task to run.
I set it to “Daily.” On the next screen, you can adjust it.
On this screen, you can describe more about your daily task, such as start date, time and frequency. I set mine to every other day (a 2 in the recur every: box).
This screen asks you what action you want to perform. As I said above, I wanted to open a browser, so I click the “Start a Program” button.
Here’s is the trickiest part. On the next screen, you have to choose which program and what additional arguments.
In the “Program/script” box, I browsed to open Firefox, which in this case gave me this path, “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe.” In the “Add Arguments” box, I put the URL of my cron file, such as “http://www.mywebsite.com/cron.php.”
In the final screen, you are offered a summary of what you filled in. I like the check off the “Open properties” box for some extra steps I needed to take. Click “Finish.”
The last few items are quite simple, so I won’t offer screen shots for them. When the Properties box opens up, click the “Conditions” tab up top. Since my computer goes into sleep mode after a half hour of non use, I want to wake it up to preform the task, so I click the “Wake computer” check box. Then, I click the “Settings” tab up top. In case the task is missed for some reason, I click the “Run task as soon as possible…” check box and the “If the task fails, restart every:” check box. You can put your own values in there.
When you are finished, hit “OK” and see how it goes. I tried this with a specific time when the computer was in use and it had no problems. I haven’t tried it when the computer was in sleep mode, so we’ll see what happens. Give it a shot and let me know your results.
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Posted in Computers, Websites | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
The list: The World’s Biggest Military Buildups
Since the end of the Cold War, most of the world’s militaries have downsized. But in recent years, a few countries have been bulking up. In this week’s List, FP takes a look at the countries that are going large while everyone else is slimming down.
Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test
New tests have revealed that XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.
24-hour Apple news video network launches
The Digital Lifestyle today launched a new 24-hour online network dedicated to Apple followers. The site mixes original programs with popular Apple/tech-related podcasts and YouTube material, as well as daily news updates and live coverage of breaking tech news events. Using live video technology from Mogulus, viewers can
The 10 Most Ridiculous Inventions Ever Patented
The world tends to laugh at radical inventions. Sometimes, the world is right.
The Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas
If you’re trying to find sources of great, wonderful, unique ideas, whether that’s for a blog post or a painting or a poem or a new product … here are my favorite ways.
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Posted in Current Events | No Comments »
