It's Huge, ........It's Alive!!!

I thought I'd be a good idea to use my change in cases for my computer as a teaching tool for the computer club. I'm not going to say that having 8 high-schoolers crowded around your dining room table watching your every move was a bad idea, but lets just say that it wasn't as fun and relaxing as playing with hardware usually is. If I haven't previous been, or are currently their teacher, and used to talking to them, it would probably have been down-right uncomfortable.

I will say that the patient was about as cooperative as I could have possibly hope for though. Taking the pieces out of the old Centurion 590 was way more work than putting it into the giant Cosmos II. The only real issues were that the previous owner had put in a bunch of additional fans that I don't need and they needed to come out. The other issue was that this case has the built-in ability to control many fans, but their LEDs separately as well. So you can imagine the spaghetti mess of wires coming off of the front panel of this thing. I will say that I was very lucky in that the wiring on my power supply unit were just long enough to reach everything, but barely!

For those of you who haven't seen this case, I'll say that it was pretty nice to have some extra hands while I worked on it though. This was especially true when we got done and was trying to get it under my desk! But I'm getting a little ahead of myself, so let me back up. I'm not sure that I've ever worked with a case where things were so easy to get inside.

It became apparent to me why the good doctor made his monster so big! It's so much easier to work inside of the cavernous space. I will say though, that putting my two little drives inside of all those bays was a little ridiculous. I was actually confronted with too many options on how I wanted them in all those trays! As it sits, the case will hold 9 more 3.5" drives....and that's not including the 2 "hot-swap bays on the front!

All was not perfect though. We finally finished wiring up and took it into the office to hook up. Of course, I knew the 27.7" height was too much to get under the edge of the desk, so after trying to get it under there by tilting, we ended up having to actually lift one end of the desk to get it under there. That went fine.....then disaster struck. Not only did it NOT boot ("missing NT Boot Loader"), it took me a little while to figure out that it was missing the boot loader because the SATA cable had come off of the SSD with the OS on it. So the BIOS failed to see it at all and loaded a new default version that didn't include that drive in the boot sequence. Therefore, even after I plugged it in, it resolutely refused to acknowledge the there was a boot drive! This took me a nerve racking 5 minutes or so to figure out with the remaining 4 students standing over me watching intently. Inside my head, the Final Jeopardy song is playing with the tic-toc, tic-toc going on as well. Ultimately, after fiddling around inside the BIOS for a few minutes I notice that it wasn't in the boot order, realized what happened and fixed it.

In the end, the monster machine booted and all was right in Propellerheadland.......and all the kids went home reaffirmed that their teacher did in fact know what he was doing.... Oh yeah, it's dead-quiet and runs extremely cool even with all those fans removed.

Size Matters....AND IT'S HUGE!!!

Last night, on my way home from buying this, I called my friend Kym to tell him about this crazy thing I had done. He, like most people had never seen a Cooler Master Cosmos II before, promised to "Google It" and see what I'd have to explain to my wife. Some time later, I received a text from him which started with "Bawwwhahahaha" or something to that effect and ended with "Good luck with that"!

This story starts in 2007. Cooler Master decided they'd so something over the top, and introduced the Cosmos 1000. At $200, 24" tall and over 40lbs, it was the most extravagant case of it's time. And as you can see, sitting on the floor next the the 2012 Cosmos II, somewhat over-shadows it! Yes, the "II", at 27.7", 48lbs, and $350 is (if there is such a thing), even more "over the top". At launch, it was in excess of $100 more expensive than the next most expensive case on the market, capable of swallowing the EVGA, SR2 (and upcoming SR3) motherboards, and 13 (!) 3.5" drives, along with about that number of 2.5" drives and 3, 5.25" drives. I'm not going to do an exhaustive listing of the features since you can all Google, but I'll hit a few highlights before I attempt to explain myself.

Lever-latch opening, swing-away doors that detach by lifting off of it's hinges to allow entry into the cavernous interior (where you can see some of the drive bays. There are 6 more of them behind that panel (which is also swing-away) with the twin fans in it. 

Top control panel which includes 6 USB ports (2, USB 3.0), eSATA, headphone/mic, along with LED lighting and fan control over multiple areas, power, and reset. Just below are 3, 5.25" tool-less bays for optical drives/etc., and 2 hot-swappable SATA 3.5" drive bays as well. 

Here are more features. By all means, click on this and blow up the image!

Want an idea of scale? Here's an image of a full-grown adult struggling with it.

 

So; why in the world would someone like me buy such a thing? The King of Function, The Sultan of Understated, The Frugal Propellehead? Lots of reasons. Let's start with, I'm downsizing......that's really not a joke! I was using two different computers that lived in two Cooler Master Centurion mid-tower cases. Any way you slice that; 2 desktop computers take up a lot of space. Although, I still fully intend to play with the idea of turning one box into a server, I'm going to do that at school now in association with the "computer club". This frees up lots of space under there. However, if I'm going to go with one computer, it needs to be able to hold a lot of stuff (read many drives). Two 10" wide computers takes up more space than one 14" comptuer! If I'm going to cut down to one computer, I'm going to make it a good one. I don't mean my parts aren't good. 

I created an issue from my last upgrade when I went from the Cooler Master TX2 to the Hyper 212 Evo. This heatsink/fan combo is big enough to require a full bolt-on backplate which uses bolt and nuts. This creates lots of metal sticking out of the back of the motherboard. So much so that it touched the MB tray of my Centurion 590. .......And many of you now know what happened. It shorted out of course and gave me issues till I put some electrical tape behind it. This worked, but is clearly not a permanent solution! Over the course of the last few weeks, I've been looking at nicer cases/up-to-date cases that have a cut-out behind the CPU area. I looked and looked, but just couldn't find one that had all the features I wanted/needed all in one case. Factal, Corsair, Antec, NZXT, XYZ, ABCD; it didn't matter. Of course, I looked at the "big boys", like the Corsiar Obsidian 900D and the Cooler Master Cosmos II, but these $300+ behemoths were way out of my price range. That is until last week when I went up to Micro Center to pick up a $3 keyboard and saw their "display model" on clearance for $214.95. That's $135 off of retail and getting within my price range, but it was pretty beat up and would have been close to $250 after taxes. Then I remembered seeing an ad a few weeks ago on Craigslist about a Cosmos listed for $200. Local, no taxes! You know the story-line already. Of course I offered him $175, he countered $180, and I'm now the proud owner of the most extravagant case ever made.

I've explained how, but haven't really gotten into why. Well; there are lots of reasons. As you can see, it's one of the best performing cases ever. When compared to others of it's type and cost (roughly), it's a, if not, the top performer. As I've already said: it will take lots of drives. In fact it will take LOTS of anything. It's doubtful that I would or could outgrow it any time in the foreseeable future. And, "where the rubber really meets the road", I had about $180, a need for a bigger case and a desire for a top-notch one. A watchful eye on Craigslist was able to land me, arguably the top one on the market. Can't complain about that! Now.......to explain it to the wife......

It's a Remote Possibility

This image isn't much of an exaggeration when I say that I have a bunch of remotes. In my main A/V system, there's a receiver (2), a CD Changer (1), a Cassette Deck (0), a DVD Mega-Changer (1), a Blu-Ray Player (1), another receiver for remote zones (1), a iPod dock (1), a HTPC (1), a big TV (1), 2 other TVs for monitoring other things (2). That'd be 11 remotes....and that's not counting the Wii-motes! Hey wait-a-minutes!?! Am I cheating? Two remotes for the receiver. Yup, that receiver has two remotes; one of them, a Phillips Pronto based touchscreen and the other, the normal Integra/Onkyo remote. And this is after I got rid of the minidisc desk!

Yes, I'm aware that I should probably seek professional attention, but let me tell ya....it's been worse. Back in the laserdisc transition to DVD (beside the LaserDisc Player) days when I also had not only a VHS VCR, but also at various times Beta, S-Beta and S-VHS....it was farworse!

So yup...as they say: "I got betta". However, I'm really seeking to get better still. So, I'm at a little bit of a crossroads. One one hand, I have a variety of universal/learning remotes.
But I've gone down the road before, and it hasn't been pretty! It got way worse, when I added a spouse and children to the mix! My ideas of what works in an all-in-one device and what they think works is two entirely different things.

I've made a few efforts in the past few years and none of them have turned out well.

So, here I sit with two different Pronto based remotes, that were too much screen oriented for my optically challenged wife and had too many pages for the kids.

Then there was there's the Integra/Onkyo style remote, which I love and use, but for them; too many buttons!

The one she does like, and will use? Is oddly the Sony AV3000, which I kinda hate because the screen isn't very good and is not very flexible. Of course, that puts it on my "naughty list". So, what to do?

Of course, my immediate inclination would be to pursue the current darling of the all-encompassing super-remote, the Logitech Harmony 1100. I'd LOVE to have one or two of those things. The concept is just cool. Tell it what devices you have, and it goes and gets the codes from the Logitech database, through the Internet. Wow, that's so 21st Century! However, it's like $400 worth of cool. I'm completely not doing that. So, I'm going to look over all my remotes and decide what can be used, program them and get rid of everything else. This will become part of my resolution to consolidate, clear out and most of all.....Avoid unnecessary buying!

Is There A Way to Make An Alienware Frugal?

In might be one of the most improbable of all the improbable success stories in the computing industry. I know I've railed against it in the past, and banged my head against an expensive failed M7700 project. The fact of the matter is that they (now a part of Dell) are ridiculously expensive for what you get. In fact, you don't have to build your own to get a better deal. You can in fact find any number of manufacturers out there that'll sell a you a better deal. However, there's just a little something about them that draw people. Kind of like owning a Jeep product. It's expensive and doesn't make sense, but they are still a success. In fact, while I was looking through Youtube videos, I came across a guy who collects Alienware desktops! This nut has something like 5 or 6 of them, mostly less then 4 years old, so you can imagine how much they costs him!

What started this weird (for me anyway) post? In fact, there's nothing frugal about this firm that makes it's money completely due to cache, and not on substance. Well, it's a weird story. This, like most other years, I have a student who's not only good at my class, but also are interested in things that I'm interested in...., however, oddly, this year.....it's a girl! It's rare, since the top history students at this age tend to be boys, and of course, interest in computers, doubly so! She and some other students have decided to start a Computer Club at our school. As part of that, she wants to build her own computer. .....Not just any computer, a Gaming Computer! One that will make her teenage younger brother jealous!

Let me make this clear. We live in the "burbs", but not the type where there are Mercedes in driveways and pools in every other back yard. The percentage of residents with college degrees is in the low 20's, so yeah, it's pretty much working class. So, the probability of a parent (in the case, a single parent) will pony up for a $3000-5000 PC isn't good. So, we'll need to be inventive and look at alternatives. Right up my alley!

One of the things I do like about Alienware is that regardless of how unusual the exterior, they seem to basically use regular parts on the inside. I watched a Youtube video where a guy took an older model and updated it by replacing the motherboard, etc. PING! ....Which is precisely what I think can be done with my student.On top of that, I even came across a great candidate for it this weekend! I found an ad on Craigslist for an Aurora 7500 (Core2Duo generation) model that the owner had pulled the processor, and RAM, but everything else intact for $175. I'd bet that he'd take somewhere between $150 and $160 for it, but even at the full price, it'd be a decent starting point for her till she can save enough to upgrade the guts.

From there, it's a series of incremental upgrades till she'll eventually have a decent gaming rig..... all without outlaying huge chunks of cash (at least for a 16 year old) at a time. 

Much of the cache of Alienware is that they are just "cool". However, the concept would be all the more cool if it can be frugally and successfully done! Stay tune to see if I have better luck with these guys the second time around!

Requium For An Old Friend: Windows XP 2001-2014

More appropriately, I should have written this on Tuesday when Microsoft ended support for XP, but I was hip-deep in gators. Meaning, I was busy looking for and writing about DDR3 RAM. Well, OK. XP support ended at our house a couple of years ago when I took the kids off of their old machines. Although, right up until a few weeks ago, I had an XP box to support a client who can't afford to buy a newer version of CAD that would run on Windows 7. But I pulled it when I upgraded my desktop workstation and move it's parts over.

The issue isn't whether Windows XP is or isn't good. That'd be like asking whether a 120 year old whether they're a good athlete. Well.....100 years ago, they probably were......but they're 120 years old!!! The reason that we're even asking this question is that 30+ percent of the computers in the world are still running this. Why!?! Not that XP is just that great! It's mostly because Vista sucked just that much!

One of these days, everyone will just automatically avoid every other M$ product and be done with it. However, this issue cause them to keep XP on life support loooong after it should have been dead and buried! What does it have to do with you? Did your XP box just fall over on April 9th? Obviously the answer is "NO". You are welcome to continue to use it, literally "till the cows come home".

The issue is this..... If you've ever been a regular user of a XP box, you are aware, that it was the Anti-Virus maker's best friend. It was pretty darned unsecure, and was a haven for every virus and malware write in the word (Don't be too smug, Mac users; if your OS was more relevant, you'd be in a similar position too). So, imagine your are some virus/malware/spam/what-have-you writer out there, polishing your skills getting your latest brain-child ready to go out there into the "wild". It's ready in Dec, Jan, Feb, or March.....what do you do? Release it and have Microsoft patch the vulnerability in the last months/days of support? Heck no, you've known for months that the day YOU want to release is April 8th...or shortly thereafter, right? Who wouldn't!

No, No, No! Don't even think about getting out there on the Internet with that Z-Box (Zombie)!

My Memory Is Going......

OK; not really that memory. Actually my computer memory (although, that other memory isn't all that great either these days). Let's back up and let me explain the situation.

As you're probably aware, I've been in the process of upgrading my computers. When I upgrade, I typically do it in the Intel style.....Tic Toc, Tic Toc. For those unfamiliar with that. Intel's famous Tic Toc process goes like this. The upgrades alternate between major changes with relatively minor ones. This current upgrade is a major one. There are a variety of items involved in moving platforms. Some are minor, and some are major. Among other things, a big change is a move in types of memory. In this case, a move from DDR2 to DDR3. I was partially there already with some machines, but this pretty much moves all our front-line machines to that type of memory. In the space of the last few months, I've bought a lot of it. These days, when you buy a fair amount of RAM, it's almost inevitable that you'll get some bad "sticks".

Yup, one of my sticks of Patriot RAM that went into the In-Law machine is "FUBAR'd". OK, maybe not that bad, but it does give me BSODs when I try to use it. Of course, it being a "name-brand" product is warrantied, but it will have to go back to the manufacturer via RMA. In this case, it's not the end of the world, just a pain in the a**! I should have predicted, since it was a "matched" pair, they want me to send both back! The issue is that I don't have any extra memory of that spec laying around.

Where am I going with this? Well, it's an opportunity to discuss the issues associated with buying memory. I know I've covered this ground to some degree in the past, but this latest situation has refreshed the topic for me and reiterated certain points. First of all; like money, there's no such thing as too much RAM! Conversely, it's easy to not have enough. Back in the Windows XP days (R.I.P. 2002-2014), if you had 2Gb, you were "OK". Like most of the world, we'll skip Vista: so, moving on to Windows 7, all conversations begin at 4Gb. Why 4Gb? Well; the OS and the typical utilities such as Anti-Virus etc. is going to use up close to 2Gb. Given that most machine are able to use dual channel memory, it just makes sense to at least put in one in each of two sockets. So, that pretty much leaves us ready to work today if you have 4Gb in a machine. What's going to happen when you start that long-put-off project to archive the old family videos. start editing photos. Microsoft pushes out the next service pack? Are you a user of many, many tabs in your browser? My wife routinely has at least 6 open at any given time. This is why I recommend 8Gb for any regular-use machines.

If you aren't aware, memory has taken a upward spiral the last year or so. Right now, base-line price of a 2Gb pair of sticks run at least $40, and 4Gb pair $60. That's the lower end of the manufacturer spectrum. If you want to get into mid-line, it'll be a $15-20 jump, then another $20 or so, if you want something like, Crucial or Corsair. If you want high-end gaming stuff, it'll at least double that outlay. If I haven't been clear before, let me state categorically that I will only use mid-line or better that have life-time warranties. What you are paying for is the warranty and to some degree, extra testing by the manufacturer to be sure the sticks are up to the rated spec. Unfortunately, the fact is that testing is expensive, and it's cheaper to RMA memory that's bad. So yeah; you REALLY want to be sure you can at least get replacements if something goes wrong......kind of like my sticks of Patriot G2s.

Over the last few months, through patience and judicious selection, I've been able to pick up memory for some good prices (below market), so I can't complain. I do have one cautionary tale to tell, it's this. Enough isn't enough! No; I don't mean you need a lot of RAM in capacity, although that's good as well. I mean if you have several machines like me, it's a good idea to have spares. As this latest episode has pointed out, I'm now busy trying to find some temporary RAM while the bad stuff is being replaced.

WhoDat HooToo?

This is pretty much the reaction of my students when I told them about HooToo. Who's/What's HooToo, they/you ask?

These guys are not well known. Well Duhh!!! They are a small outfit that's just a few years old out of Silicon Valley (of course), that up to this point has some USB hubs and one really interesting product.... in a couple of variations.

....the HooToo Tripmate HT-M01. That's it up there. It's about the size of an old clamshell cellphone. What does it do? Well...... what does it not do is a better question! It is a WiFi router, NAS, WiFi/Network bridge, charger and personal "Cloud". In essence; it's the answer to my geek-boy prayers! I did not buy this. It's $50.

I bought this! This is the HooToo Tripmate HT-M02 "Nano". It's the size of 3 saltines stacked together, as you can probably tell by the relative size in comparison to the USB and Ethernet cables in the picture. It was $20; well, actually $18.xx. The difference? It doesn't have a battery and has to be plugged into some source of power delivered through the micro-USB cable. So, it doesn't charge stuff, and it's power delivery is limited. However, it will in fact run a flash drive, I wanted to test the concept and it was CHEAP!

What concept? You guys might have noticed that I've been yammering about "cloud" type things for a while now. I have a need for people to access files via devices, whether tablet, phone or computer, wherever it is I'm at. My students need files from me. My children need videos from me, and my wife needs whatever comes to her mind from me. One of the things I've run into is that the majority of tablets don't have regular ports on them to read storage, no USB, no SD card reader. What HooToo does (HT-M01, Nano, Elite) is to create your own little cloud around you.

 

Kind of like Pig-pen in Charlie Brown. Plug in any USB storage and it will use it's wireless access point (with or without) internet and broadcast it out to whoever has it's Tripmate app. There are apps for Android, iOS and PC. My position on the device was that, the idea sounded cool, and I had a use for it. But it was so new that I didn't want to invest a lot of money into it and have it NOT WORK. For me; $20 is an amount that I can handle losing, but $50 would irritate me.

It showed up in the mail yesterday from Newegg and I got it working last night. Then tried it out in my classroom today. It worked exactly the way they said it would. The set up was very simple and in fact if I was them, I'd replace that large confusing manual with a Quick Setup Guide. My students downloaded the app and were instantly able to access the files they needed. You might be asking, if we have B.Y.O.D. and WiFi internet access all over the building, what is the purpose of having this thing? Isn't it redundant? Yes, we have the whole Google Drive/Google Docs thing and yes indeed, most kids have their own device and others have school provided notebook computers. However, all of this is subject to the vagaries of our heavily filtered network where files are uploaded to god-only-knows-where and back down again in the same room. Isn't that just a little perversely inefficient? Besides which, I have a number of students who for whatever reason still can't get on to the system. Don't know why. This way, I can get them what they need directly! And if you are in a school district that doesn't have those resources at all.......?

Who doesn't have one of these? With this and my Nano, I am the king of all that I survey, or at least inside my classroom anyway! "Behold; I am become the cloud".....or something like that anyhow.

And when I'm not teaching? Well; I'm completely expecting that HooToo to go on vacation with us. This will give me a way to provide files to the children in the backseat while they are on their tablets.

Now that I know that it works and I have uses for it. My plan is to buy the soon to be released Tripmate Elite which not only has a battery (that my Nano doesn't), but two higher amperage USB jacks so that it can function as the one charger for out phones and tablets, wired connection to the hotel's network via the Ethernet and provide my own WiFi Access Point as well. The best part of this $50-60 device? It'll keep me from having to buy the Corsair Voyager Air for $200!