I have decided to install Windows 7 on my main PC but instead of wiping out my stable, fully setup XP machine, I have installed it on another partition in a Dual Boot setup.  So far, it is pretty slick.  I only have Firefox and a couple other applications set up on the Windows 7 install so the speed may be deceiving.

I have been hedging over picking up a copy of Vista and installing that with the expectation of upgrading to 7 in October.  Now, with this solution, I will stick with the dual boot and pick up Windows 7 alone in October.

The builds are going well.  My main PC install went pretty well.  The Phenom is lightning fast.  I'm almost done reloading all the applications.  That is fairly satisfying.

The G-FEST video room PC is not going as smoothly but the hardware is older.  It will end up going fine but it is tougher.

Go Blackhawks!!!

It looks like Memorial Day Weekend will be an interesting one for me.  I am undertaking a major PC renovation project that will see the new Media PC inherit the Dual Core processor and motherboard from my main PC.  Then my main PC will have a new Phenom II 940 Quad Core processor and new AM2+ Motherboard.  To round things out, the processor and motherboard that were in the Media PC will now be held in a new PC that will be used for the Video Room at G-FEST.

If all goes well, and it rarely does with PCs, I should be smoking tomorrow. Hopefully, that smoking will not be burning plastic.

While I was performing the swap, we had the new Clapton/Winwood DVD on.  It is a collection from their recent three night stand at Madison Square Garden in NYC.  Fortunately. Clapton does what he does best when playing with other great talents.  He removes himself from the spotlight and plays the capable side man.  This DVD is a Winwood tour-de-force featuring mostly Traffic and other Winwood fronted material.  Well worth picking up.

While working through this, the Blackhawks took a backseat.  I just checked and found out they let a three goal lead slip away and it was tied at the end of three, again.  On the up side, they won this time with Patrick Sharp scored 1:52 into overtime.

The weekend is already looking up.

Something happened to my Firefox this morning and after attempted reinstall and restore of backed up profiles, I was left with only one option.  Doing a deep uninstall using Revo Uninstaller.   This means doing a complete uninstall including registry and any directory with traces of Firefox data. 

After restarting my PC, I then reinstalled Firefox.  Success!!!  My new Firefox install was now able to bring up all pages that didn't come up due to corruption.  The downside is that restoring extensions with Mozbackup isn't always successful and today it was not.  I was able to restore my bookmarks, however.

So that leaves me to go about reinstalling my essential add-ons.  Themes are easy enough.  Kempleton, myFirefox and Silvermel are good. 

Now the extensions.  His is my list of the must-have extensions.

• IE Tab
• Weatherbug
• FoxClocks
• Download Statusbar
• Video DownloadHelper
• TinyURL Generator
• Sage II
• FireFTP
• ColorfulTabs
• ColorZilla

There are a few others that I use at work such as FireBug and Web Developer.  They are great.

Then there are the Search Engines.  NewEgg, OfficeMax, BestBuy, IMDB, Tiger Direct, Websters, Netflix and many others are needed.

This is a big project but what are you going to do?

I have loaded Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 on my laptop.  So far so good.  The boot up is definitely slower than it was with Vista and the SD card I used for Ready Boost is not needed because Windows says it will not benefit my system.  It's possible that the entire PC might be running a bit slower.  I did an upgrade rather than a fresh install.  I may try that, as well.

Like I said, so far, so good.  Windows 7 RC is avaliable for anyone to download through June.  If you have an extra, non-essential PC that you want to tool around with this new OS, I highly recommend it.

My PC build has taken a surprising turn for the better.  I checked out the reviews of my new motherboard, a Foxconn Winfast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS, at Newegg.com.  Newegg is a fantastic computer parts vendor, in addition to being a great resource for user feedback.

After reading through the reviews of my new motherboard, I found that my problems were not isolated.  Many other users encountered the same issues.  Over the course of the last four days, I've asked myself several times Why Am I Doing This? Well, the reason was three fold.  The Foxconn has SATA 3 connectors.  My existing mobo had SATA 1.5.  The Foxconn has a Firewire port for the front and the back of the PC.  My Asus did not.  Lastly, the Foxconn has a Gigabit LAN port.  The Asus does not.

As I said, the reviews at Newegg showed me the light.  Two things that appeared to help many other users were to get the drivers direct from nVidia and update the BIOS.  I did both tonight and (knock on wood) things are looking up.  We'll see how it ends up but I am happier with this machine than I have been since this upgrade project began.

Yes, today is Valentines Day but computer users know that yesterday was a big day, as well.  No, not because it was Friday the 13th?  Not because Pitchers and Catchers reported to Spring Training.  Not even because it was the day of try outs for the Lingerie Footbal League?

No it's because it was 1234567890.

As reported by the Times Online,  "at precisely 23:31:30 GMT (last night), the ten-digit clock used by Unix computers - which includes the servers that run everything from the internet to air traffic control - will display all ten decimal digits in sequence. 

"Computers count time differently. They simply count the seconds from “Co-ordinated Standard Time”, or to human beings, the seconds elapsed from midnight, January 1, 1970 - the digital equivalent of the birth of Christ. Unix time is how many seconds there have been since then (not including leap seconds, in case you were wondering)"

Pretty cool in a geeky way...

This article takes you through the steps to load an Ubuntu Studio 8.10 Linux desktop that can replace a Windows desktop right out of the box. It's amazing the level of computability that is out there. Once you've loaded these programs you will be at the same level of ability that a Windows desktop would be at but without any DRM or a single cent in cost. That's right, it's all free.

There are graphics programs, document creators, web browsers, FTP clients, mail clients, audio editors, music players, html editors and more. I have not attempted to build a Linux machine to would love to. I think all I need is a case and some memory. Other than that, I have enough old pieces to create a functional Linux PC.

Read the article here.

Now there is disagreement in the Linux community if this is the way to go. For the less adventurous, there is Ubuntu Desktop edition from www.ubuntu.com.