Dec

3

Additional memory and Windows XP

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I was startled to learn just how low RAM prices are these days. RM73 (USD20) for 2GB of Mushkin Enhanced Basic DDR2/800? Sweet mother of mercy. I think I paid more than that for 1GB a little over a year ago.

Though my system runs reasonably well with 1GB, I was curious about the performance benefits of additional RAM in a Windows XP Home system.

Now, according to Microsoft:

In general, adding memory is the easiest and most effective way to improve a computer’s performance.

Of course the same article goes on to claim:

Although it is recommended, Windows XP does not require 128 MB of RAM. The operating system can run with 64 MB of RAM.

…

A computer with 64 MB of RAM will have sufficient resources to run Windows® XP and a few applications with moderate memory requirements. Office productivity applications and Web browsers fall into this category of applications.

According to Windows Task Manager, Opera’s peak memory usage on my system is 86MB as I write this. Have fun running Microsoft Office 2007 on a Windows XP box with 64MB of RAM, smart guy.

The real question users have to deal with in 2008 is not what the minimum should be but what Windows XP’s maximum addressable memory is. With RAM prices being as cheap as they are, users will naturally be tempted to shove as much memory into their systems as possible. It turns out, however, there’s a limit to how much memory a system with a 32-bit OS like Windows XP Home can handle.
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May

29

PS2

Filed Under Games, Hardware, PS2 | 3 Comments

Being a risk-taking, gung ho early adopter always on the cutting edge of gaming, I got myself a Playstation 2 yesterday, only eight years after it was first introduced.

I got the SCPH-90006, which is the slim PS2 model introduced in late 2007. Aside from being ridiculously thin and light — if it were anymore slimmer and lighter, it could qualify as a handheld gaming device — the latest hardware iteration of the console features a built-in power adapter, making it compact enough for the desktop.

As I planned to slowly work my way through Play-Asia’s stocks of PS2 Region 1 Greatest Hits titles, I got myself a modded PS2. I’m told the mod chip used is the Super 7 chip. I can’t seem to find any details about its abilities but truth be told, the only feature that matters to me is it allows me to play region 1 games on my region 3 console.

The first thing I had to figure out was how I was going to view and hear the PS2 as it includes several AV options.
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Apr

22

Choices, choices

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From Play-Asia:
Choices, choices
Hmm, should I pay almost 35 dollars for the 32MB memory stick or pay an extra five dollars to get the 2GB memory stick?

Ooh, toughie.

Dec

29

And I quote

Filed Under Hardware | 2 Comments

i-Sobot comment
A viewer’s comment during Chris Pirillo’s review of the Takara Tomy i-Sobot robot.

Aug

6

Big fight!! Gobi versus PC

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Annoyed, irritated and flummoxed.

Why, yes, I am the owner of a brand-new PC and yes, I am having trouble figuring out some of its eccentricities.

For instance …

Windows XP doesn’t give you the option to format a partition size larger than 32GB with FAT32 during OS installation. It’s not a limitation of FAT32; it’s just Microsoft’s cunning way of nudging you towards NTFS.

According to Device Manager, my hard disk drive, a 250GB S-ATA II Seagate ST3250620AS, is using the S-ATA I transfer mode. Now, S-ATA I has half the transfer speed of S-ATA II so I am naturally displeased my hard disk isn’t working at optimum speed. I checked the drive’s jumper settings and they’re fine so I suspect it has something to do with the motherboard’s SATA-IDE driver. I do have the latest BIOS and drivers for the nforce 550 chipset on the motherboard but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about PC computing it’s that the latest isn’t always the greatest.

The installer for Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander, the game bundled with the Gigabyte Geforce 8600GT graphics card, installed .NET Framework 2.0 on my system without so much as a by-your-leave. See, this is the problem with society. Even software installers aren’t making the effort to be polite. I later find out GPGNet, the game’s multiplayer component, cannot be uninstalled without .NET Framework. There’s no mention whatsoever whether the single-player game will run without GPGNet.

Windows Update later informs me there are critical security fixes for .NET Framework. Great. Thanks to Gas Powered Games, I now have some software, which I’m not convinced I actually need, that happens to be so insecure that someone could take control of my PC and do something nefarious like, I dunno, store high-quality pornography on my half-speed hard drive.

IrfanView now offers to install Google Desktop for users. Wha-? Why? But hey, at the very least the installer asked politely.

Ad-Aware, on its first scan, claimed adiras.exe was a dialler. What it didn’t mention, and I only discovered after looking it up, is that adiras.exe is used for ADSL USB modems. STFU, Chicken Little.

Having an AMD dual core processor means better performance. Theoretically. I’m disturbed by the amount of fixes and utilities necessary to make the most of a dual core processor. Exasperatingly, I learn some of these fixes can cause a degradation in some software while boosting the performance in others. This is one type of duality I don’t need.

Upon installing the drivers for the Realtek ALC888 audio chipset, I find something called alcmtr.exe on Windows XP’s list of processes. A check online shows that it’s unnecessary but more ominously, it’s further claimed the process is gathering data on behalf of Realtek. What sort of data? And how true is it? I disable it from running at bootup in msconfig. The audio works fine. So it is inessential after all. Pop quiz, Realtek. What phrase sounds like “Shrew Yew”?

I’m sure I’ll continue to find new things to vex me in the next few months but I’m hoping most of these will be solved with driver updates and software hotfixes.

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