Author: Dave Farquhar

Umm, no, that’s not Commodore, and that’s not an Amiga

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some stories floating around are suggesting that Commodore is still around, and they just released a new, overpriced Amiga.

Well, there’s a company slapping “Commodore” and “Amiga” labels on PC cases that look kind of like Apple Mac Mini cases and stuffing off-the-shelf components in them, but they’re Commodore Amigas in name only. Read more

A bad day to be a duck

Dave Farquhar Personal

It was a dark and dreary and rainy morning. Colder than it has been, too.

We were talking about it at work. “It’s a good day to be a duck,” I said. Read more

Don’t give prospective employers your Facebook password

Dave Farquhar security ,

I’ve read multiple stories this week about potential employers demanding that interviewees hand over their Facebook passwords during the job interview so they can snoop around.

There’s no good reason for this.
Read more

The best SSD deal I’ve seen yet

Dave Farquhar Hardware

I apologize that there isn’t much time left, but for what’s left of March 21, you can snag a Samsung 830 SSD from Newegg for $140.

It’s the best deal I’ve seen on a highly regarded modern SSD. Read more

Move the print spool directory to your ramdisk

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows , , , , ,

You can improve the speed of printing slightly and, depending on the nature of your print jobs, dramatically reduce disk writes if you move the print spool directory to your ramdisk. It’s a little performance tweak you might have never heard of, but it’s helpful.

This trick works best with a ramdisk product that loads a disk image at startup, such as Dataram Ramdisk.

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How to move your temporary files to a ramdisk

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows , ,

Moving the rest of your temporary files to a ramdisk provides a number of performance benefits. Program installations proceed noticeably faster, and fewer files written to your system disk means less fragmentation, less maintenance for an SSD, and, most likely, longer SSD life.

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Control your debt, stay in school, stay employed and out of prison

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , ,

Some people are worried that student loans are the next debt time bomb that can potentially wreck the economy, and that fear of student-loan debt will make people less inclined to seek the education they need.

Two statistics should discourage that.
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A Firefox ramdisk profile in Windows

Dave Farquhar Software , , ,

I’ve been using Dataram’s excellent free ramdisk program for several months now and highly recommend it. On some machines, I install Firefox to the ramdisk and move the profile there. But the biggest benefit comes from putting the profile (not just the browser cache) in the ramdisk. Storing the profile in a high-speed, near-zero-latency ramdisk solves virtually every Firefox performance issue. Here’s how to set up a Firefox ramdisk profile in Windows. Read more

My household’s energy usage dropped 19% in 2011

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , , ,

I got a letter from my utility company Saturday morning. Inside was a chart, comparing our household’s energy usage from 2010 and 2011. It dropped 19 percent.

Considering our total bill for 2011 was over $900, that’s hardly chump change. Read more

There’s a 61% chance the Adobe software you run at work is out of date

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,

I read this week that 61% of Adobe Reader installations in workplaces is out of date.

That’s very bad. Very, very bad. Because Adobe Reader is trivially easy to exploit, and there’s more sensitive information to steal on corporate PCs than there is on home PCs.

Read more