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SSDs in business: The time is right

Dave Farquhar Hardware April 7, 2014November 21, 2018excel, intel, Intel Core

My employer is experimenting with a few desktop PCs with SSDs. And they are amazing. These machines have an Intel Core i5 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 120 GB SSD. They log on and off in seconds. Word and Excel 2010, which are absolute slugs on HDDs, load in one second. The time is right for SSDs in business.

This is what modern computing is supposed to be.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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The time bomb in your older computer

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security March 26, 2014March 25, 2014amd, intel, nvidia

I was listening to an interview between Paul Asadorian (of Pauldotcom fame) and Cigital CTO and software security expert Gary McGraw. They discussed how the target of attacks moved from Microsoft to Adobe and now that Adobe is showing signs of getting its act together, it’s going somewhere else.

“If I were Nvidia,” McGraw said, “I’d be thinking a lot about software security. Fortunately they are.”

Nvidia does sound like a juicy target. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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How to get 1440×900 resolution out of an Nvidia video card

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Windows March 26, 2014March 23, 2014intel, nvidia

I have a Gateway FPD1975W LCD monitor with an unusual 1440×900 resolution. Intel video cards have no issues with this resolution, but Nvidia cards don’t support it by default when running under Windows.

Hack the drivers a bit and you can get this monitor to work just fine with an Nvidia adapter, though. Believe it or not, the only hacking tool you need to accomplish the deed is notepad.exe. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The world’s fastest budget PC

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 25, 2014February 23, 2014Broadcom, christmas, compaq, firewall, hp, intel, Libre Office, Micro Center, new hardware, office 2010, PCI Express, pcie, pentium d, pfsense, SUBSYSTEM, windows 7, Windows XP

So, a relative’s PC was getting a bit aged, and runs Windows XP, barely, so I talked them into an upgrade. I noticed that Micro Center had HP/Compaq DC5700s for $99. They were standard issue office PCs a few years ago, and there are a lot of them in the refurb channel. We went and got one over the weekend.

“What are you going to do with that?” the sales rep asked. “We only use them as cash registers.”

“Word processing,” I said.

“You sure you want to run Windows 7 on an 8-year-old PC?”

“I wrote the book on running Windows on older PCs. Literally. It’ll be fine.”

I hate calling rank like that, but sometimes it’s what you have to do.

And really, for $99, it’s awfully good. Web browsing is plenty fast, Libre Office runs fine on it, and think about it. Windows 7 retails for $100-$109. So it’s like getting the hardware for free. Or Windows for free, however you want to look at it.

Dave Farquhar

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Consumer routers are the security vulnerability of the year, so far

Dave Farquhar security, Servers and Networking February 21, 2014February 20, 2014AT&T, firewall, intel, pc world, PCI Express, pfsense, vulnerability, Windows XP

Today I found an article in PC World that gives a somber assessment of the state of consumer routers, like the device that probably sits between you and the Internet.

I’m glad this is getting attention. There’s a lot more to it than what’s in the PC World article, but I’ve droned enough about what’s bad about consumer routers. It’s bad now, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Kudos to PC World for providing a bit of an action plan.

What if you want to go beyond what PC World is talking about? I’m glad both of you asked. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Getting past your own biases

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized February 13, 2014July 14, 20171990s, amiga, Andy Grove, apple, atari, Bill Gates, commodore, IBM, intel, macintosh, motorola, x86

I read Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive last week. I always figured it was an autobiography or memoir, not a business book. But it’s a business book. A very good one.

I avoided it because I didn’t like Andy Grove. I’ve never been a fan of Intel’s business practices during the 1990s and 2000s, including using payola to keep competitors’ chips out of large computer systems, but after reading this book, I’m more disappointed than anything. Whichever company had Andy Grove wins, period. No need to cheat. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The NSA’s disaster aversion by keeping BIOSes safe for the free world

Dave Farquhar security December 19, 2013November 30, 20181990s, amd, antivirus, apple, CIH, intel, MELTDOWN, NSA, random data

This weekend, CBS ran a story about how the NSA foiled a sinister plot to brick millions of PCs and cause a financial meltdown. At least they didn’t say MELTDOWN.

My opinion is that this is a puff piece. A source managed to scare a journalist with a threat that sounded credible enough, and make something routine sound big and threatening.

Dave Farquhar

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Not your father’s Celeron

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Linux July 31, 2013July 15, 2017amd, asus, debian, intel, Libre Office, micro atx, Microsoft Office, Open Office, overclocking, passwords, samsung

I picked up a Celeron G1610 CPU last week and I’m using it to build a Linux box. Yeah, it’s a Celeron. But it performs like a 2011-vintage Core i3 or a 2010-vintage Core i5, consumes less power than either, and costs less than $50. It’s hard to go wrong with that. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Now that Microsoft is IBM, it needs to avoid IBM’s big mistake

Dave Farquhar Windows July 18, 2013July 14, 20171980s, amd, apple, compaq, computerworld, IBM, intel, lenovo, Roku, xbox

Whether Microsoft likes it or not, it’s turned into IBM. The biggest difference I see is that when Microsoft makes a mistake, it catches up with them much faster than the same mistake did to IBM.

But IBM’s biggest mistake was its adamant refusal to compete with itself. And that’s what Microsoft is going to have to avoid. Like Computerworld says, Apple says if you don’t compete with yourself, someone else will. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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What happened to Altavista

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 2, 2013November 4, 20171990s, altavista, commodore, compaq, DEC, Digital Equipment Corporation, intel, Intel Core, IPO, yahoo

For as long as I can remember, my home page has been about:blank. But for a good chunk of the 1990s, I would have done well to set it to altavista.digital.com. Here’s what happened to Altavista.

Most people remember Altavista as the thing people used before Google, if they remember it at all. But I remember it as the first great search engine, because I’ve done my best to forget what search was like before Altavista came along. So I was a little sad to see Yahoo shut down what was left of the first great search engine in the summer of 2013. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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