It's been a while....

It's been a few months, I've kept pretty busy between work and home. Some big news, I ventured out and started the process of creating a small business. I'm talking with an accountant now who it helping me set it up with all the legal mumbo jumbo. Pretty exciting stuff.

In other news, I'm suppose to go camping this weekend, but.... A picture is worth a thousand words.....

A truck.....

So I got home from work today and i was tired, more tired then normal, because I decide to sit up and watch the hockey game last night then go to work at 7 this morning.

So back to my point, my wife said to me that she bought me a truck and I laughed at her..... Now she knows that I have wanted a truck since I was 16 and so on and on.... and I have been bugging her about getting one that last few weeks. BUT she was serious, some guy she works with has a 1998 chevy s-10 that is willing to sell it to us for 1500 bucks, now it does have close to 160,000 miles on it. So I told her to ask a few questions about it..... So we shall see....

Stanley Cup Playoffs

All right its that time of the year again when the Ice is cold and the action is fast paced and hard hitting. So is going to be the Wings that get to take Lord Stanley home or the Penguins.

LET'S GO WINGS

Media Center PC Update......

So the media center pc is up and running now for about a week or so.....
I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate for the Operating System, not that I'm a fan boy, just using it as the base OS and for the media center functions.
So here's the hardware list

• 80 GB Hard Drive, Vista is installed on this
• 2 500 GB Hard Drives
• 4 GB of Memory
• DVD Burner
• ECS AMD AM2 690G micro atx motherboard
• Athenatech Black Steel MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case ATX 400W
• AMD Athlon 4200 + 2.2 GHz Dual Core Processor
• HauppaugeWinTV-PVR 500

Only other piece of hardware i'm holding off on is the Hauppauge Wintv - HVR- 1800, this is a dual tuner card, but one tuner is for cable and the second tuner is for HD.

New Toy

Well I broke down and bought an xbox 360, hopefully I can still get my sleep at night :-)

New Media Center PC

So I'm in the process of gathering parts for building a new Media Center PC. I have an older PC that I'm playing with, but I decided that a new PC will give me the best performance.

• Case
  
• APEX TX-346 Black/Silver Steel ATX Mini Tower Computer Case ATX12V 300W
• Quantity of 1
  
• Motherboard
  
• ECS AMD690GM-M2 AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
• Quantity of 1
• Processor
  
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz Socket AM2 89W Dual-Core Processor
• Quantity of 1
• Memory
  
• Transcend JETRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
• Quantity of 1
• Hard Drive
  
• Western Digital Caviar SE WD5000AAJS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
• Quantity of 2
• Keyboard/Mouse
  
• Logitech 967561-0403 Black USB + PS/2 Cordless
• Quantity of 1
• DVD BUrner
  
• LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE
• Quantity of 1
• TV Tuner
  
• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Dual TV Recorder Tuner Card w/MCE Remote 253 PCI Interface
• Quantity of 1
• This card has dual tv tuners on it, it allows you to watch a tv show and record another or record two shows at once.

Windows Media Center

So I'm in the process of setting up a windows media center to create my own dvr station, my plan is to start with a PVR-500 tuner card, I can record two channels at once. Then pickup a xbox 360 and use it as a media extender.

This guy explains pretty much what I'm going to do. I'll post specs on the media center pc once I get it up and running.


http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/turn-your-windows-pc-into-a-media-center-powerhouse-on-the-cheap-298408.php

Dual Core vs Quad Core

So I was doing some research today on Dual Core vs Quad Core processors and I came away with this.
Today's quad core can't take advantage of all 4 cores and applications can't take advantage of the cores either.

So with that said neither can dual cores. So from everything I read it is better to spend the money and get a faster dual core processor then it is to get a slower quad core processor. Plus its cheaper.

Well not bad for the first post...

Peace

Mikey