By Stu on January 6th, 2010
Ok, got the new PC and been prepping it for dev use… Gone swimmingly so far. Now I want to experiment with Virtual PC for Windows 7 (my old PC was not capable of doing this). The only problem is that I have no experience with running a virtual machine and I have had a horrible time finding a walk through. So here is the beginner guide by a beginner for Virtual PC.
- You need to know if you can run Virtual PC. Download and run this application. It will test your computer for processor compatibility.
By Stu on December 31st, 2009
First, I am no expert on CPU cooling and this is just a limited review of what I am seeing after a day of use. With that noted…
I bought the Cooler Master Hyper N520 ($39.00) from Fry’s Electronics on the recommendation of the tech guy I was talking too to place in the new computer I was building. I didn’t want to stick with the standard OEM fan from Intel, my experience is they are pretty much garbage when you put the processor under a solid load. I also know that a quad core (have a quad at work) is a pretty hot animal. So I got this behemoth of a cooler… I was actually worried it wouldn’t fit in the case and at nearly 7” tall you have to worry about case size.
By Stu on December 31st, 2009
Here is the benchmarks of the new computer verses my old Gateway and my wife’s HP dv9000 laptop. Click the image to get a large view. I used PassMarks’ Performance Test (x64) and the Windows Experience Index to generate the following results.
You can click on the images to get a large image to make it more readable.
Windows Experience Index
New PC (5.9) vs Old PC (2.0) Windows Experience Index. The old PC’s rating comes from the Intel integrated graphics. It is funny that the new PC’s slowest performance rating was the highest on the old PC.
By Stu on December 31st, 2009
While I was setting up Visual Studio 2008 and SQL 2008 Express on my PC after going to Windows 7 Professional x64, I started thinking about how slow Visual Studio was (just as slow as Vista). I bought the Gateway Dual Core computer in later 2006 or early 2007 and I bought it when I spent most of my time on my work laptop. It has worked well for my use, but Visual Studio is pretty slow (1+ minute to just load). So I decide it was time to upgrade to a new machine.
Ok, got the new PC and been prepping it for dev use… Gone swimmingly so far. Now I want to experiment with Virtual PC for Windows 7 (my old PC was not capable of doing this). The only problem is that I have no experience with running a virtual machine and I have had a horrible time finding a walk through. So here is the beginner guide by a beginner for Virtual PC.
