Let’s face it, consumers did not like Windows 8 with many of them sticking with older Windows 7 and even XP as long as they could. At the end of July, Microsoft began rolling out its free upgrades to the latest Windows 10 operating system to users that qualified or consumers could purchase the software if they did not qualify for the free update. The company touted a huge number of systems upgraded but many consumers are still waiting (myself included) for their update to finally be approved. But should consumers actually apply the updates as soon as they get them? There are a number of reasons why you may want to wait to upgrade to Windows 10, at least for a while. Continue reading
Intel Broadwell Desktop CPUs Probably Worth Skipping
After many months of waiting, it looks like Intel is finally poised to release the Broadwell desktop CPUs otherwise known as the 5th generation Core processors to the market. The transition to the 14nm processor has not been easy for Intel with many delays due to yield problems that pushed back the initial mobile release and even greater for the desktop. It seems like we have been on the 4000 series Core processors forever. With the rumored release of the Skylake or 6th generation Core processors for the end of the year, does the fact that Intel is even releasing the 5000 series processor even matter? Continue reading
Intel SSD 750 PCIe SSD – A Drive Ahead of its Time
Back in the early days of consumer solid state drives, Intel was the king with its X-25M drive. It was fast, affordable and reliable. Over time though, other companies began producing faster drives. Eventually, Intel had to rely on third parties to produce the controllers for its SSDs to try and stay competitive. Now that is all about to change with the new Intel SSD 750 lineup of drives. The only problem is, you probably do not have a computer that can take advantage of all of its features. Continue reading
NVIDIA Improves Performance and Efficiency With GTX 980 and GTX 970 Cards
NVIDIA surprised the PC graphics last night with their launch of their latest high end consumer graphics card the GeForce GTX 980. Much of this has to do with the fact that the price is going to be significantly less than the GTX 780 Ti that it will be replacing but the card is able to do so by being far more efficient akin to what AMD did recently with their Radeon R9 285. The basic chip technology hasn’t really changed that much for the past four years in the graphics market but the way that it is used certainly has. NVIDIA demonstated this when they launched the GTX 750 Ti at the beginning of the year. In fact, the GPU for the GTX 980 and the more affordable GTX 970 are both based on the second generation of the Maxwell chip that powered the GTX 750 Ti. So what exactly does this new graphics card bring with it? Continue reading
AMD’s New Radeon R9 285 Card Does More With Less
Let’s face it, most people who are getting a graphics card on their system are doing so to play games but they don’t need a huge amount of performance because they only have a 1920×1080 resolution display. Because of this, the majority of the graphics card sold on the market cost less than $300. AMD just released their latest graphics card, the Radeon R9 285, priced around $250 as a mainstream option for those that want a solid performance 3D graphics card. The weird thing is that if you look at the specs for the device, it looks to have less than the Radeon R9 280 that it is replacing. Can this card actually perform better with less? Continue reading
AMD Unleashes Its Latest Dual GPU Card, For Those That Can Afford It
The graphics card market has been in a bit of a funk for the last couple of years. While the performance of the high end cards has improved, the amount of performance needed to play games at the typical 1920×1080 resolution is just fine in the budget to mid-range cards. So why does AMD end up announcing their new graphics card that is more than twice the cost of their previous board? Basically, AMD and NVIDIA are looking to target those users that are either using their PCs for high resolution gaming with 4K UltraHD displays or using multiple displays. Sure, the cards are also being used for heavy computing tasks as well such as scientific research and cryptocoin mining. The design of the Radeon R9 295X2 is both very different yet familiar at the same time… Continue reading
Windows XP Finally Comes to an End
Cover from my copy of Windows XP dated version 2002.