Ryan J.com

For the past several years I have used mainly Nvidia graphics cards when building my home computers.  Originally, I was an "ATI guy", but at some point Nvidia seemed to take the lead and I found I had less issues using their cards than ATI models.  This was probably four years ago.

Times change.  Apparently, ATI has made a huge comeback after being purchased by AMD... and it shows.  What change my mind?  A coworker told me that he was in the same boat but decided to go with ATI when his built his most recent machine since the cost to performance ratio was better.  

After taking a look at what he proposed, a 1Gb Radeon 4890,  as an upgrade to my 512Mb Nvidia 8800 GT I said sure why not.  I went to Fry's (instant gratification much?) and bought one after work.  There was only one... maybe it is the overly strange shape of the box that is attracting people?  It only took about 20 minutes to install... mainly due to having to shuffle around the internal wiring coming from my power supply.  The card requires two 6-pin or 8-pin  power connections instead of the 1 my last card needed and I had pushed the wire I didn't need in an awkward place out of the way in my case.

The ATI Catalyst software seems to have been revamped and improved greatly.  Setting up my dual monitors was a breeze and everything integrated perfectly into Windows 7.  My FPS in WoW went from 60 to 140 (outside Dalaran).  An incredible improvement. 

ATI Radeon 4890

So, about a week or two ago, Microsoft announced their release of Windows 7 RC (release candidate). I've been reading about Windows 7 for a while as others tried out the beta and decided to finally take the plunge myself.

I've only ran into a few problems... and I am going to list their solutions here in case they may help anyone.

Extra hard drives don't show up and can not be accessed... but Disk Manager can see it!
This ended up being a pretty simple issue to remedy. Right click on the drive in question and go to "Properties" and you will find an option to "Add a drive letter" to the disk. Just give it a drive letter and you are on your way...

Symantec anti-virus would not install...
I ended up going with AVG Free, since no matter what I tried, Symantec would not install correctly.

Apart from that I've had no issues and everything works great so far.

EXTINA® (ketoconazole) Foam, 2% is used on the skin (topical) to treat a skin condition called seborrheic dermatitis in patients 12 years of age and older.

www.extina.com

I have had issues with seborrheic dermatits and psoriasis since I was around fifteen. Year after year the condition has worsened and finally I got so annoyed by it I could take no more. I went to the dermatologist and he suggested I use a prescription product called EXTINA.  I have been using EXTINA foam for approximately 2 months now and the results have floored me.  About 40% of my skin (scalp, face, chest, shoulders, back and legs) displayed symptoms (redness, scaling,etc) which made me pretty self conscious at times.  Especially due to the fact that I couldn't wear anything darker than gray without it looking terrible by the end of the day.  Unfortunately, there is no generic and the product is expensive even after insurance, but personally I feel it has totally been worth it.  Once the symptoms have been decreased you can lessen the usage significantly - just enough to keep things under control.  As far as side effects, the first month that I used EXTINA every time I put it on it felt like using pure alcohol after shaving. Ouch!  However, as the symptoms have decreased so has the burning.  If you are suffering from this disease EXTINA may be able to provide relief.

Like most techno savy individuals I find myself frequently needing to help family and friends to fix their computer problems.  Most of the time the  issue is something I would be able to fix within a few minutes if I were physically at the location.  Since that can't always be the case I have taken to remotely connect whenever possible in order to be as efficient as possible.  Previously I used Window's Remote Desktop feature to do this but recently something changed with my mom's router/computer configuration that kept me from making a connection to her machine.  After multiple failed attempts I was about to give up when I stumbled across an application called CrossLoop.  CrossLoop is a "simple, secure" and FREE method of connecting remotely.  All that is necessary is for both parties involved to download and install the CrossLoop application and create an account.  Once everything is set up you will see a screen like below... allowing you to either share (give access) or access (gain access) to a machine remotely.

Access

Share

That is all there is to it. The application takes care of the rest and you can be on your way to fixing problems in less than 2 minutes! So far I have had no issues and connected at least 4-5 times to someone's PC to help out.

Give it a try!