Ryan J.com

Movies, music, photos... our computing lives are pretty full of media these days. Over the years collecting massive amounts of multimedia we are bound to end up with duplicates. What many don't realize is the amount of space that may currently be utilized on their hard drives by these dups. I went searching today for an application that would easily allow me to locate and remove this sort of data. I had a few requirements prior to even giving an app consideration:

• Free!
• Ad-ware / bloat-ware / spy-ware / all-ware but software clean
• Not only checking by filename but also checksum
• The ability to span multiple drives for comparison

I actually got lucky on the first attempt. An application called Duplicate Cleaner was one of the top results and fit all of the above. I'm pretty floored by this application. So far today I have deleted over 200Gb of duplicate data across multiple hard drives. It works very quickly with a streamlined interface. The only thing to note is that the installer tries to install a Bing Toolbar - I hate that. Everything else works beautifully.

If you find yourself in the same situation I'd suggest giving this app a try!

My SSD arrived yesterday evening. Unfortunately, I had class, so I was only able to do much more than install Windows 7 and the appropriate updates. The OS install took approximately 15 minutes, which may be attributed to the slow-ish optical drive in my laptop. So far my experience has been pretty positive. Rebooting takes less than a minute - it takes longer to post than to load Windows 7. Installing software seems almost instant compared to the 7200 RPM drive I was previously using to boot from. For anyone wanting to learn more about solid state drives prior to taking the dive I highly recommend Anandtech's article on selecting an SSD which goes into detailed explanations on the technology.

Tonight I am attempting to optimize everything as best I can. The main article I will be following will be TweakTown's Solid State Drive Optimization Guide. The first thing I am going to do is install Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (RST) that was released near the end of last month. I'm still researching if some of these tweaks are necessary but so far I have had pretty solid results.

After restarting, the machine is ready for use in about 45 seconds, with a large portion of that tied to post as I mentioned previously. Generally I have to wait around a minute and a half before I can begin using applications but I have noticed as soon as Windows has loaded with the SSD I can immediately begin working - okay playing . I'm excited to see how the drive does after I have used it for a while since I have read a bit about degradation after the drive has some age.

So far... both thumbs way up! My Windows Experience Index went from 5.5 to 6.4 with the drive chiming in at 7.7 on the scale - my 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo and 4Gb of 800Mhz being the weakest links. It's a laptop. I'm not going to complain. SSD really do rock!

I finally bit the bullet and ordered an SSD (Solid State Drive) from the egg a few days ago.  I've been eying them for well over a year but the price has always seemed to outweigh my desire and curiosity.  My Intel X25-M G2 (2nd gen) will be arriving tomorrow at some point.   I will be installing Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) on this drive as soon as I get home from class.

A couple YouTube vids that made me even more excited...

150Gb 10k RPM Raptor vs X25-M (G1) booting:

Another Raptor comparison - Loading 51 apps (in Vista):

Tomorrow is the day!

It's 2010.  What the...?  I spent the night drinking champagne and watching The Empire Strikes Back.  It was quite relaxing!

I haven't said much the past ~4 months.  I don't have a very good excuse other than being busy and not having a lot to say.

I'm thankful that, at the time of this writing, I still have a job. My friends and family are healthy.  Life is going smoothly.  What more could I ask for?

Here is to a year better than the last. May anyone reading this be blessed!

I recently purchased a second monitor to get rid of my behemoth Samsung 21 inch CRT that my older machine was using.  I shopped around a bit looking at reviews trying to find a monitor for gaming with a 2ms response time to upgrade my gaming machine - the intention being that I use my 24" Gateway (that oddly enough I have been very satisfied with for the past 2 years) on the older box.

I decided to take a gamble and go with an Asus monitor.  I've used their motherboards and dvd drives in the past without problems and the reviews on various sites were pretty good.  Since I prefer to see what I'm buying before even considering online ordering I went into Fry's for a gander.  I ended up finding 25.5 inch beauty that looked very appealing... the VW266H.

I got it home, set it up and was instantly unhappy.  No dead pixels but everything had a blue tint.  So I went in search of some settings others had used online to see what I could get the monitor to do.  The annoying thing is I didn't really find anything very helpful.  I may still take the monitor back since I haven't made my final decision but I figured I would post the settings I found to be the best after a couple hours of messing with them.

Splendid Mode: Standard Mode
Brightness: 70
Contrast: 92
Sharpness: 63
OverDrive: 60 (default)
Color Temp: User Mode
Red: 85
Green: 75
Blue: 62

So that is that.  I'm going to try the monitor out for a week and see how I feel.  After the changes I'm pretty happy but time will tell.