Not Just Virtually Free

http://www.virtualbox.org/


When we think virtualization we think VMware or Microsoft virtual machine. This stuff is never easy and never seems to work out the way you want it. Here is a simpler, easy, and best of all, free solution. This supports most operating systems inside and out and can handle 64bit as well.

I'm still a big fan of Mojo Pak but XP is phasing out quickly.


What they say on their web page:

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

Some of the features of VirtualBox are:

• Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

• Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

• Guest Additions for Windows, Linux and Solaris. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows, Linux and Solaris virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window). There are also guest additions for OS/2 with somewhat reduced functionality.

• Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.

A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):

• Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.

• Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.

• USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.

SMS - MMS from your phone to email and back

SMS gateways are the key to allowing you to use your text messaging functions to send and receive emails and media between phones text messaging and any email service.

Here is a list of address for the Cell providers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway

To send a message from email use use the phone number plus the address listed in the link for that persons cell provider.

The send a message from the phone you simply put the persons email address where the phone number might go.

We can build it better, faster, stronger for under 6 million dollars

What we are building here is the drive layout for a PC containing 2 equal speed equal size hard drives.

We want speed for applications that need it such as gaming and video encoding as well as web cache. We want to secure our data on a partition other than the partition holding the main OS. This space will also be used to load applications that may contain user data and settings that we might want to preserve in the event we have to blow away the OS partition. Finally we need raw storage for video mostly that is not on a raid in the event we need to recover it. We could create a raid array for recovery purposes but it has always been my opinion that home or novice users need to maintain good backups as opposed to trying to recover data from a failed hard drive in a Raid 5 array.

The partitions needed will be from each drive in Gigabytes:

100
100
5
(final partition containing the remaining space)

You will have 100 on one drive for the OS. You do it this way because we are creating the Raid arrays using Microsoft Disk Management.

Then 2 100gig partitions will be used to create a Gaming or High speed stripped partition. If you want a bigger gaming array you can allocate more space or simply add another array later with the left over space being used for mass storage.

The 10gig array will be used for internet cache and for a very fast page file for both speed and privacy. It is very easy to wipe a small partition that might contain personal data that could be used to steal your identity or create profiles on your surfing habits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID














Click on the image below for more details:

Send and receive text SMS messages from the PC for free.

Google has a option in gmail where you can put a phone number into your chat box and send a text message to any phone in the US.

This is how you get it set up:

In GMAIL click:
Settings,
then Labs,
then scroll down to SMS chat which is fairly far down the list.
Select enable
Then back to the top to save settings.

Now you can simply type a phone number in the chat contact box. It will offer to save the number with a name associated.

Then simply type a message and wait for a reply.

These messages are not free to the person receiving the message.

Suck a golfball through a hose?

Well emailing a large file or movie to friends and family can be hard if not impassible, no I didn't mean impossible because I have a solution.

http://files2you.com/

This is a free service from the people who created the commercial product file catalyst.

Registered Max Filesize 200.00 MB - this is a little weak but not bad.

File types - All type allowed
Multiple uploads - 5 (not sure what this means)

Support for resuming downloads
Support for download-accelerators
100kb/s
Unlimited

You can use a service like file front and upload just about any size file as well as maintain a neat little web space if you do alot of this kind of thing. There are other faster and simpler solutions if you want to share passwords with friends or family you can just simply share free online storage space.

I recommend encrypting personal files that you might share using true crypt but your family will need to have true crypt and the password to decrypt the resulting file. This method you can encrypt a whole folder and move it as a file. You can do this with zipped archives as well. 7-Zip is a great free solution for this.

Smoke and Mirrors - 4870 vs 4850

Comparing the 4850 vs the 4870, which card is best for you.

If you look at the stream processors you see 800 for both cards. So you begin to ask yourself what am I paying 50% or more for?

Lets look at some NewEgg specs:

GIGABYTE GV-R485OC-1GH Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

• Chipset Manufacturer: ATI
• Core clock: 700MHz
• Stream Processors: 800 Stream Processing Units
• Memory Clock: 1920MHz
• DirectX: DirectX 10.1
• OpenGL: OpenGL 2.1
• HDMI: 1 via Adapter
• DVI: 2
• Model #: GV-R485OC-1GH

GIGABYTE GV-R487D5-1GD Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

• Chipset Manufacturer: ATI
• Core clock: 750MHz
• Stream Processors: 800 Stream Processing Units
• Memory Clock: 3600MHz
• DirectX: DirectX 10.1
• OpenGL: OpenGL 2.1
• HDMI: 1
• DisplayPort: 1
• Model #: GV-R487D5-1GD

The only real difference here is the memory clock. In actuality both are clocking at 900Mhz. The DDR3 is double data rate which translates to 1800Mhz and the DDR5 is quad data rate at 3600Mhz. The 4870 core clock is slightly higher as well. All of this translates into about a 25% performance boost at most.

Finally we have to consider the power consumption which translates into heat. Can your case handle the extra heat? Is the 12v rail on your power supply rated to match the power consumption of the card. I recommend 25amps on that rail minimum. If your using 2 separate rails you can add them together. The 4870 uses much more power to operate.

If you're looking for stability (MMO gaming for example) you're going to want to go with the 4850.
If you're looking to get a bit more performance then pay the extra money but in most cases you will never see the difference even at higher resolutions. If you wanted to get the best of both worlds you might be able to put together a 4850 x2 crossfire system for slightly more than a 4870 but you will see huge performance gains by comparison.

The Mythical and Elusive PhysX

Look, I'm not going to pretend this is a straight forward and easy process. I play around quite a bit with hardware and software and with something like PhysX you can't just check a box in the display panel and assume it is working or better yet is your PhysX setup providing any benefit?

http://www.slizone.com/object/sli_cuda_learn.html

Your going to need:
Cuda Driver
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_get.html

PhysX Software
http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.0203_whql.html

NVIDIA PhysX System Software WHQL Version: 9.09.0203 Release Date: February 10, 2009 Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) Language: U.S. English File Size: 39.2 MB

Installer update only from 9.09.0121 to resolve some installation issues on non-English operating systems. Supports NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on all GeForce 8-series, 9-series and 200-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory. Experience GPU PhysX acceleration in many games and demos, some of which are highlighted in PowerPack downloads on http://www.geforce.com/. Resolves PhysX SDK runtime issues with multi-GPU configurations in Hybrid environments. Improves performance of some PhysX enabled games on GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 295 products. Resolves occasional system crashes when PhysX is enabled on some systems when running on EA’s Mirrors Edge. Runtime upgrade ONLY for AGEIA PhysX processors users. (New installations should install older PhysX system software such as version 8.09.04 – prior to installing this update). Includes the latest PhysX runtimes used in the latest game titles. Supports NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on GeForce via CUDA 2.0 for SDK versions 2.7.3, 2.7.2, 2.7.5, 2.8.0 and 2.8.1 (requires graphics driver v177.81 or later). Includes all the latest PhysX SDK Runtimes. Supports control of your GPU PhysX configuration from the NVIDIA display driver control panel. GeForce 200-series, 9-series, and 8-series GPUs AGEIA PhysX Processors (All)

Then to prove this is working your going to need:
http://www.guru3d.com/news/nvidia-physx-quick-test/

PowerPack download
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.htmlhttp://www.nvidia.com/content/graphicsplus/us/download.asp

I found Physx to be of little or no benefit. and in my weak hybrid SLI setup I found this did more harm than good with respect to performance in games that don't support Physx. I wouldn't make any purchase decisions based on this technology. Besides ATI will have their answer to this very soon as well. The ATI chipsets support 800 Stream Processing Units compared to 128 on a 9800 nvidia. This will likely yield spectacular results.