Circuit City Web Order Follow Up

Remember my glowing review of online buying through Circuit City, back when I bought my Nyko Frontman Wii guitar? Well, for some reason or another, I don't know if it's standard practice for them, but those good folks felt like sending me a follow-up gift - a card worth for 10% off on my next purchase of $50 dollars or more. Maybe they wanted to woo me further upon seeing my original blog entry.



That seemed nice of them, although when I looked at the fine (very fine) print in the back of the card, it had a hefty list of products exempt from the discount:

Not valid on previous purchases. Offer expludes Bose, select Polk, Element Kicker, Nikon DSLR, Sony DSLR cameras, Sony camera accessories. Olevia, Viszio Toshiba televisions, Apple, game hardware, movies, music, laptops, desktops, software, Otlet, Red Dot clearance, PreOrder/Backorder products, firedog survices and Circuit City Gift Card purchases. This coupon also excludes the following television models: SON KDL40S4100, SON KDL465410, etc.

Where does that leave at? I think the only stuff left I can buy are car stereos (no thanks), cell phones (got one, thanks), and their various accessories. I'd consider maybe just buying 50 dollars worth of blank DVD's, except I haven't gone through my months old spindle yet.



The card expires July 12th, and I'm not buying a huge ticket item just to get 10% off. What do you think I should use it on?

Monitor Standby Script Causes Problems Coming Out of Hibernation (Autohotkey)

One of my oldest, most favorite Autohotkey scripts had been a small, simple, piece of code that put the monitor on standby. It let me shut down my computer without forgetting to shut down the monitor (which I often did). However, recently I found out this piece of code had been the reason I was having a problem getting Windows XP to come out of hibernate.

The problem was that when I run my Autohotkey script to hibernate the computer (after running some utilities), sometimes when I come back and turn the computer on, it powers up but the OS never loads. The monitors show that it never gets a signal. I would have no choice but to unplug the computer altogether and then start it up again (sometimes it would return from its hibernate state, sometimes not).

Because of this problem, I'd begun only putting my computer on Standby instead of hibernate. However, out of a nagging need to be someone environmentally and energy conscious, I wanted to go back to hibernation, and went to figure out what the problem was.

The problem seems to have something to do with whether or not I shut down the monitors manually anyway; something trips up when the Autohotkey script tries to put monitors on standby that it can't find are on to begin with. Here is the offending code:

#m:: ; Win+M hotkey that turns off the monitor.
Sleep 1000 ; Give user a chance to release keys (in case their release would wake up the monitor again).
; Turn Monitor Off:
SendMessage, 0x112, 0xF170, 2,, Program Manager ; 0x112 is WM_SYSCOMMAND, 0xF170 is SC_MONITORPOWER.
; Note for the above: Use -1 in place of 2 to turn the monitor on.
; Use 1 in place of 2 to activate the monitor's low-power mode.
return

For the moment, I just went ahead and deleted this code from my hibernate script, and I have had no problems yet. I'll just have to remember to shut the monitors down myself. If you know a workaround for this problem, do let me know!

Remove Laptop Battery to Increase Longevity

(stock image of my laptop... not my actual one)

I believe I've alluded to the fact that while I remain fully dedicated to my desktop, four years ago I also bought myself a used, cheap laptop on ebay. It was pretty low end when I bought it back then, and is ridiculously so now. But you know what? It still works for minor web browsing, word processing, and its battery still holds a charge. I bring it along whenever I go on long trips, like when I go back to my hometown.

I still use it every night to read comic books. I keep it by my bed like you would your favorite novel.

Most recently I've started to notice that the battery's capacity has gone considerably down since I started using it in 2004. I think it holds at most just an hour's worth of charge now (when it used to be almost 3). It's normal for these batteries to lose reliability after this much use, but it's still worth trying to keep it going for as long as possible.

This tip on, appropriately, One Tip A Day, suggests removing the battery when you're not using it. Commenters have observed that this doesn't nearly do as much saving as you'd think, but it certainly wouldn't hurt for people like me that keep their laptops plugged in 99% of the time. It is, after all, that 1% that matters the most.

Here's hoping I can make my laptop last at least another year or two. I already love how it runs just as fast if not faster than my sister's laptop, which hardly holds a charge anymore and takes many more minutes to start up, but was bought new after I bought my used one.

Nyko Frontman Guitar for Nintendo Wii Review (& Circuit City online)

Two reviews today, first of the product, then of the place from which I bought it.

Since getting Guitar Hero III for the Wii late last year, my roommate and I have been itching to be able to play head to head and cooperatively, especially since a handful of songs can only be unlocked during multiplayer. Unfortunately, it wasn't until last month that standalone guitars hit the stores.

The official Activision Gibson guitars that are identical to the guitars sold with the game were unfortunately being sold for an exorbitant 70 dollars, which was ridiculous since the guitars still needed a Wiimote, sold separately.

The only third-party guitar out right now is the Nyko Frontman guitar, which was selling online and at Circuit City for 50 dollars, much more doable. I wasn't crazy about getting a third party controller since I'd found myself really not liking the official Rock Band guitar, and I knew I'd be very sensitive to using a different guitar. However, the price was right.


The guitar is great, and definitely a better value than the official guitar. The strum bar snaps better than the official guitar, in my opinion (which is the opposite of the Rock band guitar, which is way softer). The whammy bar is a little stiffer, but I think it'll loosen up with continuous use.

The fret buttons ARE on the softer side, and this was perhaps the part that felt the most different from the official guitar. They're spaced basically the same, though recessed a little bit more. I'd say it's somewhere between the official guitar and the Rock Band version.

One odd thing is that the + and - buttons were switched, which is annoying because the + button is in a far less accessible place than before, which makes it hard when you need to pause the game quickly.

Build quality was solid. It's lighter than the official guitar, though it's about an inch or two longer. This creates a different weight distribution, where the Nyko's heavier towards the neck. Speaking of neck, the neck cannot be removed like the official axe, which makes it harder to take on trips.

The seam that runs along the top edge of the guitar also seems to be narrower, which helps because the seam in the official guitar hit my thumb's joint and caused me to develop a callous.

The guitars, by the way, come in two colors: white and yellow. The box indicates what color is inside, but there was no way for me to select it when ordering online (I got yellow). The package also comes with two pick guard colors, white and black. I stuck with the black.

Overall, I'm happy so far with the guitar. It takes some getting used to, of course, but it's surprisingly easy to pick up after having played with the original guitar for 6 months. Highly recommended, at least until the official guitar lowers its price.
Circuit City

As previously mentioned, I ended up ordering the product online at Circuit City. They offered free shipping on items over 25 dollars, so at 50 dollars, this was a large item being shipped free. Awesome, since none of the Circuit City stores in the area seem to carry the item at all.

They luckily offer ordering without setting up an account, and it worked smoothly and quickly even without doing so. I received a confirmation email after ordering, and you can check the status of your order online by entering your order number (all of this would be easier if you'd signed up for an account online, but I didn't feel like it).

The main surprise came when my guitar arrived two days after I ordered. Why surprise? The site had indicated to me that it would take two WEEKS! Honestly, I figure that's just Circuit City covering their butts, but I also admit there's something about beating expectations, even if they're low.

Overall, a very satisfied customer!

Scooped! CD/DVD Spindle Cable Organizer

I just had to go and blog about this out of sheer surprise that somebody else came up with the same exact solution as I did for wrangling USB and short power cables and stuff:

CD/DVD Spindle Cable Organizer (via Lifehacker)

Man, I totally woulda had that scoop if I'd written about it as soon as I figured out to do it!

Managing One's Nest of Cables

This recent Lifehacker article called Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control had some really cool cable management ideas, the most novel of which to me was using binder clips to keep cords from falling off the side of one's desk. This was always a problem to me whenever I needed to run a power cable from the surge protector up through the back of the desk into, say, my monitor. I can't run the cable from top down because of the power brick, so it was always a hassle to put the plug on the desk and get to it from above before the cable's weight caused it to fall off.

My main issue with extensive cable management is that they are meant for setups that don't need to be modular. However, if you're like me and you unplug and move stuff around more than a few times a year, you can't really afford to go through a lot of trouble hiding cables.

The thing that's made a lot of difference to me is simply labeling my power cables. One day I just took some masking tape and a Sharpie and proceeded to put identifying labels on each of the cables plugged in. This has done a lot to make sure that I don't spend more time than I need to on my hands and knees under my desk (::snicker::).

I've also split the cables under my desk into two surge protectors, one for items that should always be plugged in, and another for removable devices like external hard drives. This way I can keep one surge protector more hidden in the back and the other closer up front.

Another thing I've done which is a bit more permanent is always having USB and Firewire cables with varying ends always connected to the back of my tower, and run it around to the front. This way if I ever need to connect a device like a camera or my mp3 player, I don't have to look around for cables and fish around behind the tower to connect them. This concept does require me to have extra cables if I wanted to use my devices on another computer, though.

That being said, it's more of a mess on the outlet by my bed, where not only are my bedside clock and lamp are plugged in, but more modular devices like my cellphone and laptop.

Try to Fix a Dead Pixel with KillDeadPixel!

I got my first LCD monitor back in 2003 when I won grand prize at the University of Southern California's Webfest web design contest for the old design of my portfolio site, Greasy Pig Studios (I then got 1st place in the Communication category in 2006 for my animated webcomic journal, aLiveJournal).

The monitor was a 17 inch NEC monitor that I still use today (it's my secondary display where I keep Thunderbird almost always displayed). Anyway, when I got it it had one dead pixel, bright green in the bottom right quarter of the screen. I've tried fixing it by rubbing it really hard with my thumb, but it didn't work.

When I heard about KillDeadPixel, I was cautiously optimistic. It works by having an animated gif of what essentially looks like static, and you can drag it over the area where the dead pixel is. It's supposed to kinda flush the dead pixel back to life.

Well, I tried it on there for several hours, and unfortunately it did not work for me. But I would certainly recommend you try it for yourself. I've read testimonials from happy customers online, so it may well be worthwhile for you.

Slow computer? Block Flash in Firefox and Browse faster with Flashblock

Flashblock is a popular Firefox extension written by Lorenzo Colitti and Philip Chee that, you guessed it, blocks all Flash elements from loading in Firefox.

Flash's speed and now near universal compatibility with computers and browsers make it a godsend for dynamic, animation and effects heavy websites. Unfortunately, it can also swallow RAM and CPU like a blue whale swimming in krill.

I use this a lot on my woefully underpowered laptop* and it works just like you'd expect it to. You can create a whitelist of sites that you allow to load Flash.

However, I have to admit that I otherwise keep this extension disabled (but installed) in my main computer, unless I specifically need to block Flash files, which is, as an animator and web designer, not very often. I wish Flashblock also had a blacklist option, that only blocked Flash from certain sites.

*My laptop was bought in late 2003 on eBay. I got it used for 200 dollars. It's a Compaq Armada with a 400mhz Pentium III, 256 megabytes of RAM (32 mb VRAM shared), and 9 gigs of hard drive space. It has just one USB 1.1 port. Its screen hinge is broken so it flops backwards all to easily. But it still runs Windows XP, and I must say it's faster than many peoples' main computers, since I keep it so clean. I only use it for screenwriting, reading books in bed, and internet stuff when I'm travelling. Its battery is only now starting to get annoyingly short-lived, but it won't be until that runs out or my screen falls off that I will replace it, with another 200 dollar used iteration.

My Samsung 18x DVD Burner from 3btech is Here

As you might recall, my trusty AOpen 16x DVD Burner finally bit the dust after languishing for over a year. For a replacement, I went for a Samsung SH-S182D 18x Double Layer DVD Burner from 3btech, the cheapest burner I could find online for 29.99 shipped.

I ordered it on January 20th, and received it on the 25th via UPS ground that I was able to track online. The package was a cardboard box that was filled with styrofoam peanuts and the drive wrapped in an anti-static bag. Along with the CD audio cable (unnecessary), that was all that came in the package. There wasn't even an IDE cable (unless I wasn't paying attention) or any software. In fact, there seemed to be evidence that the drive wasn't new, and had at the very least been installed as a test in a previous computer...

Anyway, installation was a snap, if you know how to install IDE drives at all. I just opened the computer case, unscrewed the drive that was in there, and unplugged the power cable and IDE cable. And then I put in the new drive just as I did.

Here are some photos I took of the project. Unfortunately, I was the only one around so I couldn't take too many photos while working. It's all pretty uninteresting anyway.



Installed, I booted up with no problems. The only odd thing was the drive was identified as TSSTCorp SH-S182D. The part number was correct, but it was not labeled as Samsung. I looked it up online, though, and it seemed to line up with other peoples' accounts. It is labeled as Samsung in the case itself.

The best parts were that normal drive functions performed flawlessly, and burned a 16x single layer DVD just fine. I don't have dual layer media, so I couldn't test those. Playing DVD's using VLC media player worked just fine. The drive didn't come with any software, but luckily the Nero Smartstart software that came with my previous drive still worked fine.

And most of all, the drive now opens without the use of a paperclip!

Overall, so far so good. 3btech was good about notifying me of my order's status, and the drive works perfectly so far. I was a little disappointed by the lack of usually included stuff in the package, like software, and an IDE cable, but I assume that's what I get for the price (plus I didn't need them anyway). But for more novice users that would need these materials, I would highly recommend spending a little more.

I'm more concerned by the fact that it doesn't seem that the drive is new. 3btech offers a 90 day warranty, and I'd be very surprised to have this drive fail in that little time. Still, if it fails in 91 days, I'd be pretty pissed.

A Busted DVD Burner

Well, almost taking a cue from my recently busted case fan (2 dollar replacement's working like a charm, btw!), my Aopen DVD burner, purchased in January of 2005 from Newegg. Newegg is easily the biggest and best computer hardware retailer on the web, most recently evidenced by how I can still check out what I bought for what price all the way back in August of 2002, when I apparently spent $1697 to build the first components of the computer I'm still using now (my copy of Windows XP and my floppy drive are the only components left in my machine).

But back to the DVD burner first. About a year ago it started acting up. About half the time it wouldn't open or close, either by the button or by ejecting in Windows. Everything else still worked, and hardly ever burned coasters, but I had for the longest time resigned msyelf to sticking a paperclip in that tiny hole under the tray that forces the tray open.

Yesterday after having issues burning an onerous ISO file, I forced it open again, and now it no longer recognizes any disc I put in there. The LED indicator doesn't even turn on anymore.

So, time for a new one.

Anyway, while I do claim more loyalty to Newegg than any other online retailer, if Pricewatch says there's a cheaper component out there (including shipping and tax), and the product nor retailer isn't crap, then that's where I'm headed.

In this case, I was led to 3btech's supply of a Samsung 18x Double Layer burner. Back when I bought the CD Burner for my computer in 2002, it cost 67 dollars, plus another 42 for the DVD player. When I replaced both of them with one DVD burner in 2005, that cost 65 dollars.

The Samsung I just bought cost 29.99 with no tax and free shipping. Incredible. Newegg had a 24.99 burner but had 5 dollar shipping and would've cost me tax, so I'm cheating on Newegg this time around.

If 3btech is any good at all, I should have my new burner by the end of the week. Come back soon to see how the purchase all works out, despite my original insistence that this was a predominantly software tweaks site, not a hardware one.

Thoughts for the future: New/Upgrades/Macs

While at Best Buy yesterday I once again found myself checking out the various video cards for sale. My ATI Radeon 9600 had served me well for over three years, but it's definitely getting long in the tooth. In fact, it's now one of the oldest major component of my computer, which is saying a lot.

I've once again started wondering whether or not to upgrade, what components to upgrade, or to go with a complete build at all. Or, heaven forbid, finally cave into the pressure and get myself a Mac. But which one?

Upgrading

Let's break it down one by one. The first thing I can update is my video card. Unfortunately, my motherboard is also old enough that it only supports AGP, not the far-more-common PCI-Express now. That being said, I don't plan on spending more than 100 dollars on a card anyway, unless I just go for a full rebuild. If I can squeeze another year of gaming out of a 256 or 512 megabyte AGP card for less than 100 dollars, I'd feel justified.

I can also buy a new motherboard that had PCI-Express but still supported my AMD Athlon 64 (socket 754). There are far fewer of these around nowadays, but they can be had for as little as 30 dollars. For just around 100 dollars I can get a new motherboard and a PCI-express video card, with the option of being able to upgrade more in the future.

But this is a much more involved project than just replacing a video card; replacing the mobo would likely involve altering my Windows install. If I were to commit to that much labor, I could easily just replace my processor as well.

At that point I'm basically rebuilding my computer outright, which I haven't done since 2002. In fact, I'd have to buy new RAM as well, since I'm using old DDR RAM, not DDR2 (albeit 2 gigabytes of it).

Console vs. PC

This brings up the next debate: should I migrate to consoles and ditch PC gaming?

My wonderful girlfriend Lynn got me a Wii for our 2 year anniversary in September, the first console I'd owned since my Sega Genesis. I'd been a staunch PC gamer since elementary school, reveling in the high definition gaming on my computer. But with the current generation of consoles finally stepping into Hi-Def, it's hard to deny that consoles have finally caught up. My current computer certainly can't do the graphical tricks that consoles nowadays can do at the resolution they do it in.

That being said, the Wii is not a serious gaming machine. If I wanted true HD gaming, I would have to spring the 300-400 dollars for an XBox360 or PS3, and then I'd have to rebuild my stable of games to play. I'm not even a huge fan of gamepads, since I mostly play FPS'es and strategy games!

Still, the current gen of consoles should probably stave off obsolescence for 3 or 4 more years, basically the longevity of an upgrade for my computer anyway. It's getting to be a hard choice.

Mac vs. PC

And then the hardest choice of all: do I finally cave into the pressures of getting an Apple computer. As an animator and filmmaker in Los Angeles, I am one of the last bastions of people who do their professional work primarily on a PC still (I use Macs at the office). I've managed to get by this far, but if I want to keep editing in my skillset, I have to start using Final Cut Pro.

But Macs are ridiculously expensive for their performance, compared to a PC of the same specs (a friend and colleague's 1800 dollar PC rendered the same AfterEffects file as his workplace's 2500 dollar Intel Mac, and the PC rendered it 30% faster); They aren't built for gaming; they require brand new software; and they're more expensive and a pain in the butt to upgrade.

I volunteered to swap the power supply on a Mac Pro at work once. What was a 20 minute procedure for a PC, took me over six hours (spread over 2 days) with the Mac. Ridiculous.

Besides, I only really need to use the Mac for FCP... I can keep using AfterEffects and Flash on my PC.

An Indecent Proposal

It would cost about 2500 dollars to buy a Mac Pro (quad core Xeon, 2 gigs of RAM, 512 mb video, 320gb HD). With a budget like that, let's see how much I can spread the money around:

$260 - Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 ghz Processor
$65 - MSI Intel Motherboard
$57 - 512 MB Radeon x1650 video card (PCI-E)
$170 - 8 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM
$552 - TOTAL for a PC rebuild (salvage rest of parts from current PC) (via Newegg)

$400 - PS3 or Xbox 360

$952 - SUBTOTAL

That gets me $1548 left to buy a Mac. Not a Mac Pro, but I can get a 2.0 ghz 20-inch iMac with 2 gigs of RAM, which should be more than enough to run FCP without a ridiculously amount of filters and layers, for just $1349.

Total: $2301, 200 dollars cheaper than a Mac Pro that would likely be slower than my PC.

Really with that kind of a PC, I wouldn't even need an HD console for at least another year (almost certainly more), at which point the price for a console will have dropped even more, or we'd all be eyeing the next generation by then.

Of course, this all presupposes that I had this kind of money. Maybe after taxes, we'll see. What do you guys think?

A Busted Case Fan

A week or two ago I was tooling around with my BIOS to try to find if I could activate Wake-on-LAN in there somehow (I couldn't... stay tuned), and I noticed that my CPU (AMD Athlon 64 3000+) was running abnormally hot, around 59 degrees celsius. Not terrible, but warmer than I remember it being, which is a lot cooler than the Athlon XP I had in there back in 2003.

Anyway, I knew it wasn't too too hot, and the computer was running fine otherwise, so I left it alone.

This morning I realized that my case fan had broken. It was a stock fan that came with a dinky Powmax tower case that I bought during college, made of the flimsiest metal you could imagine. But the fan worked well and lit up magenta and blue, so when I bought my new and awesome ULTRA case, I kept the fan (the new case didn't come with one).

I checked the connections and saw that it was good (I didn't notice it had broken because the LED's still lit up), but the plastic casing around the motor itself had cracked at some point, and while the motor still turned if I held it tighter together, it was slow and didn't move air at all. Time for a new one.

I went to Best Buy ready to plunk down around 10-15 dollars for a case fan, and when I got there, the two LED-lit fans were both around 12.50-12.99. But as I looked down, I saw a generic Dynex-brand case fan that was only 1.99! Only caveat is that it didn't light up. But for 1/6th the price, I couldn't resist. Armed with my 12% off coupon (hurry, coupon expires Jan 21st!) that I got from recently discovered Dealigg, as well as my Best Buy rewards card, I was able to get the price reduced to $1.92 including tax. Not bad!

Installing the fan was a snap like it always has, just unscrew the mounts of the old one, unplug it from the power supply, and then put the new one in its place. I'm happy to report that the average temperature is now a very pleasingly average 47 degrees celsius.

I must admit I do miss the red and blue light from my PC; it feels so much less alive now... oh well, if I really miss it, I'll just buy one for 5 dollars on eBay, and put the unlit fan in the front of the case, and it would've still been cheaper than buying that 12 dollar one at the store :).

Speeding Up Startup

One of the more unfortunate consequences of doing a systemwide overhaul is sometimes I change something that causes something else to stop working, without knowing what the hell I'd done to cause it (because I'd changed so many things).

At some point while I was still using Windowblinds, I noticed that my computer was taking interminably long to start up. It would routinely take 4 and a half minutes from the BIOS posting to being able to open Firefox. Moreso, as soon as the Windows chime plays, it just shows the wallpaper with no icons or taskbar, and the mouse pointer that was movable but couldn't click anything. I would later discover that for some reason if I used CTRL-ALT-DEL to log off as a user and log back in, the computer would finish its startup in no time at all. So I could either endure nearly 5 minutes of waiting, or cut out a minute and a half by jumping in the middle of it by logging out and logging back in. I usually just let it go and used the time to stretch my legs or refill my drink.

It had nothing to do with Windowblinds at all (in fact one of the reasons I uninstalled it was hoping it would fix the startup problem), but it bugged me enough to go through everything I possibly could to speed up my Windows startup.

I won't go into obvious computer maintenance tasks like defragging and running scandisk, I'll assume you've done that already.

First, I cleaned up the Startup folder in the Start Menu. This is the most visible way of knowing what was starting up with Windows on your computer, and was the easiest to clean up (just delete the icon from the menu). However I think because it's so easy to remove stuff from there most programs use more insidious ways to ensure loading at startup. So I moved on.

Oftentimes, you can also right-click on the icons in the system tray and see if there's a "Preferences" or "Options" menu, and see if it gives you the option to disable loading at Startup. Quicktime is an application that springs to my mind that always runs at startup when it doesn't need to, and can be disabled this way.

Next up, I loaded up Spybot: Search and Destroy, and Ad-Aware Personal, and ran a systemwide check for spyware. I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to spyware, so I don't keep these programs running all the time (that would slow down my computer as much as the actual spyware would), but it's always good to see what falls through the cracks. When I did the check, it found some cookies, but for the most part, my computer was clean.

Next, by clicking Start>Run>msconfig.exe, you are taken to the Windows System Configuration Utility, which lets you edit the .ini files that govern how Windows loads up. By clicking on the Startup tab, you can see the various programs that start with Windows. Some of the programs on there can be identified easily by their filenames, but many are not. Check the folder they're in for clues as to what they do, and if all else fails, google the filename. If you see anything that doesn't need to run, uncheck it. Novice users might want to do this one restart at a time so you know what disabled application causes whatever side-effect pops up. When I did it I saw some programs that loaded with my video card, mp3 player, and my seldomly used webcam, which I went and shut down.

I restarted when prompted. I noticed a little bit of a speedup at shutdown, but nothing major, and that minute and a half of dead time in the middle was still there. I decided to keep looking.

Start>Run>services.exe brings up the Windows Service Controller. Windows services are application-like components that Windows loads up in order to make sure certain options are always available. I learned about what each of the many services did from sites like these (among others that I can't remember specifically), and then went about setting unnecessary ones to Manual or Disabled.

Again, a tiny bit of speed up (maybe ten or so seconds max), and by this point the startup was almost entirely just that dead period, but alas, the dead period was still there.

Then it turned out it was just my Wacom Cintiq driver acting up. It felt like such a throwaway application/service that I never assumed that would be the problem (I was all ready to reinstall my video card drivers before I even thought of the Wacom drivers). Luckily Wacom had newer drivers on their website and reinstalling the drivers cleared the entire problem up.

Now, instead of nearly 5 minutes to start up, it now takes 1 minute and 8 seconds. That's one third of the time! The only applications starting up that aren't completely necessary for Windows to function are my Wacom drivers, my antivirus, and Thunderbird.

There's more about this topic I can elaborate on, but I'll postpone those for a future post. Especially look forward to more information about Windows Services, and being able to start and stop them at your convenience.

My Partner and I

Before moving along, I wanted to create a more distinct profile of both myself and my computer, so as to better inform you reader about where I'm coming from, what types of enhancements I'll probably be looking at more than others, and how far I can go.

My PC configuration (in a nutshell):

• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0ghz (single core, circa 2004)
• Some compatible motherboard I can't be bothered to remember right now.
• 2 gb of DDR SDRAM
• ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 9600 128mb RAM, AGP 8x (circa 2004 as well)
• ATI Rage 128 32mb RAM (to power 3rd display)
• SoundBlaster Live! Value sound card (circa... 2001??)
• LiteOn DVD+-RW 8x burner (won't eject sans paperclip, otherwise works perfect)
• Generic 5.1 speaker system (that isn't running true 5.1, re: sound card)
• primary display 24in widescreen LCD from Acer, 1920x1200
• secondary display 17in LCD from NEC, 1280x1024
• tertiary display, 15in Wacom Cintiq LCD drawing tablet(bought used for 700 bucks cash!), aka the gift that keeps on giving.
• Labtec wireless keyboard and mouse.

As you can see, this is a very middle of the road hardware configuration (with the exception of the 3 displays, one of which is a high-end though aging LCD drawing tablet). The last time I invested in earnest on my PC was before college in 2002, when I built my very first rig. Since then I've just swapped aging components out with newer (but not bleeding edge) ones, and it's managed to chug along nicely.

I've contemplated other major upgrades recently, but since doing so would require replacing everything but the hard drives, monitors, sound and optical drive, I'm going to table that for at least a while longer. I'm more seriously considering getting an iMac for video editing and productivity as well as a dedicated next-gen console for gaming. I've been on a PC for so long that it's bittersweet if/when I leave it. I know I certainly wouldn't have as much fun customizing such a setup as I do now, but perhaps I'm getting too old anyway (maybe I should just start learning to fix up my car).

Anyway, back to it. The following are the more important current software running on my machine. Some of these are very recent additions and I hope to go back in the future to recount how I came upon using them.

• Windows XP Service Pack 2 (really awaiting SP3)
• Firefox 2.x (come on 3.0 and no memory leaks!) and Thunderbird with Lightning
• Winamp 5.3
• OpenOffice 2.2
• Most Adobe Products (AfterEffects, Premiere, Photoshop)
• Flash 8
• Miranda IM for instant messaging
• uTorrent
• Autohotkey (my savior!)

As for myself, I am 24 minus 4 weeks, living in Los Angeles as a freelance animator/motion/graphics designer. I used to be a hardcore gamer when I was younger, and most recently purchased Valve's Orange Box (and will continue to be a Valve fanboy for the foreseeable future). In fact, I bought my ATI radeon in order to play Half Life 2, and it came with a coupon for a free version of said game. Nowadays I prefer to play older games that I know will run rock solid on my computer (Warcraft 3?), but I must ackowledge that most of my computer knowledge I learned along the way has been related to gaming, until just now, when apparently I'm just tweaking my computer for its own sake.

Given how my PC's certainly no spring chicken (and probably hasn't been for a good while), doing these tweaks probably add a bit more life to the machine (I don't have a name for it, as dear as it is to me, unfortunately, and it's probably inappropriate to name it during its middle age).

Anyway, now you know where I'm coming from, so we can move forward together.