Author Archives: Richard

Enough space to swing a cat

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I mentioned that I had bought a new external hard drive.

Within days, it failed.

I went into eBay which is where I bough the drive to contact the vendor, and to my disgust I noticed that he had a no-returns policy.  More in hope than expectation, I wrote to him anyway.

I didn’t get a reply, so I marked the failure down to experience, and as I needed a backup drive, I ordered a new drive off a different vendor.

A day later, I got two mails.  One was from the new vendor to say that my drive had been dispatched, and the other was from the original vendor to say that he would replace any faulty components, which he proceeded to do.

I now have two new external drives, and one somewhat flaky old one,  I have just hooked them all up to this laptop.  It now has a total of 4.8 Terrabytes of storage!

storage

I remember back in the 90s when Microsoft introduced their Terraserver project (now apparently renamed MSR Maps) which was a precursor to Google Earth.  Everyone was aghast at the amount of storage required to host the project.  How could anything be so big as to require terrabytes of storage?  yet I could probably store the whole project on my laptop now!

Naturally, I am not going to lug the drives around with the laptop.  What I intend to do is to mount them on the network so they are accessible at all times without having to physically move them. 

As for the amount of space I now have, I would imagine that it is about right.  I will mirror the two 2Tb drives so that in the event of failure, I will still have a backup.  The 1Tb drive will be used as an auxiliary dump which I shall probably use as a media server.

Overall, I should have enough storage?

Upgrading

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I can’t remember exactly when I bought my first desktop computer, but I think it was around fifteen years ago.

Boy, how things have changed!

My first machine was a Tandon 386, with 1Mb of RAM and a massive 40Mb hard disk.  It had the standard 5.25” floppy drive, but I spent a little extra and got a 3,25” floppy as well.  I was forward thinking!

I have just taken delivery of a 2Tb external drive which is hooked up now to my laptop, along with a slightly unreliable 1Tb drive.  I have just been doing the maths on how this humble little laptop compares to my first machine.

The memory has grown from 1Mb to 4Gb, which is 4,000 times more.

The storage has grown from 40Mb to 3.35Tb which is an increase factor of 83750!!

The laptop has a 2Gh dual core processor compared to my old 16Mh Tandon which is the poorest improvement – a mere 128 times faster.

I haven’t seen a floppy drive in years, nor have I seen a floppy disk.  This yoke is DVDs (and CDs) only.

Of course the display and sound have improved beyond recognition too.

But by how much has the price increased in the fifteen years?

I actually paid about half the original cost on my current setup.  Allowing for inflation, I have spent considerably less.

Not bad. huh?

The top 300000 websites in the world

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I came across an interesting item yesterday.

It is a graphic of the icons of the world’s top 300,000 websites.  Considering that at the end of 2009 it was estimated that there were 234 million websites, then to be in the top 300,000 is quite something.

The graphic is a large one.  I’m not going to post it here, as the copy I have is nearly 508Mb in size.  You’ll have to make do with a reduced one –

Topsites1

What amazed me is that Head Rambles is in there.  It took a bit of searching, but the Old Goat is in there, up in the top left hand corner.

Topsites2

There he is.  Bang in the middle.

Not quite as big an icon as Google or YouTube.

But it’s a start.

Windows 7 and Firefox 4

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

As I mentioned about three weeks ago, I got myself a new laptop.

At my age, switching to a new version of an operating system can be a little daunting.  Learning is not the problem.  I have no problem with the learning.  What I do have problems with is habit.  I get into the habit of doing things a particular way, and if I am forced off that way, I tend to get annoyed.

I mentioned before that I liked my “Classic Menu”.  I found a nice little programme (Classic Shell) that does exactly what I wanted.  What’s more, it gives be a configurable dual option – left click (for example) on the Start button gives the new Windows 7 Menu, whereas right click gives the “Classic”.  What I find interesting is that more and more I am using the Windows 7 version, and soon there will be no need for that programme at all.

For the last couple of days, I have been playing around with Firefox 4. 

At first glance there is little difference from Firefox 3, apart from little tweaks such as the tabs now extending to the full width of the screen, whereas in the old version, they were moved to the right by the Bookmarks/History panel.

One area where there is a significant difference is in the way the tabbed preview works.

Win7_FF3

In the case above, the curser is over the Firefox tab on the menu bar, which gives a preview of the tab currently open.

Win7_FF4

In Firefox 4 however, moving the curser over the menu gives a preview of every tab open in Firefox.  Moving the curser over the previews immediately shows that tab in the main screen, allowing for very easy and quick selection.

I don’t know if it is my imagination, but the screen seems a lot crisper in 4, as well.

Normally I only run Beta versions for test purposes, and will rever to the production version for normal use.  I find with Firefos 4 though that I use it all the time, and would be loath to revert.

Nice one, Firefox!

A Classic Menu in Windows 7

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I wrote yesterday that I missed the Classic Menu in Windows 7.

Why the option was omitted is anyone’s guess, but the fact is that it’s gone.  I did a search on the Internet and found a few solutions that were all going to cost me.  Now, I’m not averse to paying for good software, but this didn’t warrant  any expenditure.

I searched a bit further, and found an extremely simple solution that not only is free, but doesn’t require any additional software at all.

First of all, through Control Panel, –> Folder Options make sure that “Show hidden files, folders and drives” is selected.

Now, right-click on the toolbar and select Toolbars –> New toolbar…   This will open up a folder selection window.  Select ‘C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\windows\StartMenu\Programs\

That’s it.

The new item appears on the right-hand end of the Toolbar:

Classic_menu

Click on the double arrow ‘>>’ and away you go.