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"Your opponent cannot fold if you do not bet or raise." –Abdul

Installing Windows 7 from a bootable USB drive

Posted on | June 24, 2010 | 1 Comment

There are a lot of Google search results with guides on how to create bootable USB drives from which you can install Windows. Unfortunately, a lot of them are outdated or missing key pieces of information. Fortunately, I found two pages that were pretty helpful:

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool – Who needs a guide when you can have software do it for you? Microsoft’s online software store has a tool that makes it easy to make a bootable USB drive or DVD from the ISO.

at Kevin’s Blog – Kevin has put together a fairly complete guide to how to make a bootable USB drive. It’s useful even when you use the Microsoft tool because you might end up having to manually run bootsect (e.g., you’re making a x64 installer on a machine running the x86 version, so you can’t actually run bootsect from the x64 ISO).

As I type this, my computer is busily rebooting away during the installation process. I think it’s almost done.

Category: Useful Stuff

I bought a new computer in pieces from NewEgg

Posted on | June 23, 2010 | No Comments

Five years ago I went hunting around for the best prices for computer parts online and at Fry’s. I ended up getting parts at all different times and driving to a couple different Fry’s. This time around I ordered everything from NewEgg. They generally have great prices on things, and I also like the idea of spending my money locally (their HQ is about an hour east of here). They’re pretty fast, too; I placed the order Sunday at 2, and everything showed up this morning around 10.

Case: Antec Sonata III 500
Newegg: $119.99 – $20 discount – $20 MIR = $79.99

Motherboard: MSI P55-GD65
Newegg: $159.99 – $10 MIR = $149.99

CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Processor (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz)
Newegg: $199.99

Graphics: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+
Newegg: $129.99 – $20 MIR = $109.99

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1600
Newegg: $105.99

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive
Newegg: $64.99

Cooling Fan/Heatsink: Zalman CNPS9500 AT
Newegg: $40.99

Total: $891.11 shipped – $50 MIR = $841.11

If I were smart, I would have done the 2% Bing cashback and saved another $18.

Related: Help me build a new computer, The New Poker Machine

Category: General

Help me build a new computer

Posted on | June 18, 2010 | 13 Comments

The old computer is painful to use, and since I built it five years ago, I’d say it’s definitely time for a new computer. Any suggestions on components to buy?

I’ll probably go for a newer Sonata case, intel CPU, nVidia card, Zalman CPU fan, etc., but I’d appreciate any insights or tips y’all might have to offer. I’m not particularly interested in computer hardware, so I have no idea what’s out there, what’s good, etc. Nor am I that interested in scouring Tom’s Hardware to find out. Yep. I’m lazy.

As was the case the last time around, I’m not really interested in getting something that can play the latest video games flawlessly, just something that will give me decent performance for the price. I don’t intend to scavenge parts off the old machine except maybe the optical drive, and I’ll use my old monitor with the new machine. Overall, I’ll probably feel pretty good about the whole thing if you keep my budget around $550.

Related: The New Poker Machine

Category: General

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