Computer
Rules of Thumb
Version 1.2
(13 April 2012)
(Updated slightly for the first time since 2010)
(Compiled from personal experience and the recommendations of denizens on the www.stardestroyer.net forums)
The Really Important Bits
1.) Always buy name brand hardware from reputable sources. Avoid no-name clone manufacturers like the plague. I will repeat this many times through this guide; but it doesn't hurt to emphasize it again.
2.) First adopters are Suckers. I repeat, first adopters are Suckers.
Do not rush out to buy the latest and greatest technology. Wait until it has proven itself.
Example A:
Back in 2010, Intel's X-25M series of SSDs (solid state drives) had a pretty bad firmware problem.
Intel had been promising that when Windows 7 was released, they would release the TRIM firmware, which would greatly prolong the lifetime of the drives by enabling TRIM support, and significantly reducing the “slowdown” that occurs as the SSD is used.
Sound all good and cheery? Well, it turns out that the TRIM firmware, when it was released a few days after Windows 7, when it was applied to already in-use SSDs, bricked the drives, rendering them useless. It took several more firmware updates to resolve that problem. After several months, you basically could buy X-25Ms that shipped with the fixed firmware that included working TRIM support out from the box; but the people who brought the drives before the TRIM support had been proven were the Suckers.
Example B:
In early 2012, Canon began shipping out the hotly anticipated 5D Mark III Digital SLR; and early adopters quickly found out that there were several early possible flaws. Some cameras had slightly fuzzy focus, while others had a ‘light leak’ issue where it was possible for light from the illuminated top LCD display to leak into the camera itself and affect the automatic metering of the shot in extremely dark environments. And to top it off, Canon’s Digital Photo Professional, the included software that could read/convert Canon’s RAW files into JPEG format had a number of issues.
When you pay $3,500 USD for a camera body, you don’t want to find out about these teething flaws with your money.
3.) A collorary to the above, I have found that BIOS/Firmware updates generally tend to cause more problems than they fix/correct, or the new features they offer. I find that only updating them when it's absolutely crucial to resolve a critical problem that you are encountering makes your life much easier.
4.) Upgrading your computer every six months does not give you the best bang for your buck. A three to four year refresh policy for your computer hardware ensues that you will have a substantive and qualitative improvement over your old hardware for your money. For example, in 2006/7, the leading lower-upper end card was the GeForce 8800 GTS, and it had about 700 million transistors. The new GeForce GTX 680 coming out in March 2012 will have 3.5 billion transistors.
Try this Before Anything Expensive!
Back in 2010, I had to troubleshoot a problem in which my brother's desktop stopped “seeing” the internet. We tried everything from resetting the router, plugging it directly into the cable modem, etc; but it would not see the internet.
We began to think that our only options left were these three choices:
1.) Buy a add on wireless-N USB receiver for $60
2.) Buy an internal PCI Ethernet card
3.) Replace Motherboard
Fortunately, I found the following advice online:
1.) Shut down your PC.
2.) Unplug the power cord.
3.) If you have a laptop, remove the battery as well.
4.) Walk away from the problem for at least 20-30 minutes.
5.) When you return, reconnect battery and power cord.
5.) Start as usual.
6.) If this solves the problem, take 20 minutes and post this to all of those message boards that you didn't find the solution to.
Following this advice; the computer following start up once again saw the internet. This seems like a good piece of advice to offer for any random glitch you are facing, before you do something really drastic, like nuke and reinstall, or replacing major system components like the motherboard.
Software
Rule #1. There is only Windows or Macintosh. All others are forgeries.
This rule may seem brutal and simple to a lot of computer enthusiasts out there, but the average person just wants their system to WORK with a relatively minimal level of fuss. While Linux and other Open Source Operating Systems do work (I've played with them in the past); they just are not a reliable choice for anything other than enthusiast tinkering; due to the lack of hardware OR software support for Linux, and the fact that Linux itself is fragmented between many incompatible versions. Additionally, Linux, is pretty much out in the cold for anything more complex than simple word processing, surfing the web, email, and instant messaging.
Yes, I know about the open source movement, and that there are a lot of programs out there for Linux. I did tinker with Linux several years ago. But the overwhelming majority of these programs are very user un-friendly in how they are set up – e.g. you have to find the specific compiler and libraries that the coder(s) used, then type in an arcane sequence to compile it. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it doesn't. It's only fairly recently that Linux open source software has begun to at least offer pre-compiled binaries that install very much like a Windows or Macintosh software package. And even then, they're pretty rare.
There's also the fact that a lot of software simply won't run on Linux. For an example, I own a Canon Digital SLR camera, and the software which lets you view the RAW image files generated by the camera is only available for Windows or Macintosh. Yes, there are emulators like WINE (link to WINE), but the average person won't know about them, nor know how to properly configure it and then make it work with every single program out there.
Suffice to say, Linux is for computer geeks with a lot of time on their hands who enjoy running a server in their basement.
Rule #2. See Rule #1
Rule #3: Generally wait a month or two after an operating system has been released to the public. Let someone else be the beta tester, not you. Traditionally, the rule of thumb has been to wait six months or at least one service pack release before buying a Microsoft OS. This was born in the very bad old days of Windows 95; and then reinforced by the bad release of Vista into an environment where a lot of hardware drivers weren't ready for it. Windows 7's release was a lot better, since it could use the drivers that had been developed for Vista, and Microsoft really took to heart a lot of the criticisms of Vista in designing 7.
Windows 7 Home Premium is all you really need if you're the average and slightly above average user.
If you handle some rather obscure software which needs virtualization, you might need Windows 7 Professional to get Windows XP mode via Virtual PC.
However; you can get workable virtualization for free via Oracle’s VirtualBox (LINK); so unless you actually need more than 16 GB of memory (Windows 7 Home Premium’s limit); there really is no real need for Professional. By the time the average user needs 192 GB of memory (Windows 7 Professional’s limit), we will be quite possibly into Windows 9 or 10 territory.
Windows 7 Ultimate is just a waste of money; as it offers no real new features that would be used by the average person, except bragging rights on message boards about how much disposable cash you have.
Originally I recommended unchecking “automatic install” for Windows Update, due to lingering memories of IE/Service Pack installations gone horribly wrong; which made Microsoft pushing Service Packs and new versions of Internet Explorer to automatically install through Windows Update anathema to me.
However, Microsoft has really cleaned up their act regarding the stability of these updates and IE versions; and a lot of people (myself included) now have more than one computer that they can use as a “guinea pig”.
It all depends on how ‘critical’ you view that particular computer as – if it’s just something you use to check the internet from airport lobbies; go full automatic and never look back.
If however, you use your computer as a power user and use a lot of specialist programs which may or may not work well with a new service pack or Internet Explorer release, I would uncheck the “automatic install” feature of Windows Update; but keep the automatic notification of updates on; so you can decide what updates should be installed.
In a 32-bit application, the maximum amount of memory space the application can address is 4 gigabytes. Meanwhile, a 64-bit application can address 16.3 billion gigabytes. That's a lot more memory space available.
Generally, for most applications, the advantages of going to 64-bit are very small (on the order of about 5-10% performance improvement), and in some cases, there is actually a decrease in performance, because of the extra number of registers which have to be handled by the computer.
A simple way of measuring whether a program you have would benefit from upgrading to a newer 64-bit version is to look at the kind of datasets that are being handled by the program.
A Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator wouldn't benefit much if at all, due to the fact that the NES had only 2 to 32 kb of system memory to emulate.
By contrast, a graphics editing application that routinely handles very large images -- a 5000 x 5000 pixel bitmap at 24 bit consumes about 72 megabytes of information would benefit from 64-bitness, due to the fact that many graphics applications save "undo" steps so you can go back to a previous version of the image, and if you have several large images open at once, this causes a pretty big memory footprint.
Likewise, newer and newer 3D computer games definitely push around a lot of data, as game developers push for ever larger and ever more detailed game worlds, and want to keep track of more things within that world (which needs more memory of course), so they would benefit from going to 64-bit binaries. However, games that actually have this are very rare.
I have been fairly conscientious concerning deploying a anti-virus program, etc; and even then, I got hit by a virus/malware program. It was one of those “fake” anti virus scan programs which messed up your system among other “fun” things. How did I get hit? Well, I was browsing one of my internet discussion forums when it was being hosted on Yuku (the former eZboard).
A popup came up, asking me if I wanted to install blah blah blah.
I clicked on the windows close button (that “x” in the upper right corner of your window), and still got hit by the program.
See, what happened is that many of these programs manage to script their popup windows so that ALL the buttons on the window begin the installation sequence. Even the “cancel” buttons.
Here's how you deal with them. (With Windows XP/7)
Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and start up the Windows Task Manager.
Select the browser in task manager, right click, and select END TASK.
Keep trying until your browser closes.
Sure, you'll lose whatever internet pages you had open in that browser, but it beats a zombie system that forces a nuke-and-pave.
(The previously suggested method, using ALT-F4 to close that window was depreciated, because some malware popups can recognize this and bring up an additional pop up window asking you if you want to navigate away. Better to be safe than sorry).
You don't need five or so programs running simultaneously to get the best protection. If anything else, the programs will just keep getting in each others' way and actually lower your overall system security, because you will have to set up so many exceptions and suchlike to keep them playing nice with each other.
My simple recommendation?
Get Microsoft Security Essentials. (Link to MSE Website)
You can download it and use it as long as you're using a genuine copy of Windows. Why pay $50 to $80 each year for an anti virus program, when you can get a decent program, and up-to date anti-virus definitions free from Microsoft?
Sure, it may not be as good in catching viruses as NOD32, or what, but, you don't need professional grade anti-virus programs unless you're deliberately going to the bad corner of the internet (porn, warez, etc) and clicking on every single ad and link in sight.
Windows Firewall, which is available built into all versions of Windows after Windows XP Service Pack 2, when combined with your router's built in firewall, should be enough to stop 99% of all intrusion attempts.
It won't stop a concerted professional-grade attempt by people who know what they're doing; but will stop the script kiddies that 99% of all internet hackers are.
To stop that last 1% of hackers, you would need a router set up by an expert who is willing to devote a lot of his free time to running it.
Rule #1: Buy only discs with reasonable prices (no buying a 50-CD spindle for only $4.99!) and check the labels for where they are manufactured. The problem is even the "name brand stuff" can be the same media as ultracheap; so paying attention to the manufacturing location is important.
2010: The good stuff is made in Japan or in Singapore. Made in China or Made in Taiwan usually is inferior quality.
2012: Certain brands are starting to carry ‘made in India’, while the majority are now ‘Made in Taiwan’.
Rule #2: Burn them a step or two below your drive's maximum write speed. This results in a more reliable burn, especially if you are doing something really crazy like burning a huge directory that has 12,000 files in it. This also helps prevent a disc from failing silently, despite the program reporting a successful burn.
Rule #3: Keep your important optical disks (backups, the Great American Novel that you are writing) in a cool dark space, like for example in a file cabinet in the basement. This keeps them good for a long period of time, even if you didn't splurge for a premium archival brand of disc.
Rule #4: Figure out what is Really Important™ (The Great American Novel you are writing, etc) amongst your files and make double copies of it. Don’t burn just one CD/DVD. Burn two. Label them Copy 1 of 2, and Copy 2 of 2. That way, if one goes bad, you will have another. Additionally, keep one or two generations’ of backups for maximum assurance; e.g. when you burn Novel Work As of April 2012; you keep Novel Work As of December 2011, and Novel Work As of August 2011 in your storage place. Sure, they’re out of date, but in the event of your April 2012 backup being damaged or lost, you will have a fallback set and won’t lose 100% of your Really Important™ stuff.
Hardware
Generally, the warranties offered by stores are a waste of money; since many of the parts you buy already have manufacturer's warranties.
There is one BIG exception though.
ALWAYS buy an accidental-damage warranty for:
1. Laptops since they tend to get jostled around quite a bit; and most of them lack a proper load-bearing frame which increases stress on key components inside as the outer shell is jostled/twisted around.
2. Tablets, as they will be handled a lot and propped up to act as media players in odd spaces, leaving them prone to falling over if the airplane hits turbulence, or the road gets bumpy. Additionally, their displays are very large for their overall size, increasing their susceptibility to damage.
The reason for an accidental damage warranty is that manufacturer’s warranties only cover manufacturing defects; they won’t cover you if you drop your ShroomBook or spill coffee on it.
That said, don’t go overboard and get the multi-year warranties. One year’s extended warranty should be enough, as it will then cover the initial side of the bathtub curve and beyond a year, the item rapidly depreciates in value due to advances in technology, making a two or three year contract a nice way of giving your money to the retailer.
Don't do it. Just don't. Don't even THINK about doing it in any form.
Why? Your computer's components were designed to run at a certain specification, and exceeding those specifications greatly decreases the lifetime of your computer.
As a “bonus”, you greatly increase the probability of data errors creeping in and compromising the reliability of your data. (MSDN Article on this), thus leading to frequent software crashes.
Rule #1. There is only Intel or AMD. Forget all other brands.
Rule #2. Generally, picking a CPU from the lower portion of the upper performance bracket works very nicely. You get a CPU that's powerful enough to be a qualitative improvement over your previous computer, and a CPU that's fast enough to last for several years, while not paying the absurd, overinflated prices for the top portion of the upper performance bracket (I'm looking at you Intel Super Extreme Edition – or whatever Intel calls their top-top end now.)
Exception for Rule #2: If you develop rather specialist applications or use said specialist applications, Intel is becoming rapidly infamous for stratifying their CPU lineup by features, rather than by speed/performance. E.g. VT-d (device I/O virtualization) is only available on their very high end processors.
The first step of buying/choosing a motherboard is to pick ONLY from quality brands like:
Asus
Gigabyte
MSI
Intel
Supermicro (Good for workstations/servers)
Tyan (Good for workstations/servers)
Above all, avoid deals that are “too good to be true” using no name brands. That way lies insanity and pain.
Check the specifications of the motherboard very carefully.
Thing to Look for #1: Does it have enough slots/connectors/ports for your present and future needs?
A certain model of motherboard with two SATA connectors may be fine for a simple media center (with a single optical drive and hard drive); but would not be acceptable for someone who uses more than one hard drive for storage.
The reason for paying close attention to the boards' specifications in your initial buy is while there are Expansion Cards which can add extra connectors/ports like more SATA connectors, they generally are not as reliable as a built in motherboard connector/controller.
Thing to Look for #2: How much memory can the motherboard handle? Can it handle modern-ish memory? You want to be a little ahead of the curve in regards to total memory capacity, so you don't have to replace your board that often.
Rule #1: Buy from known major manufacturers like Kingston, Corsair, or Crucial. Avoid ‘no-name’ manufacturers.
Rule #2: Buy memory within the same spec as the original memory; e.g. PC3200, if you are adding more memory to an existing installation.
Rule #3: Performance RAM isn't worth it – you only need it if you're planning to overlock, and you did read what we said earlier about overclocking, didn't you?
Rule #1 (Expansion Card): Buy cards with a chipset from ATI or NVIDIA and from a known brand manufacturer like eVGA or PNY.
Rule #1 (Integrated Graphics): Buy a motherboard or laptop with an integrated chipset from ATI, NVIDIA, or Intel.
Rule #2: Really avoid no-name manufacturers in this category. I cannot tell you how torturous my experience was with a integrated no-name video card chipset in the mid 1990s.
Rule #3: Like CPUs, picking a graphics card from the lower portion of the upper performance bracket works very nicely. You get a big improvement over your previous video card, and the card is powerful enough to last for several years before it needs to be replaced to keep up with newer games. You also save a bundle as opposed to buying from the very upper end of the performance bracket.
Rule #4: Stay away from mid-level or low-level cards in the ATI/NIVIDIA card lineups. Generally, due to the very confusing methods of naming both manufacturers use, a newer midlevel card may actually be less powerful than your older existing card. They also will have to be replaced more often than a more powerful card. They are however acceptable if you are building a budget box that won't be used much for other than the internet, media center streaming and maybe some old game you really do like.
Rule #1: Stick with major hard drive manufacturers. Suggested ones are Western Digital and Seagate.
Rule #2: Stay away from the bleeding edge in hard drive capacities. For the last couple of years, the 1 TB and above category in hard drives has been suffering from an abnormally high amount of failures, due to the much higher data densities of those drives making a failure much more unforgiving. Sticking to a 500~ GB hard drive for most applications will increase reliability.
Rule #3: A very good rule I use (born out of the horrible bad old days of Windows 95/98/Me, where you usually had to nuke-and-reinstall your OS if a Blue Screen of Death happened, is to have two hard drives in my computer at all times. The first is the OS/Program drive, and the second is my Data drive, where I store photos, writings, or anything I want to keep. This means that if you have to nuke-and-pave, you don't have to worry about your data, since it would be safe on a physically separate drive.
Rule #4: Multiple partitions aren't really worth it anymore, due to the advances in file systems (NTFS is a vast improvement over FAT or FAT32). They also increase the probability that you may do something wrong when you tool around with your system's settings while installing the OS, and you end up nuking your data partition instead of the OS partition. Ooops.
These are only good for backup storage needs – e.g. you have 50 gigaterabytes of family photos or videos you need to backup, and you don't feel like burning 11 billion DVDs for backup purposes. They are NOT a mobile storage solution. That way lies the click of death after being put in a briefcase for a day of jostling. Likewise, they're a bit too erratic, even with the advances regarding device drivers and USB drivers for them to be used as a primary storage solution -- for that, stick to Internal HDDs.
They cannot be as easily ejected/added to a system as a USB stick or Flash Card. Generally, disconnect them after your system has been turned off and the drive automatically turns off.
As before, get a case from a major manufacturer like Antec. They're put together a lot more sturdily than the cheap clone cases, are much, much easier to assemble; and tend to come with special thumb screws which sure beat using a screwdriver!
The power supply is the one component in your computer, if it fails, can take down just about everything, from the motherboard to your hard drives permanently via frying.
So do not skimp on it by getting cheapo-no name PSUs that are “bargains”. You won't feel like you've gotten a bargain after it bombs and takes the rest of your system with it.
So only buy power supplies from known big name manufacturers like Asus, Corsair, etc.
When you are choosing your power supply, keep three factors in mind:
1.) Add in a little bit of extra power than what you need. If you figure your system needs about 400 watts of power to run, put in a 500-550 watt power supply. The reasons for doing this are so that you have a buffer for possible future upgrades; i.e., you might want to upgrade to a more powerful video card in the future, or add more hard drives. Additionally, this provides an extra margin of durability. Power supplies designed for 500 watts when they pull only 400 watts run cooler, and because they're built for a hotter thermal environment, they last longer and have less critical failures.
2.) This does not mean that a 800 to 1,000 watt PSU will give you a ten times greater margin of durability. There's a limit of diminishing returns, and your electric bill will hate you. Plus, only a very few systems actually NEED such power.
3.) Take a close look at the output cables it offers. You want to have only the cables you need with a little overhead for expansions. Otherwise, the inside of your box will look like a spaghetti mass of wiring. which not only looks horrible through a transparent window (which a lot of cases have now); but it also cuts airflow inside the case, and reduces the effectiveness of your cooling system. A lot of mid-range and virtually all high-end PSUs are now “modular”, in that there are sockets on the PSU for the various rails, and you only plug in the cables that you need. I do not have any experience with those or their durability, so I cannot make any informed comments on them.
If you're doing major computer assembly work; e.g putting together an entire system from the boxes they came in; wear an ESD Wrist Strap. While computer parts are surprisingly durable (for example, I've had cards which have sat unprotected against other cards for nearly a decade boot up and run with no problems; but those are exceptions to the rule); you want to be sure that you haven't blown your investment in computer parts by shorting out a key component.
While you can RMA those components; it's annoying to wait for a new part to come in.
Minor assembly work; e.g. adding a new hard drive, or changing the memory in an existing system can be done safely by regularly touching unpainted metal parts of the case to ground yourself and dissipate any possible charge.
Do assembly in a relatively clean room or area. Do not do it in carpeted areas; and if you have any pets in the house, lock them out of the assembly area until the computer is assembled and sealed up, to avoid them transferring static charges from them to you via rubbing against you.