Will the cloud ever replace the desktop?

I don’t think so. Security will always be a problem, speed another and lack of internet yet another one.

Everyone with a state of the art computer knows that nothing can match the speed of the SSD hard drive combined with 16 GB of RAM and an 8 core computer. No matter how fast the optic fiber is or the servers, there will always be more delays in the cloud than in your own machine.

I think that as the amount of data and information explodes inside companies, they will tend to use bigger and faster hard disks. Companies simply don’t want to give all their data to a cloud solution no matter how cost effective it may seem. The desktop system will always be faster than any cloud system even with 1GB internet speed. There are always delays when it comes to travel thousands of miles to reach the server.

One indicator of how people prefer to have their data inside the hard disk is the Chrome Notebook. People didn't mass buy them (at least yet) because they are not comfortable giving so much power to Google. They want to choose what operating system they want to have, what browser and what search engine and email solution. They don't want to be attached to Google forever nor to online services.

The clould storage is quite limited in mobility and file edition. You can't simply open and edit files inside the cloud, unless the service has applications installed for that end. You have to download the files to the computer, edit, then save again in the cloud. That's a problem I have not seen a solution yet.

The importance of desktop search

Google Desktop Search was the best software to search your computer. The results were super fast, faster than any other technology at that time. Ther results were very accurate. You could even search your web history which was perfect to find a page you visited but forgot to save and wanted to visit again. You would see the results in the browser with Google search results style. It was the perfect desktop search tool. Unfortunatelly Google decided to stop the development of this software. People who still want to search the computer have to buy the Google Enterprise Search. The reasons given by Google were that people have less information inside the computer and more in the cloud so it made no sense to continue the development of Google Desktop Search.

I don't agree.

Desktop search continue to be one of the most important tools in the computer. To have a small idea of how important search is, just go to your Windows 8 machine and try to find a file you don't know where it is. You can't find it. Windows 8 does not have a general desktop search engine. You need to open the folders one by one and search inside them. It's true people have more and more information inside the cloud and not inside the computer, but security problems, lack of speed and support make most people continue to use their computers for file storage, especially companies. Big companies probably don't live without enterprise search. They have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of documents to search and without search, their productivity would be wasted. Google has a product for them.

Let's see if Windows 10 comes with a better search engine with the new Start Menu because if it doesn't because it's trying to make people use One Drive, I think Chrome OS and Linux will be the operating system of the future.

How will Google be able to index the internet of the future?

Google is probably the smartest company in the world. More than 60 trillion pages indexed and the number grows every second. It is estimated that in 2019, 4 years from now, the internet will double in size every three days. Hard disk sizes don’t double in size every three days. They double every 2 years. Google can’t build more and more data centers every day to keep up with all this size. What will happen? I think that Google will be even more selective about which sites or blogs are indexed and which remains out of sight and from the index. It will be impossible, even more Google, to handle trillions or maybe quadrillions of pages with content. 

Google has its limits.

I think the internet of the future will be even more caothic than what it is today. The competition to get web traffic will go from extreme to insane. Most blogs will simply get no traffic. Human writers will be replaced by machine articles. I read about one company called Wordsmith that says their goal is to get one single visitor to each page they write. In 2014 they published 300 million unique pages of content, written by robots, in order to get 300 million visitors to their articles. In 2015 they want to write one billion unique pages.

Can you see how the future is going to be like on the internet and for search engines? Machines will be able to write interestinf stories based on all the numbers published across the internet. New statistic numbers? The robots are ready to interpret and express with words what those numbers mean.

Let’s wait and see what happens.

Should you buy a computer or configure your own?

This is a quite popular topic. Most computer experts prefer to make their own computers buying the parts individually than buying a new computer. I would say the best optin depends on your computer experience and also on how well you can configure one and how much patience you have. 

Computers directly from the store come working perfectly (most of the times at least). If you prefer to configure your own computer you may have a hard time putting all the parts together without damaging anything. Still it’s a pleasure to work with something you made yourself.

Another thing to consider is how long you can be without the computer in case something fails. If you buy from a store the whole computers, you have to wait up to a month to get the machine back working. If you configure everything yourself, that wait does not apply. You just have to open the machine, send the damaged part to the warranty and install a new until the old part comes again.

Making your own computer is something to be proud of. Few people can do it. Making your own machine means not only you will have to learn a lot about IT (very important in today's world) but also you will have to put that knowledge into real world practice.

Make your own machine and be free.

Google CEO says we don't need to fear artificial intelligence

Eric Schmidt says that according to the numbers, people who work with computers see their wages going up, productivity going up and have a better life generally. He also says it's normal that people fear artificial intelligence.

http://www.newsweek.com/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-says-artificial-intelligence-will-make-world-not-break-290778

Artificial intelligence is making progress almost exponentially according to Tesla's CEO Elon Musk. He fears that artificial intelligence could be the biggest threat to human kind. We also fears that artificial intelligence could soon become more intelligent than humans and that we might do something very foolish.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/27/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-ai-biggest-existential-threat

He is not alone in this fear. Last week, Stephen Hawking who is considered one of the biggest living minds say that general artificial intelligence could design improvements to itself, outsmart us all and that it could be the end of man kind. He also says that artificial intelligence could be the ones leading in the future.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/richard-stacy/artifical-intelligence-st_b_6293732.html

Right now artificial intelligence is so advanced it can write reports just like human beings. It's also doing things that were considered impossible just ten years ago. Robots are already being used by Nestle to act as sales men in their stores in Japan. Artificial intelligence already can drive cars, trucks, race in real world cars and even play ping pong.

How to continue to use Windows Xp without many security problems

Since Microsoft stopped updating Windows Xp in April, people rampaged buying the new Windows 7 and 8. Xp saw the market share drop. Funny comments on the web said that Microsoft could not end Windows Xp with new Windows versions, but now hackers are the ones who will "destroy" Xp.

Can you still use Windows Xp without worries? It's certainly less safe. Now there are probably security holes not patched, but for some basic uses Windows Xp still works. Just don't do serious stuff with the computer and follow these tips.

1. Install Google Chrome. Internet Explorer for Xp is no longer updated. New bugs and security holes are not patched. Google Chrome is faster, lighter and safer.

2. Install a new firewall. Xp's firewall again is not updated. Zone Alarm or Comodo firewall gives the best protection a free firewall can give. You will just have to allow or deny access to applications the first time they request access to the internet and then you will be safer.

3. Don't download files from places you don't know. Based on what I read on the internet, hackers are probably looking for Xp security problems not patched and exploit those holes. If you get an infected file that targets Xp holes, you might get problems. Software downloads? Only from sites like Softpedia and Cnet and similar trusted sites.

4. Never leave Xp connected to the internet very long. The longer it connects to the internet, the higher the chances of getting affected. Using a real time Firewall alert shows that as soon as the internet is connected, viruses and malware will start trying to enter even when the browser is closed.

5. Download the latest Xp updates from Microsoft site if you did no already and...

6. Just don't connect Xp to the internet and use it forever. If you are like me and like to play DOS game using DOS box you need a Xp. Win 7 and 8 don't support most DOS games or Windows xp games. Xp is the only OS that runs these lovely oldwares. Just don't connect the computer to the internet and Win Xp might run forever (as long as there's hardware for it).

Firefox is the best browser for reading

Recently when reading a couple of articles with Google Chrome I noticed I had a hard time trying to read. The letters had a low resolution and low contrast compared with the page background. I thought glassed would be needed because of too many hours working with the computer.

Then I tried to open the same page with Firefox and the difference is amazing. The text has much better quality than with Google Chrome. The words have such a high resolution that you have no problems reading for hours and hours. It's the perfect browser for reading and to digest information.

Is this a problem with Chrome's character size? Not at all. You can modify the character size, the font and some more options and get the same end result. Chome is not a browser to read. It's fast in my cases but for long hours of reading and browsing the internet it loses to Firefox by a longshot.

Laptop vs desktop, which computer offer teh best price, performance and upgrades in the future

I have laptops and desktop computers. They are unique and I can't say if one is better than the other. What I can say is the advantages of one against the other and leave you the info to make a decision.

The laptop

In the 90's, laptop computers were very expensive, slow, and prone to damage. In the 2000's companies like Acer and Asus made huge improvements to make the machines faster, more reliable and strong enough to be carried every day from home to office. Now laptops can even be used for gaming. Alienware laptop computers are made with nothing in mind but games. In general, laptops are more expensive than desktops, have fewer upgrade options (you can replace the screen, the cpu, the mother board...) are more expensive than desktop computers, and slower (they run on low watts to make the battery last longer). 

A good laptop should have a fast cost effective CPU (Amd leads the price to performance ratio). It also should have at least 8 GB of RAM because with just 4 GB Windows runs out of RAM as soon as you boot the computer with all the programs installed. Since laptop hard disks are slower with just 540 RPM, the SSD is the best choice for speed and to make the battery last longer. How big should the SSD hard disk be? Depends on how much data you plan to have in the laptop. For video storage, just buy an external hard disk.

Desktop computer

For gaming, speed and performance, laptops don't have a chance. High performance cheap computers exist only for the desktop machines. Every component is faster. The disadvantage is you can't carry them around. Ok, you can, but imagine the logistics necessary. The desktop is perfect for video edition and gaming and to upgrade it when you want. You can sell on eBay the older components and buy new ones that fit on the same motherboard. Currently a good performance priced computer is anything with an AMD 6 or 8 core, 8 GB of RAM and the SSD hard disk. For storage consider a second hard disk with 1 TB or more. Just don't use the big disk for the operating system or most of the time the PC is loading is waiting for the hard disk, not the cpu.

Conclusion

People looking for computer power and cheap machines, definitely go for a desktop computer. The ability to upgrade is great. You can always have a top class computer just by upgrading the cpu, ram or the hard disk, usually for about 2 years. After that, just get a new motherboard and a newer cpu. The laptop on the other hand has usually a better keyboard than the desktop computer, can be taken anywhere (the best point) and it consumes less electricity. It's also more confortable to use the laptop for long periods of time than the desktop because you can use it almost anywhere. Every day there are new computers, new components and the improvement speed is getting faster every year. The most expensive computer today will be just a normal machine 3 years from now. I would say that instead of buying the very best machine money can buy, get a above average pc and a new one 2 years from now. You will spend less money and get better performance 2 years from now, than buying the best today.

10 awesome tips I discovered to make the computer load faster

No patience and the computer takes around 5-10 mins to load? It's normal. When computers come from the store, it loads in less than one minute. There are no programs installed by you, no files to make the task heaviers and everything is runnign smoothly. As months go by, the boot time increases and increases... and again.

What can you do about that?

Many many things.

1. Delete or archive all files not in use. Do you like to make your computer a big storage of digital files? Bad idea. Since Windows Vista that Windows has the desktop search. That means indexing all the files almost in real time and each file added to the index, makes the computer slower. Get an external hard drive and backup (finally) everything you don't need on a daily basis. There will be less digital stuff getting on the way of the work and the computer will increase the overall speed considerably.

2. Run CCleaner and clean the history, cache, temporary files and the registry. This will make a wonder because sometimes programs stop working because of those files there that don't make a difference. Run that software at least once per month. For intensive computer users, run once a week.

3. Delete all the programs you don't need anymore or at least daily. Each software you install makes the computer just a little bit slower. Dozens of programs make it much slower. Today there are portable apps. Basically they do the same thing as the installed version with the advantage of not adding more boot time to the computer. Portable apps are the future in my opinion. You can run them all even from a pen drive.

4. Install more RAM in the computer. If Windows runs out of RAM right during the boot time (happens with machines with less than 4 GB of RAM) the boot speed will increase because Windows has to move somes files to the virtual memory. Today at least 8 GB is the normal. 4 GB is not enough for most users today.

5. Control which applications run right after the boot. Antivirus, real player, media player, games, whatever. They are consuming boot time. Disable them or better remove them.

6. Check the computer for virus and spyware every week. While you are enjoying Friday night, let the computer do the heavy lifting and run a full system scan - every week.

7. Remove all the apps from Windows 8 you don't know, don't care and don't like. Windows 8 likes to make easy to install apps but each app is more boot time. Most apps are useless. Windows 10 will probably make a big change to that since apps were not the expected success.

8. Defrag the computer often is the hard disk you still use is a big TB drive. Windows does not write the files on the disk sequentially. Instead it breaks the files into smaller bits of files and every time it needs to access those files, it has to move the mechanical head over and over again. Windows defrag is cool but Smart Defrag is way better.

9. If none of the above got your computer back in time when it came from the store well the solution is to backup every single thing and install Windows again. A fresh start is needed almost every year for intense computer users. Windows is not a perfect operating system. Sometimes the big word format must be used.

10. The ultimate way to get your computer load faster and literally kick everything at the speed of light is to install an SSD hard drive. It's the fastest thing ever invented for the computer. Since there are no moving parts in this hard disk, Windows is able to get everything faster from it. The speed for the fastest SSD drives is something like 550 MB/s compared with 50-100 MB/s for the mechanical versions of the same thing. That's just sequential reading. In random reading those 100 MS/s drop to even lower numbers.

Is the machine loading faster already?

The fastest processor money can buy

What is the fastest processor today you can buy with "infinite" money? It's Intel again and Xeon. It has more than 25K benchmark points on CPU benchmarking. This processor is not designed for the home user, but for servers that need to handle huge amount of data.

But you are interested in a processor you can buy and use wiht every day computers. In that case the fastest is the Intel Core i7-5960X. With 4 cores and 4 threads, this machine when combined with an SSD drive has enough power to process everything you need as a home user or office worker. The problem is always the price. The most expensive Intel processors are too expensive for the money asked.

The best price to performance processors are always AMD, at least so far. The best in this category is the AMD 8350 8 Core processor. It cannot match Intel in terms of brute processing power, but since the price is so small compared with Intel, you can buy 5 of these processors and get much more speed than you ever could with Intel.

In a future post I will explain how to take advantage of networking processor to process use amounts of data with AMD processors.

Is this the right time to buy a top class processor? The fastest ones will always be too expensive. You will be served better by buying a not so fast processor for around 200$ and upgrade it every two years when the processing power is doubled for the same amount of dollars.

Will the Google Chrome computer succeed?

Google is trying hard to get people to use their Chromebook. Most people don't and they don't because of the simple reason that Chromebooks are only useful when using the internet and Google's services.

Most people want a computer they can use to do everything. They don't want a computer that only works when it's connected to the internet. Think about all the stuff you do on your computer like video edition, image edition, sound edition, encoding, file backups and most of all software. That's impossible with the Chromebook unless there's a web service for that task.

I don't think that people will upgrade ever to the Chromebook. Google has to release a version that can work while there is no internet, a version where people have more freedom and don't have to be connected to Google all the time.

Even if the prices continue to go down, it's more cost effective to buy a cheap laptop.

What can you do with an old computer?

Old computers are there in your house. You used them for years but your new Intel or AMD processor leaves them behind on most tasks.

Is there anything else you can use the old computer for instead of the recycling or eBay?

Yes you can!

The best use you can give to an old computer is to use it as storage and backup. This might sound old fashioned compared with cloud storage or external hard disks but it's not.

Let me explain.

When you save your most precious data on the cloud, you risk having your data hacked like the celebrities had in the last weeks. Totally out of question because chances are you save everything you have in the computer. That includes passwords and other details no one can know about, right? Storing the same data on an external hard disk has also the disadvantage of damage. Since you can carry that little drive anywhere, the chances of damage are also quite high. If you drop it on the floor you say goodbye to the files. If you accidentally let something drop on it, goodbye files.

With an old computer you can have up to 4 drives per machine, each one with several TB of data and everything is safe inside the old machine. With a SATA to IDE adapter you can easily install new hard disks even on a machine designed for IDE. If your old machine already supports SATA drives then the task is even easier. The old machine will store all your files, will have it's own operating system and that machine will never be connected to the internet to make the files totally safe from hacking.

To access these files you don't need a screen or a keyboard. The network cable is there to help. TO access these backups or stored files, all you need is to add the old computer to the network and share the files with your new machine. With Windows 7 and 8, seeing thos files is so easy, just like if you were browsing your own computer. But you don't want to browse the files one by one. You want to search them. Fortunatelly there are solutions. With Copernic desktop search or X1 desktop search indexing thos files is done on auto pilot if you select the option. It will take some hours or some days (depending on how many files you want to index) but after the initial work is done, with a fast computer like Intel i7 or AMD 8 Core with the SSD drive, searching for anything you can think can be done as fast as your fingers can type.

For security, that computer should not be always connected to your main computer. You should connect the cable only when you need to backup something, like every week or even every day. Just disconnect the main computer from the internet to avoid any chances of having a hacker attacking when you are transfering all the data.

Digital heaven where all the known information is published and free

What I call a digital heaven might be a reality as soon as artificial intelligence is able to produce content with the same, if not better, quality as a human writer/producer.

Artificial intelligence can already write stories based on data. The computer digests numbers and words then writes a report or an articles, based on what you want the computer to write. Forbers and Associated Press are two examples of sites already employing this tecnology.

For a digital heaven, where anyone can learn anything, computers have to be the ones producing the content. Google already indexed around 60 trillion unique pages of content. Most of that content, probably, was not written by humans. That would of each person writing 8571 articles. Google mentions that all those pages are unique. I think that most of that content is computer written content, such as public pages of huge online stores with millions of products to display. That's still information, but not information in the form of teaching and learning. The aim is to describe the product, machines can do it perfectly.

For knowledge and information, the machines will probably ingest and digest all the public statistics and numbers published across the internet and write reports and articles with all that info, combining it with videos, images and links to even more content. That would be the digital heaven. Anything you can think and imagine, a search engine indexed, you can search for it and that info is free (probably ad supported).

How long will it take to reach the digital heaven? Probably another ten to twenty years, depending how a company is going to be profitable producing all that content. Even if it's ad supported, such technology might be too expensive in terms of computer power. As years go by, CPUs get cheaper and more powerful. Each new years increases the potential of such a company.

Can't wait to see that day :)

SSD hard disk: Is this the time to finally upgrade?

Solid state disk or SSD is one of the major computer upgrades anyone can make. Sometimes the speed will more than triple.

What's so special about these new hard drives? They are the future of speed. They might not have the same capacity like the mechanical traditional hard disks, but since they have no moving parts, information can be accessed in just 0.1 ms. The benchmarks are clear, under all read and write conditions the SSD hard disk beats the mechanical one.

With so many brands, what's the right for you? The faster, the better. The best way to decide which SSD drive is the fastest is to see the benchmarks on the web. Some sites dedicate themselves to tests computer components and share the results. PC Worls shows the fastest SSD drive today is faster than any other mechanical hard disk. In their tests the Windows boot speed is three times faster.

Some people say SSD had the problem of limited number of reads and writes. It's true. But the number of reads and writes a home user usually makes during the warranty time is enough to make the life of the SSD probably just a little bit shorter than the mechanical hard disk.

Today the fastest hard drives "clock" at 550 MB/s. That's enough to transfer the equivalent of a CD in little more than a second, even if the files are not sequential. The fastest mechanical hard disks don't beat the 200 MS/s mark not even for sequential reading or writing. For random access the numbers shrink.

Copernic desktop search, the best desktop search yet for Windows 8

Want to find a file in your entire computer using Windows 8 search? Good luck, that won't happen much less on time. Windows 8 has the worst search yet. Slow, lack of accuracy and impossibility to export the search results or run them on a standlone window makes people look for solutions. Most peopel still have their files inside the hard disk instead of the cloud. There they are safer, faster to retrieve, easier to search and can be copied and pasted and edited without delay with any proper application.

The only problem is finding them.

Copernic Desktop Search is the best desktop search for Windows 8 I have tried. It's light, super fast and finds everything the computer has. The free version

The only features Copernic should have is the ability to run programs like we could with Google desktop search and Windows desktop search. To run applications you still have to go to your short cut folder and double click the application.

What can Copernic do?

It searches everything inside the hard disk at the speed of typing (depending on your cpu and hard disk) and finds every single file. You can filter them by type (music, email, document) add more filters such as date and size.

The main advantage is you can "freeze" the search results while browsing the files (windows 7 or 8 search does not allow that unless you search inside a folder) and at the same time you can preview them on a window below the search results.

I don't see how this tool can be any better. It's just perfect. Productivity goes up, you can find anything from just one place which is perfect in a digital world of data fragmentation.

Will Windows 10 be the best Windows yet?

Windows 8 is a failure. Users don't like to work on a desktop or laptop the same way they work with a tablet. The system is hard to use, programs and files hard to find and booting the computer directly to the new interface with the Hotmail password proved to be annoying.

Microsoft put something back in Windows 8.1 but the lack of the start menu and the impossibility to have a real true in house start button makes people use Windows XP more than they use Windows 8 even with all new machines coming with preinstalled Windows 8.

Will Windows 10 be the best Windows yet? I hope so. Microsoft continues to make a good version of Windows after a bad version and I think Microsoft learned a lot in the last three years. They know that people want to work with the computer the same way they have always worked. They don't want metro interfaces or touch screens. They want to work, not to have fun sliding the screen.

Windows 10 features promise to be a success. Back to the start button, a better start menu and improve cloud interface are the advantages Microsoft has been talking about. One single Windows version for all devices is another advantage Microsoft promised to end with the confusion of one version per device. It also has a new task view to make easier to switch between applications. Apps will come back. Remember when Windows Vista had all those useful gadets such as notes, cpu usage and the weather? Now some of them are back. There will be one entire application dedicated to thse smaller apps.

I just hope that search continues to work the same way it works on Windows 7. We rely on search more than anything to find one particular file in a sea of hundreds of thousands. Windows 8 search is slow and useless. Instead of opening a new screen with the search results, it shows just about 10 files from the entire computer and there is no way to refine the search or to save those search results. The end result? Solutions like Copernic and X1 became featured in computer magazines as the best search.

We are yet to know if Windows 8 users will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. I hope so because Windows 8 is expensive and not worth the price. For less dollars you can still get Windows 7.

Will artificial intelligence ever outsmart humans?

Artificial intelligence is really becoming more and more intelligent. Forget about the artificial intelligence you see in video games. That's smart AI but not good enough because it cannot think outside that game. You give a game AI something outside the computer game, even another computer game, and the AI does nothing.

What's really scary is when artificial intelligence aquires intelligence the same way computers aquired memory and processing speed. Can you imagine a computer a million times more intelligent than you are and probably doubling that intelligence every year or sooner? That's probably the kind of AI we are going to see in the next decades.

I am not telling the computer are going to take over the world. Maybe that's pointless for them. What I think from what I read is that computers are going to take over the world in terms of intelligence and logic. Our humans brains will become obsolete. Maybe they will not make critical decisions to humanity, but the computer recommendation will probably be considered before someone important makes a decision.

What can AI do right now?

Amazon uses artificial intelligence robots to carry the ordered items from the storage to the queue. These robots are small and navigate around the storage using labels on the ground. They never crash, they never get tired and they don't complain.

Robots can also write articles just like human beings. There a site called Narrative Science which service is a robot that writes content based on numbers and facts from your spreadsheets. It says that some of the top sites on the internet already use their services.

Robots can play ping pong! Don't believe? Just Google it.

Robots can also talk to humans in the same way another huna being ca. You heard they just beaten the Turing test this year for the first time. Check out the Alice chat bot and get some company for the days you have no one to talk to.

What else will robots do in the future? While narrow intelligence robots can do just one task, such as playing games, general intelligence robots are said to be able to do any task a human being can. We are still decades away from such artificial intelligence but in the future some company (probably Google) might be able to produce the robot that makes humans obsolete.

Ouch, so many files and information!

With TBs of files in your hard disk, how can one person keep track of everything? You can't. LOL!

What you can do is to find a system where you organize the files your way to reduce the access time and especiailly the times you know you have the file but have no way to look thousands of files onde by one.

Forget about the cloud. In my opinion the cloud system is only good when you have a few dozen files to keep and if they are totally unimportant. Remember the celebrities that got hacked? Now imagine your most importante details hacked too.

Your desktop computer might not be the safest place in the world, but has a lot more security than the cloud. Well, banks work with desktops right? Computer security is not perfect against hackers, but it's good enough for your digital life.

Talking about a desktop computer. When you have an Intel i7 or an AMD 8 core computer, with that speed you will never want to remember the cloud again. With these processors and the SSD hard disk you can access anything as fast as you can type or click. No more wating for the disk to load or the cpu to think and process. I think the cloud is out of the equation.

Now how to do organize your information in a way you can reach it when you need it as fast as possible? With most people now having hundreds of thousads of files in the computer, manual selection and organization is out of question. You simply can't do that. Automatic file organization is the key.

Windows 7 and 8 have something called virtual folders. What are they? Simply saved search filters that allow you to search the entire computers for words, file types, date of modification and a little bit more. Withtout these folders you can't work. It takes time to adapt to them but once the technique is mastered, the work is done on auto pilot. You can have a folder just for something, for example, called october pictures (remember do name these pictures with october in the name) and anything you can image. Today it's almost impossible to love without these folders.

Another thing that you will use every day is the search. Windows search is very slow with mechanical drives. With SSD drives the boost in amazing. You can find millions of files almost instantaneously. Windows 7 search is the best search there is. But with Windows 8 search just become the worst you can image. No more fast search, no more a single window just for search. Microsoft did it bad this time. For Windows 8 maybe a Copernic desktop search install will solve the problem.

As for all other kinds of content and info like bookmarks and email, it's really much better to have them all in the Windows search (not Windows 8 of course). Browser search is still too slow to make it worth using for a general search engine.

Advantages of the AMD 8 Core processor

In the last post I wrote that AMD is no match for Intel in terms of brute force and single core processing.  That's still true. I have one AMD FX 8320 and after a year of intense use I learned how to make the most of it and I actually like it and now I think it beats the Intel processor in terms of price to performance ratio but also on brute force.

Since AMD costs a lot less per benchmark point, you can easily buy the best AMD processor without burning the wallet. That's the first advantage. The second is since now most of our tasks are multi tasks, I think that for the same dollars, you can get an AMD processor with more power than Intel and let it run all the tasks at the same time, without impact the work you have at hand at the moment. Let's say you are a Youtube video producer. Lots of videos to edit, encode and decode. That would be a problem for Intel because each core works faster but after more than three simultaneously tasks, each new video to be enconded at the same time will take a lot longer. That's no problem for AMD 8 core (or 6 core). You can put 7 videos to encode at the same time (make sure you have the RAM for it) and then just check when they are done. You can use the remaining core for every day work (email, facebook, whatever) and not experience any performance impact.

Well, took a long time to see that AMD is better for most people I think. Intel is no match for AMD in terms of price to performance ratio meaning you can always have the best cpu performance money can buy and at the same time invest the extra you would pay for Intel in for RAM and a bigger SSD hard disk. Don't forget! You should have SSD to take full advantage of the AMD 8 core. Mechanical hard drives do have good read and write speeds but only during the transfer. Most files (especially during multi tasking) come from different places inside the hard disk. Without SSD, the disk has to move the head to one place, then another and then again, before getting all the files to the CPU. SSD have just 1 ms of delay in checking for the files. The mechanical hard drives have dozens of ms.

That's it for now. I hope you enjoy your brand new and faster processor. Remember to upgrade it regularly to keep your machine state of the art :)