Samsung 830 SSD -1, Opening

Last week, there was one day sale on Samsung 830 SSD 128GB.
What is SSD? Think of it as a hard drive that works like a flash drive, or a flash drive that works like a hard drive.
It doesn't have a moving part, no noise, lower power consumption, and above all, faster speed.
Read more about it on Wikipedia.

Today I've got it in mail, and this is what it looks like.

Top view

Side view

On the back you see the summary of 830 series SSD.

Back side

Some models come with cables, brackets, and Norton Ghost CD.
This is what's in the box. Pretty simple. No cable. No bracket. No Norton Ghost.

What's in the box

The backside of the SSD you can find model numbers and stuff.

Soon I'll write how much faster it is compared to my old SATA2 HDD.

Remote Desktop and Windows 8 CP

It's been a few weeks with Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
I tasted many interesting new features of Windows, but I figured the new Remote Desktop was pretty confusing.
I use Remote Desktop a lot to get to my work computer especially when the weather is bad and I don't feel like going outside.

I'm no network expert, so when they changed the interface, I couldn't figure out how to set it up.

Huh? How do I use this?

Then, I found out MS still put the old style Remote Desktop hidden in system32 folder. If you're on Windows 8 and miss the old style Remote Desktop, this is how to get it.

Find "mstsc.exe" in C:\Windows\System32 folder.

Right-click, Send to, Desktop (create shortcut)

Now you have it on the desktop.

How to recycle UPS battery pack

I have a UPS at home. Not that brown truck thingy.
I mean Uninterrupted Power Supply, UPS.

It's a small battery pack that goes between the power outlet and your computer, so when the wall outlet loses power you still have 3-4 minutes to save all your stuff and turn off the computer.
Brilliant!!!

Mine is 6-year-old one from APC. It's been working great until about a month ago.
It started beeping like nuts-day and night.
I checked out the customer support website and it was my old battery that's causing the problem.
The manufacturer says replacing the battery back every 2-3 years is recommended.

2-3 years. Hmm. I've been using it for 6 years.
So, I found the best price at Amazon, and got it in a few days.
Then, next question was, "what am I gonna do with the old one?"

This is the old one. Do you see the sides of the pack are burst open?

I couldn't just toss it in a dumpster because it's lead-acid battery, the same type as the car batteries.
So, I went to the local Waste Management place. They said, "Oh, we don't accept batteries here."
Oh, bummer.

Then I took it to the city recycling center. The guy working there took a look at it and said, "I've never seen this kind before. I don't know what to do with it. I can't accept this."
Bummer.

So, as any wise person should do, I Googled what to do with it.
And I found out that APC actually recycle these battery packs for free. I just tell them the model number and they generate the shipping label and I can just bring it to the local UPS store (yes, the brown guys).

I'm sending the old battery away tomorrow.
By the way, if it's not from APC, they don't accept it. So, if you have other brands like Belkin, ask them what to do with it.

Renren HD on Windows 8 App Store

Ah, look what I've found.
Actually I didn't find it. I just saw an article talking about it.

Windows 8 comes with app store. Since MS is planning to have one OS for different hardwares-phone, tablet, computers-I get an app store on PC.
This Renren app is available now.
No Facebook yet.

I guess the Chinese SNS was a few steps ahead of Facebook on this.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview - first impression

Thursday afternoon I saw an article saying over 1million people downloaded Windows 8 Consumer Preview (CP) on first day of its release.

I was so eager to join the club, so I installed it, too.

Yes, it happened.

The installation was done from my USB thumb drive, and it took about 5min 30sec again.

One thing I noticed this time is that during the installation, it's not really installing windows. Instead, it copies and pastes files from the USB to the hard driver. Why do I think so? Well, after this 5:30 "installation" period it restarts once.
Then, it starts to configure all the hardwares and install drivers during this 1st re-start. The configuration takes about 8 minutes.

So, I guess it's fair to say it takes 13-14 minutes to install Windows 8 on a decent hard drive.

One thing to notice is, its Metro UI became more PC friendly. In the developers preview it was quite  a hassle to find things I wanted with Metro UI on. Now I just type the first few letters of what I want, it'll bring them up to the front.

For example, if I type "cont", it'll find control panel and bring it to the front.

It's true that it's a bit odd to see Windows without "start" button, but brining the mouse arrow to the bottom left corner has similar effect as clicking "start" button. It may feel a bit odd, but I doubt people will have hard time getting used to this.

Here are a few important things I'd like to mention.
1. Firefox 10.0.1 is unstable. I just installed 10.0.2, and it's working fine.

2. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.1000 64-bit Client doesn't run right. After installing it, it prompted me with a message requesting re-start. When I restarted, it entered infinite loop of re-starting. Well, it stopped looping by itself after about 4 re-starts, so it's not really infinite. Windows gave me a message saying it's trying to fix it, and when the fix was done all the Symantec files were gone.

3. MS-Office 2007 works fine (duh~!).

4. Internet Explorer 10 is still in beta phase. It's fast (faster than Firefox) and smooth, but you can tell it's not complete.

5. Within 10 seconds of waking up from sleep, my computer's wifi is connected to the internet, being ready for an action (fast re-connection is what MS has been bragging about)

6. When you click the bottom left corner of the screen, this shows up. It's like clicking "start" button. The problem is, it will show everything it has without suppressing details. I mean everything. Take a look at the picture.

See? It spits out everything on the screen. Everything!! Why don't they hide details?

7. App store is activated, but there's not much to see yet.

8. It comes with a built-in disc image viewer. No need for Daemon tools.

9. It has a pdf reader. It's not as versatile as Adobe reader yet, but it's there.


I'll write more about it if I find something interesting.

Making a bootable USB

I just put a page up describing how to make a bootable USB memory.
It's at http://semicomputerexpert.blogspot.com/p/how-to-make-bootable-usb.html or click it on the page list on the right.