Personal Computer
Hardware, software and accessories that are used on personal computers.
Household Personal Computers
I try and keep this up-to-date.
| Personal Computer | Primary User | CPU | Memory | Video Adapters | Storage Devices | Monitors | Power Supply | Motherboard | Case | Operating System |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| orca | daddy | I7 930 @ 2.8 GHz | 12GB | Two EVGA NVidia GTX 560 Ti 1GB (SLI) | Two 1TB HDD | Three 23" Dell LCD (SLI) | Corsair HX 1050 | Sabertooth X58 | Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP | Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE |
| frog | mommy | AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core @ 3.6GHz | 16GB | One XFX FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB | One 1TB HDD | One 23" Dell LCD | XFX PRO850W XXX Edition Semi-Modular | ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 | Cooler Master | Win 7 64-bit |
| flamingo | 9-year old daughter | Intel Q6600 Quad-core @ 2.4 GHz | 8GB | One EVGA GTX 260 | 1TB HDD | One 23" Dell LCD | Corsair HX 850 | Will check later | Cooler Master | Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE |
| elephant | 7-year old daughter | AMD 955 Quad-core @ 3.2 GHz | 8GB | One EVGA GTX 260 | 1TB HDD | One 23" Dell LCD | Corsair HX 850 | Will check later | Cooler Master | Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE |
| spiderman | 4-year old son | AMD FX-4100 Quad-core @ 3.6GHz | 16GB | One EVGA GTX 260 | 1TB HDD | One 23" Dell LCD | Corsair HX 850 | MSI | generic | Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE |
| shark | daddy | AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core @ 3.6GHz | 32GB | Two XFX FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB (Eyefinity) | 256GB SDD | Three 23" Dell LCD (Eyefinity) | Corsair HX 1050 | ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 | Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP | Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE |
| hammerhead | daddy | will check | 4GB | EVGA GTX 460 | 256GB SDD | One 23" Dell LCD (Eyefinity) | Corsair HX 850 | Will check | generic | Linux Mint w/Cinnamon |
My main machine
ASUS Sabertooth X58 motherboard Twin XFX Double D FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support video cards running Eyefinity (5760 x 1080) Two SATA HDD (1 TB, 1 TB) 16 GB RAM Corsair HX1050 power supply unit Three Dell E Series E2311H Black 23" 5ms LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor Assorted other peripherals.
Notes
Marvell 91xx Config ATA Device
Issue:
BIOS defaults to IDE Mode and I changed to AHCI Mode. Windows found standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller and ATA Channel 0 through 7. The Marvell driver failed and I got a "No driver found" for Marvell 91xx Config ATA Device.
Screen capture (no driver):
Fix:
I downloaded Marvell 91XX Controller Beta Driver V1.2.0.1002 for Windows 32/64bit Vista & 32/64bit Windows 7.(WHQL) Beta Version 1.2.0.1002 from ASUS support page then installed it. Windows 7 did not even require a reboot and drive has been found.
Screen capture (driver installed):
Intel DX48BT2 motherboard support site
Software
Office Suite
CD / DVD Burning software
To burn data and audio CD / DVDs I use CD BurnerXP.
To create personal copies of protected DVDs that I have purchased I use 1ClickDVDCopy Pro ($79 fee) and DVD43, a free decrypter.
Multimedia software
VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server.
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Video Capture
Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as:
- Benchmarking Software
- Screen Capture Software
- Realtime Video Capture Software
Video Editing
Freemake offers freeware in the truest sense of the word: no feature or time limitations, no hidden costs. Download and use our free Video Converter, Video Downloader, Audio Converter and Free Music Box! Convert video free to AVI, MP4, WMV, MKV, FLV, 3GP, MPEG, DVD, Blu-ray, MP3, iPod, iPhone, iPad, PSP, Android, Nokia, Samsung, BlackBerry with Free Video Converter. Convert audio free to MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A, OGG, convert audio to MP3 player, iPod, iPhone, iPad, PSP, and more with our Free Audio Converter.
I like FreeMake products as the software is simple to use & their site provides video tutorials. Their products work, have lots of features, & no hidden spyware or adware.
TMPGEnc converts *.AVI files to MPEG1, the format which is used in VideoCDs. Using a variety of options in TMPGEnc, you can compress your video file in high quality.
TMPGEnc enables you to adjust bitrate, quantize matrix, GOP structure, interlacing and many other parameters so that you can create the most appropriate movie file depending on your needs.
Virtualdubis a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters.
Communications Software
Browser and E-mail
Firefox add-ons
FireFTP
Download Status Bar
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.
Torrent
qBittorrent project aims to provide a free software alternative to µtorrent. Additionally, qBittorrent runs and provides the same features on all major platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD).
Java
FTP clients
VoIP clients
IRC client
SSHv2 & SFTP
Putty is a free SSHv2 program. You can also get SecureFTP program from same site.
mRemoteNG is a fork of mRemote, an open source, tabbed, multi-protocol, remote connections manager. mRemoteNG adds bug fixes and new features to mRemote.
eRemoteNG allows you to view all of your remote connections in a simple yet powerful tabbed interface.
mRemoteNG supports the following protocols:
- RDP (Remote Desktop/Terminal Server)
- VNC (Virtual Network Computing)
- ICA (Citrix Independent Computing Architecture)
- SSH (Secure Shell version 1 & 2)
- Telnet (TELecommunication NETwork)
- HTTP/HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
- rlogin
- Raw Socket Connections
Tunnelier
Utilities
eBook
calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories:
- Library Management
- E-book conversion
- Syncing to e-book reader devices
- Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
- Comprehensive e-book viewer
- Content server for online access to your book collection
Password manager
Keepass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish). For more information, see the features page.
PDF Viewer & Printer
Foxit Reader Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.55 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7.
PDF Printer
BullZip PDF Printer Introduction
The BullZip PDF Printer works as a Microsoft Windows printer and allows you to write PDF documents from virtually any Microsoft Windows application.
This program is FREEWARE which means that it is FREE for personal and commercial use. It does not contain any advertising or popups (Really!). Features
* Print to PDF from almost any Windows program. * Supports 64-bit operatings systems. * Direct output to the same file each time or prompt for destination. * Control if the printer should ask if you want to see the resulting PDF document. * Control output and prompts programmatically. * Setup can run unattended. * Graphical user interface. * Password protect PDF documents. * 128/40 bit encryption. * Quality settings (screen, printer, ebook, prepress). * Set document properties. * Watermark text, size, rotation, and transparency. * Supreimpose/background documents. * Appending/prepending documents. * User interface control. * Command line interface to all settings. * COM/ActiveX interface for programmatic control. * Support for Citrix MetaFrame * Support for Windows Terminal Server
System Requirements
* Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/XP x64/2003/2003 x64/Vista/Vista x64 * GPL Ghostscript 8.54 or later
Compression
Backup
MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird and Netscape profiles.
Hardware Monitor
SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for those hard disks that support this feature and show hard disk temperatures too, if supported.
Accessories
Mouse pads
Prefer Xtracpads
Second choice is RatPadz. Over the years my Ratpadz start to fail as the surface becomes worn & smooth in areas which impacts laser mouse movement