These systems will allow users to address more memory (RAM), to do more with and / or speedup video editing, Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM).

About 4 years ago when Windows release Windows XP 64 bit I was eager to jump on the 64 bit bus (pun intended), since then I have learned a few things I want you to consider before hopping on that bus.

First of all, let’s take a look at the difference between 32 and 64 bit systems. In the most basic terms we are talking about how much information the computer can process each cycle of its clock. 64 bits of architecture is not just double that of 32 bit, so saying that a 64 bit system could be twice as fast, move twice the data just really is not correct, it is closer to exponentially faster. This occurs because more data is moved at the same speed. Think of a 32 bit system as using cars to move people around town (the motherboard). A 64 bit system would be using the same number of busses as there were cars, to move the same data. This allows fewer drivers (header packets), more data to be moved per packet and less congestion on the roads, or motherboard in this case.

In order to keep things simple, we will only discuss memory here. A 32 bit system can handle up to 3.2GB of RAM. So basically that is all the RAM or memory a 32 bit system will see. You would normally install 4GB of RAM and only see the 3.2 give or take depending on the hardware (motherboard and CPU) and your video configuration (on board or an add-on card).

A 64 bit system could hold a lot more RAM, so much in fact we could not comprehend it (about 16.2 thousand terabytes). To solve the mathematical problems of RAM, each manufacturer has made some different concessions on the maximum amount of RAM their hardware can hold or use in a 64 bit environment. Processors from AMD and Intel can support this full amount but the chipset on the motherboard is what limits the system. Right now Intel documents say it is set at 1 terabyte of RAM for its maximum; however I have only seen test using 192GB of RAM, still, that is a lot more than 4GB. Another issue is the availability and cost of larger denomination RAM sticks. As of this writing one stick of 4 GB of RAM is 15 to 20% higher than two sticks of 2GB at crucial and even though they show 8GB sticks on their web site, you cannot actually get to a page with pricing or availability. This creates quite an issue with anyone installing 192GB on their system at this time.

Now that we have the basics out of the way, let’s dig a little deeper. While you might have a 64 bit hardware system, remember that it can only hold as much memory as the operating system that is installed and versa visa. Thus if you have a current PC that uses a 32 bit CPU and motherboard, installing a 64 bit operating system (O/S) will do nothing for you and for the gamers who bought a 64 bit hardware system and want to upgrade from XP or Vista 64 bit, installing Windows 7 32 bit will not help you in any way. In either case you will be back to limiting yourself to 4 GB of RAM.

Alright so you have purchased 64 bit hardware and Windows 7 64 bit, now what? Well, the vast majority of software is still 32 bit, Microsoft Office (and all office suites that I know of) is still 32 bit, the internet does not care about 8, 16, 32 or 64 bit architecture so that does not make a difference. Even though there are a few (very few) 64 bit drivers for printers and scanners, a lot of investigation turned up that they are still printing and scanning at the same speeds. This means that unless you have specific software that uses 64 bit there is no need to have it. Office will still only see and use a maximum of 4 GB of memory and it will not run any faster, as a matter of fact, in my test it actually ran slower. I will get into that in a moment. If you do have a video editing program or use a CAD or CAM program (yes, I am sure there are others, these are just what I run into) then those programs may have a 64 bit version that can take advantage of the 64 bit architecture.

So are you off and running to the local PC shop to get a new 64 bit system yet? Not just yet I hope there is a little more you need to know. 64 bit operating systems require more code and thus require more memory (just like the bus in our earlier example needs more space on the road than a car), so does a 64 bit system. The 64 bit versions of your anti-virus, Internet Explorer, printer drivers and of course the main program that you purchased 64 bit for all need more memory than their 32 bit counterparts. What this means up front is that you will need more base memory with a 64 bit system than a 32 bit system. So exactly how much memory do you need? To be honest I have not figured it out mathematically by comparing exact brand products on 32 and 64 bit systems; however the consensus seems to be 4 GB on a 32 bit system is the same as 6 GB of memory on a 64 bit system. I think that is quite high, the operating system and anti-virus might be using 500MB more but I am not buying that it needs a full extra 2GB.

So, have I talked you out of a 64 bit computer yet? I hope not! There are major advantages if you have the programs that can take advantage of the enhancements that 64 bit systems offer. An example from my personal life is a home video I compiled took 8 hours and two tries to complete (8 hours the 2nd try). The first try failed because I started it before bed one night and Microsoft Updates ran and in their infinite wisdom Microsoft forced a reboot that completely crashed and killed the compile process. When fussing about this to an acquaintance who is a “video guy”, he suggested we try it on his 64 bit system. His system was slightly slower (2 GHz compared to my 2.26) and we had the same amount of RAM. On his system it only took 2 hours.

It is my conclusion that the individual who makes home movies 2 or 3 times in a year and then not for another year or two should not stress about purchasing a new 64 bit system, however for the business that makes money and relies on videography or CAD/CAM systems, the benefits of increased turn around on jobs, bigger and more reliable processes and of course less employee cost, the saving could be huge in the first month, let alone over the course of the life of a good computer.

Well, that is enough jabbering for now, until we meet again, have a virus free week!

Needless to say, The Weekly Geek was not a happy camper. Four different experienced technicians (with 5 to 20 years experience each) could not get these systems running. I had made up my mind to order prebuilt servers at noon on Monday and send the parts back if we could not get them running by then.

Step back in time with me. The first server a dual CPU Xeon 5500 series was built by our least experienced tech but he does have over 5 years experience. He had been in and out for 3 weeks with a tooth infection and now a cold. The server just would not start. Alright, no big deal we don’t need to deliver it until the Monday before Thanksgiving. Our senior office tech and manager was building 5 or 6 desktop computers for the same project. Now forward to the Thursday before Thanksgiving, the server still does not work. The tech manager gets involved. The Weekly Geek does not worry, he and the other owner are very busy with service calls and the tech manager is a master of figuring out “stuff” and issues with computers.

Now comes Monday morning, “Hey, why is the server in parts on the bench, it is supposed to be delivered for training today.” It seems that we could not figure out what was going on. After a few phone calls it turns out the wrong type of RAM was sent by the parts house. To make matters worse the parts house was 3 days away. Ok, don’t panic, there is a parts house one day away, cancel the RAM at the farthest and return it and order RAM from the closer parts house.

Now we need to rush to the customers and make an older PC a server for training, install Server 2003 setup yadda yadda, a full day’s work.

Tuesday the RAM comes in, and we still have the same issue. Funky BIOS post (2 slow, 3 fast, 2 slow or 2 slow 3 fast or 2 slow and 1 fast) beeps were inconsistent. Now THW is getting into boss mode (those who can fix things are assets and those that cannot are expenses and businesses only cut expenses). The first tech is still sick off and on and told to keep away from the project (too many hands) so tech manager and owner 1 are to get on the phone with Intel and get things done. Remember it is now Tuesday before Thanksgiving, people are just not answering their phones. Intel decides we have the wrong type of RAM again. So no more trusting the parts house, we order from Crucial the part numbers from Intel and pay 2 day delivery. That means Friday before the RAM will come in.

Wednesday the RAM from the first parts house that is 3 days away comes in. Yes, the tech manager was supposed to cancel the order but in the mayhem of business forgot to. It is the right ram from Kingston, yeah! It is of course 3:30 on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. New RAM same issue, TWG is now in ticked off mode but decides to let the other owner take care of it. Thursday, instead of Thanksgiving the other owner is on the phone with Intel for almost 3 hours. Their decision, bad motherboard. Tech support from another country assures owner that a motherboard will be shipped today and arrive Friday, owner questions this due to the Holiday.

Friday, no motherboard, Monday no motherboard. Monday 4:30 Owner calls Intel, Intel’s response “oh, we have that on hold for some reason, don’t know why, we will get it out tomorrow.” How about today says owner, “can’t truck left already”. Miracle of Miracles, Tuesday comes and the board does show up. Same issue, motherboard starts POST and the BIOS screen comes up with the Intel logos but nothing else, no keyboard response, no mouse, just an Intel logo screen. Another series of calls and hours on the phone with Intel, “Must be two bad CPUs, well send them right away.” Wednesday the new processors come and the issue stays.

Fast forward to Monday the 7th. Still no working server. TWG requests that tech manager build server 2 now just in case there is an issue. With owner 1 out of town on business and tech out sick it is tech manager and TWG only this week. Guess what, same issue.

Thursday TWG and tech manager have a series of interviews for a full time tech. One, a very young kid who is extremely bright comes into the shop after the interview for a tour, he sees the server and asks a couple of questions and then pops off “it’s the monitor”. Yeah right says TWG to himself, we have built 8 or 9 PC’s during this time on that monitor and bench repaired 5 or 6 more “silly kid”.

Sunday the 13th during church, TWG decides, we have changed every other part, we will swap monitors first thing Monday if that fails we will install a different motherboard in the first system (TWG had ordered a different model board the previous week just in case) and of course if neither worked by noon then pre-built servers would be ordered (yuck!). That evening the other owner calls to say he missed his flight and asked the status of things. While explaining the server dilemma he suggest (without being prompted), “Well if the keyboard and mouse don’t respond and we have swapped every other part, how about the monitor…”

Monday morning arrives. The current monitor is a 17” CRT (tube type) 1280 x 1024 resolution for testing we put on LCD 17” with same resolution and get the same beeps BUT there is text at the bottom of the screen <esc> to continue, f2 to setup … WHAT!!!! So tech manager and THW press f1 and we can get into the BIOS, set it up and begin RAID build. Yes, we did try those keys even when we could not see them!

So lessons learned, Intel’s newest 5500 and 3300 series motherboard will not POST with CRT monitors (we have build several servers this year on the same monitor but they were series 5000 and 3000 motherboards), another lesson, Intel has not heard of this and denies that it could be the problem (yes, I have a lump in my breast, yes the Doctor said it is cancer but I don’t believe it therefore it does not exist mentality) and the final lesson, sometimes a newbie gets a lucky guess (or maybe he knows something The Weekly Geek and staff don’t hmmm… that could not be).

Well, until we meet again, have a virus free week.

Small business owners can take advantage of this package and grow their businesses. The reason I write about this is that some benefits specifically apply to technology purchases and others are “for the bottom line” which means capital for needed equipment (like technology).

The package extends a tax deduction that allows small businesses to deduct up to $250,000 a year in new equipment purchases including technology (laptops, desktops, servers, network security, software upgrades…). Section 179 of the tax code allows small businesses to take a deduction for equipment purchases in one tax year instead of over the life of the equipment (usually 5 to 7 years).

The law also keeps in place the 50 % bonus depreciation President Bush put into place in 2008. Say you buy $500,000 in equipment this year (2009), $250,000 can be immediately deducted with section 179 mentioned above, plus another $125,000 (1/2 of the balance) can be deducted this year also because of the “bonus”. It is my understanding the remaining balance ($125,000 in this example) would be depreciated over the useful life of the equipment.

Both of the above should allow any of you who need new equipment and especially new or upgraded technology to write off in full or almost full the cost this year.

There is one more section that may help, another part of this Act allows businesses that lost money in 2008 to “carry back” that loss to their prior year’s tax returns by amending returns up to five years back. Previously this could be done up to two years back. This does only apply to those who have $15 million or less in gross income.

Since I am not a “tax” lawyer or professional (CPA), this is just my reading the law to you, see your tax professional(s) on how this could help you, and remember this is a government program, there are loopholes, rules and exceptions out the wazoo just to keep some of us from gathering the benefits.

Oh, if you do decide to spend some of that capital, IFix Computers in Beautiful Branson Missouri (417) 337-7184 would be more than willing to help you with professional advice on hardware and software that will benefit your business.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week!

Previously I have written my suggestions on things to do every day: http://www.theweeklygeek.com/2009/08/31/pc-things-to-do-everyday/

Things to do every week: http://www.theweeklygeek.com/2009/09/01/pc-things-to-do-every-week/

My suggestions on what to do monthly: http://www.theweeklygeek.com/2009/09/03/pc-things-to-do-every-month/

Here is my list of things to do yearly. Physically clean the computer, with the system off and unplugged clean the outside of the case, the monitor and then remove the side of the case and dust the inside.

I used our normal household cleaner on the case and monitors bezel. I have LCD cleaner for the monitors screens however in the past I have sprayed eye glass cleaner on an eye glass cloth and then wiped the monitors.

As for the inside of the case, I take them outside and use canned air. Some people use small compressors. I don’t like them for a couple of reasons. First they can accumulate moisture and then spray that inside your computer, second they have a lot more pressure than canned air and can dislodge wires and devices like RAM or even processors, not something I want to not see and then spend extra time diagnosing. Make sure that the CPU and case fans as well as inside the power supply are well cleaned, the fans are where most of the dust builds up.

Enough about cleaning, the next thing I recommend is running full hardware checks. I know you have run your cleanup and defragmentation but that does not check for errors on the drive or in RAM. The major hard drive manufacturers have software that will scan your hard drive for errors.

Western Digital hard drive software: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en#

Seagate’s SeaTools: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

Fujitsus diagnostic tools: http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/storage/hdd/support/utilities.html

Microsoft (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp) and others have memory testing programs (I like Memtest http://www.memtest.org) that will check for issues with your RAM modules.

Of course many motherboard manufacturers have system tools for their boards. If all else fails, there are several Live CD versions of Linux that have generic tools that can be used. Knoppix is one such CD and is located here http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html.

That is all I can think of at this time, if you have an idea or tip you would like to share feel free to e-mail us, until we meet again, have a virus free week!

Earlier this month I was touring the desert of SlowServia searching out the ancient city of Mydatastewslow. While digging at the temple of Bloatedfiles I found that a tomb raider had already been there.  While sifting through the sand, the ancient one showed up full of arrogance, praising himself to the local tribe. That was until the ancient one realized he was looking at Adonis himself. As a hush fell across the desert valley, the ancient one looked down at the sand in humble submission and quickly scurried away to perform some menial task at hand.

Calling all Computer Professionals, DO YOUR JOB!

For those who don’t fully understand the story, I was called into a job where a slow server was taking to long to feed information to the client computers and the hard drive was reporting full. The main database for the customer would not run and thus the entire business was literally shut down. The original technology company was not available for one reason or another. While I was at the client’s office a representative of the original company showed up and was a little put out that another technician (me) was there. When I began to question the previous tech about why the server had a single core, non hyper thread 2.4GHz CPU and only 512MB of RAM (this was Windows Server 2003 for you techies out there) with a shared database he proudly stated “We upgraded that about a year ago.” Hello, that motherboard was outdated more than a year ago (Intel 845G), it could support up to a 3.06GHz 533 FSB CPU and 2 gigs of RAM, not much by today’s standards but a lot more than was in the system.

Now let me state that the server and technician were not wrong, just different. Whoever designed the server was spending as little money as possible but the customer / end user is not “budget” type of customer so proper hardware should have been used up front. The database software on the server also needed more horsepower.

The reason I call my self Adonis here is because only arrogance would have a technician think he or she was a know it all do it all (a “Jehovah” of technology). My specialties are my specialties, I am not great at every aspect of technology thus I rely on others who are “gods” in their areas to assist me and in turn I assist others.

Technicians, you do not work for your boss or yourself, you work for the customer. By working for the customer you will get a repeat HAPPY customer (and most likely several referrals) which will keep the money flowing which in turn keeps your boss satisfied. So do the job right the first time and be humble to the customer. I am so tired of your self appointed arrogance. Just because you eat too much and know how to make Windows Server NT dance the jig does not mean you know anything about web hosting or programming in LISP. In my real world example above, the technician was not even a good technician, not only did he not know the real world required hardware but had set up the clients program to incorrectly store data. He was using more space for each file than necessary. Each file should have been between 100 and 150k, the small files were just over 300k and the out of control ones were over 3 Meg. No wonder the hard drive was full.

I could go on about the known dead backup system (the tech knew but the customer thought it was working) and the dead, in warranty, parts that were left on a shelf (apparently waiting for the warranty to expire). I could also talk about the dual hard drives in the server not configured or the software RAID set up for the operating system only, but once again I digress, his methodology was different not wrong. Yeah, right!

For those of you who are not technicians or newbies getting into the technology field, I apologize for this rant. For those of you who are not new to the field (beginning technology experts), you now have been officially told that character, honesty and humility do count. Finally, for those experienced technicians who actually read this through, let it serve as a reminder of our place in the “service” oriented field.

Oh, yeah, I’m not perfect, just ask my ex-wife (or even my current wife for that matter). I am willing to admit that I must give my best to the customer and where I fall short, I need to call in the troops not skimp, “tech-talk” over my clients head or think I walk on water.

Well enough for now, until we meet again, have a virus free week!