Tag: Operating System

Ninite

     I’ve mentioned Ninite in “Removing Malware” but wanted to dedicate a post to this nifty site. Ninite has a categorized list of some of the most useful applications and bulks the installation files together to streamline the installation process. Ninite fully automates the installations so you don’t have to click “next”, says no to installing toolbars, chooses the correct version for your PC (32 or 64), installs the app in your PC’s language, and updates the app if it is already installed. The site comes in handy if you have to wipe your operating system and need to re-install the applications; this can save HOURS. I’ve discovered many new apps that i had never heard of because of this site and best of all most of them are free.

On a personal machine this is what i would choose to download on a fresh Windows install:



My take on SSD’s



I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about SSD’s lately so i figured i would post about my experiences with them: About 4 months ago i put a 60GB OCZ Agility ($110) SSD in my desktop and have absolutely loved it. I put my operating system (Win 7 Pro x64) and programs on this drive and still have 20GB left over. The biggest performance increases are faster boot times (around 20 seconds), programs startup as if they are minimized, and installations are very quick.

After the hard drive failed in my Dell notebook i decided to upgrade to a Corsair SSD based on my experience with the one in my desktop. I use my notebook mainly to take notes in class, browse the web, and check emails so i opted for a small 30GB SSD (Also, because i couldn’t afford a larger capacity). I store all of my data online (mainly dropbox and google docs) so this justified my reasoning behind this decision as well. In the future i plan to replace my optical drive (CD/DVD) with a high capacity hard drive, for a total of two hard drives.

Now, for my recommendation: If you have a machine that you would like to upgrade and have the money, go SSD. The cost of SSD’s is slowly coming down so if you can’t afford it, wait. If you can decrease your dependency on local storage (your hard drive) then you can sacrifice capacity for a cheaper priced SSD. A great program to figure out how much space you are using on your current machine is Treesize free. This will display how much space you are using and where the utilized space is located.