2010 Computer Resolutions

I have been trying to figure out what resolutions I am making this year. I figured my computer resolutions would be the easiest so I will do those first.

1. Upgrade my computer - I have a DELL Dimension e520 It's been a good little machine for the past 3 years but I want a newer faster computer. What I am looking at is the best "Bang for the Buck" This is usually an AMD processor. Everyone Knows Intel but AMD is right up there with them. In fact in most peoples opinion AMD has always made a better chip. I ran Intel chips for many years and switched to AMD when I bought my DELL. I want a quad core phenom. Every processor has a core. This is the "Brain" portion of the processor. Intel and AMD now have multi-core processors. This allows your computer to do more thinking. Making your computer faster. I have no need for the Intel i7 processors. They are a bit overkill for what I do. I am not a hard core gamer so an AMD Phenom quad-core will do just fine.

2. Purchase more flash drives. If you call them flash drive, thumb drive, pen drive or something else. I would tell you to get as many as you can hold. I currently have 4 @ 4gb, 1 @ 16gb and 1 @ 32gb flash drives. The 4gb drives are for the shop http://Insta-TEK.com, The others are for personal data. They are great for backups of your pictures and what ever else you want to store. In the 6 months in 2009 that Insta-TEK was open. I recovered over 10 damaged hard drives to get customers images back for them. BACKUP PEOPLE!

3. RAM RAM RAM All of my personal computers need more RAM. My wifes computer has 1gb and the kids have 786mb. Both run Windows XP. I want at least 2 gb of ram on both computers. RAM will make your computer faster better than anything else you can do. Here is MY recommendations for RAM for the "Normal" Computer user. Power users will need more.

• Windows XP at least 1gb of RAM
• Windows Vista at least 3gb of RAM
• Windows 7 at least 3gb of RAM
• Ubuntu at least 2gb of RAM

4. Setup a NAS server at the shop. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. Basically it's a computer that sits on your network that does nothing but hold files. FreeNAS is a FreeBSD (Linux) based NAS server. It has a ton of features like streaming audio/video so if you have an Xbox360 or PlayStation3 you can connect to it and play your movies over your TV. It has a built in webserver. It also handles Torrents. I want to put in 2 @ 1tb hard drives. Thats 1024 GB of storage. The drives will be mirrored. That means if 1 drive dies the other still has a copy of the data. This will hold my MP3's and all my important work documents.

5. Start a new training session at the Insta-TEK. I have had over 50 people attend my 4 week long classes. I have 1 more 4 week long class I want to do. Then I want to pick a day of the week and hold a different class from 6-8pm every week. I want to cover things like Ebay, Google, Torrents and much much more. Keep an eye out on our site here for updates on when the classes will be and what we will be covering.

6. Keep up with this blog. I started off good and have slowly fell into a slump on it.