I’m usually favoring the “second-best” part or device over the best, e.g. not the latest and greatest video card for $600+ but one for $300 that is not super fast but still fast enough for everything.

Usage:

I need the PC for blogging and research on the Internet mainly. I want to view movies and listen to music. I also want to work with Visual Studio and play some games with friends every now and then.

Components:

CPU: Intel I7 9xx or 8xx. If you have other suggestions or favor a specific processor let me know
Computer Memory: 8GB or more
Motherboard: No favorite yet. Do not need a lot of extras like firewire, bluetooth, infrared connections on the board. Should have a fast network connection build in.
Video Card: No idea. Do not want to pay more than $300 for the video card. I currently have a ATI 4870. Are there any DirectX 11 cards out there yet? Video card should not make a lot of noise.
Hard Drives: I need at least 2 Terabyte. No more than two hard drives. Currently thinking about getting two 1.5 Terabyte drives. Hard drives should not make lots of noise. More important than speed to me. I do not need Raid but I though about having a faster boot hard drive and two slower data drives. Would you favor a fast hard drive (or two in Raid) or SSD drive for that task?
SSD Drives: I’m not sure if I want an SSD drive. Are there any next gen SSD drives out there that do not get slower over time?
Sound Card: Not necessarily needed but if there is a good one for little money I take it. Otherwise it should be onboard sound.
Case: Mid-tower is fine. I do not care about color but it should have a few connectors on the front (e.g. USB)
Power Unit: It has to be quiet. Should supply enough power though for the computer system.
Computer Monitor: Do not need one

Did I leave anything out? I’m keen to read your suggestions. I also do not have a problem waiting another few months before I build the system in case some ubercool hardware comes out in that time that is worth waiting for.

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The report then needs to be uploaded to the GSI Parser website once the report has been generated. The online parser will analyze the report and display various information about the computer system in the web browser.

The report is divided into various tabs on top. A summary is displayed on the first page to give the user information about possible problems. The detailed reports in the other tabs usually consist of files and paths plus some additional information like the name of a program or developer. Some details can be clicked on to get more details in a popup window.

Kaspersky’s GSI Parser displays many information in the various tabs which might sometimes be hard to interpret for inexperienced users. They are usually a good start to perform additional research on search engines to find out more about a specific file or problem.

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These things seem to happen regularly and it is not only laptops that are affected by this. We have seen malware on appear virtually anywhere where it can appear in the last years, even on music CDs from a well known company. This leads to the interesting question on what users can do to ensure that their computer system is not already infected by malicious software.

Security companies advise to scan a newly purchased computer system thoroughly before starting to work with it. They also suggest to stay offline during the procedure which can sometimes be problematic if the computer system is the only available at hand. The virus definition files of antivirus software that is already installed on the computer system is usually outdated and might not catch the virus. The same is true for antivirus software that is purchased in stores.

Security experts therefor suggest to download the virus definitions for the antivirus program from a different computer with Internet access. That’s problematic if there is only one computer system available. Solutions for this might be to visit friends, go to an Internet Cafe or computer shop to download it from there.

Which leads to the question: What do you do after buying a new computer system?

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Sleep Talking, a new system that is called internally Somniloquy has been designed by computer scientists at UC San Diego and Microsoft Research, combines the energy saving benefits of sleep mode with the responsiveness of awake mode. An USB prototype has been created that acts as a low end computer system impersonating the host computer on the network. The prototype comes with the ability to wake the host computer system if necessary. This can be an incoming call using voice over IP or a P2P download that filled the internal flash memory of the USB prototype so that the contents have to be written to the host computer system.

Tests that the researchers conducted resulted in power savings between 60 and 80 percent depending on the use model compared to idle state which is

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TweetMyPC turns Twitter into something else; A platform to send commands to a computer system. It provides the means to shutdown, restart or logoff PCs remotely. A client – the TweetMyPC software – has to be installed and configured on the remote computer system. This essentially means to add a Twitter username and password in the software which has to run in the background. An Internet connection is obviously needed as well as this is how the status updates are send from Twitter to the local computer system.

The user can then initiate the shutdown, restart of logoff by updating the status at Twitter. Changing the Twitter status to Logoff would for instance send the logoff command remotely to the computer system where it would then be initiated. It is advised to create a new Twitter account for this so that no one but the owner of the computer system can send the commands using Twitter.

TweetMyPC checks for status updates every minute and runs most of the time in the Windows system tray.

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The software program PC Audit uses tabs to divide the information about the computer system into categories. It displays the tabs System, Software and Processes which each contain dozens of information about the computer system.

The System tab for example contains information about the system hardware, Windows product key, installed Windows hotfixes, startup items and network information while the software tab contains the list of installed software applications. While that is not that useful it does have a feature that might make it interesting again. It can list the product key of several of the installed applications on the computer system.

The processes tab on the other hand is just a list of running processes with less detailed information as the Windows Task Manager. There is no real use for that tab in the software application.

The main use for this application can be narrowed down to its portability. It’s rather lightweight and fits perfectly on USB devices. Could be used to get a first quick overview of a computer system without having to run any locally installed applications.

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