Turning this blog into branded content...

I am listening to The Current on CBC, and I am imagining what it would be like to be a publisher, a site which takes pride in good writing and reporting.

For the longest time, I recall seeing reports on Global TV which were non-news : new tech products, car reviews, product trends etc. The majority of the entries on this site have demonstrated a preference for some brands over others. The expressions were genuine. Given I am not a reviewer, I did not have access to a plethora of products or did I ever claim to have a background in journalism to give a degree of credibility of my posts.

If advertising were to be part of this website as a legitimate post, I would have to doubt any integrity that I ever had.

Don't text me!

I understand that some people hate e-mail as it just piles up. However, I equally find texting a pain.

If it is something important, that needs to be done right away, fair enough, use a phone and call me. However do not expect that your message will be considered important if you text. It can equally be ignored like e-mail.

What are my rules for e-mail? Should I equally apply them to texting? Generally, I don't immediately answer my e-mails. I usually wait a day, and often wait a couple weeks before getting back to somebody for correspondence.  As for business e-mails, that is a completely different matter. With regard to texting, I have a work colleague who has texted me on my days off for work related questions. Should I leave my work provided cell phone in the office? My line of work is not time critical, there is no reason to contact me outside of my work hours.

Why Steam's poor service encourages a return to piracy

No longer being a student, I finally had some money to spend on entertainment. The advent of digital downloads and the reasonable pricing, made the choice rather obvious. Why wait a couple weeks to receive a DVD when you can download the software?

It may be a straight forward question if you have a high speed connection with unlimited bandwidth, but less so if you are using the only telecommunication service available which has a cap and is very slow.

I don't mind not having a fast connection for most things. I prefer to read something rather than watch a video, I don't like to send or receive high definition image files. However, a connection is necessary for Steam. With regard to my title, I think I may continue to buy games on Steam, but will have to find a new way to get the games as the client is useless : backup and restore fails.

A few months ago, I purchased some titles which exceed 15GB. Given my connection wouldn't allow me to download the files at home, I went to the public library to update my library on my laptop. The latter is low powered and not my gaming machine. Nevertheless, I made a backup of the games that I downloaded through the Steam client and then tried to restore the games on my gaming desktop.

The restore function restored 6.5 GB out of 16 GB for one game, and 6.9GB out of 16.2GB out of the other. I wasted time trying to contact Steam Support, looking around on forums etc, but to no avail.

Thinking about the ease one can have in downloading pirated copies, I wonder if Steam is shooting itself in the foot not properly supporting their products.

Windows 8 - Cannot Repair, Refresh or Reset - Fix

When overclocking my system(settling for a 40% overclock would be reasonable, but not for me!), I pushed the settings that the system was unstable causing Windows 8 would crash and reboot before I could change settings in my BIOS. Well I thought that was the problem. Playing around with the settings through the command prompt, not restarting when instructed to, making other changes etc., caused Window 8 to fail. Although the OS was rock solid when installed and running for a couple months, I think I did something like rewire my car stereo through the electric window motors with a rail attached to the coil pack. In summary, I messed up my installation.

As you can assume, that is not good. It got to the point where I was no longer able to boot into Windows. These are some things that failed :

• System Restore
• System Reset
• System Refresh
• Boot in Safe Mode  ( possible not, but not possible to repair booting problems )

What next? I couldn't reinstall Windows 8 over itself, the in-place upgrade was impossible outside of the Windows environment, so I found my Windows 7 disc and decided to give the re-installation  of 7 to 8 another shot. It means that I will have to re-install some software, but I am trying to tell myself to try to be productive, not run tests on system stability like overclocking.

If you have alternate solutions (to a problem which isn't so well defined) you are welcome to make your contributions in the comments below.

I learnt that the word "app" replaces "application" or "program". Keep that in mind when you are restoring or refreshing Windows. 

Why tablets (iPad, Android) are not for me

Over the past couple months, I have had a few chances to use tablets. In fact, I bought a number of them(iPad, Playbook, Android HoneyComb and Froyo) and found myself returning them within a few days. While they can be used for browsing, playing simple games, watching videos etc, there is a lot that cannot be done:

• Typing like a regular keyboard
• Using a spreadsheet
• Keeping my neck more less straight
• Multi-tasking ( works more less well on the Android and Playbook, but less automatic switching like in Windows)
• Proper browsing - the mouseover function is brilliant; let us not forget the ease of double clicking a word and then right click - "Open in a new tab" etc. 
• Simple connection to a monitor or TV ( again it was possible with the Android and Playbook devices, but I never got a mini-HDMI cable ) 
• Keeping the screen clean!

AMD A10-5800k Reviews

I have been trying to find the best settings for overclocking my AMD A10-5800k Trinity. While I can reach 4.7GHz with the CPU on air, I haven't been very lucky with the iGPU only reaching 1050 Mhz. I believe the latter will translate to a more important performance boost when gaming. Given I paired the 7660d with a Radeon 6770 DDR3, games in DirectX 11 perform well, however I should make a comparison to see which GPU actually performs better. For example, The Witcher 2 is a DX9 game. It is quite demanding on the GPU. In the AMD Performance Monitor, I see that the 6770 is almost fully loaded, while the 7660d does not seem to be used at all. Given my system RAM is 2133MHz and the iGPU can overclock, I may get an improvement from using the 7660d alone.

This article on overclocking by tamjinhang is excellent. Given the BIOS configuration for each motherboard is different, you will have to adjust accordingly.

Tweaking of the voltage and the frequencies is time consuming and can be frustrating. I wish that there were a simple version of Linux used only for testing benchmarks and stability of an overclocked system. Windows 8 doesn't deal well with multiple reboots without proper recoveries : not uncommon when overclocking.

While I like the concept of Dual Graphics, there doesn't seem to be enough titles out there that justify DX 11. The chicken and the egg debate continues.


The articles below are not all linked to the first page of the articles. Hover you mouse cursor above to see the publisher URL.

As for the articles on the AMD A10-5800k, here they are :

Vortez Tony Le Bourne

PC World New Zealand Review: AMD A10-5800K

AMD Trinity A10-5800K Review - Testing & Conclusions | Widescreen Gaming Forum
AMD A10-5800K Unlocked "Trinity" Quad Core APU Review
AMD A10-5800K + Radeon 7660D Tested 
Dual Graphics, Influence mémoire - AMD A10-5800K et A8-5600K : APU desktop, deuxième ! - HardWare.fr
[M] AMD Trinity A10 5800K APU Review
AMD Trinity A10-5800K APU Review 
AMD A10-5800K and A8-5600K APUs for Socket FM2 Review | techPowerUp
AMD 2nd Generation A10 5800 & A8 5600 Desktop APU Review » Page 5 - Test Setup and Overclocking - Overclockers Club
AMD Trinity for Desktops. Part 2: Socket FM2 Platform and AMD A10-5800K Processor Review. Page 10 - X-bit labs 
Review: AMD A10-5800K Dual Graphics evaluation - CPU - HEXUS.net - Page 3
AMD Trinity A10-5800K Review | Pure Overclock
AMD's Trinity APU Efficiency: Undervolted And Overclocked : Trinity: Great Gamer, But What About Power? 
AMD Trinity A10-5800K APUReview | Overclockers
AMD A10-5800K review | Processors Reviews | TechRadar
Rage3D.com : AMD A10 5800K Launch Review [ Battlefield 3 / Sniper Elite v2 ] 
AMD A10-5800K APU Performance Review - Introduction
AMD Trinity: A10-5800K & A8-5600K 2nd Gen APUs | silentpcreview.com
ocaholic - CPU Charts: 29 CPUs - updated AMD A10 5800K 3.8 GHz Trinity - Charts - Reviews 

AMD Trinity Review - AMD vs Intel - A10 5800K vs Core i3 3220
AMD Trinity A10 5800K APU | AMD Trinity A10 5800K APU Review
AMD A10 and A8 Trinity APU: Virgo Desktop Experience - HotHardware
AnandTech - AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 2

If you have any articles that you would like to add, in any language, please do not hesitate to post it in a message below.

China will never use its missiles against Taiwan

Although the majority of this blog is about PC related solving and not politics, I have chose to give myself the opportunity to write about my opinion regarding the question of unification across the Strait of Taiwan.

Unfortunately, I never pursued a doctorate in my field to have a position that would be considered valid in the world of academia regarding the recognition of Taiwan, however, I will still state my opinion in the few following sentences. Although the people of Taiwan have a distinct political history for the past hundreds of years, the greater part of of the culture has been closer to China than it has been to Japan or even to the United States.