Enumerating the Devices in Your System

Here is a program that will detail the motherboard and all devices in your system.

Windows 2008 Workstation

You say "Hey, there is no such product as Windows 2008 Workstation, only Windows 2008 Server!" Well, check this out. Supposedly, 2008 Workstation is better than Vista.

Comparing Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Moveable Type

Here are some comparisons of the Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Moveable Type blogging platforms.

Building Quiet PCs

If you are like me, you like your PCs to be quiet, if not downright silent. For more information on how to do so, see SilentPCReview, Building a Quiet PC and Building a PC.

Quad Core vs. Dual Core CPUs

If you are considering which CPU to choose, quad core or dual core, you may want to check out this, this and this.

In the second link above, Jeff notes:

there are only a handful of applications that can truly benefit from more than 2 CPU cores, and they tend to cluster tightly around certain specialized areas

Said another way, if you are running a small number of apps, or the apps don't effectively make use of multiple cores, then a dual core *MAY* in fact be faster, *IF* the clock speed at which the dual core runs is higher than the clock speed at which the quad core runs.

A quad core *MAY* benefit you if you have a large number of processes to run (for instance virtualization), or you are running an app or apps which are specifically coded to be aware of, and utilize multiple cores.

See alsoand .

32 bit vs. 64 bit OSes

If you are considering whether or not to switch/upgrade to a 64 bit OS, this article may give you some helpful background information.

Changes in a 64 bit processor, relative to a 32 bit processor:

1. The address bus is expanded from 32 bits to 64 bits (this allows the processor to address 16 exabytes of physical memory, instead of being able to address only 4 GB).
2. The CPU's registers are expanded in width from 32 bits to 64 bits.

While switching to a 64 bit OS *MAY* speed things up, don't assume it will automatically do so for everything you are running. Here are some reasons why:

1. It is important to catch that the 64 bit processor's data bus did NOT expand in width. Current 32 bit processor's data buses are already 64 bits in width, and have been for a long time, so data is already being moved to/from RAM 8 bytes at a time. 64 bit processors do not change this.
   
2. Unless you switch to 64 bit apps, your 32 bit apps will have to run in the WoW64 emulation layer, causing your 32 bit app to be "thunked up" to 64 bit.

Comparisons amongst 32 bit and 64 bit OSes have been done. This page shows the results of a benchmarking comparison between the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of XP, Vista and Server 2008. Scan through the results and you'll see that in some cases 64 bit is faster, in other cases 32 bit is faster and in yet other cases there is no meaningful difference. Some other comparisons are available here, here, here and here. In short, when running 'normal' 32 bit productivity applications, or similar, there is little if any benefit in switching to a 64 bit OS.

Raising IIS 5.1's 10 Connection Limit

This blog post discusses how to raise the built in 10 concurrent connection limit built into IIS 5.1, the version included in Windows XP.

Books On Sonicwall Firewalls

If you need to configure or manage a Sonicwall firewall, perhaps these books may be of interest:

Configuring Sonicwall Firewalls
SonicWALL Secure Wireless Network Integrated Solutions Guide

OT: Book to Read?

Perhaps I should read 'Spit and Polish for Husbands: Becoming Your Wife's Knight in Shining Armor'...

Text Editors - Notepad++

A colleague recommended Notepad++ as a good text editor.

Managing Database Schema Changes with Visual Studio Team System - Database Edition

Here is MSDN's article on managing database schema changes using Visual Studio Team System - Database Edition. In short, VSTS adds 'Database Project' projects templates. You get 'SQL Server 2000' and 'SQL Server 2005' templates. (These are similar to the more familar project templates like C# 'Windows Forms Application'.) Using source control, you can now use this project to track your schema and changes to it over time. You can compare versions, build deployment scripts and so on.

Debugging ADO.NET Data Services

Having trouble getting your ADO.NET Data Service running? Getting cryptic error codes in your browser, for instance HTTP error 500? Here is an article on debugging ADO.NET Data Services. In short, it tells you how to get more informational messages in your browser, so that you can find out what is really going wrong. In my case, it was nothing more than the ASP.NET worker process did not have permissions in SQL Server--easily resolved once I knew what was actually going wrong.

Note there are two steps, and you may need to do both:

1) Set UseVerboseErrors to true in the ServiceConfiguration, and
2) Configure your Servicebehavior with the IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults attribute.

ADO.NET Data Services

Here is an MSDN article about using ADO.NET Data Services. The article includes a walkthrough for creating an ADO.NET Data Service.

ADO.NET Dynamic Data?

This is an MSDN article about what it is, and this is MSDN's overview.