Hardware Grumbles slows down production
Well this didn�t happen today, but it has been going on for the last couple weeks.
First it was Windows XP crashing several times a day at random times. Thought it was the hard drive, so I replaced it and installed everything fresh. No good. Got really frustrated, so I installed Fedora 9 64bit. Worked awesome, but without the ability to install Photoshop CS in Wine, didn�t do what I wanted it to do. Overclocked my cpu (q6600) from 2.40 to 2.92 and reset the heatsink. Booted into windows, and it�s been running stable ever since (6 days straight now). It wasn�t the re-partioning/installing of grub or fedora. It still crashed. It was when I overclocked that windows stabilized.
Last week I also had the pleasure of having my router go haywire. This is an SMC wireless G/4-port router. Wireless worked on my iMac and Powerbook, but all wired connections, including the connection to the cable modem/internet were seemingly dead. I tried my old wired router. Same thing. Did my cables all go on strike? I tried a different cable. Still no good. I gave up, and went the rest of the day without networking between my machines (including my file server). Then at 11pm, I tried one last time before ordering a new wireless N router. It worked! I don�t know what changed, nor do I care. It�s been stable since as well. Needless to say, I will be buying the next wireless N router that I see on sale (hopefully a D-Link Rangebooster).
As for my PC stability and frustrations, I will be buying a Mac Pro shortly. I prefer the OS X system and philosophy, plus it�s a really good deal if you compare to a custom/white box 8 core xeon with 2.83 processors.
My �file server� is a Vista Home Premium computer by HP (refurbished sale at Future Shop!) with a 400 gb hard drive. My main gripe with Vista is the printer sharing cripples. I cannot get either of my Tiger based Macs to properly connect and print, regardless of all the different tutorials, protocols and hacks. (even LPD). So I�ve moved the printer to my XP box for now. I will be buying a Samsung colour laser printer that connects to the network instead of one of the computers for ease of sharing between my 4-5 computers.
Once all my systems are converted to Mac/Linux, things will be much simpler and faster. Since Loklo Media primarily produces 3D animations, speed is important. The 3D Software that I use (Blender) is available for pretty much every major operating system out there, and is known to run faster on Mac and Linux systems.
