News and Views of a Technical Nomad

Jun

26

Well, I am returning home next week for the first time in a while and there are quite a few things that are on the plate, technology wise.

First off, I have two new PCs to build, as while I have been away my old web server, a Pentium 4 built in 2002, decided to crash so I have to replace it. In addition, the hard disk of my wife’s laptop crashed and rather than replace it, she has requested a new PC. So, once again I went back to Logic Supply in Vermont to get what I needed.

Both PCs will be almost identical in appearence as they will both use the Morex 3677 Mini-ITX case which is the same case that I have used for my other Mini-ITX PCs.

The differences will be internal. My wife has long complained that her laptop, which was a Toshiba A60 with an Intel Celeron and 512 MB of RAM, did not really cut the mustard for graphics, multi-tasking etc so I have ordered components to build a Intel Dual Core 1.66 GHz PC with 2GB of RAM using a Jetway J9F2-KHDE motherboard. These are the same components that I used to build my Mini-ITX development PC at the end of last year. 

The web server on the other hand will use a VIA VB7001G motherboard with a 1.5GHz C7-D CPU with 1 GB of RAM. This is obviously a slower configuration, but all it has to do is serve web pages at the end of the day, not handle simultaneous GUI applications at the same time. I am quite interested in how fast it will be when running Windows Server 2003.

I also decided to get a small 10.8″ touch screen LCD monitor and small keyboard for use with my development box.

As I mentioned in a previous post a few months ago, I am using Remote Desktop from my laptop to access my mini-ITX development box. This works well when all the machines are connected via ethernet to a router, but if you have to rely on WiFi to access the box you can be a bit stuck if things go wrong.

In addition, I had to recently reinstall Windows XP on the Mini-ITX box a few weeks ago and of course I could not access the box at all so I had to take it to the office to borrow a monitor so that I could get things going. Having a small portable monitor and keyboard will resolve any such issues.

On the software side, such as my Orders of Battle application and website, I have lots of things on the agenda which I will talk about in a later post.Â

Jun

26

Well I have been using SharpDevelop 2.2 (#Develop) for a few weeks now on and off and I have to say that on the whole I am pretty happy with it; it works well, loads projects and solutions quickly and compiles very quickly.

In the down side, the debugger is very slow and that is driving me up the wall. In addition, it can be hard to find the current value of class members and properties and there is no watch or quick watch facility at present when debugging.

Finally, it does not seem possible to develop ASP.NET in VB.NET only C# which is a bit frustrating.

Version 2.2 is for .NET Framework 2.0, if you wish to use .NET Framework 3.5 you will have to wait for SharpDevelop 3.0 which is still in development, a beta version is available for download.

So, it seems that if I want to do ASP.NET work that I must still rely on Visual Studio 2005.

I would really like to start using Visual Studio 2008 Professional but that requires about 1200 USD for a one year MSDN subscription which has its benefits but is still on the expensive side; especially when you are looking for another contract!!

One possible solution would be to download and install the Express Editions of Visual Studio 2008 which support such new functionality as LINQ. Microsoft markets these to “students” and their website is enough to make anyone older than 19 feel like they have strayed into the kindergarten! I do think that Microsoft have got the marketing wrong here and they should make Visual Studio 2008 as freely available as possible, perhaps even open-source (as Eclipse is in the Java world) as the more people who use it, the more people who will get used to developing in .NET. So perhaps I will try installing that when I get home next week.

SharpDevelop can be downloaded here.

Visual Studio Express Editions can be found here.   

Eclipse can be found here.

Jun

9

PC Perspective have a very good article from Computex 2008 on the new VIA Nano processor (aka Isaiah) and Atom, its new rival from Intel which includes some benchmarks on their respective performance.

The article also discusses VIA’s recent collaboration with NVidia and also the update to the Mini-ITX standard which VIA unveiled called Mini-ITX 2.0 .

Key quote about Mini-ITX 2.0 (for me):

Most of the physical characteristics of the design remain the same: 17cm x 17cm PCB footprint, a focus on tight power consumption and high levels of feature integration on-board.  The design is an evolution in the most basic sense and is essentially an attempt by VIA to “call out” Intel for closing down mini-ITX on their platforms.  With phrases like “no artificial restrictions on features and performance” and “freedom of choice for graphics and operating system configurations” in the VIA presentation, it is obvious that the company is more than slightly miffed about Intel’s decision to come in, use the standard they created, and close it down.

On the rumoured NVidia/VIA takeover/merger….

Many people were expecting VIA and NVIDIA to announce a merger, or for NVIDIA to announce their plans to develop an integrated GPU chipset for VIA’s Nano processor.  Neither happened of course, but I think the latter is a lot closer than either company will divulge to us right now.  It would make sense - using a DX10-ready IGP solution would put Intel on the hot spot once again and the combined VIA/NVIDIA platform would be able to return to the single-board principle that it was really meant to be.  Maybe by this time next year VIA and NVIDIA will be ready to announce a much more encompassing business agreement…?

Source: PC Perspective

Jun

5

Well the week got off with a bang when I and several of my freelance colleagues were informed that our services were no longer required and we were given a months notice as a result of budget constraints at the client.

So, it’s back on the job market and I will soon be saying farewell to sunny Belgium.

The really ironic thing is that I moved flats last Saturday as a result of various issues in my last flat and on Monday I had to ring my new landlord and tell them that I would not be staying (unless of course someone else in Belgium offered me a contract).

Oh well, plus ca change plus ca meme chose!!

Let’s see where I end us next, North America would be nice….

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