My New Computer

I know I’ve been slacking with new posts, but I’ve been getting used to my new computer and setting it up how I like. I’ve also had more work to keep me busy.

My new computer has an AMD Athlon 64 x2 2.6GHz Dual-Core Processor with 2GB of RAM. It is also running Windows Vista Home Premium. Please do not leave comments about how bad Vista is, because I’m actually having a wonderful experience unlike some. I also didn’t have a choice of Vista or XP. I probably would have chosen XP, but am glad that I didn’t have a choice now that I’ve given Vista a chance.

There were a couple annoyances and they were easily disabled. One was the Welcome Center. Who really needs that to start every time Windows loads? The other was the User Account Control asking permission for every little thing.

The only thing Vista is missing for me is VPN access. I know the feature is there, but I can’t use it because my work’s VPN requires MS-CHAPv1, which Microsoft decided to remove that, without giving you an option. This means you need to spend money to upgrade the VPN server.

You might be wondering how I connect to work’s VPN if I’m using Vista. I am running VMWare with XP installed in it. I only need to use my work’s application with the VPN. Sure, it’s an extra step to connect and do work, but I’m used to it now.

Please do not comment about how I could just run XP on the computer instead. I like some of the features in Vista that XP is just missing, but also, that would mean I’d have to go and actually search for all the drivers. I do not have separate discs for any of the hardware, just one Gateway Windows Vista disc with everything in it.

There is only one thing I had to search for drivers for that a simple Google search found right away. That was the ZDWLan for my WIFIMax dongle because it needed drivers to work correctly on Vista. Unfortunately, I can’t find the link again to put it up for anyone who might need it.

Mitch over at Mitchelaneous has written about things he likes and doesn’t like about Vista.  I’m glad to see someone not just pointing out the bad things and then going back to XP just because of a few bad things. If I had done that with Linux, I would have never figured problems out. In fact, if most people did that, Linux probably wouldn’t be what it is today.

If you like Vista, please feel free to leave a comment about what you like.

Computer Problems, Not Lack of Content

Anyone who is a regular here should know that I normally write more often than I have in the past week. For those of you who don’t know and have considered unsubscribing because of the lack of posts, please don’t! Or, if you aren’t a subscriber, please subscribe to the feed so you’re notified when I start writing again.

The reason for the lack of posts is because my computer stopped working correctly. I’ve tried everything possible, coming to the conclusion that the motherboard has a problem with the slots where the RAM goes. It won’t take anything in the last two slots and is picky in the first two. (Yes, I know that I can’t just place any RAM in any slot. I have a manual that shows me the combinations.)

I am writing this from my laptop, but I don’t have anything on this laptop to work with. This laptop isn’t great for doing the type of work I do, which involves Flash and Photoshop.

Although I love my computer very much, I am kind of glad that I will be getting a new one, because mine is 4-5 years old (considered ancient if you compare it to newer ones). It has also had problems from the beginning with double-sided RAM even though it claims it is supported. It’s a Gigabyte motherboard if you’re interested. Great motherboard, but very picky.

So, if you don’t see any new posts from me this week, hopefully I will be setting up a new computer. Stay tuned!

New Content & Look

Previously, I had said that I will not write on the weekends, but this is an important update that I wanted to have done before the weekend was over.

One obvious change is the look of Soft Tech Reviews. I had used Revolution by Brian Gardner before he released the Revolution News Theme, along with a few different styles. I really like the Magazine style for it. Before I saw the style, I was already considering on adding something new to the site, but wasn’t sure how to go about displaying it. This theme is perfect for what I want.

The new content is videos. Not videos created by myself, but videos that are related to the topics I write here. Every so often I do add a video to a post, but I would like to include more in its own section. Currently, there is only one video post, so I am not going to display a list until there is more.

If there is anything out of place or any errors appearing, please let me know.

Google PageRank

It seems that a hot topic is about Google making some changes. These changes have caused a lot of blogs to have lower PageRanks. Why? Everyone has their own ideas.

• Removing AdSense
• Using WidgetBucks
• Selling text links

PageRank isn’t actually all that important to me, but it seems to be important to advertisers.

I decided to check if my PageRank of zero has changed. I didn’t expect it to so soon, but it turns out that it’s now a three! A three? How is that possible? The Soft Tech Reviews domain is only about four months old. I haven’t done very much except write in the blog.

So, the top blogs go down and Soft Tech Reviews goes up. Did Google make a mistake? But like Darren Rowse from ProBlogger said, Forget About PageRank and Build a Better Blog. Although I now have a PageRank of three, I’m not going to become obsessed about it.

Plans for Soft Tech Reviews

After the talk with Easton Ellsworth, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what I need to do. Here are my current plans for this blog:

I started to offer free advertising in August and not many were interested, so I am removing the Related Links in the sidebar. If you are interested in advertising here on Soft Tech Reviews, you still can. I will provide free advertising again in the future as a giveaway, possibly to subscribers only. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out on this. E-mail subscription is available in the menu.

I have decided to write about 3-5 posts a week and during the weekdays only. I will not spend time writing on the weekend. I’m hoping that this will give me more time to write better content and also allow me to do other things, such as coming up with ideas for content.