More speed less Windows

Well I've brought the experiment into the real office. I've built an Intel Q9550 quad core based system with 4 gigs of DDR3 1600 memory running at 3.4 Ghz (overclocked from 2.83 Ghz and easily goes up to 3.8Ghz). It's based on OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and while I'm content using Snow Leopard for most everything else, I'm still using Windows for my CAD software which is good old DataCad 10. On this machine I'm using Parallels instead of Fusion for running Windows in a virtual machine because the graphics drivers in Parallels work better with DataCad. In Fusion when you draw a square on the screen it looks like a rectangle. The aspect ratio is off and there is no way to change it in DataCad. Its been nice to be able to compare Parallels to Fusion. In my effort to use as much free software as possible, I even tried Sun's Virtual Box and while it does work, it has a way to go before it will be an equal to Parallels or Fusion. Right now I'm leaning towards Parallels as my favorite pick. They sweetened the deal by having two rebates. One just for buying the product and the other one for upgrading from a competitive product. $40 in all. While I'm quite content running Windows from within Snow Leopard, I did set up the machine to dual boot so that it can run Windows on it's own. So far I've had little need for this. It is also possible to run Leopard from within a Vmware virtual machine while in Windows but it lacks some of the graphics ability.

So where did Ubuntu go in this? I haven't given it up. When I get a chance I'll install a virtual appliance version of it to run on the same machine. Bottom line though is that when it comes to mission critical work, one really wants the best tools to work with. Right now, that is a combination of Mac and Windows.

Serving up tunes

I've been away for awhile getting real work done.  In the meantime, not much has changed in the options available to Ubuntu users for architecture.  I have upgraded my systems to 8.04 and built a Mini-ITX based system as a media server.  After a little tweaking for the obscure SiS video, it is rock solid, quiet and uses less power than a light bulb.  It is based on the Intel D201GLY2 motherboard.  While this little system is rock solid, I'm tempted to replace the motherboard with the newer Atom based Intel D954GCLF2 which has a dual core processor (still < $100 with processor).  The goal for this system has been to keep the system at < $200.  What does this have to do with architecture?  What good is an office without tunes?