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My thoughts on Razers Project Christine

· 2 min read

Razer – a company well known for its PC gaming peripherals.

With its sleep black and green designs Razer has captivated many a gamer – including myself as I type this using my Razer Blackwidow keyboard.

Now – out of nowhere the company has released concepts for two products – the Razer Nabu a digital wristband that connects to your mobile phone offering various options – and Project Christine the modular PC design.

Computer components themselves are of a modular design – as soon as they are compatible with each other you can swap and upgrade most parts – Project Christine takes this modular design further in a fashion that reminds me of lego.

Simplicity

  • The design like all of Razers products is simple yet aesthetically pleasing.
  • Modular – pick & part parts – want another CPU or SSD? Simply plug it in.

Future proof(ish)

  • Razer are claiming that when technology changes so do the modular modules.
  • Up to date technology with the latest brand GFX & CPU chipsets.

Silent & Cool

  • Each modular component will feature inbuilt water cooling.
  • The water cooling will allow the components to be cool and quiet.
  • As an added note – the water cooled components will most likely make purchasing the modules already overclocked easier.

The Downside

  • It is only a concept and prototype at the moment – usual Razer product lines seem to take 1 year to hit the shelves. This will probably be a 2015 product.
  • Even though the modules will connect via the PCI-E BUS this will depend on manufacturers reselling Project Christine part “modules”.
  • No pricing has been released yet.

All in all – I quite enjoy the look of Project Christine and may well see it in my office space next year.

Surface Pro – How to install Hyper-V

· One min read
  1. Bring up the Metro Windows 8 interface
  2. Type in: Programs & Features
  3. Select Turn Windows Features on or off on the left hand side menu
  4. Check Hyper-V (make sure – Hyper-V Management Tools & Hyper-V platforms are also selected inside the Hyper-V section).
  5. Click Ok
  6. The Hyper-V services will get installed. Once completed restart your Surface.
  7. Launch the Hyper-V Manager and you are good to go to start playing with your Virtual machines.

Note: The same method allows Hyper-V to be installed on Windows 8.1 if you are running a 64bit OS & your Motherboard & CPU supports virtualization.

Note: Surface RT does not support Hyper-V – this is only suitable for the Surface Pros.

Outlook 2010 – How to find your Exchange address

· One min read
  1. Open Outlook
  2. Click on File
  3. Click on Account Settings
  4. Click Account Settings
  5. Select the mailbox you would like to retrieve the Exchange address of and select Change
  6. Your Exchange address is titled under the Server field

VMWare Workstation – How to share a folder with a virtual machine

· 2 min read
  1. First up – you need to create a folder on the host machine. For this example we are using a folder on the Desktop.
  2. Right click a blank space on the Desktop and select – New, Folder.
  3. Name it: vmshared and press Enter
  4. This will be our base folder – anything we put in here will be shared with the virtual machines.
  5. Open VMWare Workstation
  6. Right click the Virtual Machine you are using and select Settings
  7. Click on the Options tab and navigate to – Shared Folders
  8. Here you can choose to have it Always Enabled or Enabled until next power off or suspend – I will select Always Enabled.
  9. Check Map as a network drive in Windows Guests
  10. Down the bottom select Add
  11. This Wizard will guide you through to navigating to the hosts path – the location of the folder you created earlier – ie Deskop/vmshared
  12. You can specify an alternative name if you want or just select Next
  13. You can specify to have the share Read Only here if you want, make sure Enable this Share is selected and select Finish
  14. Done – as soon you as press Ok your virtual machine would have mapped a network share to your workstation. You can find this under My Computer or Computer!

Note: You can map the same network share between multiple Virtual Machines. Note: The Virtual machine must be on to allow Shared Folder configuration – if it is off the option will simply not be enabled.

Ubuntu – How to do a Distribution Upgrade

· One min read
  1. Launch a Terminal
  2. Type in: sudo apt-get update
    (this will ping all the upgrade mirrors to determine if they are live and what upgrade packages are available)
  3. Once completed – type in: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade (this will start pooling down the various packages to do a distribution upgrade. Keep in mind – apt-get update will just do an update within the same distribution).

Note: Ubuntu now has an Update Manager that is available by launching the Unity search function and typing in – Update Manager. This is a GUI method of upgrading. I have had failure with this method personally so recommend using the command line for distribution upgrades for more visibility.