How to Tell the Quality of Your Computer Hardware

You want to know if you got a good deal on your processor and you want to know how to understand the classifications and how old your processor is. We all go through this.
Don’t worry, it’s a pretty easy, quick study to find and  there isn’t a whole lot to it. All of the gobbly goop stuff you hear people talking about is much easier to follow when you get the basics down. So…let’s do this. Let’s find out how fast your processor or video card is and which processors are faster or slower than yours.
I will explain this in a plain simple manor without using tech jargon. Don’t freak out.
You can click on any of the images in this post if you are having trouble seeing or reading them.

Age of your  hardware
The first digit from the left tells  how recent the technology is. Let’s say you bought an Intel CPU. That processor is a 7700K. If you look online  and you see nothing  higher at all, such as an 8700 or a 9700, then you are in the latest tech group. If you bought  an i7 5500 and you see online there are i7 7700 CPUs available, then you likely have bought a two year old  processor.

Power class of  your hardware
The second digit from the left tells you how strong your hardware is for it’s class.
If you have an i7 7700 and compare it to an i7 7600, the 7700 will be stronger.

Newer does not mean faster
If you have a 7600 and compare it to the 6700, the 6700 will be faster but incapable of doing some of the more recent tech tricks that have come out since the 6xxx models.

Is it clocked faster?
The last two digits tell you this.
All CPU makers (and video card makers) do a final push of their most recent (but soon closing out) product by shoveling out a hand full of overclocked processors. Intel, for example, ended their last batch of 6th generation i7 processors  with the 6900 rebadged and overclocked as 6950. The 6950 is the overclocked 6900. AMD did this with their FX processors, and shipped out the FX8300 rebadged as a 9590. Rightfully too. They made a beast of that processor. It sucked out more than twice the wattage the 8300 processors pushed, so you had to buy a special motherboard (of only like 5 available) that could handle so much wattage. It was a hot fickle beast, so water cooling was a must. 4.7 GHz out of the box. 5.0 GHz with turbo turned on – on 8 cores.

Now comes the last space. The lettering.
If you buy the i7 7700K, you have bought pretty much the flagship processor of 2017 Intel, but the more expensive, harder to locate and much faster processor is the X model – the i7 7700X.

AMD processors follow the same format

AMD Ryzen Classes

This is good. So we can all understand what we have without having to learn more formats.

Video cards now follow the same format.

Except, now you have to read right to left. That’s only because video cards go through the numbers faster and when they get done with the 1000’s spot, they start back over with a 3 digit identification (usually, who knows, this year may be different). What I am saying is read right to left to see what version. GT, GTX, TI, etc. Then, if it is overclocked, it will be identied by the first number from the right. Strength will be the second number from the right. The last 1 or 2 numbers (the 950GT having one number and the  1050GT having two numbers) will tell you how recent it is. Note that this number does not represent a year. It identifies a series.

Questions or complaints? Questions go at the bottom. Complaints…email those to the manufacturers.

Internet Explorer (No Add-ons) – How to

How to use Internet Explorer with No Add-ons
If you have been wondering how to surf the intenet with most of everything turned off, to prevent exploits to each of your typical add-ons. Here you go.

right click desktop and select “create new” and then select “shortcut”.
The command you need that shortcut to run is
“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” -extoff

Then name your shortcut
Internet Explorer (No Add-ons)

Then again right click the file, select “properties” now change the icon to something that looks nothing like internet explorer. I select the padlock. To distinguish the difference between the stripped internet explorer and regular internet explorer.

Photoshop CS2 denying administrative privileges

I haven’t shared the How to tip, here for quite a while. But as an adobe CS2 user for ages (and happy with it) I have to share my frustration with getting cs2 to run on Windows 7.

I tried forums, I tried calling Adobe. I tried all that I can think of (below is the fix). In the end, when I figured out the solution, Adobe told me “We no longer support this product so we will not bother with this tip” (actually paraphrased, not a real quote).

Hope this helps you With your Photoshop Error Message.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/1668542
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2774322

Photoshop CS2 denying administrative privileges

You are not allowed to continue because your account does not have the proper privileges.
I have just installed Adobe Photoshop CS2 on my Windows 7 Pro 64 Laptop.

When I try to run Adobe CS2, I get a message in a window titled “Adobe Activation” saying: “You are not allowed to continue because your account does not have the proper privileges. Please log in using an account with administrator privileges and try again.”

I am logged in as an administrator and have installed all my applications using the same login. Though the version I have installed is not yet registered, I am unable to even get to the registration screen as once you click OK on the dialogue, Adobe Photoshop closes.

Here is a fix:

Open windows explorer and go to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2” directory; Find the Photoshop.exe and right click on the highlighted file name and Left click on Properties. Click on the top Compatibility tab. Under Compatibility check the box to “Run this program in Compatibility mode for” Windows XP (Service Pack 3) and click OK. Double click and Open the Adobe Photoshop shortcut. skip registration for now. Proceed with registration. Adobe updater will come up with an error but the software will run fine.

 

Windows 7 Can’t run .exe files?

A friend was having trouble with her laptop not being able to run .exe files.
I had to go through a few checks to see exactly what the issue was. First I had her right click an executable file and see what general tab says for type of file. Everything checked out fine in there. Said “exe”

file type exe

file type exe

Now mind you, she doesn’t care much for computers but had a few things she wanted to do. So it was hard doing this over the phone.
She couldn’t open email or run a browser.
The trick was to change her registry

reg edit for .exe association

reg edit for .exe association

but again, she can’t run .exe files, and making a copy of her regedit.exe and renaming it to regedit.com didn’t work either. Seems that has stopped working on windows 7.
So, the solution was, to .reg file for her and email it to her so she can save the file on a thumb drive from another computer and then run the file her computer
she couldn’t copy it to notepad or create it in notepad, simply because she had no way of running the notepad.exe file. Don’t ask me why or how explorer.exe was functioning. Because I just do not know.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe]
@=”exefile”
“Content Type”=”application/x-msdownload”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe\PersistentHandler]
@=”{098f2470-bae0-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}”

Now the trick is, copy the text in the code box there paste it into notepad, save the file as “fixit.reg”, make sure it does not save with txt on the end. Then save it to a usb stick,thumb drive, memory stick, cd what ever you have to sneaker mail (hand deliver the file) the file to the computer with the issue. When the drive opens, just double click and say yes to everything.

I did do a search on the internet to see if there was another way. Everyone’s advice said to open regedit.exe on the computer with the problem. erm…… Nope. will not open .exe files.

Now I am not saying this is for everyone. She was on windows 7, and I am on windows 7 . She is using a laptop, I am using a pc. This worked for her, I might not work for you. I myself would go ahead and try it if it was the last logical solution or if I felt comfortable with what I have seen the reg commands. It just tells the computer that an exefile is exe. Pretty simple. So use that at your own risk. There is a chance that this will not work with your computer. This is not for anyone who is not on windows 7. This is for some (probably not all) windows 7 computers only. But.. .. since this post I have tried this Method on a windows XP computer that couldn’t open .exe files, and this Registry Edit did work. Here is the reg fix for Xp

Looks like the exact same set of commands.

 

Budget Tech Reviews

Finally enough time to actually do reviews. There is now a tech review section of the site created specifically for budget tech. From imitation components, to budget makes and models.

See it’s as if 99% of review sites out there do the high dollar high interest  stuff. For some of us that means “dream stuff”. well this site has a whole section for the budget shopper.

you will most likely not see reviews of the 9800 video card, but you will see a review of the 9500,9400 and so on. If the best video card costs $400, you will see reviews of the $59 video card, tricks that the High end video cards barely use and how to make your budget card just as good as the $400 video card.

Inexpensive cell phones, old used cell phones found on Ebay and craigs list and so on. I call them “GEMS”. The ones that everyone owned a year ago and hacked and modified so much you could almost not tell it was the same one, The site will show you how.

Do not worry, the news section (this section) will still have tech news. All news here, all budget review and budget tricks will be found on

Budget Tech Reviews and tips

You are all welcome to visit.