The UltraTech Zone

After many months, and a few miscellaneous upgrades to other parts of my network, I'm finally about to get a jump on my home virtualization overhaul project.  A number of things have changed from the original plan, however. Since that plan was presented back in October, Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008, with a beta of Hyper-V, ...

I posted an announcement over the weekend that my List Mail server had gone down.  I'm pretty sure that the power supply was all I needed to change, but due to a series of parts failures and upgrades over the past 4 or 5 months across various systems, I'm fresh out of power supplies. More importantly, the list server is running on the oldest ...

It took me long enough, but I'm finally cleaning out some old boxes of computer parts that I have laying around.  Really old parts in really old boxes. My wife will be very pleased to see this stuff go, finally.  She's been after me to do this for years.   Seriously! Just to give you an idea of what this amazing box ...

When I wrote part 1 of the home network virtualization project, I didn't realize that I actually had an updated network diagram available. I created it last October, but never posted it -- for reasons which completely escape me right now. I suppose that I was waiting until I actually performed the upgrades at the end year before I would post ...

Although I really need to upgrade my network diagram to reflect some major changes since 2006, it is effective enough to indicate the need for server virtualization even on a small network.  I currently have 4 servers which are operational, and another which I want to bring online shortly, but I would be far better served if I put in a couple ...

''Daddy, can you show me how to build a computer?'' That was the request I received today from my 11 year-old daughter.   I guess it helped that I had a whole lot of computer parts laying about, with some unfinished systems.  I've been pretty busy of late, but it's all good busy -- nothing to complain about. I still haven't ...

First of all, I hope that everyone has had a very enjoyable Christmas with friends and family.  I know that the holidays aren't always pleasant for everyone, but I hope that this year has been especially good for everyone. I finally have some free time this week.  Things have been very hectic the past few months, but this week I'm going ...

  The folks at MIT have made some serious progress in the search for the replacement material for silicon in transistors.   One of the materials being discussed, according to this ZDNet article, is gallium arsenide, even though there are some kinks to be worked out. The transistor technology is young, and researchers ...

nVidia has released it's next generation card family, the 8800 series, and the reviews are looking great!  Sure, I'm not personally going to be purchasing a $450 or $600 video card, but for those who were previously contemplating SLI configurations, this sort of cost is much better than the price of two previous-generation (or, should I say ...

The annual upgrade plans for my home network have to be accelerated somewhat due to a couple of system failures I have experienced over the past few months. It all started back in August when my old desktop system died.  Thankfully, it was already the former desktop system at the time of its demise, and I was getting ready to ...

On Tuesday, Apple Computer company had an issue where a Windows-based virus was shipped on a select number of iPods, and rather than accepting blame for a mistake in their manufacturing or QA processes, they blamed Microsoft for not producing a ''more robust OS''. Huh? Not only is that an absurd deflection of blame, but as ...

I was forced to upgrade one of my systems this week because the motherboard (or CPU) died.  Rather than mess around trying to figure out which specific component was impacted, I ran over to NewEgg (virtually, of course), and picked up a new AMD Sempron 3400+ CPU and a Gigabyte Socket 754 motherboard for cheap to replace the previous Athlon ...

Over the years, my perspective on computer upgrades has changed significantly. There was a time back in the mid-to-late 90s when I would go out and obtain a new motherboard and processor every 15-18 months, and swap out the components on one of my systems. In the early going, this wasn't too bad, as the performance improvement was substantial ...

I just upgraded to v0.9.56.2 of TVersity which manages the content for my wireless media player.  Around Christmas 2005, I finally obtained a wireless media player, the D-Link DSM-320. I guess I should have looked at the TVersity site earlier, because there was a bug which would occasionally freeze my DSM-320 when playing certain video ...

RSA Security acquired by EMC for $2.1 billion http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid1_gci1197226,00.html?track=NL-118&ad=557474 Following a slew of rumors, storage giant EMC Corp. confirmed late Thursday that it will acquire RSA Security Inc. for just under $2.1 billion in cash, or approximately $28.00 per share. ...