New machine - new day - Rick Strahl's Web Log

New machine - new day

August 21, 2007 @ 1:12 pm- from Hood River, Oregon

It's been a little quiet around here the last couple of days - that's because I got a new machine and have been buried in setting up the new box and trying to get some work done at the same time - always a fun exercise.

As you probably know if you read this blog even occasionally I've been having some video problems with my existing machine - I've been unable to get dual monitor support to run under Vista and Aero and I've had a number of issues with the video drivers crashing constantly when running certain applications ( WPF applications specifically ). The machine - a Dell Inspiron 9400 Dual Core Laptop - otherwise has been solid and usually wouldn't have warranted a new machine. In addition though I've been thinking about a new machine for a bit anyway because frankly the 17" box is one hell of a lug to tote around when you're travelling. Not only that but the 9400 also is horrible on batteries lasting - if I'm lucky for about 3 hours on two sets of batteries.

So a few weeks back I decided to look for a new machine mainly because of the video problems but also because the 'surrounding factors'. Yeah, I got another Dell - a decked out Inspiron 1520 with a 2.2 ghz Core 2 Duo 2 gig of memory and 160 gig hard disk. I looked around a few other machines this time around - mainly at ASUS, but the configurability on most other sites just didn't work out right. There was always something missing.

So - the verdict so far is: I'm back in business. I figured if I was going to have video problems again I was going to ship the box back to Dell immediately. To my surprise though the box fired right up with multi-monitor and there wasn't even any hickups of any sort - missing drivers or the like - when I paved the machine from scratch and installed a clean copy of Vista Ultimate. Given that the 9400 never had such a smooth ride choking on video I'm hopeful that things will finally be peaceful and I can focus on my work instead of hunting down hardware/driver configuration issues.

The main issue has been video and I found that Dell is actually using the same driver on this box ( a nVidia 8600 GT) that I had been using with the old machine unsuccessfully. The driver they are using 101.43 and it seems to work reliably with this card. There are no video issue even with dual monitors. There's no driver crashing and no issues with the driver 'forgetting' each screen's location or which one is the master as I had even in non-Aero mode with the 9400 (and others have complained about bitterly).

I'm still angry at nVidia for this whole driver mess, and while I would have liked to have NOT gotten another nVidia card I have to grudgingly admit that none of these issues are an issue with the new card. It's clear that the new card was designed for the environemnt that Vista runs in (Directx 10 and probably specifically designed for Vista) while the old card (7800 Go) was claimed to be Vista compatible but probably really wasn't. I don't know the big problem is that there aren't a lot of video choices these days if you want a Aero capable video card... <shrug> I guess call me a hypocrate but all I care about is that it works damn it!

What's interesting is that I don't really miss the extra screen real estate of the 17 inch machine. The old box was 1920 x 1200 while the new one's 15.4" screen has only 1680 x 1050. The extra height is useful but the extra width doesn't do much. I suppose now I can actually use my second monitor and that more than anything will help breathing room. The other improvement here is that both the laptop and the external screen have the same resolution so it's easier to move windows between screens without having to resize <g>.

The new box is a 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo the old one was a Core Duo 2ghz - As far as overall performance goes I can't really tell a difference. Both machines are equally snappy.

The other thing is battery life - it looks like the batteries on the new machine last much longer - I was using the machine on the 'light' battery for nearly 3 hours last night which is impressive. There are two kinds of batteries and I usually get two - one of the default 'cheapo' kind that I leave in the laptop to burn down and a second bigger battery that actually holds the juice for travelling. Good idea since turning your machine on and off tends to run down the batteries stamina some even if it never runs actively on batteries.

Reinstallation - man what a drag

Reinstalling a machine from scratch is always a pain - and I spent a good part of the day yesterday moving everything over to the new box. I'm happy to report that installation of Visual Studio 2005 followed by installing Visual Studio 2008 went without any hiccups of any sort - both started right up without complaints - again something that never seemed to work quite right on the old box.

I'm also finding that

The two worst installation culprits for time consumption though are Visual Studio 2008 and Sql Server. Man there's gotta be a better way to install these products and get up to date. For Visual Studio 2005 this process involves:

Install VS 2005
Install VS 2005 SP1
Install the VS 2005 Vista Patches

If you've gone through these installs you know that the patches take almost as long as a full install and so getting VS 2005 installed and ready to run up to date easily takes 2 hours (ok with minor distractions while doing other things elsewhere).

One thing to remember is to make sure to back up and copy over your Documents\Visual Studio 2005 (or 2008) folders with add-ins, custom templates and Intellisense scripts. This makes VS.NET (for me at least) feel right at home without having to reinstall a whole host of add-ins.

Installation of Sql Server is not much better:

Install Sql 2005 Express as part of VS .NET (so you can run file based MDFs)
Install Sql 2005 Standard
Let Windows Update bring down SQL Express SP2 AND Sql 2005 SP2

Again this process takes well over an hour, but at least the SP2 patches here are happening mostly in the background not hijacking the whole machine.

The other major time consuming issues that are pretty painful:

Reconfiguring IIS - setting up virtuals etc. (too chicken to do a backup and restore <s>)
Moving SQL Server Databases

The latter especially is tedious as I have to reattach about 30 different databases. I'm not sure if there's an easier way - I sure wish there was a way to export a configuration and then re-import on the other end assuming the directory structure is the same (as it is).

As always I'm pretty careful to move files to the new machine using the same directory structure. I tend to not put all of my shit into Documents so this process is at least bearable as I can use RoboCopy to do most of the work.

Speaking of which - the recent Vista updates were supposed to have improved file copy and 'estimating' performance when large files are being copied. I'm afraid I didn't see any big improvements here when moving 4 or 5 gig of data. I started down this path, but quickly got frustrated and switched to RoboCopying files instead. I don't have any hard numbers but I suspect using RoboCopy is probably twice as fast or faster - the 4 gig copied in about 10 minutes instead of the 3 hours projected (and in really probably 20-30 minutes) by Explorer once it started copying. Hmph...

Incidentally I was using a crossover network cable to copy files between the two machines. IOW, no router just direct cable connection. My office is connected to the router only via wireless and I didn't want to run these file copies over the slow wireless connection. I figured out that little trick - I never actually realized that you can just wire most current network cards together like this - from Hanselman when he saved me last year during a PADNUG user group presentation. Short of taking the drive out of the other machine and hooking up with a direct SATA connection this works fabulous.

I was pleasantly surprised that all of my Tortoise/Subversion repositories still work since the directory structure between machines is identical which is nice. No reconfiguration there at least.

All in all though this was a smooth transition. Barring any major hardware failures in the burn in period over the next week or so (fingers crossed) I hope I'll have a stable machine to work with.

Now will be the fun task of finding all the little things I need to re-install. In the meantime I'll try to keep things a little more mean an lean.

Posted in Hardware Personal

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re: New machine - new day
by Mike Dennis August 21, 2007 @ 2:12 pm

The 1520 is nice. I got one with the same hardware, and it has been working good since then. My only problems where that my bluetooth card died after a day, which was replaced for free within about a day, and I did a clean install which REALLY messed up the McAfee subscription because I needed to register it first. The disk that it came with was only for a 30 day trail, instead of the 3 years included with the service plan.. I works fine now though with Vista Ultimate and Ubuntu 7.04.

re: New machine - new day
by Craig Berntson August 21, 2007 @ 5:10 pm

Rick,

I've had the same PC (I got a red one) with Vista Business for about a month now and really like it. The only change I made with the preinstall software was to remove McAffee (I won't ever use it again) and installed Avast!

re: New machine - new day
by wOOdy August 22, 2007 @ 6:16 am

Hi Rick,
You don't even need a crossover cable; since the DELLs have a Gigabit network port, they are autosensing and can use regular cables.

I wonder why you didn't choose the Latitude series. We have about 20 of them in our team (10x D820, 10x D520), and are very pleased with their stability and their Vista-support. The good thing about them is the non-shiny display and the mouse-nipple in the keybourd (I hate those touchpads <g>)
We have the same screen resolution, BTW, and I disagree about the extra width: I have my Windows taskbar vertical attached to the right side, 4 icons wide.

Oh, and since you use dual monitors: You surely know about www.UltraMon.com? I can't live without that one... Highly recommended.

re: New machine - new day
by Rachit August 22, 2007 @ 11:59 am

Rick, how hot does it get (compared to your old one) when you run CPU at 100% or when large I/O for a while?

re: New machine - new day
by Rick Strahl August 22, 2007 @ 12:01 pm

@Woody - Latitudes are always underpowered using previous gen components and more pricey. Probably exactly why you like them given you *like* the non-glossy screen and mouse nub (gd&r)...

re: New machine - new day
by Rick Strahl August 22, 2007 @ 12:06 pm

@Rachit - the old 9400 was also dual core so there is not much difference between the two. So there's never really a case when the machine goes to 100% since there are two cores dealing with load (other than during occasional load testing <s>)

I notice that this machine is much quieter and it's not thrashing as much just in day to day operations but that's probably because it's a new install and because of the recent Vista patches which seem to have actually smoothed out some of Vista's excessive resource usage during 'idle' time. It probably also helps that the hard-drive has a lot of breathing room - the old one was within 5 gigs of being full.

+++ Rick ---

re: New machine - new day
by Peter Bromberg August 22, 2007 @ 12:54 pm

Amen on those long installation times. I've gotten to the point now where I will *only* install this stuff starting in the evening before going to bed. We find out what happened the next morning! Good luck with your new box.

re: New machine - new day
by Joel Rumerman August 22, 2007 @ 10:06 pm

Hey Rick,

I just ordered a Vostro from Dell last night. It was pretty much speced the same as yours, but Vostro 1500 was about $300 less than a comparable Inspirion 1520. It'll be here next month some time so I'll let you know how my experience is. I hope it's as good as yours.

Joel

re: New machine - new day
by Sergio Pereira August 24, 2007 @ 7:42 am

As soon as I got my first wide-aspect monitor, first thing I done, move the windows taskbar to the left edge of the screen. Now I can fit more "buttons" there, more stuff in the notification area, the clock also shows date and weekday, more stuff in the quicklaunch, etc.
Since I don't like grouping the taskbar applications, this was a move I cannot do without anymore after the 1-day adaptation period.
As a side note, I also use taskbar shuffle (freeware) to reorder my taskbar items. Why in the world even Vista doesn't allow you to drag/reorder these things?

re: New machine - new day
by PBZ August 27, 2007 @ 4:35 am

I got into the habit of creating images of my CDs/DVDs on a separate harddrive and use something like Daemon Tools to mount them. Installing anything this way can speed it up dramatically; especially VS's installation that does a ton of seeks. I also slipstreamed SP1 of VS. So, having it slipstreamed, with mounted CDs, and using a Raptor in my desktop I installed VS with all the patches under 10 minutes.

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