Die Resident Shield Die

Disabling AVG’s Resident Shield made my PC so much faster, I almost want to cry. I was fiddling around in AVG settings today after getting a License error and reinstalling AVG to eliminate it.

Something strange crawled up to the back of my skull as I read that Resident Shield was checking every file I used. Every single file, that’s must be like 20 files per second or something, assuming standard usage. Could this be what was crippling my system?

I disabled it, but Windows gave me a nasty message telling me that my Anti-Virus has been turned off. Despite my best efforts to convince it otherwise, it didn’t budge. I disabled its monitoring instead, which is good riddance as it sometimes lied that AVG wasn’t running when the AVG icon was right next to the goddamn Security Alert in the System Tray.

So things feel very fast now, it’s great! Not sure if this is temporary or what, repeated usage speeds things up as always, but really, things are much faster with the resident shield off. And while checking every file I use is a nice offer, I think I’ll rely on the old-fashioned firewall-and-scan approach, in addition to the classic internet-common-sense technique.

New Pet

This one is good. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries it.

Tim Schafer vision for Atari’s domination of the world

In a vision that reminds of how wistful historians dream of a world where Rome had never fallen, Schafer provides some info on the famed relic of old, the Atari 400:

ATARI 400 – The greatest computer of its day, with a keyboard that was so comfortable to type on, they still use it on microwave ovens today. The Atari ate Apple IIs for breakfast, and for dinner it swallowed Commodore 64s whole. It usually skipped lunch, preferring to use that hour to beat up PCs. I’m not bitter, but if Atari had won instead of Apple, they would have made something better than the iPhone by now. Or at the very least, the iPhone would come with Star Raiders.

And just what is Star Raiders?

STAR RAIDERS – The best game on the Atari 400/800, ever. Many people will tell you this. Although, to be honest, few of us can really remember why we say it. We’ve just been saying it since 1980 and it’s a habit.

What scares me is that I will probably be saying something similar in 20 years and it will be really creepy telling people about CDs, DVDs, Xbox 360 and (urp) PS3. Not to mention the PC race for better and better gear, something that the PC Gaming Alliance will hopefully get rid of.

Kilobyte

Blueprints for the new system

Did some research and constructed a system. The motherboard is going to be Intel’s DG31PR. After reading its lovely technical specifications document cover-to-cover, I’ve decided it to be good enough. The Processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6550, which looks decent from the comparison chart here. No graphic card yet, because my eyes are set on ATi’s HD 3850 and nVidia’s 8800GT. Whichever hits India first and cheaper wins. The motherboard’s in-built graphics can kick my old graphic card’s ass, so I should be able to sustain on the games I’m playing right now. The graphic card will come in about 6-8 months, and do I have patience. I’m planning for 2 GB worth DDR2-533 SDRAM, and that should last for quite a while.

Most other stuff will be salvaged from my existing PC, like my 2.1 Speakers, Sony DVD-RAM drive, and my precious Samsung 80GB drive. This, plus the 80 GB in the new system makes for 160 GB worth space, and two drives. A new, flat CRT 17″ will replace my beloved 15″ classic. Not much of a difference, but what the heck.