It’s Christmas Day and I hope everybody got what they were hoping for. It’s the best time for getting electronic gadgets, even for those who already have everything!

My wife got me an LCD Monitor and a Nikon Digital Camera as my Christmas gift, both of which I’m very happy to have. The LCD Monitor is identical to the Sceptre 20.1″ that I already have, so this will give me two monitors connected to my Desktop PC system (woohoo!). So I’ll have monitors spanning almost two-thirds the width of my physical desktop, so I’m stoked. The only thing I need now is a video card that can drive both monitors and an extra video cable.

I’ve ordered a Zotac GeForce 9500 GT video card from Newegg.com which has dual DVI output, so I should be in business sometime mid next week. Hopefully, Santa was generous to all of you as well.

This is brilliant…

Twitter creator reveals Square mobile-pay device

By Barry Neild, CNN, December 9, 2009 6:06 a.m. EST

Paris, France (CNN) – Twitter creator Jack Dorsey Wednesday gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture — a device to allow credit card payments by cell phone — and revealed it would be given away for free.

Details of “Square” — a card reader which plugs into the headphone socket of most mobile devices — have been circulating on the Internet since it was announced earlier this month, but little has been known about how it works or who it was aimed at.

However, Dorsey — whose microblogging Web site has proved hugely popular but not hugely profitable since launching in March 2006 — gave no explanation on how he would make money from his new creation, beyond revealing there would be a per-transaction charity donation.

Square, a tiny cube about an inch in length, contains a magnetic strip reader that allows users to swipe and read credit cards, then deduct payment on or offline through a downloaded application that communicates with card issuers in the same way as retailer devices.

Customers then use their finger on the phone’s touch-recognition screen to sign their name to the transaction.

Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and chairman, says the device, scheduled for launch on iPhones and iPods in March 2010, was inspired partly by the “immediacy, approachability and transparency” of Twitter and by the global economic crisis which has exposed a need for a radical rethink of the financial sector.

“The financial world is amazing right now because there’s a clean slate. A lot of these industries are looking for something very small and innovative,” he said during the gremlin-hit demonstration of his device at LeWeb, a major Internet forum in Paris.

“My co-founder is a glass artist. He sells things that people don’t need — $2,000 glass faucets. They’re beautiful. If he could not take credit cards, he wouldn’t make the sale because no one carries around $2,000 in the cash.

“So we looked at it. Ninety percent of the U.S. has moved to credit cards, but it’s still very difficult to accept them.”

Dorsey said he considered a number of options in developing Square, including using cell phone cameras and character recognition software to read images of the credit card.

“The other thing we looked at is the audio jack — and it’s on Macbooks, desktop PCs, BlackBerries and Androids. We built this hardware. It’s a self-powered swiper. Powered by the magnetic power of the swipe itself, converts it to an audio signal, which the software interprets.”

Dorsey, who joked he had pocketed $650 by allowing potential business partners to road test the device with their own credit cards, said Square was currently being beta tested in a handful of major U.S. cities by a cross-section of small business users.

“We’re trying with a bunch of different profiles of folks in New York, San Francisco, LA and St. Louis, Missouri. There are piano teachers, flight instructors, and coffee shops. It can be used in a retail store like Apple, all the way down to Craigslist or paying me back for that dinner you owe me.”

Dorsey said his developers were still working to ensure the device was fraud proof.

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And finally we are at the end of my series about building a custom computer system using an Antec 1200. In this final posting, I’m going to throw numbers your way. I ran some gaming and performance benchmarks. But first, I must tell you that I am not a professional reviewer. One of those guys stuck in labs, running test after test on computers and then kicking your ass with the logic. Sometimes it’s better to hear it from the random guy on the street. Here I am.

System specs refresher

You don’t need to scan through the other postings to see my specs. I’ll list them right here:

• Antec 1200 computer case, 5 120mm fans, 1 200mm fan
• ASUS P6T motherboard with Intel X58 chipset, 3-way SLI and Quad-Crossfire ready, onboard Realtek HD Audio, onboard Gigabit LAN
• EVGA GTX 275 1792MB GDDR3
• 6GB Corsair Dominator PC3 12800 @1600, triple channel
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA (3.0Gpbs) HDD, 32MB cache @7200rpm
• Corsair TX750, 750W power supply
• Samsung SATA DVD-RW drive
• Windows 7 Home Premium

How does it run?

It runs well, but I am not surprised. Programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Dreamweaver start up fast. Games load maps fast. I had a really good experience using Windows 7 Ultimate RC, both on this laptop and on my gaming system. It was almost stable with few problems. I have removed RC from this laptop and have gone back to Vista. Man, I really don’t like Vista.

If you have clicked on the picture to the right, then you have noticed that the Windows Experience Index is only 5.9. For those that do not know, the Windows Experience Index, introduced to us in Vista, is Windows’ benchmarking tool. While it’s not as telling as PC Vantage or 3D Mark, you get the general idea of how well Windows 7 will work on your system.

Here is a snapshot of the Windows Experience Index screen and you can see how my system measures up according to Windows 7. My system gets mid 7s in all categories except the HDD transfer rate. For me, this was not unexpected. My hard drive is very large and only 7200rpm. It takes the system longer to search for files on this drive. Maybe an SSD would be good for this system. However, I want large capacity and SSDs are expensive the bigger they get. So the HDD will remain the part that – sort of – holds this system back.

The Intel Core i7 quad-core CPU is the engine that keeps my rig running fast. To the right, you can see the Windows Task Manager. Windows 7 has detected all four cores plus Hyper-Threading for each core. Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology virtually duplicates parts of each core. This is why Windows Task Manager shows eight CPUs instead of four. However, as you can see, not all eight “cores” are being used. This will probably remain the case until someone comes out with a OS, software or game which can use all four/eight at the same time.

For now I am happy with my choice of CPU. As a test, I timed Any Video Converter as it converted a 730MB AVI video file into a MP4 video for my iPod in 25 minutes. It takes my HP dv9000 series laptop a couple of hours to complete this task. The video looked good and the audio was on track.

PC Vantage and 3D Mark 2006

Since I am cheap and poor, I only used the trial versions of these programs. Both made by the same company, PC Vantage tests the performance of computers running Windows Vista and higher. 3D Mark is the standard in graphics performance testing for the masses. Because I only used the trial versions, I was severely limited in settings and how hard I pushed my system. So, these are the results:

• PC Vantage: 8401 PC Marks
• 3D Mark 2006 (Res. 1280×1024, no AA): 16911 3DMARKS
  SM 2.0 Score: 6822
  SM 3.0 Score: 7634
  CPU Score: 4962

Game Benchmarks

GPU-Z displaying my graphic card's specs

When I play games, I created a gaming theme which switches to Windows Basic and removes the wallpaper from the desktop. In my experience, turning off Windows Aero does have some impact when playing a game. I ran my gaming theme while running these benchmarks. These are the games that I have and tested: Crysis, Far Cry 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 Demo, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat.

Note: My monitor’s native resolution is 1920×1080

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat (зов припяти) Benchmarking Tool

Yes, this game has not been released yet but GSC Game World has released a benchmarking tool for us to use. This tool runs the test four times by testing different configurations. Each loop tests the same sequence in different weather environments: Day, Night (with Lightning), Rain and heavy sunshine with sun rays the demo calls SunShafts. The results:

High preset. Enhanced, full dynamic lighting DX10

• 1920×1080
  Day: 85fps
  Night: 79fps
  Rain: 86fps
  SunShafts: 31fps

• 1680×1050
  Day: 94fps
  Night: 89fps
  Rain: 96fps
  SunShafts: 35fps

Left 4 Dead

Unlike other games, Valve’s Left 4 Dead relies more on the processor than the video card. Not that a video card doesn’t help!!! For this, I recorded a demo of me playing the single player in The Woods, the 1st map of Blood Harvest. I fought my way from the first to the second picnic table.

Max settings. The timings are: 1)No AA, Anisotropic filter 2x 2) 8x MSAA AA, Anisotropic filter 16x.

1. 1920×1080 – 130fps
2. 1920×1080 – 77fps

1. 1600×900 – 150fps
2. 1600×900 – 102fps

Left 4 Dead 2 Demo

Just like the first L4D, L4D 2 also relies on the CPU. Just in case you didn’t play the demo, the demo takes place on The Waterfront map. The 1st map of The Parish campaign. I recorded a demo of me playing from the riverfront to the backdoor to the restaurant kitchen.

Max settings. The timings are: 1) No AA, Anisotropic filter 2x 2) 8x MSAA AA, Anisotropic filter 16x.

1. 1920×1080 – 148fps
2. 1920×1080 – 105fps

1. 1600×900 – 163fps
2. 1600×900 – 133fps

Did you notice that the numbers for L4D 2 are higher than L4D? This is because The Woods is more graphically intense than The Waterfront.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Unlike the other games that I tested, GTA IV has a benchmarking tool within the GUI of the game. Just click on “Graphics” then click on “Benchmark” near the bottom of the submenu. The preset demo shows a race on mopeds through the lighted streets of Liberty City. The submenu also shows you how much graphics memory you are using.

All settings are high and draw distance is mid-range.

• 1920×1080 – 60fps
• 1680×1050 – 61fps

Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 comes with a benchmarking tool. You just have to find it! At first, I found it on the DVD but it would not work. Finally, I found that it had been copied onto the computer during the installation. I found it in this directory C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\Ubisoft\Far Cry 2\bin. I used the demo Ranch – small.

My current game settings, DX10 All settings VERY HIGH.

• 1920×1080 – 57fps

DX10 All settings ULTRA HIGH

• 1920×1080 – 50fps

DX10 All settings VERY HIGH

• 1680×1050 – 59fps

DX10 All settings ULTRA HIGH

• 1680×1050 – 53fps

Crysis

GPU-Z after a round of Crysis.

Crysis is pretty much the current king of all benchmarked games and internet memes (“Yeah, but can it play Crysis?”). Crytek pulled out all of the stops when they made this game. It’s taxes, even, the most powerful gaming rigs and mine was no exception. I just recently bought this on Steam for 10€. I downloaded a benchmarking tool and the demo was a bird’s eye view of the island.

All tests were done in DX10, 32-bit. The timings are:  1) No AA, High quality 2) 8x AA, High Quality 3)  No AA, Very High Quality

1. 1920×1080 – 43fps
2. 1920×1080 – 38fps
3. 1920×1080 – 28fps

1. 1680×1050 – 46fps
2. 1680×1050 – 38fps
3. 1680×1050 – 32fps

Final thoughts

There is one lingering problem that I have had since Windows 7 RC. I make it a habit to put my computers into Hibernation instead of completely shutting them off for the night. My system tends to bring itself out of hibernation. I have set the sleep timer to 10 minutes and it goes to sleep. This happens every night. I turned “Hybrid Sleep” off so I could actually use Hibernation. I also disabled “Wake-on LAN” and “Magic Packets”.

I really enjoy building systems and this was no exception. What made it even more special was that my rig has quality parts and it is a high-end rig. Maybe it could use a Creative sound card and a LCD temperature gage and fan control. But this works just fine and it really didn’t break the bank. And if you look at the last picture just above, you can see that after playing Crysis, the EVGA card is only 76C. I have never seen that temperature reading above 79C. Plus, the area where my computer sits really is not any hotter than it normally is when the computer is off. So, it’s getting sufficient cooling thanks to the airflow provided by the fans, cable management and space of the Antec 1200. Good luck in building your gaming rigs!

I love using the Google search engine (who doesn’t?). I can very easily and quickly search for anything on the Internet using any web browser, and find the information that I’m looking for in a snap. Often, I’ve wanted to have a Google-like search engine just for my personal information which can be accessed on my PC or on the web. It turns out I may have found my answer with a product called Evernote.

Evernote is a cool product that can store various bits of information in a central database system “in-the-cloud” (Internet), on your PC, or on your smartphone. You can create multiple “notebooks” and store “notes” in each of them. Notes can consist of plain or formatted text, web page content, pictures, and audio. The single most useful feature I’ve seen, is the ability to easily grab content from a web page and save it to Evernote. A perfect example is when I come across a web site and I want to look into it further at a later date, I can easily save the full web page (or a portion of it) to a note in Evernote. In fact, there’s a FireFox browser plugin that easily does this for you.

All data stored in Evernote can be searched using a text string, just like with the Google search engine. In fact, if you store images in a note that contains text (say, when you snap a picture with your phone of product description at the store), Evernote can recognize the words in the image for the search! Speaking of snapshots, the Evernote app that runs on your smartphone (iPhone,Blackberry,Windows Mobile, or Palm Pre) interfaces with the Evernote database very nicely, and you can use the camera on your phone to easily snap a picture and store it in Evernote as a note. The Evernote site suggests using your phone’s camera for taking snapshots of business cards, airline tickets, travel receipts, etc. which is a great idea if your phone has a good camera (unfortunately, the camera on my Moto-Q phone is crappy).

You can also send an email to a special email address setup for your Evernote account and the infomation will be stored as a note in your default notebook.

Now, I went through an exercise several months ago trying to find a method for storing information in a database that I could access from my PC, from the web, and from my phone. I examined and tested Google Docs and Zoho for this capability, and ultimately determined that neither met my needs. Specifically, it was difficult to use my older Windows Mobile 5.0 Moto-Q phone to search and display my stored information. With Evernote, that wasn’t a problem.

As a test, I created a simple grocery checklist using Evernote on my PC. I then synced it to the web, and was able to access that same list very easily from my Moto-Q phone using the equivalent Evernote application. I found it using a very simple search and displayed the contents on my screen. Exactly what I need!

I can’t emphasize enough the power of the simple search engine. With Google Docs and Zoho I tried to organize my data into different folders, etc. but I couldn’t search for data as easily as with Evernote. In my case, I plan to use Evernote to store this type of data:

• Web pages that I come across that I want to check out later
• Future blogging topics
• Dinner recipes (so I don’t forget an ingredient when I go food shopping)
• Travel information (hotel, airport, and restaurant details)
• To-do checklists
• Grocery shopping list
• Automotive servicing records (oil changes, repairs, etc)
• Work related data (customer visit logs)

Evernote does have the ability to encrypt text, but I’m unsure to what level of encryption it is or the encryption method. As such, I’m not planning to store sensitive information in Evernote until I learn more about it.

Now, Evernote has both a free and paid subscription version which you can use. The free version limits the amount of data you can upload per month to 40 MB, which is pretty good for most basic activity. The subscription version ($5/month or $45/year) allows you to upload 500 MB per month and adds in a few more features.

So if you want a nice method for organizing and retrieving your important data from multiple devices and platforms, give Evernote a try!

I’ve solved my problem with having to install all my favorite applications twice on my Dell 11z netbook (once under the existing Vista OS and a 2nd time under Windows 7 when I do a clean install in about 10 days from now). It’s a wonderful automatic installer application called Ninite, which completely automates the installation process of several different applications. I describe this utility on my main tech blog site, so you can get more details from there.