Woodbine computer class

Friday, October 27, 2006

The presentations of the class were preety nice . I liked Mediha's , Fuad's and Elaine's presentations the best because they were funny and very consistent . However i think my Q&A session was good even if i did what the "death from powerpoint" article told me : ask people to ask you questions. I also should've used animations but i thought they were distracting. I might use Elaine's method by a picture popping up when she talks about it. For short i think the class did a preety good job except some people put to much text.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

I made my presentation on the xbox. I think i did preety well except i panicked , skipped some information so maybe some other people will ask. My presentation was shorter than 3 minutes but I didn't know the questions should be extra ( I included the questions in the first 3 minutes)
Mr. Case asked me a lot of questions and i knew them , i study videogaming and it's history in my spare time. I think it's fun.

P.S : Yesterday i dissasembled an older computer and these days i will try to put it back together. I did okay except the floppy and the second hard-drive were very weirdly connected to the computer case but my dad helped me ( and it gave him a hard-time too) .I cut myself once but whatever .

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Friday we had a quiz and I think I did preety well , probably made a mistake at the binary because i'm not great at math. I'm sure I passed it.

Update: I got 19 out of 20 which is a 95 % so it's great . My only mistake is I didn't explain how a videocard makes the job easier for the computer.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

These days we are learning about powerpoint . Mr. Case showed us a few tricks which I allready knew .The important things he showed us is that Powepoint is secondary and the presenter is the most important . This phenomena is also called Death by Powerpoint which I did today at the business class , too bad i didn't know this when i created the PPT. I will also add some cool pictures near my articles ,even the early ones so it will look cooler .

Now we have an assignment to make a power point presentation of 3 minutes with four slides about a brand . I choose the Xbox 360 .

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Another article found using EBSCO is about "Gears of War " an Xbox 360 game that is very hyped but i didn't really know why. According to the article the game is a 3rd person shooter (you see the guy you are controllig) and it is based on taking cover then shooting your enemies > most shooters today are run and gun according too the article this game is stop and pop .
The graphics will be amazing with destructible environments and your main enemy will be monsters under the ground . Also according to the article this game has a really intense melee atack system (if you are close to the guy you punch him ) but in this game you have a chainsaw instead .COOL.

Monday, October 16, 2006

The article Stop Death by Power by Christian Buss talks about the mistakes people make when using Powerpoint . First one is the presentations are too linear and the audiences know what to expect so you have to try to make it a little more different.
Second don't write what you are about to say on the slide since the audiences can read them faster than you can say them out loud so they will be bored until you finish talking.
Third :Limit each slide from 30 to 60 seconds so you won't produce a mind dump .
Fourth : don't read the titles your audience probably did that allready and it takes away from the value and don't overclutter the presentation or add too many annoying animations.
Fifth : Before the audiences settle talk to them so you know what might concern them . Have a question and answer session and a ) omit a piece of key information so they will ask about it or b) tell some d from the audiences to ask a couple of questions so your question and answer session will be nice and interactive.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

I handed my project in and Mrs. Grifiths agreed for me to make a presentation on Monday for extra marks . I made a powerpoint presentation but that's more visual and now I'm killing myself trying to put tables in the power point presentation .
All the right type is working fine now :).

Friday, October 13, 2006

I'm done my project . It was pretty hard allways adding stuff and replacing PCs with another one you find later. I worked over 10 hours (including class) on it and i hope it will be good.I also have a short Powerpoint so i can present it better.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Initially i recommended only 1 computer for each clinet in the project but now i added an extra 2 computers for each client and I will make a small table that compares them. Most of the writing is on one computer though which I recommend . The other 2 are good computers but might be a little off from the people's wants (too powerfull ,too expensive ,ineficient etc.

Initially i recommended only 1 computer for each clinet in the project but now i added an extra 2 computers for each client and I will make a small table that compares them. Most of the writing is on one computer though which I recommend . The other 2 are good computers but might be a little off from the people's wants (too powerfull ,too expensive ,ineficient etc.

Monday, October 09, 2006

This is what i've been working for the past few days. I will hand a printed revised version though.




The perfect computer for a teacher who doesn’t want to spend a lot of money and uses it only for marking and creating tests
is the “eMachines AMD Sempron 3100+ 1.8GHz Computer “ which retails for 279.95+ taxes at Futureshop.I compared it to an older computer of mine which did these tasks pretty well.
This model is appropriate because the specs are perfect for writing documents and has an affordable price.
The processor is a single Amd Sempron 1.8 Ghz (gigahertz ) which is enough to do basic applications like Word processing and surfing the web . I remember a long time ago I had a computer at a 10th processor power and still did these tasks but these computers are hard to find and old. This pc has 256 Mb of Ram which also might be enough for these tasks since my old computer could do it with 64 Mb of Memory. 40 Gb of a hard drive isn’t a lot but that can store around 18 thousand documents if they are 2mb and if the Hard-drive isn’t enough the pc is equipped with a Cd-rw so information can also be stored on Cds . An optical media drive is necessary these days to install a program since most of them are stored on cd’s.
The video card is Nvidia 6100 with 128 Mb of shared memory .It might not be good for gaming but if a 32 mb videocard could do these tasks so can the Nvidia 6100 . The computer also has a soundcard which is helpful.
This package doesn’t include a monitor and as a monitor I reccomend the ThinkVision 17" CRT monitor which has 1280 x 1024 resolution ,the best feature of this monitor is the price .The computer includes a modem but it has a slow speed of 56/kbs I recommend a subscription to high speed internet which is around 25-50$ a month and the high speed modem is included. All you need is a 10/100 network adaptor which is integrated. With a 56 kb/s modem the person will sit more at the computer waiting to connect and load the webpages.
The total price of these is 280$ (computer ) + 88$ (monitor) = 368 $ + taxes. This model is refurbished to save money and is considered a low end model.
Other computers that the client might consider is Acer Aspire Intel Celeron which is more powerfull and little bit more expensive , for general use it would be a wise investition since it has has 3.2 GHZ which is greater than 1.8 Ghz , it has double the ammount of memory (512 MB)
it ahs a DVD burner so the client can put information on DVD's and a decent ammount of 160 GB
of HDD storage space at 7200 rpm (rotations per minute , the more the better ) .The other featuresare almost hte same except the second option has a 533 MHz system bus agains 100 Mhz system bus from the first model but since the client wouldn't use these features it would be 100 $ wasted.


To the student who wants a computer to play games , listen to music and surf the web I recommend a computer similar to what I am using now 3 Ghz processor , 1024 mb memory , and 256 mb of video memory .I would recommend the Systemax Venture Desktop Pc from Tigerdirect which I customized myself . The pc has a 3 Ghz cpu just like mine and it is pretty decent for playing games but handles easy tasks like playing Mp3s and doing homework. The original system comes with windows XP professional but windows XP home edition is more suitable for home use and it is also cheaper .The pc came with 256 Mb of memory but I decided to use the saved money from the operating system to purchase more memory and now there are 512 Mb. I would also spend an extra 24 dollars to upgrade the HDD from 80 Gigabytes to 160 because he can store more information (especially games and music ).
For an extra 13 $ buying a dvd drive might also be useful since a lot of games come on a dvd format . I don’t think the student needs a floppy drive or a card reader. As a graphic card I chose to upgrade from integrated graphics to the ATI 9550 with 256 Mb .I own this graphic card and it can handle a lot of games pretty well but some games still have issues but it has a Vga output port meaning if the student has an HDTV he can use it as a monitor. In order to save money the student should use the integrated sound ,shouldn’t need an internal modem , the network adaptor is integrated so he can use hi-speed internet .The keyboard and mouse should be simple because it saves money and it is a keyboard and mouse after all. For 6 dollars a student should get the Cyber Acoustics 2016 2-Piece speakers so he can listen to music . I don’t think the student might need other features like a webcam . This computer would cost 676.57 dollars plus taxes.
Now the monitor .I found this “Famous Brand “ (that’s how it’s called ) 19” CRT monitor only for 61.99 $ . The total package is 736.56 $ which is a good price for a mid-range computer with an included monitor.


For a person who is interested in gaming and graphics design I will recommend a high end computer. The Systemax Wildcat AMD based pc will be great for any gaming enthusiast or anyone who will do video editing . This computer is pricey but it will play the newest games for a very long time with no problem and no upgrading necessary.
The processor is an AMD Athlon 64 3200 with support for dual core technology and a clock speed of 2.0 Ghz but the technology inside this Cpu makes it the fastest type on the planet .The graphic card is a GeForce 7950GX2 with 1 gb of memory again this is probably one of the best graphic cards and it will be a while until it will become outdated . The motherboard of the computer also supports Sly meaning you can hook up 2 video cards at once to get a greater graphics but today wouldn’t be the case.The special thing about this computer is the PPU which is a physics processing unit so the physics in games are handled by this card and not the CPU. The computer has 2gb of DDR2 memory and even the most challenging games soon to be released require 1gb and DDR2 memory is faster than a simple DDR .
As a HDD(hard disk drive) I decided 250 GB should be enough because the pc is equipped with a DVD writer and info could be stored on DVDs The Keyboard and mouse resemble a design meant for gaming.The sound is integrated in the motherboard but that shouldn’t be a problem since there is enough memory to handle it.. This pc also has the 10/100 network card so the client can get high speed internet. This computer costs 2852 $ and it is considered a very high end model and there shouldn’t be a need for upgrade in a long time.
If the client wants to purchase a monitor I would recommend Dell 1905FP which is a 19” lcd with 1280 x 1024 maximum resolution .The price for this monitor is around 250$ which is a good price but the major drawback is that it’s refurbished however the company who manufactures it Dell is well known for customer support and warranty replacements would probably be the last company that wants to screw you up plus you already have a 1 year warranty from tigerdirect .


Bibliography
Tigerdirect.ca
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/configdetails.asp?Base=2412155
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/configdetails.asp?Base=1638120
Futureshop.ca
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0665000FS10079383&catid=

Saturday, October 07, 2006

about the project : i allready found the computers the people need .All i have to do is type it down and put everything together.
Happy Thanksgiving . !!! :)

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Assignment : 3 people need 3 different types of computers and we have to recomend a computer for each person.
Here is a link with a more detailed description :http://www.g9computes.blogspot.com/ .Due October 13.