Several weeks ago, I made the jump into the world of ultra-wide monitors. I held off on writing about my experience until I had lived with it for a bit. The bottom line is that I have adjusted and can’t imagine going back. Here’s what happened. For many years, I happily lived with 2 monitors….
Category: Hardware
ThinkStation P340 Tiny – A First Look
Many of you know that I am a big fan of Lenovo products. I belong to a group sponsored by Lenovo called Lenovo Insiders that spreads the word about Lenovo. However, I never pull any punches and have never been reluctant to be brutally honest when necessary. But none of that really matters today as…
I ThinkPad, Therefore I Go
A few years ago I purchased a ThinkPad P50 when they first hit the market. Because I typically need a lot of horsepower for teaching classes and conference presentations, I was thrilled to get a system with 64GB or memory and a Xeon processor. Yes, I had to trade some weight for that much horsepower…
More Power is on the way
For the past several months, I’ve been debating about what to do for the next iteration of my Hyper-V network. I rely on it heavily for my writing, course-ware development, and training. For awhile now I’ve been traveling with a Yoga 2 Pro which runs a few virtual machines, and a Gigabyte Brix unit with…
More Power Scotty!
Many of you have seen my travel with my Yoga 2 Pro laptop and a Gigabyte Brix running Hyper-V with 16GB of RAM and a 240GB msata drive. I use these rigs for demos when traveling and they also provide me with a test domain network. But lately I’ve started feeling some constraints. Even though…
My Mobile Training and Presentation Setup
As many of you know, I typically travel with a mobile Hyper-V setup using a mini-server housed in a Gigabyte Brix unit. I also have a brand new Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, which I’ve also written about. During the recent PowerShell Summit my intent was to use this gear during my presentations and demos. Sadly,…
The Ultrabook Quest is Ended
Over the last several weeks I’ve been researching, thinking and mulling over a decision for a new laptop. In short, I was looking for something smaller in the ultrabook form factor that could still run a few Hyper-V virtual machines. In the end I decided to compromise and ended up with a Yoga Pro 2…
The Ultrabook Quest Continues
I’ve been continuing my research and deliberations over a new laptop, and am still leaning towards the ultrabook form factor. As to be expected there is no perfect, no-brainer solution, at least for me. What I have been able to do is prioritize the features I need. Since my primary need is for a presentation…
My Ultrabook Quest
Working for myself, I try to keep major expenses to a minimum. Computer equipment falls into that category. But the time has come to refresh my laptop. And since many of you buy and support hardware I thought I’d turn to you for suggestions. I have some requirements and something of a short list but…
Mini Hyper-V Benchmarks
I’ve received a lot of interest in my mini Hyper-V project. I’m still running preview bits of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. Once final bits are released I’ll do a clean re-install. But until then I’ve been using it running about 4 virtual machines without a hiccup. I was getting some questions about benchmarks so…
Mini Hyper-V: Setup
Now that hardware has been installed on my mini Hyper-V project, next up is to setup the unit and get software installed. The Brix fires up very quickly and of course since nothing is installed I initially see the no operating system found message. Rebooting, pressing F2 gets me into the BIOS setup. The only…
Mini Hyper-V: Hardware Build
So the parts arrived for my mini Hyper-V project. I have to say I’m really excited about this. Everything is so tiny! Here’s what I have to work with. I have the Brix unit, a 256GB mSATA drive, 16GB of RAM and a video adapter. The Brix unit is amazingly small and fits in the…
Building a Mini Hyper-V Server
Since I work at home, I naturally lack the extensive IT infrastructure that you most likely enjoy. However I rely on a mix of virtualized machines delivered through an ESXi server and running Hyper-V on my Windows 8 laptop. The downside, is that even with 8GB or RAM and an SSD in my laptop, I’m…
Netbook or Tablet? Why Not Both?
I recently came across an article describing a very intriguing product that is a combination of tablet computer and netbook. Its called the Touchbook and it is offered by a company called Always Innovating. This small device, about 3 lbs with the keyboard, brags a 10 hour battery life. What I find most intriguing…