Wednesday, September 5, 2007
IT audits should be short and sweet. Typically within about four hours, you should know exactly what is going on within the company's system, what needs to be done next, how you are going to prioritize the to-do list and what additional hardware, software or other products the company needs to buy.
Because you are proposing a lot of follow-up items, there will be plenty of time to come back for more in-depth work later, so you don't want to get too involved right away. IT audits should provide an overview of issues, not immediate solutions or total fixes.
A Checklist Keeps You On Time
Limiting IT audits to four hours is as easy as coming up with about a dozen different areas you will be addressing. Because you can't look at every single PC or item in one four-hour period, keeping it to these twelve most important things can help you stay on target. The following is an example list of items and their time allocations:
1. Half an hour to an hour on the primary server, which maybe another 20 minutes allotted to a secondary (if available).
2. A few minutes (15) on LAN hub infrastructure
3. A search for various routers and hub switches, 10 to 15 minutes at a time while making some notes on what you find or additional observations about LADs or surge protection.
4. Half an hour to 45 minutes on a few ?representative PCs.?
What Is A ?Representative Pc??
A representative PC is one attached to the most important PC users in the company. You can find out who these people are by asking your company contact directly. Looking at two to four representative PCs will give you a good idea of what is happening with configurations, drive mappings, network protocols, and what kind of shape they are in.
IT audits should give you plenty of information about what the hot spots are for a company, what can wait a few weeks or a few months to address and also what can go into the to-do list for a long-term plan. But they should be as short as possible while still giving clients a clear idea about how their systems are functioning.
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Why Choose a Core 2 Duo For Your CPU In Your New High End Computer ?
It must have been difficult for Intel to watch AMD's Athlon 64 and then the Athlon 64 X2 and FX pretty much take over the performance PC market, putting the once-untouchable chip giant into a position where its only competitive response was to cut prices. Those were dark days indeed. But now, with the release of the long-awaited codename "Conroe" -- the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors -- Intel looks set to start a new age of desktop domination.
Most onlookers expected Intel to take back the performance crown from AMD, but few anticipated the sheer magnitude of this victory, or the nearly flawless style with which Intel performed it. And the Core 2 Duo is just the first strike in this battle, as Intel is also planning preemptive Pentium D price drops and has revamped its single-core Pentium 4 and Celeron D lines as well.
The Conroe excels in three areas, which add up to the very definition of what a current buyer expects from a top-end desktop CPU. These factors are price, performance, and power requirements, and the 65-nanometer-process Core 2 Duo and Extreme have surpassed their AMD counterparts in each, completing the same type of triple play that AMD had turned on the Pentium 4 and Pentium D.
The question of who's got the best performance is not even up for debate: The 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 is the fastest desktop processor on the planet, and the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 is not far behind. Even the next-step-down 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 is an outstanding desktop performer that can outpace AMD's flagship Athlon 64 FX-62 in most tests.
Power and cooling requirements are also extremely low -- the Core 2 Duo line offers the lowest power draw of any dual-core processor, with the Core 2 Duo Extreme not far off. Prices are also extremely competitive. In fact, it's amazing that for such a competitive price , the Core 2 Duo E6600 can outrun AMD's entire desktop lineup. The lower-end Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400 models are even more affordable, although their 2MB instead of 4MB of Level 2 cache mean their relative performance isn't as high.
Intel has accomplished this via a drastic shift away from the Pentium's NetBurst technology. Conroe's next-generation core performs more instructions per clock cycle (IPC), rather than having a longer and potentially less efficient pipeline that can be clocked into the stratosphere. Core 2 processors' 2MB or 4MB of 256-bit L2 cache feature what Intel calls Advanced Smart Cache, dynamically shared between the two cores for maximum efficiency rather than chaining half the cache to each core.
With IPC levels exceeding those of AMD plus clock speeds up to 2.93GHz and a 1066MHz front-side bus, Intel has moved well ahead in the performance game despite sticking with traditional CPU and chipset architecture rather than AMD's on-chip-memory-controller approach.
The Conroe design also reflects a need to keep power requirements and heat production down via various power-saving technologies. Since the basic architecture will be shared through all of Intel's processor lines (except the Itanium), including upcoming mobile CPUs, this translates into very power-efficient processing.
The Core 2 Duo and Extreme processors may offer industry-leading performance, but Intel's SpeedStep technology ensures that the chips can ramp down the multiplier and reduce clock speed to conserve battery power and/or lower core heat levels.
Moreover, new Intelligent Power Capability can go beyond slowing the CPU as a whole to turning various core functions on and off as required. These power-saving techniques don't get in the way of outright performance, as the Conroe instantly jumps back to top speed when required.
Through the use of technical expertise obtained through advanced CPU server technology and exprertise Intel has leapfrogged once again to a combination of power , low energy use and heat production and reliability especially since with advances in CPU speed can disabling and damaging hear.
The Core 2 Duo CPUs should be a major consideration in your next high end computer purchase.
Computing - The Basic Generations of the Early PCs an Their Legacy
The Generations of early vintage PC computers can be divided based on the family type of CPU processor used in the computer.
Here are the basic family lineages of these CPUs
1) The Original the Granddaddy - ?8088?
The 8088 is slow slow slow. At the time (1981) it seemed like a very hot item.
The Intel 8088 is an Intel microprocessor based on the 8086, with 16-bit registers and an 8-bit external data bus.
The most influential microcomputer to use the 8088 was, by far, the IBM PC. The original PC processor ran at a clock frequency of 4.77 MHz. A popular clone using an 8088 was the Leading Edge Model D, with a switch to select running at 4.77 MHz or 7.16 MHz.
2) 802286
The 286 was the next generation of vintage computers in the mid 1980's era. A 286 family computer is about three to four times faster than an 8088 based PC.
The biggest problem with a 286 chip is that it does not handle memory well as a 386 (next step in the line) computer. It has a different instruction set (the programming telling a chip what to do), which is just slightly incompatible with the 386.
These differences, plus the slow speed, that made the 286 almost incompatible with the newer software sealed the 286's doom.
3) 80386SX and DX
In its day the 386 chip was a revolutionary change in computing which paved the way for later major upgrades in computing.
We owe much in our days of Pentium 4s to the early days of the 386 computers.
Compared to a 286, the 386 had a huge amount of addressable memory. The 386 came in two basic flavors ? SX and DX ? and in a whole range of speeds. The 386 SX was a bridge between the 16-bit and the 32 bit chips.
Higher clock speeds certainly boosted performance, but the most noticeable change was the move from 16 bit to 32 bit computing. When that occurred, performance was doubled immediately, since twice as much data could be moved and used. It is like grabbing twice as big a handful. The bigger the handful grabbed the more that can be moved at a time. Today this seems commonplace however at the time it was more than a major step leading to our current 32 bit and now 64 bit computers ( one more step we should be grateful for the 386 for leading us to ).
80486
The 486 was a more affiancing design than the lowly 386. It incorporated a built in 8 kb cache and cache controller (kb as opposed to megabyte which is 1000 kb). As well a Math Coprocessor, better architecture and memory management for 32 bit operations were part of the package. The cache gave a boost to overall performance while still using the relatively inexpensive dynamic random access memory (DRAM),
DRAM was a volatile type of main memory,
Cache serves a simple way to speed up the 486 computer. The cache anticipated the next instructions based on what was being done and stored it in a hiding place in memory. Then when the instructions or data was needed it was retrieved fairly rapidly from the hiding place in memory.
A 486 could process 32-bit instructions much faster than any 386. However DOS based software as it was written primarily for 8 and 16-bit systems could not take advantage of these advances.
OS/2 a multitasking operating system developed by Microsoft and Windows 3.0 and later 3.1 are able to take full advantage of the 486's features.
80486DX2
The 486DX2 was a peculiar chip that ran internally twice as fast the external system. In other words, if a machine was designed to run a 25 MHZ 486, you could put in the 50 MHZ 486DX2 and it would work fine without any major changes to the rest of the computer. It would not run as fast as a 50 MHZ 486DX though. Only the innards of the CPU are running as fast on a DX2 chip ? the rest of the computer is running at the speed designated around the 25 MHZ chip. This is a little confusing, but suffice to say that a 50 MHZ 486DX had more performance than a 50 MHZ 486DX2. Perhaps this however was little more than an Intel marketing gimmick.
804486SX
The 486SX was a slowed down 486.
It ran at 16, 20 and 25 MHZ.
Basically in a 486SX the math coprocessor chip was disabled.
The 486SX was a budget entry level chip meant to upgrade users from their 386 at less cost. Or it may have been seen as the 2 door car to get you into the car showroom or steer you away from competitors.
Lastly the 80486DX3
These were IBM licensed chips that were clock tripled 486 chips running at 75 MHZ and 99 MHZ (called conveniently 100 MHZ speed)
The Intel versions were called the DX4
It needs not be said that these chips were far than overshadowed by later Pentium processors of the same or greater speeds.
Generally the speed of the computer CPU goes more than family than speed. That is a 75 MHZ (later model) Pentium will almost certainly beat out a 100 MHZ 486 CPU.
