Chris Pirillo » hard-drive

Should You Create a Partition?

Chris — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:57:52 +0000

Should You Create a Partition? is a post from Chris Pirillo

It is surprising how strongly some people feel about the issue of partitioning or not. Voices are raised – faces become a bit redder – language becomes a bit more colorful. If you are from the school of thought that partitioning is absolutely not necessary, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page. Your point of view is valuable and should be considered.

This presentation, however, will favor partitioning. There will be some of us who will remember the days when, for example, a 3GB hard drive on your laptop was considered to be “state of the art”, and the cost of that machine was several thousand dollars. Now, that seems archaic, and the hard drives increasingly grow in size – and some are partitioned.

One of the best arguments on the side of partitioning was given by Mitch Tulloch, in an article for Microsoft. The three major points that Mitch basis his argument are:

partitioning organizes work
partitioning safeguards the data
partitioning increases the computer’s performance

One of the points is that Mitch makes is: At the end of each month, I copy last month’s Archive subfolders to CD, label it by date, and put it somewhere safe. That way I have last month’s backup ready if both my hard disks fail from a lightning bolt hitting my office, or my computer is infected with a virus, or a thief steals my computer. Needless to say, the security programs should be run to make certain that the back-up is not infected.

One of the most popular and well-used partitioning programs is Acronis Disk Director Suite. It has won industry recommendations and users’ praise.

The Acronis Disk Management and Partitioning program is easy to use and effective. It supports Windows (NT 4, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista). And, until July 22, 2009, the Acronis people are offering our readers an amazing thirty per cent (30%) discount.

This program is a CNET Editors’ Choice Award winner: A suite of utilities that will keep your hard disk healthy. An excellent set of tools that will allow you to keep your hard disk healthy and organized. The Acronis Disk Management program has had many third party reviews and it has been top rated.

Thanks to the Acronis people for the generous offering for our readers.

What’s the Best Hard Drive Enclosure to Buy?

Chris — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:25:04 +0000

What’s the Best Hard Drive Enclosure to Buy? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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A few days ago, I heard whimpering from my closet. I thought one of the dogs had been stuck inside there. Low and behold, it was an old hard drive whining to be used once again. However, I needed an enclosure to put it in! When I had the opportunity to look at the NexStar 3 from Vantec, I jumped on it!

The sturdy cage protects your hard drive, and the aluminum case draws away the heat. This protects your drive from overheating. The NexStar 3 is available in two awesome colors: Onyx black and midnight blue. The colors are vibrant, allowing you to store your data in an enclosure that matches your style.

This enclosure will accommodate any SATA drive, no matter the size. It even has several connectivity options, which makes it quite versatile! One of the things that stands out about the NexStar 3 is that it has a removable stand, and can sit it whichever way works best.

The thing that stands out the most, however, is that the tray slides out. Once you’ve attached the hard drive to this, you simply slide the tray back in. There are no tools necessary, and it’s just so easy to get your drive up and running.

So there you have it: The NexStar 3 from Vantec is sleek and sexy looking, it has a ton of connectivity options, and it is amazing easy to use. Be sure to consider grabbing one of these for yourself if you need a hard drive enclosure.

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How to Speed Up Your PC

Chris — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:40:29 +0000

How to Speed Up Your PC is a post from Chris Pirillo

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PCPitstop is one of those resources you need, but don’t realize it until you need it! These guys have been around for nearly a decade now, and their reputation is rock-solid. They have a feature called “Ask an Expert” – and they’ve asked me to answer one of the questions. Candace is wondering how she can speed up her computer. She defrags regularly, and isn’t sure what more she can do.

There are several things you can do, Candace. Memory could speed things up, although there’s a law of diminishing returns. Since you didn’t mention a specific operating system, I know you’re running Windows due to the mention of running a defrag. If you’re using Vista – stop it. Spring forward to the Windows 7 beta, or roll back to XP. Even if you like Vista, you still have to realize how much of a resource hog it can be. The operating system is as important as the software you’re running on it.

Defragging is only going to help you so much. If your hard drive is full – consider cleaning it up. Store some of your videos, pictures and documents on a separate storage drive. If your hard drive is full, it definitely will not run at optimal importance.

Another option is to upgrade your hard drive itself. Consider switching from the HDD hard drive you likely have to a Solid State Drive. The problem could be due to the bottleneck speed of your current hard drive.

It’s difficult to guess at what will work best here, since I don’t know the full specs of the system. However, I’m willing to wager that the problem is bottleneck with the hard drive. I couldn’t believe how much faster my own personal machine ran after upgrading myself to the Samsung SSD.

How else can Candace make her computer faster? Let’s make this a community effort – if you have an answer to this, please feel free to leave your thoughts in a follow-up comment to this video.

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Are SSDs Good for Gaming?

Chris — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:43:37 +0000

Are SSDs Good for Gaming? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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No, there’s nothing wrong with this video or your computer! I was just being my usual dorky self. You know, your computer can run that fast if you have the right hardware. There will always be slow components, of course – usually your hard drive. That isn’t the case if you have an SSD drive though! You might remember a few weeks ago, I did a review of Samsung’s stupid fast SSD. I was just flabbergasted at how quickly everything ran on my computer.

A solid-state drive is something that has no moving parts, and is just stupid fast. Many of you went out and bought your own SSD drive, and are reporting to me that you can’t imagine going back. I’ve noticed so much of a speed increase on my computer since changing over to the Samsung SSD. Programs that use a lot of data – like my instant messenger program – are just lightning fast compared to what they were on a regular drive.

Many of you have asked ‘how is game performance on an SSD?”. Of course it’s faster and better! When you copy your game data over to your drive, you know that it’s going to have to read the information. The faster the read time – the more responsive the game is going to be. Game response on an SSD is great to phenominal. When you’re gaming, you want to keep rolling… so get an SSD.

Fine, don’t believe me? I decided to demonstrate using Need For Speed: Carbon. I’ve already copied over all 5+GB to the Samsung SSD. I chose a quick and easy race, since I’m not the greatest at playing things like this. Heck, I try though! What more do you want?

Remember, the game loaded from a 5GB app on the SSD… and it was ready within a couple of seconds. That’s literally all it took! Think about how long it takes you to load a game like this on your normal drive. You’re jealous now, aren’t you?

You know what you need to do. You need to get yourself an SSD today! Who knows what the future will bring… but the present is stupid fast!

Thanks again to Samsung for sending this to me. My life is just so much better now.

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Protecting Yourself from a Hard Drive Disaster

Chris — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:31:16 +0000

Protecting Yourself from a Hard Drive Disaster is a post from Chris Pirillo

This can happen to anyone. Unfortunately, it happened to a long time Lockergnome chatroom visitor, Catherine (aka ‘Noggie’). I’m sure many of you have seen her in the room. Without any warning whatsoever, her healthy hard drive stopped working. Upon reboot, the operating system could not be initiated. Everything was gone. Fortunately, Catherine did have a backup copy that was almost current. She lost all of her most recent work covering the three days prior to the crash. The irony is that Catherine has written about doing backups, and published some of those articles on the Lockergnome pages and newsletters.

Disasters like this are just a matter of time. It happens to all of us who have spent much time on the computer. Hard drives can – and do – fail. If you do not have a backup of your data, everything can be gone. This means all of your data files, all of your music, all of your pictures, all of your software… everything.

Imagine all the time, energy and frustration to find all the registration codes of that software that used to be working just fine. Catherine’s hard drive crash could have been much worse. Now, if she wants to try to recover that work for those last three days, it might cost her hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of dollars. And even then, there are no guarantees that the hard drive recovery specialists can be successful.

Save yourself the aggravation. Prepare for a hard drive failure now. No, don’t wait. Really – don’t wait. Do the backups now, and make copies regularly. And if the information on your hard drive is really important, do multiple backup copies. Here is a program that will do this for you. It is the well-known Acronis True Image Program. The backup can be done easily:

Acronis True Image Program is an award-winning backup and recovery solution for a good reason: it protects your PC after just one click and allows you to recover from viruses, unstable software downloads, and failed hard drives. Create an exact copy of your PC and restore it from a major failure in minutes, or back up important files and recover them even faster.”

From now until June 2nd, 2009, you can save fifteen dollars ($15.00!!) on this excellent program. That’s 30% off!

Use this program to protect your data. The backup can save you beyond a hard drive disaster. It can help if you have a bad computer infection. If you have a virus or malware problem, you will have an extra layer of protection. Restoration of a clean system can be simple. Just make sure that you are making a copy when your computer is free from malware and other infections. Otherwise, you will be replicating the problem. And you can find in our archives the security programs that we recommend. Believe me – you don’t want to risk what you have on that hard drive. Acronis is an excellent layer of security and, at this price, this program for protecting your computer data is a true bargain.

Are You Ready to Buy an SSD?

Chris — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:00:37 +0000

Are You Ready to Buy an SSD? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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What’s the bottleneck in your primary machine? For most people, it’s actually the speed of their hard drive. SSD is coming into its own, and can definitely clean up this problem for you. I received a review unit recently, and you can consider me a convert! Samsung sent the unit to me, and I have been flabbergasted at the results.

I’m going to be using this as my primary drive. My old drive was no slouch, but I could definitely feel the crunch when it was working. That’s less of a worry with SSD – there are no moving components. It’s insanely fast, I’m telling you. You’ll be amazed at the difference you’ll see!

I could put this into a notebook, but I’m not going to. I’m putting it into my Mac Pro. I’m going to keep the other hard drives that I had, and copy over files as I need them. Once I have everything off the old drives, I’ll format them and be done with them. I’ll have a pretty happy system, and I’m very much looking forward to installing it! My computer is going to be stupid fast!!!

Do you even know how fast your hard drive is spinning, and what your transfer rates are? I can guarantee that it probably doesn’t come close to what this SSD can do! This is a dream come true, and cutting edge.

If you want massive performance boosts, you need to take a look at one of these, for sure.

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Samsung’s SSD Hardware is Stupid Fast

Chris — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:37:08 +0000

Samsung’s SSD Hardware is Stupid Fast is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I recently purchased a Samsung SSD drive and put it in my Mac. I decided to try opening a bunch of intensive programs all at once to see how fast they would open. It is STUPID FAST!! All of them opened before I could even count to two!

So what IS a solid state drive? An SSD is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store data. An SSD emulates a hard disk drive interface, thus replacing it in most situations. They’re light, and they’re fast. This makes them ideal for laptops!

These drives have been around for some time, but it is only recently that they have started to become available through normal channels and even available to the average consumers; despite that fact they are still far from affordable.

Not only are they stupid fast, they’re completely silent. You’d expect to hear your hard drive “working” when you’re doing something, right? Not with one of these babies. They’re just totally and completely quiet. What a change that is!

If you’re in the market for something like this, I’d definitely recommend the Samsung. It works very well, and I’m absolutely happy with it.

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Top 5 Tips for Buying a Hard Drive

Chris — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:45:27 +0000

Top 5 Tips for Buying a Hard Drive is a post from Chris Pirillo

“loverstink85″ from our chat room recently purchased a 1TB hard drive and wanted to share his experience with the rest of the community. He lives in the Philippines and is just 13 years old. He’s been subscribed to our YouTube channel since 2007, too. When I was that old, I don’t think hard drives were even available on the mass market. No matter, here’s his “guest blog post” wisdom on buying hard drives:

Compatibility. If you’re buying a hard drive, make sure your computer supports that kind of hard drive. If your computer is about 8 years old, it probably still uses the EIDE/PATA interface. But if your computer is almost 5 years old (like mine), it might include the first generation SATA interface (SATA150). If you just recently purchased your computer, it should have the second generation SATA interface (SATA300). SATA300 is backwards-compatible with SATA150. Some motherboard chipsets that have the SATA150 interface (namely the VIA and SIS chipsets: VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420, VT6421L, SIS760, SIS964 found on some ECS motherboards) don’t support SATA300 drives. So, the hard drive companies addressed these problems by putting a jumper on their drives which will force them to use the SATA150 speed. The same applies for laptops. Laptops also have SATA and/or IDE interfaces in them.

Capacity and Speed. A lot of people think that when you’re gonna buy a hard drive, you should always get the highest capacity available in the market. That is wrong. If you’re gonna buy a hard drive, make sure its capacity is not too big OR too small. Its speed is a bigger factor. Make sure you are going to buy a hard drive with at least 7200RPM spindle speed (for desktops). If you are just gonna use the hard drive for media centers or just basic file storage, 5400RPM is enough. And some hard drives at 5400RPM beat some 7200RPM hard drives according to benchmarks. For laptops, you have to be aware that heat is a factor, so a slower spinning hard drive may be advised.

Brand / Reliability. I have an 80 GB IDE Western Digital drive which came bundled with the PC I purchased in 2005. It is still running well, but I need more space. Make sure your hard drive has the most features in it that you believe will (or has been proven to) improve reliability. And the brand doesn’t matter in my opinion. All companies make mistakes and great products so don’t go buying a Seagate just because you have been a Seagate fan for years.

Power consumption. Western Digital has just released a hard drive family called the GreenPower hard drives, which they say are eco-friendly, cool and quiet. By just reading the family name, we’re lead to believe that they will have low power consumption. According to Western Digital, by putting a GreenPower hard drive in your machine, it’s just like taking your car off the road for 14 days in one year. Make sure your power supply will support the power requirements of ANY hard drive, though.

User opinions. You should also read user opinions. I have been thankful for my peers – because without them, i could have purchased the Seagate hard drives which have a firmware bug in them which causes the hard drive head to bump and click when going into power saving mode. Apparently, these drives have buggy firmware and Seagate still doesn’t have a official fix for this. You can look for user reviews by looking at unboxing videos on YouTube or product comments on e-commerce sites, etc. (or by looking at some technical forums and blogs).

How Fast is Booting from an SSD?

Chris — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:10:51 +0000

How Fast is Booting from an SSD? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Booting up using a Samsung SSD drive is stupid fast. I attempted to count how long it takes to boot – and didn’t even make it to two. I’m not kidding!

SSD stands for Solid State Drive. So why go with a solid-state drive? The main advantages are improved read and seek performance, a much better battery life, and awesome durability. The price tag is, of course, really high for these right now. But that’s always the case when the newest and best comes out. SSD prices will be dropping and capacities will be increasing over time like with anything else. Even though these are pretty rare right now, they’ll become standard before too long.

We have SSD deals and discounts aplenty, too.

As you saw in this video, the boot time using one of these babies is just amazingly fast. It’s also so quiet it could scare you. We’re used to hearing our hard drives grinding away during heavy work loads… not so using one of these! It’s just – quiet. Copying files and such is a little faster than when using other types of hard drives, but that’s an area that still needs to be improved upon.

As time goes on and I continue to run my machine on the SSD drive, I’ll be sure to let you all know how things are going. Thanks to the Samsung SSD team for enabling this experience!

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Western Digital 300GB VelociRaptor Hard Drive Deal

coupons — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 01:31:35 +0000

Western Digital 300GB VelociRaptor Hard Drive Deal is a post from Chris Pirillo

From: Jeff Gomez
Date: April 17, 2009 10:25:52 PM PDT
To: Chris Pirillo
Subject: VelociRaptor Coupons

I’ve been thinking of upgrading my boot/program drive to the 300gig VelociRaptors and I saw when you were putting in your SDD and VelociRaptors you could get coupons, so if you have any shoot them my way, it would be greatly appreciated.

Hey Jeff,

The best deal is:

B&H Photo – Western Digital 300GB VelociRaptor Internal SATA Hard Drive only $229.99 + Free Shipping

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Data Recovery Experts

Chris — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:59:56 +0000

Data Recovery Experts is a post from Chris Pirillo

Jeff Phillips has had it “up to here” with Data Recovery and Computer Repair Breakthroughs. He decided to write me this morning with his thoughts on the matter:

It really frustrates me that consumers are losing their valuable hard drive data from self proclaimed “Data Recovery Experts.” I just invented the world’s first universal tool to remove parts out of a hard drive without damaging the components – so I know a bit about data recovery.

I am a former computer instructor and I run SD Computers and Data Recovery. It bugs me that other firms tout themselves as experts, but do not even know the basics of static grounding when working with hard drives or that the drives are calibrated to individual specs and not meant to be dismantled.

Surprisingly, the majority of computer repair and data recovery facilities don’t even know that removing the cover of the hard drive prevents data retrieval in most cases. We also created a process of obtaining factory assembled calibration settings without opening the cover. This break-through application of technology utilizes high end lasers to evaluate the perimeter settings. We can often now repair even a electrically damaged drive without removing a screw or picking up a soldering iron.

I have been wanting to help educate the public so that they can evaluate a computer repair and data recovery shop and have a chance at salvaging their information; or at least be aware of the key warning signs that might indicate an eminent failure, so they can copy their data prior to hard drive failure. But also, there are several key factors to look for when taking your computer to a repair firm for basic repair.

Most computer technicians have less than 5 years experience, and they don’t even know how to properly handle a hard drive or understand the symptoms, to say the least about having the ability to educate the customer on how to prevent future data loss.

There is so much more to share and I can organize the documentation and graphics should you desire. True data recovery experts of a very elite group, but there seems to be a new data recovery guy popping up every day that is really just experimenting with customer data, and preventing the few expert shops from ever getting data.

Hard Drive: Fail!

Chris — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:47:24 +0000

Hard Drive: Fail! is a post from Chris Pirillo

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My Macbook is working now, thankfully. I had to get a new hard drive. Instead of an Apple showing up when the Macbook booted up, I saw a symbol with a circle through it, suggesting there was a problem. After much diagnosing and talking with others via Twitter and Geeks, I learned that indeed – my hard drive had died.

I tried all of the suggestions that all of you gave me, and nothing really worked. I went online on Apple’s site, and made an appointment via my AppleCare. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now: AppleCare is well worth the money you’ll spend for it. It completely takes the stress out of any problems that may arise with your equipment!

I took the Macbook in, and the tech plugged in a Target Disk Mode. That’s where you plug in a FireWire drive, and boot off of that. Then they ran a Smart Disk Utility check from that. Indeed, the hard drive was failing. I knew that they would replace the drive, and they had it in stock. I begged them to let me have my dying drive back, even though it’s not policy. After signing my life away, they did give me the bad drive. That gave me the opportunity to try and recover the information off of it.

A few months ago, I talked about the NexStar Hard Drive Dock. I wasn’t sure I’d really have much use for it again. Boy, am I happy now that I have this little thing! I plugged it in and connected it by USB. I was able to mount my dying drive, even though it was read-only. I didn’t have a lot of things I needed to copy off of it, but there were some things. I use the Macbook to sync my iPhone, so I wanted to be able to get an index of all of the Apps I have!

The NexStar works perfectly! The connection is a bit flaky, but as long as you don’t touch it you should be ok. I ran into some problems using OS X Copy feature. Instead, I dropped to a command line, and did it that way. I was able to get all of the data that I needed from my old drive.

What should I do with the dying drive now? Should I take a hammer to it? When asking the chat that question, someone mentioned that I had “learned my lesson”. Uhm, seriously… this isn’t an Apple problem. It’s a hard drive. They fail. It doesn’t matter what kind of machine they might be in. However, AppleCare was amazing, and I had an excellent experience. How could I complain about that?

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What Can You Do with a Dead Hard Drive?

Chris — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:30:24 +0000

What Can You Do with a Dead Hard Drive? is a post from Chris Pirillo

Kinkajou suggests…

Make a wind chime with the platters. If there are at least 3 platters in the drive you could make a small wind chime. Just string them up, hang them on a small piece of wood or something and you could put it outside or you could hang it in the office. Hacked Gadgets also has a top 5 list of things to do with an old hard drive, one of their suggestions is a wind chime.

Make a belt buckle out of one of the platters. If a belt buckle isn’t for you, you could also possibly get a baseball cap and somehow attach the platter where a logo would go, but those platters are a bit heavier than fabric, but it’s always a suggestion.

You could then take the leftover case of the drive, and make a small storage box. Just gut the drive and put some hinges on it. You could put small treats for Wicket and Pixie or candy for you in it and keep the box in the desk.

You could harvest the magnets that are in the drive and put them on the fridge. High tech fridge magnet to hold the shopping list for the win.

You could also possibly find someone or a company that may inscribe your “Chris Logo” onto a platter and you could possibly install/mount it on your desk. And this leads into the next suggestion…

Take the platters and make a wall hanging. With one platter per hanging you could make something like platinum records. If you can scrounge up a second or third dead hard drive you could use all the platters to make a hard drive mirror. It’ll look geeky, and it’ll be a great conversation piece for visitors. Hey, Chris, what’s this and where did you get it? It’s a hard drive mirror. A little art project I did after the drive in my MacBook Pro’s hard drive died. Or you could just take the platters and use them to frame a picture of yourself, Ponzi, and the kids (Wicket/Pixie). The possibilities in this category are rather endless.

You could gut the case and turn it into portable flash hard drive… Okay, with the set up they show here, it would be four drives showing up when you plug it in, but still a neat little idea, and with the price of USB flash drives constantly going down you could put four 16 GB drives in there and basically have a 64 GB backup drive. You could also just turn the drive into a USB hub with a little slicing and ingenuity, you could have a fancy enclosure for a 4-port USB hub.

Another project, take the platters, get some kind sticky rubber feet for the bottom, maybe even wrap the platter with yarn or fabric, and make a coaster. You don’t want nasty rings to devlop on the desk, oh no.

And if you want to be less creative, and totally destructive, you could just take a hammer to the drive, but that’s not nearly as much fun, really it isn’t.

And finally, something to try if you want one last go at getting anything off the drive before you call it quits. It might work in Leopard…

And one last idea that came to me a few minutes ago, if you do go the destructive route, take the platters out, paint the platters with different colored semi-transparent paints, smash them up into little bits and then stick them down on some paper or canvas that you’ve applied some adhesive or glue to, frame it, then either hang it in the office or sell it on eBay for five thousand dollars. It kinda goes back to the wall art idea from earlier.

Apple Boot Error – Any Ideas?!

Chris — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:58:31 +0000

Apple Boot Error – Any Ideas?! is a post from Chris Pirillo

How to Visualize Files on Your Hard Drive

Chris — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:15:40 +0000

How to Visualize Files on Your Hard Drive is a post from Chris Pirillo

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During our last GoToMeeting, we took a look at what Will had on his desktop. He was using StepTree in order to view and manage the files in his hard drives. This free program is extremely extensive, and will allow you to keep control of what’s on your computer.

StepTree is basically a Tree-Map extended into three dimensions where the size of files and directories is mapped to area in the visualization. Therefore, the area of a directory in the visualization is indicative of the sizes of all the directories below it.

There are thousands upon thousands of files in your hard drive when the computer is new – long before you ever add your first program or document. Anyone who thinks they have full control over every one of those files is sadly mistaken. Using a free program like StepTree lets you keep track of your files, and maintain your hard drive properly.

Every week we do a GoToMeeting with people from our live community. GoToMeeting is the perfect way to collaborate and share what’s on your desktop with others. You can use it for your next business meeting, or just to show off your latest gaming achievements to your friends. Make sure you join us for the next one!

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How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

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Plus, as a friend of Chris Pirillo, enter code CHRIS7, that's C-H-R-I-S and the number 7, when you check out, and save an additional 10% on any order. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy.com.

VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.