You would think a large company like Intel would take time to test out their products, but when it comes to their CPU cooler design I guess they didn’t. Well maybe they did test it, but not for multiple installs. What I’m really talking about is the clip design on the stock Intel cooler, you can see it pictured above. I don’t know who came up with this design, but it’s horrible!
The biggest flaw of the clip design is that it is made of plastic. Plastic breaks extremely easily and also is easy to bend out of place. The design is 4 plastic plungers that you press down through holes in your motherboard. These plungers will lock into place and you’re good to go. Sounds easy right? Well it is if you only intend on installing the cooler once. If you want to use the cooler on another system you are in for some headaches.
As you try to remove the cooler by ejecting the plungers they tend to bend, this makes them extremely hard to install again. Also as I said the entire plunger is made of plastic so it can easily break. The ends can break off, the locking mechanism can break, or the tip can break off. If anything happens to 1 of the plungers you’re screwed because the cooler will not be properly secured onto the CPU.
I have been accustomed to the AMD clip system, which is made of metal. There is a single clip that you attach on each side of the CPU socket. I have installed over 50 AMD CPU coolers and they all have been relatively easy using the clip system, or similar design. Since the Core 2 Duo has come out I have built 4 different systems and each time I have had issues the CPU cooler installation. Even a lot of the aftermarket Intel CPU coolers use the damn plastic plunger design.
There are 2 reasons I think Intel has stuck with this system. One you don’t have to remove the motherboard from the case to install the cooler. Two, a lot of consumers just install the cooler once and never change it, or use it on another system. I really don’t understand why they don’t just use a CPU bracket like AMD does, it would make things a lot easier. If not a bracket then at least revise the current cooler with quality parts that won’t break. If I paid over $200 for a CPU I would feel more comfortable knowing what is keeping it cool is being held into place by metal, not plastic.
Website promotion is not always the easiest thing to do. I know that I have had trouble promoting websites in the past. A lot of people who are starting websites do not have a lot of money to work with, and I am the same way. After spending the money on design, coding, and hosting you don’t want to have to spend even more money on promotion. Now buying advertising to promote your website is a good way to get traffic, but if you really don’t have the money there are a lot of other alternatives. Here is a list of methods that I promote my websites at no cost.
Banners
When I start up a new site sometimes I will put a banner up on one of my already established sites to drive traffic to the site. I never replace existing advertising, but I will put a banner in rotation. If you are creating your first site you may ask a friend to put a banner on their site for a few days at no charge, or an exchange of banners.
Links
On most of my sites I have links to all of the other sites in the network. If the people reading one site like the content and see that you have other sites they are more than likely going to check out that site and see if they like it too.
News Exchange
This is how I get 60% of the traffic on ThinkComputers. If your site is in a specific niche you might want to see if there are other sites like it out there. Look on these sites and see if they have a news section with links to articles on other sites. They should list an e-mail to send news in to. Each time you post a new article send it out to these other sites and they will most likely post it.
Link Section
If you have a large network of sites you can put a link section at the top of all of your pages. Jon Waraas does this on all of his sites. At the top of each page is a random link to one of his sites and a drop down menu with all of his sites listed. This is more effective than just links somewhere on your page, because this is right at the top of the page.
Social Bookmarking Sites
These have become extremely popular and everyone tries to submit things to these sites to get on their front page and pickup a ton of traffic. These sites are like Digg, Slashdot, and Netscape. You are able to submit your articles to these sites and if enough people like your article it will make it to the front page. The big problem with this is a lot of people just submit every one of their articles. I would say the best way to get on the front page of these sites is to submit your best work.
So those are some very easy ways to promote your website. I know there are a lot of other methods, but there are the ones that I have used and have been successful with.
Running your own business is not an easy thing. It is so easy to get off task and even forget the important things you need to do. I have gone through making daily task lists, putting everything into outlook, and even considered getting a PDA. But before I wasted the money on a PDA I found Netvibes. Netvibes is sort of like your own personal homepage. You can move everything around on it, add modules, add widgets, add RSS feeds, and much more. I am using it as a daily task list / organizer and it has been working really well.
Here is what my personalized homepage looks like. Click on the image for a full sized screenshot.
As you can see in the center I have my daily tasks organized by day and below that I have the weather. On the right side of the page I have a list of blog topics that I want to write about and a list of upcoming reviews that I need to write. Below that I have RSS feeds for all of my sites. On the other side I have a list reviews that each one of my reviewers need to finish. This way I can keep track of what all they need to get done. Below that I have a calendar and web search.
As you can see I’m using a widget called Remember the Milk. Netvibes only offers a To Do List which is helpful, but I cannot have reoccurring tasks, so I am using Remember the Milk. You can setup a free account on their website then add the widget onto Netvibes. I really like it and I can organize things by the type of task as well, like work, personal, study, etc. Also I can set things at a higher priority than others.
Adding things to Netvibes is very easy. Just click on the add content button at the top of the page and you can add a ton of different things. Netvibes does offer basic widgets like weather, notes, to do list, calendar, etc, but there are a ton of widgets in their widget directory. You will find all kinds of widgets like a Digg widget, Myspace widget, and a Flickr widget.
Netvibes is really cool because you can move any of the widgets around anywhere on the screen and just as easily remove them. I also like it because it is online so as long as I have an internet connection I can be on task. The best part about it is that it is free! So if you are having trouble keeping on task or having trouble organizing work than you might want to check Netvibes out.
You may have noticed a link on the top of the page as well as the side of the page that says, “Watch me live!”. That is because I have started lifecasting. Basically I have a webcam on me most of the day. I have been very interested in lifecasting and wanted to see if I could do it. I have a pretty nice webcam and laptop so it’s really easy. All I had to do was find a streaming service. To my surprise there where quite a few to choose from and they all were free. Out of all of them Ustream seemed to me the most popular and a lot of popular shows were on there so I signed up and in less than 5 minutes I was online.
So if you ever want to see what I am up to you can check out the watch me live page or go to my Ustream show page. There you will also find a live chat so you can talk to me. Wonder how long I can do this for?
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