Hi All: Matthew will be upgrading the backend Server OS and PHP so the forum SW can be upgraded to the latest sometime next weekend. There is also a free host upgrade waiting to give the server double the drive space which we need. He will need about 30 minutes down time for the host upgrade part. And then it'll likely be at least a half day to get the server on to the newest version of the OS and the xen upgrade completed. Wayne
The testament and curse of having a stable server. It just chugs along doing its thing but really in need of some updates and downtime.
Hi All: While purchasing the Xenforo Forum SW upgrade, I thought I may as well upgrade my laptop since the 7th Gen I5 equipped HP w/ a 1TB IDE HD, 8 GBs of RAM, 17" 1600 x 900 display, and Windows 7, 8, and finally 10 has seen better days and is quickly becoming unusable for any kind of video editing. In its place I purchased a new ($800) HP with an 11th gen I5, 12 GB of DDR4 RAM, 1 TB SSD drive, 17" 1920x1080 IPS display, and Windows 11. I also purchased a ($46) Redragon S101 wired backlit KB and Mouse and a ($305) Asus VL249HE 23.8” 1080P IPS monitor. I have a 750 GB laptop drive from the old HP upgrade setup in a powered case for backup which is also connected to the new HP. By pulling 3 USBs and the power cord, I can hit the road like I always have but it is located at my work desk/workspace now and is as good as any desktop I have owned in the past. Outside of high end gaming of course which I never do. The Intel IrisX on chip graphics actually bests the NVIDIA MX series laptop cards so I did not lose anything on that no cost HW choice fortunately. I also have a non-backlit wired Microsoft Natural keyboard and Intellimouse I can swap to if I do not end up liking the highly regarded Redragon wired KB and Mouse. I am still debating this as I type as the Redragon mouse buttons and keyboard keys are pretty loud vs the almost silent Microsoft input HW. On the SW side, I upgraded to Corel Video Studio 2021 Ultimate on a Christmas deal for just $35, ACDSee 2021 photo editing suite, and Microsoft Office 2019/Office 365 to name a few. All in, network up and downloads speeds are up 300 to 400%, USB transfer rates are up 200%, SD Card transfer rates are up 300% and the new laptop is all-around a lot snappier as the following std. benchmark comparisons between the old HP and new HP will attest. The old Laptops HD was just becoming unusable so I am in the process of formatting and restoring to Windows 7 from the recovery files and updating everything back to Windows 10 stock to see if those disc benchmarks will improve any? 2021 HP Laptop Benchmarks CINEBENCH 32, Superposition, and CrystalDiscMark Benchmarks 2017 HP Laptop Benchmarks CINEBENCH 32, Superposition, and CrystalDiscMark Benchmarks In the 4 to 5 years between purchases, CPU performance has doubled, Graphic performance has improved by 350%, and drive performance ... As you can tell, I am a huge fan of SSDs vs the older IDE rotating drives. Maybe I can get some more work done on the site with all of these SW and HW upgrades instead of screwing around driving around the country this year. I made this vid on the new HP last night because it is so much faster. 2021 Porsche Taycan Vanita, OK to Hesperia, CA: 1,430-miles in 21-hours and 5-minutes in an EV! Wayne
Hi All: I spent most of the day wiping the 2017 HP Laptop and reinstalling Windows 10. The clean install removed most of the disc churning but the benchmarks - especially the CrystalDiscMark, barely budged. Yup, I needed a new laptop. 2017 HP Laptop w/ Clean Windows Install Benchmarks CINEBENCH 32, Superposition, and CrystalDiscMark Benchmarks Wayne
I upgraded my laptop to Win 11 a month or 2 ago. There's still some aspects I'm still trying to get used to, but its been stable.
I'm in shock that Wayne spent that much time driving in the left lane . The only time I've seen him over there was when there were HOV lanes or going down a hill.
Hi All: I knew the new 2021 HP laptops Wi-Fi was better but until you measure the real-time network connection/bandwidth performance, it is just a notion. 2021 HP vs 2017 Laptop 2021 on top in my office, 2017 in the middle in my office, and 2017 next to the router. The top is from my home office where I completed the Speedtest on my new 2021 HP laptop and is 2-walls from the TMobile Router in my living room. The middle test is the 2017 in my office. The lower Speedtest is the 2017 is in my living room next to the router. 2021 HP laptop - 200 Mbps down, 15 Mbps up in my home office. 2017 HP laptop - 048 Mbps down, 09 Mbps up in my home office. 2017 HP laptop - 053 Mbps down, 17 Mbps up in my living room next to the Wi-Fi router. Data transfer speeds from the SD slot, the USB 3.0 port(s), internally to and from the 1 TB SSD, and through the new 2021 laptops Realtek GbE WiFi controller and 802.11ac PCIe adapter absolutely improve the end user work experience. I should have done this sooner. Wayne
Hi All: Except for deciding if I want to switch back to my Microsoft Natural KB and Intellimouse from the Redragon back lit KB and Mouse - the key and mouse strokes click loudly, the 24" Asus IPS monitor is beautiful albeit not cheap. The inexpensive Creative Pebble speakers ($19.87 incl. tax shipped) sound pretty good for as small as they are. They are a vast improvement over any laptop speakers. The Ulanzi extendable mini-tripod for the GoPro Hero9 on the left ($21.50 incl. tax shipped) has multiple mounts incl. a 1/4" tripod, buckle, and mount to mount. This should prove useful in short order while I am trying to capture the Taycan's main screen during a DCFC and my Galaxy S20 FE is tripod mounted on an EA 350 KW display. Wayne
Hi All: Here are two examples of the 21 Porsche Taycan charging in Orange, CA with a tall white building as the backdrop. Using ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021 on the new HP Laptop, I am able to instantly correct for perspective with a drag of the mouse. I used to open up Lightroom to do this and learning even the basics in lightroom was a PIA! 2021 Porsche Taycan - ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate Top pic was Rotated, Perspective Correction applied, Cropped, and Resized. Bottom pic is missing Perspective Correction. While Perspective Correction can be overdone, it is a tool I rarely used given the hassle. With it built in to ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021, I will probably be using it more and more. What do you think? Look at the EA Chargers and left side of the buildings lean to the right and left of the buildings lean to the left vs. the perspective corrected pic on top. I have already fixed a number of OEM provided photos for posting onto CleanMPG with that feature along the rest of the basic photo editing tools I have been using for years. Wayne
Hi All: Having spent much of the day yesterday setting up and recording the Porsche Taycan's pre-charge battery conditioning procedure(s) for maximum charge rates and charging from near empty (5%) to near full (80%) SOC on an EA 350 KW, I came home recorded another quick overview vid and the Press Fleet Handlers drove it away. I spent the rest of the day, evening, and night setting up the overall video in Corel Video Studio 2021 with the half cannonball included as an add-on bonus. All-in, 22-minutes will be going up on YouTube tomorrow. The older 2017 HP would have taken all night and I would not have been nearly as clean with the design details as it just did not have the horsepower for a monster video like this. The new 2021 is humming along at 67 to 77 percent CPU utilization, 3 to 5% on the GPU, and the SSD disc is barely registering at 1 to 3 percent. It was a good purchase despite the almost $1,200 investment for the Laptop, Asus 24" external IPS monitor, KB and Mouse. The pricing part hurt a bit but I am a lot less frustrated with waiting on something to happen while listening to my old HP laptop and that poor IDE disc churning away at 100% for hours on end. Wayne
Hi All: If you are in need of a hot laptop, might I suggest any of the newer HPs? The 2.4 GB, 1080p, YouTube MP4 took about 35-minutes to render. It would have taken hours on my old 2017 HP let alone hours more to setup all of the transitions, titles, subtitles, music scores, layered vids, and moving 10s of GBs around within an edit screen. 2021 Porsche Taycan GWR - Charging and 1/2 Cannonball Run Vid I was lucky to have made this purchase prior to pushing all of this content out as of late. It is just so much easier to do on a hot laptop with a real monitor, KB, Mouse, and external drive storage than I was completing with my old HP. Wayne
Hi All: When I first started CleanMPG back in 2006, I was posting 800x pics for most stories. On the last major upgrade quite a few years ago, I started posting at 1024x pics. With the latest upgrade, I am considering 1280x pics for posts going forward as most viewers probably have much higher resolution and larger monitors and much faster connections than we had from 10 to 15 years ago. Let me know what you think about the larger size pics going forward? 1280x710 1024x595 Wayne
How are we gonna be able to show a Vera C. Rubin Observatory 3.2 billion pixel image of the Universe? I know, I know. It’s just a bit of the Universe.
Both images look fine to me on a 23" 1920x1080 monitor. I can't read the license plate on either. Upgrade the standard to 1280 pixel if it doesn't cost much storage, and I suspect it won't. My phone has the same pixel resolution as the monitor on my desk. More resolution in the image is useful if you want to see the smallest details in a zoomed view, such as if you're looking at astronomy images, etc.
Hi All: I will post 1280x from now on. 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E The California Route 1 Edition in the mountains above Santa Barbara, CA last year. Matthew upgraded the backend OS and migrated the site to the new larger capacity drive this morning. I am not sure when the new forum SW will be installed or what it will break? Wayne
