I use Siteground as my main webhost and have been some some time now, everything ran great until today I got an email explaining that in fact I was using too much resources for a shared hosting account. On the site here, I run a WordPress Blog and a Gallery of my wallpapers. I recall from my last host when I gave people the option to zip up the wallpapers instead of having to download one at a time, it flagged my account – seems this may be the case again.

The Email from Siteground:

With this notification we would like to inform you that our in-house Website Performance Monitoring System (WPMS) has signaled that your account liquidsilver.org constantly uses a large amount of the server’s CPU resources.

As you know, your account is hosted on a shared server and thus sharing the server resources with other customers’ websites.

Your account’s CPU usage is 24911 script executions per day. The industry standard for CPU usage of a shared account is 12000.

SiteGround’s servers use stable hardware, as well as custom developed load-balancing monitoring system. This is why we let our accounts utilize even more CPU resources than the industry standard allows.

Unfortunately, no matter how powerful or how well optimized the server is, it is possible that one account consumes almost all server resources for a short period of time and thus causes very high load on the server. Even though the amount of CPU resources we allocate to the accounts we host is higher than the industry standard, your account’s CPU usage exceeds even our increased limit. As a result, your website affects negatively the performance of the whole shared server and all accounts hosted on it.

What is causing it?

I am suspecting that my Blog alone does not generate enough traffic but by the stats, I see that my Page views have shot through the roof and are growing in large numbers by the day. I suspect that google are bringing in people looking for Wallpapers and with such a large collection – it is killing the shared hosting account.

What can I do to solve this

Siteground offered a few options:

1. Get a professional to optimise my site – this will not help.

2. Upgrading to an Advanced Business Hosting solution – We are talking money here, starting at $30 a month.

3. Move my Hosting somewhere else.

I have an idea

What I have done is remove the link to the Gallery from the menu and inside Gallery, put site into maintenance mode. We shall see if this cures the problem. If the traffic does in fan slow down and my site runs as normal without triggering Siteground, then my next plan comes into effect. I can set up a machine here to handle the entire Gallery and have a site point to it – no limits my end and as I have 5mbit upload, should not be too slow for people.

If this does not help and it is the sheer number of people coming, I will have no alternative but to move the site to my own hosted machine and buy the domain name from Siteground.

We know that the next big thing to come from Intel is Sandy Bridge, which will be the biggest CPU overhaul since Nehalem.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini made mention of the upcoming processor generation, saying that it’ll be the biggest leap the company’s made yet in terms of processing power.

While Intel would never encourage prospective customers to hold off on a new PC – especially leading up to the hot holiday buying season – the CEO’s enthusiasm for Sandy Bridge could give reason to wait until 2011.

In closing, I want to mention our next processor family codenamed Sandy Bridge. This quarter, we began volume production of Sandy Bridge and expect to ship revenue units in Q4 as we prepare for systems launch in the first quarter of 2011. Sandy Bridge represents the largest increase in computing performance in our history. This is a truly stunning product that we can’t wait to bring to market. Early demand from customers is much greater than we originally expected and we anticipate a very fast ramp.

Interesting times ahead as the Current Core series was a very good CPU and I look forward to what Intel are brining out next.

I have heard the USA Based Tech Hosts declare that the end of notebooks is in sight and they serve no real purpose in life and things such as the Apple iPad will overtake the notebook market by next year. I own a netbook myself (the first gen Acer One) and while it does serve some handy purposes, it is not about to replace my laptop any time soon. Do you think the bell’s are sounding for Netbooks as yet another passing fad or do you think they are here to stay?

From a Retail point of view

Last weekend while out shopping for a washing machine, I was in the local Comet Store and in the PC Section we had a row of Desktops (limited mainly by the touch screen variety), a row of Laptops (large number of 17″ Models) and finally TWO rows of Netbooks – a good enough sign if ever I needed one. It is simple enough to understand, the price of these computers are cheap, far cheaper then the Laptops and the desktop models. They are small, they now feature a mostly normal keyboard and the battery life shown seems to beat most laptops.

If these things were not selling, the various companies would not be making them, every single company had a netbook model out there such as Acer, ASUS, IBM, HP, Dell and others. If these things were not selling, Comet would not waste floor space on them – people were indeed checking them out and indeed buying them while I was there.

From a work point of view

There has been a requirement for small portable computers for various tasks and while we looked at the likes of the Apple iPad as something we could maybe use – the fact we could not load the software we needed to operate made us instead turn to the various Netbooks and tablet computers on offer. If we ignore the models with very small keyboards – these are more then usable on a daily basis.

The problem with Netbooks

The first issue that comes to my mind is the keyboard and mouse pad, if these are too small, you cannot really use a netbook properly at all and end of pecking away rather than typing. Those people with large stubby hands will have a major problem typing on these things and will be of no use to them, though the majority if people I have come across do not fit into this category.

The next issue is not the screen size but the resolution, fitting a web page or an application means scrolling around, if they could make this bigger (fit more into the same space) – then this would help a lot – as it stands now, this is a major thing holding these things back.

Speed – when I was building 6 of these things at work, I noticed how slow these are to go from start to finish but once working, they do serve the purpose well. Remember that the Atom is about the same speed as the old P4 CPU – so no speed demon.

Will they disappear?

I can understand somebody who does not deal with the larger world of corporate buying decisions and looking at the retails stores at what is out there, then they can see that something such as the iPad will overtake the world of Netbooks by next year. I beg to differ on this thought and see the Netbooks getting faster and more models coming in. What are your thoughts? Do you think they will die or do you think they will just keep on coming?

PCs often find themselves the playground for over-hyped tech – it’s almost as if manufacturers believe gamers will buy anything if you force enough marketing down their throats. Almost.

Cue the latest in a long line of interesting ideas rendered flesh in the hope of making a pretty penny: Bigfoot Networks Killer NIC.

Prioritise gaming

Its premise is interesting: offload management of the Windows network stack from the CPU and prioritise UDP gaming traffic in dedicated silicon. This releases the CPU to concentrate on more important frame rate-boosting stuff, and also improves ping times. That’s the theory at least; in practice things aren’t quite so exciting…

We tried the card in a pair of machines – our high-powered test rig, and an older machine that would almost cost less than this card. The first machine garnered no obvious improvements, while the improvements from the second were uninspiring to say the least.

Disappointing performance

A marginal increase in frame rates (from 53fps to 57fps in WoW Battlegrounds) and slight improvement in the ping times (from 155ms down to 140ms) hardly got us excited. We couldn’t spot any change in Team Fortress 2, Quake 4 or Call of Duty 4 however.

That’s a lot of cash for a few more frames, especially when it’s only going to affect network play.

That money’s far better spent on CPUs, graphics card and RAM. And if for some unfathomable reason, you still like the sound of this card, at least go for the cheaper K1 rendition.

The core’s clocked at 333MHz as opposed to 400MHz, but this won’t affect its ability to do its job.

Your in the market for a new shiny laptop but are not 100% sure what you need to look for in the waves of models the local store are showing you. Why are some more expensive then others, why is there so much choice between even the same makes of laptop and how can you buy something that is going to last you a while? Read on to find out my own views on what to look for when buying a laptop.

Price

The first thing that you as a consumer is going to base a new purchase from is the price, this will be the most important factor above any specifications. There is a reason why one laptop is £299 and another is £999, you are going to loose some features as the price goes down but this does not mean if you bought the most expensive that it will be a given it will be the best. Always go along with a price in your head as to what you feel is good to pay – remember the salesperson will always try and get you to spend more then you want – that is there job and they do get a commission if they manage to sell certain brands.

Usage

What do YOU want to do with the laptop? almost any laptop on sale today can run Windows, produce documents and spreadsheets, browse the web and send emails, so you need to look beyond this general use. Is portability important to you or in other words, are you going to be carrying this about everywhere you go? Do you want to replace the desktop and for the laptop to be mainly on your desk connected to a power supply? Are you going to be gaming on this laptop? Do not kid yourself and say you are not going to game – apart from a few chosen models, you cannot upgrade the graphics in the laptop.

CPU

I have noticed they try and hide the actual CPU used – maybe they deem that this is not important? The lower price models come with a Celeron CPU and from my own experience, this is a very bad idea to buy something with this in – steer clear of any Celeron or Single Core AMD chips. The next step is either a Dual core AMD (Called AMD Turion64 x2) and this does the job but is not as fast as Intel Dual core from my own testing. The one to aim for then is the Intel Core 2 Duo range of CPU, the faster the number the better. For most home users this is not swappable – so get the most bang for your buck here.

Memory

The next thing to look for is memory but remember this can be upgraded quite easily. I would suggest in this day and age to look for 3 or 4 GIG ram installed if possible. The more memory you have, the less the computer need to swap stuff around on the {slow} Hard drive and makes the overall computer feel a lot faster and allows more programs open at once.

Graphic Card

Most laptops come with an on-board graphics card that is either Intel or ATI and some do come with Nvidia but the better the on-board graphics get, the price starts to rise. A chip made by Intel for example is fine for normal day to day stuff and playing movie’s but gaming is out of the question. As an example, my laptop features an ATI 1270 which boils down to the power of anATI X300 – which in desktop terms is low gaming wise but I can play some games fine – so not everything is lost. If gaming is not required and by this I mean blockbuster titles such as Modern Warfare 2 not Solitaire – then any of the installed graphics cards will suit you just fine.

Screen size & Resolution

Screen size will effect the overall size of the laptop so a 10″ Screen allows a very small compact laptop but sacrifices resolution meaning you cannot fit much on the screen. A Model with a 17″ Screen means this laptop will be a monster to carry around but allows the laptop to have a fully featured keyboard and numberpad along with higher resolutions often matching a 24″ Desktop Screen.

Not all is clear cut as it sounds, one laptop can run at 1280×800 while the same screen size (15.4″) on another one can feature 1680×1050, which just happens to be the same resolution as my 21″ Desktop screen. Does this “resolution” matter? think of them as dots and the more dots you have either direction means you can fit more on the screen. On the first example, you can have a web browser open and when you want to look at say email, you have to switch applications but on the higher model, I can have these open side by side.

HardDrive

Laptop’s use a 2.5″ Harddrive and by and large these come in sizes of 60,80, 120, 250,320,500 gig’s – the goal here is to aim for bigger is better. Now it is possible for the end user to buy a replacement hard drive and put a bigger one in later or even use an external harddrive.

Battery Life

Most people seem to ignore this and often the quoted numbers bear no real indication of how long it really lasts. Many things can effect battery life such as wireless, playing DVD, the screen bee on full brightness or the CPU going full pelt running an application. I would say that a normal laptop gives about 2 hours use so factor that in and if portability is high on your list, maybe buy a spare battery.

What is the Sweet price point?

I would spend myself only £400 ($650) to get myself the right kind of laptop, you can buy a Sony and spend a lot more or even an Apple Laptop and really go to town on price.

Checklist

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2ghz or higher

Memory: 3 or 4 GIG ram

Screen: 15.4″ Screen or higher

Extra’s: DVD Writer, ignore BluRay for now (Adds a lot to price)

The iMac was quiet no matter what and this has a 2.8GHz CPU and built into the confines of a monitor. Laptops by there very design are quiet for most part but desktop Machine’s for some reason are too noisy. I see them in the shops and they seem very quiet but the environment is not a library  – so easy to be fooled. I have seen (or rather heard) an HP machine which was so quiet, you would be mistaken that it was actually on until you work out the inside is low powered crap. 

I have two desktop computers up and running, one if a old Fujitsu Siemens and personally this was never totally silent as it is powered by a Athlon 64 3700. The case is smaller I would say then a normal tower case plus the Athlon 64 was never a cool CPU – the noise is bearable and constant but it would not be a machine I would leave on 24/7 for example and I notice that while the Temp rises while playing a game, it comes down quickly afterwards.

The other machine is off the shelf but along the way has had a few changes made, for example I swapped the 1.8GHz CPU for my 2.4GHz one, the graphics card from on-board to PCI-Express and slipped in there 4 sticks of Ram (which have heat spreaders on). The case inside is no bigger then the Athlon so there is not much room at all. There is two problems with this machine:

1. While trying to stream 640×480 on FME/Wirecast/Procaster etc – hold back data.

2. Once the Temp of the system (not the CPU) rises due to room temp, the cpu FAN spins up to 4500 RPM and its get noisy, a quick reboot fixes this but WHY does it not go back down?

I have a ASUS Motherboard spare and a case and even a CPU Heatsink/Fan but no mounting brackets for the CPU holder (just holes). I am very close at this time to rip the motherboard out of the Acer, see if I can take the mounting brackets off the CPU holes and re-fit the entire lot into this case. This would means a complete rebuild of my OS, for it to be placed in a case not as nice looking and no guarantee that the noise will get any better. It has crossed my mind that the system works outsaide of these minor issues and as I type this, the Fans are spinning at 3434RPM with the CPU sitting at 37c for example – motherboard reads 47c.

Maybe this is the reason people just go and buy a Dell computer – it works, it’s quiet and yes I agree you have no control over overclocking.