The P3 Update Magazine Blog

By Gordon Meyer

P3GizmoGuy@gmail.com

It was just a few weeks ago when I wrote about the ClickFree automated backup system.   Little did I realize that I would soon have to use it to actually restore key data on my hard drive. 

Here’s a bit of advice I failed to follow myself.  It’s a really good idea to wipe off your hard drive every two or three years and do a clean install of both Windows and your applications.  Why?  Because over the years, all sorts of extraneous crap builds up that you don’t even know about and it can slow down your computer to an absolute crawl.

I know better and still didn’t get around to doing that because frankly it’s a cumbersome, time consuming operation.  Re-installing Windows alone takes close to two hours, assuming the install goes smoothly.  But with my computer (and no, I have not yet gotten around to getting that new system I wrote about), all that junk on my drive was not only slowing things down to a snail’s pace, it was actually preventing some of my programs from running properly.

So over the weekend, I broke down and wiped my hard drive.  Fortunately, I also did one more pass with ClickFree before doing my clean install.  The restore process from ClickFree worked very well for me and in the background so I could use my computer for other tasks while the restoration was in progress.

ClickFree lets gives you a choice of either a complete or select restoration.  Since one of the reasons I was doing this operation was to clear out all sorts of no longer needed files, I elected for the latter, choosing mainly to restore the files I had on my desktop itself as well as everything in the My Documents folder. 

Although I expected ClickFree to restore all those files to the appropriate folders on the “new” drive, it put everything in a dedicated folder instead, with the contents of that folder simulating the original file structure of the original hard drive configuration.  I like that.  It’s certainly easy enough to move files over to reconstructed folders if I want them, but truthfully I plan to delete many of the files and folders that had been restored.  And many of the restored files are corrupted in some way.  This way I can segregate the older, possibly corrupt files from the clean, fresh ones.

In the end, although a new computer is still very much in the near future for me, until I make that plunge, wiping my hard drive and doing clean installs of both Windows and my key applications gives a big performance boost to my computer.

Onward and upward!

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By Gordon Meyer

P3GizmoGuy@gmail.com

I’m reluctantly dating myself when I concede that I wrote my very first screenplay using the original Microsoft Word for DOS and printed the thing out on a 19 CPS daisy wheel printer.  That 124 page masterpiece took over 5 hours to print and I had to babysit the entire process in order to make sure the form-feed paper didn’t jam up my printer.

Although setting the standard screenplay margins within Word for DOS wasn’t a big deal, every time I revised the script, I had to manually go through the script and adjust each and every one of those 120 + page breaks. And then came dedicated script writing software and writers everywhere bowed to the techno-geniuses who made their lives so much easier.

As far as I’m concerned, in the professional world, there are basically three choices for dedicated screenwriting programs: Final Draft (www.finaldraft.com), Movie Magic Screenwriter (www.screenplay.com) and Scriptware (www.scriptware.com), all three of which are available for both Windows and Mac.  All three programs boast A-List writers in both features and television as their users.  Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter recently released new versions.

The core idea behind pretty much every screenwriting program worth considering is to make the mechanical part of writing (i.e. correct formatting and pagination) as much of a no-brainer as possible.  The early DOS based programs, while easier than adding custom templates to Word, Word Perfect or WordStar (the reigning word processors of the day), they still were pretty cumbersome with their heavy use of function keys for thinks like dialog formatting.

Then came Scriptware.  Here, you only needed to learn to use two keys – Tab and Enter.  Want to insert a piece of dialog?  Just hit the Tab key (as if you’re on an old fashioned typewriter) and Scriptware would automatically put your cursor where it needed to be for a character name, even remembering to put the name in all caps.  Hit Enter after the character name and you’re in the correct position and formatting for the dialog itself.  Every major screenwriting program since has adopted this user interface.

I have to admit up front a certain bias in that I started with Scriptware.  Right now, I’m using Final Draft for the re-writes of my swashbuckling fantasy adventure saga (agent and producer inquiries welcome).

But Movie Magic Screenwriter’s latest addition not only includes what they call “educational templates” to coach you through the creative process for a variety of formats, they recently created a template from author Michael Hauge, the author of “Writing Screenplays That Sell.”  I’ve known Michael for years and taken several of his classes, so this addition intrigued me.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be putting each of these programs through their paces with as open a mind as I can muster.  Each program boasts a fairly easy learning curve for the basics and lots of useful tools to make the writer’s job easier.  It will be interesting to see which I like best by the time I finish my testing.

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By Gordon Meyer (P3GizmoGuy@gmail.com)

I thought I’d narrowed my quest for a new computer down to a Windows-based laptop with a Blu-ray R/W drive, because I want the flexibility of being able to easily take my work with me on the road.  But I’m frankly having second thoughts.

One of the laptops I’m looking at is a $3,600 HP portable workstation with the latest generation of super-fast Intel Core Duo processors (2.8 GHz), 4GB of RAM, 17” display and the option of using a docking station. 

What’s a docking station, you ask?  It’s a device you connect a notebook computer to that lets you connect an external keyboard, mouse, monitor and, depending on the model, expansion cards, internal hard drives and all sorts of other goodies that can give your laptop the expandability and functionality of a desktop. 

You simply attach your laptop to the docking station when you’re at your “home base,” and detach it when you want to take it on the road.  Depending on the feature base though, docking stations can cost $200 or more.  HP’s highest end unit has a $349 price tag.  So with a really good docking station, the price tag is now approaching $4,000 (plus tax).

Now if I was doing a lot of heavy duty graphics work, editing and disc authoring on the road, I could easily justify that level of investment.  But truthfully, if I’m going to edit video, author discs or do any number of other tasks that require a lot of computing horsepower, I’m most likely going to be doing that at my office and not on the road.

While there are a lot of online stores where I can custom configure a desktop system, since I was talking about an HP mobile workstation, just to be consistent, I went back to www.hp.com to configure a high-end desktop system.  Here’s what I was able to come up with for well under $2500.

I started with a base e9180t desktop system and tricked it out with a 3 GHz Intel Core i7-950 CPU, 9GB of RAM (more than double what’s on that laptop), a 1TB (that’s 1,000 GB) hard drive, an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics board with DVI, HDMI and VGA adapters and a full GB of dedicated graphics RAM, a 21.5” HD-compatible widescreen monitor with VGA, DVI-D and HDMI connectors,  Blu-ray R/W drive that doubles as a DVD R/W drive, 7.1 channel sound card, and Logitech 5.1 channel speakers.

And I can easily add another 3GB of RAM and another terabyte or so of internal drive space.  Pardon me for a minute while I wipe the drool off my keyboard.

As I said in my last blog entry, for what I do, my mobile computing will primarily consist of writing either in Word or my screenplay software, perhaps update an Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation, surf the web, check email or watch a movie.

If it’s still a priority for me to have a Blu-ray drive on my laptop, there are Blu-ray equipped models starting at just under a grand.  Even if I go with a MacBook Air, which to me is the ultimate balance between portability and functionality (base price of $1500), this means that for about the same price as my uber tricked out mobile workstation with docking station, I can have both a kick ass desktop system for my primary work and a very cool laptop for when I’m on the road. 

In fact, to save even more money,  I can get a brand name basic laptop with wireless networking, a 15” screen, 250GB hard drive and built-in DVD burner for around $500, which means I can have my best of both worlds solution for about a grand less than getting the high end laptop alone.

Food for thought, eh?

This of course is the solution that meets my specific usage patterns and needs.  Your mileage may vary.

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By Gordon Meyer (P3GizmoGuy@gmail.com)

Whether it’s a laptop or desktop system, you can never have too much RAM or storage space.  The way technology continues to develop, especially when it comes to graphics and hi-def video, which tend to be incredibly demanding of system resources. 

As for the hard drive itself, if you’re using a traditional platter-based drive, mine has to have a spin speed of at least 7200 RPM so the drive can access my data as quickly as possible.  This is critical when much of the data is video footage.

Many computers now offer “solid state” hard drives, which essentially use the same kind of chip-based non-volatile storage you find in SD modules and USB thumb drives.  These drives have two very big advantages over the older technology.  They are much faster and have no moving parts. This means they’re more stable and likely to have a longer user life.

On traditional hard drives, the data is magnetically recorded on a spinning metal disk.  If and when the motor conks out or the disc itself gets damaged by being bounced around in transit, during an earthquake (this IS California after all), or some other mishap, you have a hard drive crash and, unless you had the foresight to back up your data (see my earlier blog on this subject), you’re up S Creek without a paddle.

So solid state hard drives offer better speed and reliability.  But they also cost a lot more money.  A lot! For example, HP has a mobile workstation, the EliteBook 8730w, which comes standard with a 250GB, 7200 RPM hard drive.  Want to substitute an 80GB solid state drive?  That will add $250 to the price tag for 1/3 the storage.  A better deal is the $295 upgrade charge for the 128GB solid state drive.  But you’re still getting only half the internal storage that the standard drive offers for almost $300 more.

Screen size, weight and what kind of ports come standard are the other key criteria on a laptop.  No matter which way you go, there are trade-offs.  Obviously the bigger the screen, the bigger the overall size of the laptop, which means more weight to shlep around.  Now the 7.5 pounds that the 8730w weighs may not sound like a lot, but that gets damned heavy very quickly, especially when you add a decent laptop bag to the equation.

Basically, the trade-off here is weight vs. functionality.  The more bells and whistles you have on your laptop, the more it’s going to weigh you down.  This is why many people classify the bigger laptops as “desktop substitutes,” intended to more or less stay in one place the lion’s share of the time.

So the question you have to ask yourself is, how often will you want to take this portable computer on the road with you?  And when on the road, what will you be using it for? 

For me, any time I’m taking a computer on the road with me, my primary use is going to be email, surfing the web, using a productivity suite like Microsoft Office and watching a DVD or Blu-ray. 

Cowabunga!  I think I’ve just altered what kind of computer I’m most likely to get.  Stay tuned for my profound insights on this.

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By Colin Oh (more…)

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