Backside Bus

My brother-in-law recently gave me a motherboard. He had been thinking about building a PC, but life got ahead of him and he decided he wasn't going to do it just yet. Since he was also moving to Australia, he decided it was something he didn't want to take with him. It took me a while to decide what I was going to do with it. I've never built a complete PC all at once. I've replaced every part in more than one system, but that usually would take place over a couple of years. It's not that I didn't want to build a computer, but it was generally less expensive to buy something pre-made and then tweak it. But now I had this shiny new motherboard, and a pretty decent one at that. So I decided to take the plunge. This seems like a great topic for a series of posts... walking through the process of obtaining the parts and software, putting it together, then testing and running benchmarks to see if it will perform as well as I hope. I'll start with a post

Had a little early Christmas yesterday... well, technically a late birthday. I got a Sony Vaio T-series ultrabook and a 64 GB Microsoft Surface RT . Playing with them now. Quick first impressions of the Vaio: this thing is incredibly fast... from power off to using Office 2010 apps in under 20 seconds, including the time it takes to enter my password. Also, this is the kind of machine Windows 8 was made for. Surface RT impressions: decent tablet, but quirky. System messages call it a PC, which makes me chuckle when I see them. Not seeing the speed issues I read about in the early reviews, but mine updated right when I got it. Office 2013 RT is the best tablet office suite I have used, and it integrates well with my SkyDrive. I'm impressed with Microsoft's work on creating a seamless ecosystem... I upgraded my desktop when Windows 8 came out, and when I set up both systems, my settings (including wireless network settings) synced. I set the Surface up at the office, and

Welcome to the Backside Bus blog What is Backside Bus? Backside Bus is a technology blog. I'll fill the pages with my opinions, experiences, reviews, tech tips, and other things I find interesting in the IT world as well as fun gadgets and other tech-related stuff. I'll cover projects, such as making a home built PC, coding a Web application, or setting up home automation. Hopefully I'll post something useful, and maybe I can help someone out. Backside Bus is not striving to be anything more that a fun hobby written by a technology enthusiast. I don't expect to be Lockergnome  or CNET  or Endgadget any other tech blog (though it would  be nice to eventually gain a loyal following). What I write can probably be found in hundreds of other blogs across the Web (my original name - Yet Another Tech Blog - was taken by several other blogs), but hopefully someone somewhere will like the way I say it better. About Me I'm a jack of all trades when it comes to tec