Another FREE utility that EVERYONE should install... TODAY! [Video]

Believe it or not, but Funkyy has been using the portable version of HWiNFO (x64)

since the Dinosaurs roamed the Earth. I didn't have the necessary experience or

knowledge (or brains) to understand 99% of what it did...but I did like the bright

design and it's busy appearance  (lol). Oh to be able to turn the clock back 30 years

and get myself interested in computers when they were in their infancy....my wasted

adulthood....but I'm a trier anyway.

"that EVERYONE should install TODAY" is an extremely large stretch. "A great free PC monitoring app that power users may like to have, but that most people will NEVER have a use for" would be much more accurate.

It's a good utility to have.

This is not for "EVERYONE"! 99% of PC users don't care about this kind of utility.

Agreed it's a huge stretch, but by chance recently in another place I go, we've been recommending it to a lot of users (dozens in the conversations, hundreds of lurkers) to check out how their PCs are handling certain things.

On 8/23/2024 at 8:25 PM, funkyy said:

Oh to be able to turn the clock back 30 years

and get myself interested in computers when they were in their infancy

They were very exciting times. While a week's worth of tweaks now brings more absolute gains than five years' work did back then, today just doesn't invoke the same awe. Partly I think because it's just too complex and high-level now for all but the most technically trained to really understand it or be able to fiddle with bits beyond changing a setting in the firmware, as well as being as commonplace as a loaf of bread.

Back then, tech was simple enough to see the individual parts and changes to the architecture, and poke them with a soldering iron without needing an electron microscope and clean room. I recall overclocking one of my first IBM compatible PCs by desoldering the clock circuitry from the motherboard and soldering in faster crystals that I bought from the local electronics store (those are almost extinct now). GPU VRAM upgrades (to an entire 1MB) by buying the individual memory chips and adding them to the board. Hacking on a DEC PDP-11 minicomputer while the lab supervisor wasn't watching to 'interfere' with the class running down the corridor by taking over their VT101 terminals by remote.

A new computer magazine was launched almost weekly and some were the size of large books, with glossy pictures of the latest UNIX-like powered MC68000 box with 64MB of RAM that could run another 16 terminals, all multiuser/multitasking. Plus oddities like the FORTH powered Jupiter Ace home computer; the same language I used later at Jodrell Bank.

Oh, and 300 baud modems and bulletin boards that would take an hour to read and reply to this thread with, not including the large pictures. And 'discovering' other modems over the phone system, connected to other computers, in the days when security was... not so secure. Or not even bothered with at all.

Those were the days! (But I would rather have my 80Mbps ADSL, thank you very much).

@Mutton Mid 1990's I worked for a company that sold domestic appliances (fridges, washing machines, hi-fi's

                    televisions etc etc). Sega, Super Mario and other electronic games were the kids/adults Christmas

                    wishes from Santa. I never got into them at all, although I did like the space Invaders tables that a local

                    pub had (lol). My employer then started to rent/sell computers....I still wasn't interested in them..silly me.

                    Then around 1999/2000 I got my first computer 1) to print English lessons for my students and 2) to play

                    Movie CD's that were being sold in the street (I love movies..heaven for me is a 30 screen multiplex with

                    non-stop movies for eternity lol).

                    I didn't know a kilobyte from a dog bite though and so it took me ages to fathom out what I could do with this

                    once-ignored machine. Now I can solve some basic problems that were impossible for me back in the old days,

                   but I really regret that I waited so long to finally get into computers. Better late than never I suppose.