AKA Laptops Still Suck!

Well I took a little breather from writing articles in general, especially the Laptops Suck series of articles.  But here we are, three months into the new year and it seems like as good as time as any to get back into some more of the nitty-gritty why laptops suck for mobile entertainment purposes.  The following is a response that I received from a reader in regards to Laptops Suck – Part 5:  (more…)

On Monday 19 November 2009, I took a road trip up to visit with the Connecticut Chapter of the American Disc Jockey Associationand to make a presentation for the Computer DJ Symposium.  While I was there, we also put together a small panel to discuss a number of topics related to Computer DJing, which was also recorded live with the local chapter as an audience.  The full episode may be found on the PodcastForDJs.com website.

Here is the direct link to the article and podcast:  Computer DJ Symposium.

Please Note:In an ongoing effort to support the excellent educational content produced by PodcastForDJs.com (PFDJs), DJMM is offering a FREE one year subscription to be given away when PFDJs reaches 1,000+ fans on Facebook.  Be sure to become a fan today in order to become eligible for the drawing!!!  PodcastForDJs.com Fanpage.

Alrighty!  In the last article we covered RAID 0 which are also known as Striped Volumes.  Fun stuff, right?

Well this time around we are going to give a few tips about RAID 1 arrays, which are also known as Mirrored Volumes.  Mirroring your volumes adds a level of redundancy or backup to your system, in case of a HDD failure.  And as we all know, all DJs carry backups, right?  Just think of a “mirrored” array as a form of backup that you carry right inside of your CPS.  (more…)

In the previous three articles we discussed a number of cheap or even free methods of boosting computer system performance and getting the biggest bang for your buck.  In TNT3 we touched upon hard drives and partitions as well as briefly mentioning something called a “striped volume” among other things.  Building upon that, we will take it a step further with this and the next few articles - talking about RAID setups, which includes that mysterious animal called a striped volume.  (more…)

Since we covered some stuff with hard drives in the last article, I thought adding another tip about hard drives would be in order for this installment.  Specifically I mentioned placing the VM on its own partition, all by its lonesome.  I’ll take that one step further and say that it should be on its own partition on another drive rather than the boot drive or the drive that has the operating system (OS) is on.  But those poor souls using a laptop do not really have this option unless they set it up each time they boot their laptop up.  (more…)

For this installment, lets talk about another easy (and cheap) method of getting the most out of your CPS or any other computer for that matter.  What I am referring to ties in with the last articles where I mentioned Virtual Memory.  Virtual Memory or just VM is a portion of the hard drive that is dedicated to acting as a temporary storage of data, device drivers and so on like RAM.  And performing two simple tasks with VM can drastically improve system performance as well as speed up the boot up process.  (more…)

For the first Tips N Tweaks article, lets talk about the single most important, easiest and one of the cheapest means of improving the performance of any computer – RAM.  RAM or Random Access Memory is the one part of the computer that is fairly easy to upgrade or add once you know what type your computer supports.  Having enough RAM is absolutely crucial in that all of the programs, hardware and the operating system all take up different sized chunks of memory as soon as you turn the computer on.  (more…)

The Tips N Tweaks series of articles that I will be writing are going to cover a number of quick, inexpensive and – most importantly – effective means of improving the system performance of your CPS. Each article will cover one topic of discussion in order to give you easy to read reference materials. Many of the articles will also have a cumulative effect on improving system performance. (more…)

Here’s a recent reader testimonial I received about my book Introduction to Computer DJing & CPS.  (more…)

DJ Power is quite possibly the most feature-rich and complex software solution that I have ever had a chance to play with.  It is also one of the original programs that were available to DJs back in the 1990s and still going strong today.  But one of the things that really sets DJ Power apart from the competition is the fact that they also build systems specifically to run their software.  A few other have attempted the same, but only a handful have been as remotely successful.  Hands down, it is one of the most versatile software packages on the market today that has most of the features and capabilities that any mobile or club DJ could ever need.  (more…)