Recently I've been wondering if that's possible to create an application which would take some CPU from one computer and conduct it to another pc connected to the same network for example. I have 2 laptops and one is much worse than the other. When I'm playing a game the first laptop overheats quickly :P and I would like the better laptop to take some of the CPU, execute the calculations and return the results back so that the weaker laptop wouldn't overheat too quickly :P.
Is that possible to code in C/C++? With use of WinAPI or sth? Or maybe there is already an application which would enable me to achieve this goal?
Not as simply as you're probably looking for, no. Some old games may be very well playable over Remote Desktop, but that's probably not what you're looking for.
Still, there are some options, with a bit of tweaking, that can be used to play a game remotely, for example: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1638643/tutorial-create-onlive-remote-streaming-setup.html
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My question is pretty simple. As a somewhat new person to the whole coding world, I don't know a whole lot about computers, so I want to ask you guys if it's possible to keep a webpage exchanging data with me while keeping my computer at the minimal energy cost.
The closest thing I can think off is the "Asleep" mode, but that doesn't seem to work for what I need to do. I need a way to have my computer connected to video streams or youtube videos (like if I was watching them) while I sleep or go to school.
It might seem a bit weird the reason as to why I need to be able to do this, but it's basicly for a website that gives you "coins" for every 780 seconds that you watch a stream. Those coins can then be used to enter giveaways of hardware and software (gaming related), the more coins you bet on an item the more chances you have of winning it.
I use Windows 7.
your requirement is unclear.. but i suggest use a spare android phone or use a windows phone(convert it to pc using software available online).
Other than that i dont think there are any other option as to keep the website live and that is simple for you to implement.
I am hoping this is a relatively simple answer. Ive always been interested in ar, and I've been debating about tinkering with a possibly ar driven ui for mobile.
I guess the only real question would be having the camera continuously turned on, how much battery would that use? i.e. would it be too much for something like this to be worth doing?
Battery drain is one of the biggest issues in the smartphones nowadays. I'm not a specialist in power consumption or battery life or whatever but anyone having and using a smartphone (not only for calls of course) would not be wrong by saying this. There are many tips on the internet teaching you how to increase the battery life. In fact processes running on your device need energy and that energy is provided by the battery.
To answer your question, I've been using the smartphones' cameras for AR applications since quite long time now. It's a heavy process and indeed it drains the battery faster than other processes. On the other hand you also have to consider the other processes running on your device while your AR application is used. For example your app might use the device's sensors (gyroscope, GPS, etc); these processes are draining the battery also. A simple test that you might do is to charge your device, start the camera and leave it until the battery dies. Well that's exactly how much the camera would drain the battery (you can even measure the time). Of course you might want to turn off everything else running on the device.
To answer your second question, it depends how the application is created (many things can be optimized a lot!) and how it's going to be used. If the goal of the application is to be used continuously for hours and hours then you need to wait for some other kind of technology being discovered (joking..I hope) or having extra power supply attached to your device. I think it's worth doing the application and optimize it on the fly and also in the end when everything is up an running. If the camera is the only issue then I'm sure it's worth trying!
I recently got a shiny new development workstation. The only disadvantage of this is that the desktop apps I'm developing now run very, very fast, and so I fear that parts of the code that would be annoyingly slow on end users' machines will go unnoticed during my testing.
Is there a good way to slow down an application for testing? I've tried searching around, but all of the results I've been able to find seem pretty fiddly to set up (e.g., manually setting up a high-priority CPU-bound task on the same CPU core as the target app, or running a background process that rapidly interrupts and resumes the target app), and I don't know if the end result is actually a good representation of running on a slower computer (with its slower CPU, slower RAM, slower disk I/O...).
I don't think that this is a job for a profiler; I'm interested in the user's perception of end-to-end performance rather than in where the time goes for particular operations.
setup a virtual machine, give in as little ram as needed and also you can have it use 1,2 or more CPUs. I like VirtualBox myself install your app and test with different RAM configs
Personally, I'd get an old used crappy computer that is typical of what the users have and test on that. It should be cheap and you will see pretty fast how bad things are.
I think the only way to deal with this is through proper end-user testing, i.e. get yourself a "typical" system for testing and use that to identify any perceptible performance bottlenecks.
You can try out either Virtual PC or VMWare Player/Workstation, load an OS onto it, and then throttle back the resources. I know that with any of those tools you can reduce the memory to whatever you'd like. You can also specify the number of cores you want to use. You might even be able to adjust the clock speed in VMWare Workstation... I'm not sure.
I upvoted SQLMenace's answer, but, I also think that profiling needs to be mentioned, no matter how quickly the code is executing - you'll still see what's taking the most time. If you find yourself with some free time, I think profiling and investigating the results is a good way to spend it.
At work, my PC is slow. I feel that I can be way more productive if I just wasn't waiting for Visual Studio and everything else to respond. My PC isn't bad (dual-core, 3GB of RAM), but there is a lot of corporate software and whatnot to slow everything down and sometimes lock it up.
Now, some developers have begun getting Windows 7 machines with 8 GB of RAM. Of course, I start salivating at this. However, I was told that I "had to justify" why I should get a new machine.
I can think of a lot of different things, but I am curious as to what every one else on SO would have to say.
NOTE: Ideally, these reasons should be specifically related to .NET development in Visual Studio on a Windows machine. This isn't a "how can I make my machine faster" question.
I would ask myself "What am I waiting on?" And then let the answer to that question drive whether or not I felt like I could justify it.
For example, right now, I'm dealing with 90 minute compiles of the project I'm working on. Would a faster machine help that? A little. But, more impactful would be sane configuration management. So, I'm pushing that way (to no avail) rather than to the hardware route.
Bring in a chess clock.
If you are waiting start the clock
when you aren't stop the clock.
At the end of day, total up the time
multiply it by your pay rate,
multiply it by 2000,
and that is a reasonable upper limit as
to the amount of money the company is squandering on you
per year due to a slow machine
Most useful metric: How much time do you spend reading The Onion (or, these days, StackOverflow)?
This is item #9 on The Joel Test:
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
Writing code in a compiled language is one of the last things that still can't be done instantly on a garden variety home computer. If your compilation process takes more than a few seconds, getting the latest and greatest computer is going to save you time. If compiling takes even 15 seconds, programmers will get bored while the compiler runs and switch over to reading The Onion, which will suck them in and kill hours of productivity.
I agree with the "what is holding me up?" approach.
I start with improviing workflow by looking at repetitive things I do that can be automated or a little helper tool can fix. Helper tools don't take long to write and add a lot of productivity. Purchasing tools is also a good return on your time - a lot of things you could write, you shouldn't bother, concentrate on your core activity and let the tool makers concentrate on theirs, whether is is help software, screen grabing, SEO tools, debugging tools, whatever.
If you can't improve things by changing your workflow (and I'd be surprised if you can't), then look at your hardware.
Increase memory if you can. If you're at 3GB with a 32 bit OS, no point going any further.
Add independent disks. One disk for the OS another for your build drive. That way there is less contention for disk access from the OS and the compiler. Makes a difference.
Better CPU. Only valid if you are doing the work to justify it.
Example: What do I use?
Dual Xeon Quad Core (8 cores, total)
8 GB RAM
Dual Monitors
VMWare virtual machines
What are the benefits?
Dual Monitor is great, much better than a single 1920x1200 screen.
Having lots of memory when using Virtual Machines is great because you can realistically give the VM a realistic amount of memory (2GB) without killing the host machine.
Having 8 cores means I can do a build and mess about in a VM doing a build or a debug at the same time, no problems.
I've had this machine for some time. Its old hat compared to an iCore7 machine, but its more than fast enough for any developer. Very rarely have I seen all the cores close to maxing out (pretty much going to be held back by I/O with that much CPU power - which is why I commented on multiple disks).
For me (working in a totally different environment, where JBoss, Eclipse and Firefox are the main resource sinks), it was simple enough:
"I have 2GBs of RAM available. I'm spending most of my time with 1GB of swap in use: imagine what task switching and application building looks like there. Another 2GB of RAM costs 50 euro. Ignoring the fact that it's frustrating working like this, you do the productivity math."
I could have shown CPU load figures and application build times as well, but it didn't come to that. It took them a month or two, but boy is development a joy since then! Oh, and for performance, it's likely you'd do best with Windows XP, but you probably already know that. ;]
Use some performance monitor to determine the cause.
For me its the antivirus has some kind of critical resource leak the slows down IO after a few days requiring a reboot and no hardware upgrades will help much.
The justification will need hard data to back it. If their business software is causing the problem that "this is industry standard" obviously doesn't fly anymore. Maybe they'll realize their business software sucks and fix that instead.
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As a programmer I found it very hard to use my laptop and workstation with two different input devices, Can anyone suggest a good solution to use single mouse and keyboard to control my two machines
I am not looking for a Virtual Machine or RDP solution to see my machines in a single monitor,
Synergy.
Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between
multiple computers with different
operating systems, each with its own
display, without special hardware.
It's intended for users with multiple
computers on their desk since each
system uses its own monitor(s).
Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is
as simple as moving the mouse off the
edge of your screen. Synergy also
merges the clipboards of all the
systems into one, allowing
cut-and-paste between systems.
Furthermore, it synchronizes screen
savers so they all start and stop
together and, if screen locking is
enabled, only one screen requires a
password to unlock them all.
P. S.
See also how to fix Synergy problems on Vista.
What you want is a small gadget called a KVM switch (keyboard, video and mouse switch). Googling for that term will hook you up with plenty of suppliers.
There is also a neat software solution called Synergy that lets you use your cursor and keyboard input over multiple computers connected by a network.
Yet another vote for Synergy for a software KVM solution. I'm not sure about the others, but it's unique if your computers are running different operating systems. It worked very well when I had a W2k/Linux setup across 3 computers.
Synergy is great, but also give something like VNC a try: it consolidates not only the keyboard and mouse but also the screen. In my case my desktop monitor is much larger than my laptops, and I'm more comfortable facing forward anyway (not looking off to the side where the laptop is.)
There is a lag compared to using a KVM switch, but no loss in video quality.
In my experience Synergy is the best way to merge multiple monitors.
Others include:
- x2vnc
- x2x
- win2vnc
- osx2x
- win2x
... pretty much just take what OS/platform you're on, which one you want to connect to, and put a '2' in the middle. Type that into google and you're good2go.
For my linux machine I use QuickSynergy since it provides a gui for easier configuration. It also has a Mac OS version.
The best...
Synergy
I'll put in another vote for Synergy, but with a caveat - setup can be a little tricky. The first time I tried it, I could move my cursor over to another PC but I couldn't move it back. Spend some time with the documentation before you proceed.
InputDirector is better than Synergy. Here's why...
It has built-in AES encryption functionality (without requiring you to install OpenSSH) for secure transfer of input between machines.
It allows cut & paste of text and files between machines (by automatically translating to C$ and D$ shares)
Based on extensive use with a laptop, it is far more reliable and stable than Synergy when reconnecting after undocking & docking. Synergy would frequently just stop working after docking and undocking, requiring me to kill it, restart it, and reconnect. InputDirector rarely has any issues.
The configuration UI is easier to use, and has more options, than Synergy.
Lots of little things, like matching of cursor location between machines during screen-edge transitions, and overriding mouse settings of "Slave" machines with those of the "Master" machine.
Beyond that, as far as I can tell, it does everything Synergy does. There's only a Windows version, but apparently it's also Vista compliant as well.
I've used both tools extensively, first Synergy, and then InputDirector. InputDirector is just a more robust application. It has all the features of Synergy and then some, plus the key ones listed above. It's website isn't as attractive, and while it isn't GNU GPL'd like Synergy, it free nonetheless, and an oustandingly well-functioning tool.
I used to use a KVM switch, but lately I've started running all my computers as virtual machines on a single hardware platform. Each "system" is a window on my desktop!
I have a triple monitor display, and I just remote desktop into my other machines. I have 2-3 laptops on my desk at any given time, and 3 servers to administer. Over a 1 gbps connection, I have very little latency to worry about, and I can be working on three computers at once without much trouble. This may or may not help you, but I thought I would throw it in there for you.
If you mean: two machines on your desktop, a lot of places use KVM-style switches.
They come in legacy PC-style and also USB. The USB version works with Macs and PCs.
My experience is that the small desktop switches are a bargain, and if you learn the keyboard shortcuts, you'll jump back and forth without much problem.
The machine room, 3-level tree KVM's are also pretty useful. They flake out more often, but when you have 60 machines, you simply can't have 60 pairs on input devices.
I'll second Zarkonnens comment about KVM Switches as I use one for this purpose all the time. However I might share some rather frustrating experiences with them:
I have found that PS/2 interfaces tend to be somewhat more reliable on KVM switches than USB - I have had very bad experiences with some supposedly upmarket DVI-USB KVM kit from Gefen and Avocent. Due to a quirk of my Viewsonic monitor where it would drop back to analog most of the time these were exacerbated to the point of the system being nearly unusable.
DVI and USB are finicky. DVI monitors will often time out and sleep if they get no signal. The KVM switch will assume that there is no monitor if it is not active, which will then be passed back to the video card. USB interfaces will also get put to sleep randomly.
The net effect of this was that it was very difficult to get two machines to boot up and work on the KVM switch and the switch would lose keyboard or mouse input on one or both machines every few days. This was followed by an hour or more of trying to get all of the hardware to come up and play nicely. I got the same issue with the Avocent and Gefen switches on several different machines.
My older Belkin VGA/PS2 kit worked fine with the Viewsonic monitors on VGA but I spent nearly £1000 on switches and cabling to try and get a working DVI-USB KVM setup.
In the end I got two HP LP2065 screens that didn't have the bug that the Viewsonics exhibited. These have two DVI inputs and I used one of my older Belkin PS/2 switches to switch the keyboard and mouse. The computers are plugged directly into the monitor and the monitor's input selector is used to pick the computer. The keyboard and mouse are switched off the KVM switch. This is the setup that I'm using today.
The monitors and KVM have to be switched individually but it's much more reliable than the DVI-USB KVM switches that really did not work at all. Caveat emptor.
You should also check out Multiplicity from Stardock.