I ordered an MSI G41M4 motherboard, you may recall, and tested it using Ubuntu 10.04. My intent was to get a case and move the board into it to upgrade my faltering XP system. Originally, I was considering purchasing an Atech STK6508G 9-Bay case and 680 watt power supply. On thing that I considered was what appears to be a bright LED configuration on the front panel. Because of other purchases, I had to go with the Logisys CS-206BK 10-bay case with a 480 watt supply for $28.99 to save a few dollars.

Store photo

One of the other purchases was the Samsung TS-H663C. I ordered it specifically because the picture displayed indicated that it DID NOT come with Nero. When I received the drive, it, in fact, came with Nero 8. The first version of Nero that I received was 6 and it worked great. Subsequent purchases came with Nero 7 which totally screwed up my system. I did not get it totally straightened out until I had to restore my system later. I obviously have reservations about Nero 8. As of this writing, the disk lays on my desk untried.

The other component I ordered was the Seagate Barracuda 750 GB SATA hard disk drive. I didn’t realize that it was refurbished, but that rarely bothers me with hard drives. I have yet to order a refurb that did not work. I thought it was marked as on sale, but apprently the $44.99 is the current price. The drive registers actually 710 GB by Windows, by as we know they never format out to the full specs.

Click on images for larger view

The case is very light weight as the metal used is light. It is a good-looking cover outside. The sides come off easily being held by two thumbscrews each. You need to open both sides to get screws into both sides of the devices you install. The first thing I saw upon opening was a rear vent fan that I was not expecting. That was a pleasant surprise. The cables for the front USB and audio were run through the rack for the hard drives and I had to pull them out and re-route them to the side. Not a big deal.

Front cable connections ran through HDD rack.

There is only one 3.5 external slot, but I only needed one for my card reader which fit fine. The problem was that the screw rack for the 3.5 inch slot was bent. It is thin-gauge metal, though, and bent back into place without a problem.

The only problem that I encountered was the placement of connectors. It would have been better if the power supply manufacturer had put a SATA and Molex combination connector on each power cable. Instead, you have a power cable with two SATA connectors, one with two Molex connectors, and one with two Molex connectors and a floppy drive power connector. This would have been all right with my former board arrangement, but my new board has four SATA connectors. Currently, it is not a problem because I went ahead and ordered the larger hard drive and SATA/IDE to USB cable to transfer all of my older stuff. However, I will have to purchase a power supply with more wattage, later.

The backplane cover is a punch-out as are the covers for the card slots. I had to whack the backplane with the handle of my screwdriver to get it started, but it came out fine. Don’t forget to recyle them. The covers for the card slots punch-out without a problem with just the fingers. Remember to only punch out those you do not need. There is only one of the card slots, the top one, that does not have a cover, but you can install an internal fan, if needs be, or a cover from an older computer. Aren’t you glad that you kept those lying around? The only other thing was the funky cover over the card slots. You have to remove the screw and cover to screw down the cards and then replace the cover. I suppose you could keep the cover off, but that leaves a hole for dirt.

The case is shown upside-down. Notice the top card slot is open.

Overall, the case rates about a B+. I suspect that my front headphone/mic jack and rear microphone jack are a motherboard problem and not the case. The case looks good and once you have everything installed and running, it will probably do all right for you in a pinch. If you are planning to use a dual-core or high-end board, you’ll probably want to move up to a better case or, at least, plan on buying a better power supply.

As for the other purchases, the IDE/SATA to USB 2.0 cable adapter I ordered worked all right. But the Molex-to-SATA adapter for the power was difficult to install. I managed to get important data transfered with no problem. Make sure that you disconnect the hard drive after you transfer, however, as it gets extremely hot.

I took a chance on the Earcup Stereo headphones w/boom microphone for $4.99. I forgot tha I ordered one before and had a problem with the volume control on the cable. My motherboard is not working right, for some reason, but the headset works fine on my other computer. I would recommend that the manufacturer eliminate the volume control on the cable.

I also ordered a Sony ICD-BX700 refurbished voice recorder. The biggest problem with it was that it and the instructions were glued to a piece of cardboard which took some time to remove. The backpage of the instruction book tore, but I did not loose any of the instructions. The recorder takes two AAA batteries. It is really light-weight and I do not know how sturdy it is. It does not plug into a computer via usb, but you might be able to transfer your recordings via the headset plug. It has a plug for mic/headphones. It took me about ten minutes with the instructions to learn how to use it, so most people should be able to just pick it up and use it.

2. Give me more drop-down menu options. If I use the Pages and Recent Post widgets, it tends to take up the entire sidebar areas. The option of drop-downs might reduce some clutter.

I’ll add more suggestions as I think of them.

I have experimented with the menu feature of the new WordPress 3.0 beta. It is impressive.

The first thing you have to do is select Appearance—>Menus in the toolbar section on the left. Once you get to the menu creation window, you type in the name of your menu and press create menu.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. You can add a link to a web site. You can add a link to one of your pages or a category of posts. If you cannot remember the name of the pages or categories that you want to use, just press search. When you are finished, simply press save.

After you have finished, you can select Appearance—>Widgets. Select the Navigation Menu widget and move it to where ever you desire on your blog. Select the menu that you want to use from the drop-down menu and give it a title. Don’t forget to save it.

This is a nice feature for writers of fiction or online books that you put into pages. You can make a menu for chapters of a book or short stories. You can set up a menu of recipes or what ever your imagination can come up with.

You can replace your Recent Posts widget and links widget and group related items together. Of course, if you want to use your old themes, there are menu plug-ins available.

There is a warning, of course, that this feature is in beta and may change. The one change I hope they make is to be able to choose a drop-down menu for your menu.

WordPress is going through a massive revision. I discovered it when I was installing a blog for a client. I was so impressed that I decided to take a chance and lost my old posts. That is not big deal since they were only for demonstration purposes only.

The biggest news about the upgrade is the Twenty Ten theme. It is a massive reconstruction of the default WordPress theme. The first thing to notice is that they abandoned that narrow look from the WordPress default theme from previous versions of WordPress.

It is easily customized without digging into the CSS file. I am still trying to figure out how to change the fonts through the CSS files. I wonder if WordPress will include a menu to change those easily. You can upload a header file easily as long as it is 940 x 198 pixels in size.

It allows you to set a “featured image” through the upload image feature or to set one when you edit or create a new post. The featured image is used as the header for that particular post. I have only tried it on one post, but if you can set a separate featured image for different post, the possibilities are remarkable. For example, imagine that you have a home making blog. You could set up one header for cleaning tips, another for recipes, another for interior decorating tips, and so on.

You can easily change the background color of your blog or image of your blog. You can set an HTML code to change to background to a single color. Or you can upload and image and set it as your background. You can set it up to scroll with the page or stay fixed.

There is a menu feature, but I am not sure what it does, but I am working on it.

The current beta also allows you to use your old themes, so if you are just too old-fashioned to change, not to worry.

This is a major revision for WordPress and they are definitely on the right road. No doubt many beta testers will keep giving hints and ideas, but I hope it does not delay release of this tremendous effort by the WordPress staff.