For firefox users, changing your “Temp Directory” isn’t quite as easy as it is in Internet Explorer.  In fact, no matter how hard the average Joe looks for it, he’ll find himself either tearing what hair he has left out, or giving up… So here you go!

1. Open Firefox and in the address bar, type: about:config

2. You’ll get a message about ‘voiding your warranty’, click the button that says “I’ll be careful, I promise!”

3. Right-click anywhere in the browser window and chose New > String.

4. It will prompt you to “Enter the preference name”, type browser.cache.disk.parent_directory and hit OK.

5. It will then prompt you to “Enter string value”, here you enter the location of where you want your temp files to be stored.  I have mine on Y:\TEMPNET (Y:\ is the letter for my other HDD).

6. Close and re-open Firefox and your new settings will be in effect.

Alright, so I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (7600).  I noticed in some of the games I frequent (sadly WoW being the main one) that I was sitting around 112ms~ latency.  Much like HDTV buffs notice the most minute imperfections in video, gamers can basically feel the delay between when they enter a command and when their game performs the intended command.  You can essentially cut your latency in half by disabling Nagle’s Algorithm… I dropped down to a 53ms~ average.

By default all current Microsoft operating systems have Nagle’s Algorithm enabled.  For gamers playing games that utilize TCP packets to transmit data, such as WoW, this can be a bit of a hinderance.  So here is how to go about disabling it in Windows 7… you’ll need to go into your registry editor, which to be honest, if you don’t know what you’re doing, can become quite scarey as you can really hose things up if you’re careless.  However if you follow this step by step, and refrain from slamming your face on the keyboard while swinging your mouse around like you’re trying to rope cattle, you’ll be fine.  Also keep in mind that you’ll need administrative privelages to get into the registry editor.

1. To get into the registry editor, go to Start > Run > Type: regedit

2. Browse to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces

Here you will see your network interface devices listed as random characters.  The only way to really identify which one you want to modify is to click on each one and search for your IP configuration information in the right pane (ie. IPAddress > 192.168.0.100).

3. You will need to create two new entries for this interface.  You can do this by right-clicking the interface in the left pane and going to New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.

• Name the first one “TcpAckFrequency” (case sensitive).
• Name the second one “TCPNoDelay” (again, case sensitive).

4. As you create these, they will appear in the right pane of the registry editor.  You want to double-click each of your new values and set their ‘Value Data’ to “1″, and leave “Hexadecimal” checked under ‘Base’.

5. Exit your registry and reboot.

Notice: This can adversely effect other types of internet usage such as streaming video (ie. Hulu), further research on your part will provide more information.

My iStat Menu configuration.

The configuration screen is pretty simple to decipher and you can check for updates from here as well.

Configuration screen in System Preferences.

Product Type: Freeware (donations accepted by developer).

Anyways, I use the 750GB drive as a data/documents storage volume for both OSes formatted as NTFS.  I formatted it NTFS because out of the box OSX can view NTFS volumes but not write to them, whereas Windows can’t even view HFS+ volumes (out of the box).

Since you can already view NTFS volumes mounted on your desktop in OSX just as you would any other HFS+ volume, the only aspect left is writing to it.  Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X is a lightweight driver that allows you to write to NTFS formatted volumes within OSX just as you would a HFS+ volume, its seemless and doesn’t require launching of an application.

You can also use the included MacBrowser to read/write to your HFS+ formatted volumes while in Windows.

Product Type: Shareware $39.95 // Trial Period: 10 days fully functional.

As a precautionary measure I’ve already tested this system’s ability to run OSX using iDeneb v1.4 – please don’t ask for specific details as to where or how, there is plenty of literature online if you search… I’ve already given you a link.  Anyways, now that I know OSX is feasible, I’m going to do it the right way.

I will be learning a lot in the process and hopefully can document it efficiently enough for others to benefit – or if I blow up the whole deal, I can retrace my steps to pick it back up.

System Specs;

• Motherboard: ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe (AMD 790FX / ATI SB750)
• Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 940 (Deneb)
• Graphics Card: HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo 1GB (ATI RadeonHD 4870)
• Memory: G.Skill DDR2 1066 8GB Memory (4x2GB)
• Hard Drive: 320 Seagate Barracuda (SATA/300)
• Display: Dell S2409W LCD (1920×1080)