Category Archives: Software Tips

2026 VMWare Workstation Pro 17 download [SOLVED]

Friday, 2024.05.24 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Update (Feb 2026): The original download link below no longer works and has been removed. Since Broadcom acquired VMware, a LOT has changed. Here’s the updated info: The Big News: VMware Workstation Pro is Now FREE VMware Workstation Pro no longer requires a license key. It’s free for commercial, educational, and personal use. When you install it, you’ll be asked for a license key — just click Finish to skip it. The latest version is 17.6.4 (Broadcom is also introducing a new naming convention: 25H2). Direct Downloads

Combined two unallocated 2TB partitions into 4TB [SOLVED]

Friday, 2024.04.19 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Recently I started to repurpose a 4TB 2.5″ SATA SSD but ran into an issue utilizing the entire SSD. Specifically, even after deleting the existing partitions I could only allocate ~2TB and ~2TB (as shown on Disk1 below) Eventually, I realized that the issue was the drive had been setup as MBR instead of GPT. Here are the steps to remedy that and create a large contiguous 4TB partition. First the screenshot shows the steps, then the commands are listed

Photoshop keeps moving the wrong layer [SOLVED]

Tuesday, 2024.04.16 J.D. H. 3 comments

Recently when using Photoshop 2024 to move some small rasterized calendar text with a transparent background, Photoshop kept moving the wrong layer. Specifically the layer behind the object that I wanted to move. I checked that I was on the correct layer (and I was). Finally I realized that “Auto-Select” was checked in the move tool options dialog. After unchecking that, all was well! Short summary: if you are having difficulty getting photoshop to move the correct layer, try checking

AMD Ryzen 3700X (Desktop) vs AMD Z1 Extreme (Ally portable)

Tuesday, 2024.04.02 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Hands-On Experience: Ryzen 3700X Triumphs in Handbrake Encoding Over Asus ROG Ally’s Z1 Extreme CPU While compressing some video recently, I conducted a hands-on test to compare two contenders in my personal collection: my trusty desktop PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 3700X CPU (released in 2019 almost 5 years old!), and the compact portable powerhouse, the Asus ROG Ally mini gaming system (released 2023), equipped with an AMD Z1 Extreme CPU. The battlefield chosen for this performance duel was

Google Docs Export to PDF are HUGE now?!

Friday, 2024.03.08 J.D. H. Leave a comment

UPDATE: as of late March 2024, the file sizes have returned to a reasonable size 👍👍 The original blog entry describing the (now fixed) issue can be found below: Recently when exporting Google Docs pages to a PDF my file sizes have increased from 2-3mb to 20+mb 🙁 It seems to be related to including photos in the Doc but there do not appear to be any solutions from Google. They made some server size change because the EXACT same

Use Logitech M215 wireless mouse with Windows 11 [SOLVED]

Tuesday, 2023.09.26 J.D. H. 13 comments

Recently I setup an old Logitech (now logi) M215 wireless mouse with my Windows 11 laptop. The process was not as straightforward as I expected because I needed to sync/pair my mouse with a new unifying receiver. The Logitech website can be rather confusing, so as of 2023/09/26 here are direct links to the Unifying software page: https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025297913 and the download itself: https://download01.logi.com/web/ftp/pub/techsupport/unifying/unifying252.exe After installing the unifying software, it will ask you to turn your mouse off and the back

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No cloud save for BG3 on GOG! [as of Sept 2023]

Monday, 2023.09.04 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Currently, as of September 4th 2023, there are no cloud save for Baldur’s Gate 3 on GOG. The Larian Studio cloud save has been disabled and GOG has not enabled their cloud save functionality. Therefore, the current option is to manually copy your saves from one PC/device to another. The saves can be found here: LOCALAPPDATA%/Larian Studios/Baldur’s Gate 3/PlayerProfiles/Public/Savegames/Story Hopefully in the near future (maybe when the PS5 version is released) Larian will re-enable cloud saves for ALL platforms! Other

Topaz Video AI benchmarks 2023 (GPU list)

Friday, 2023.07.07 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Based on the various posted results, the performance in FPS for various GPUs when running Topaz Video AI depends on several factors, such as: Here are some examples of user-reported benchmark results for different GPUs and AI models: GPU Artemis 1X Artemis 2X Artemis 4X Proteus 1X Proteus 2X Proteus 4X Gaia 1X Gaia 2X Gaia 4X RTX 3080 Ti¹ 17.73 fps 8 fps 2.09 fps 13.09 fps 6.21 fps 1.99 fps 8.14 fps 5.32 fps 2.62 fps RTX 4080⁴