About Darren

About Darren Yates

Darren is one of Australia’s most respected IT journalists, having written for some of the country’s most prestigious publications including The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, Australian PC User and APC magazines. He was contributing editor to PC User from 2001 to 2012 and continues that role with new TechLife magazine.

He covers a wide range of personal technology areas, including 3D printing, having built his own 3D printer, along side reviewing a number of models including the MakerBot Replicator 2. He is currently Contributing Editor to TechLife magazine and a contributing writer to APC magazine where his features and tutorials can be seen each month.

He developed the UserBench series of PC benchmarks for Australian PC User magazine, Australia’s only home-grown benchmark system. In recent times, he has developed a range of software tools for the magazine including the popular RockPod series of audio/video converters and is the driving force behind PC User’s own range of UserOS operating systems including UserOS ULTRA, the first internal Linux distro created by a computer publication aimed at its readers.

*Darren has won numerous awards in recent years including the Australian IT Journalist of the Year award in 2005 and again in 2008. (He is currently the only journalist to win this most prestigious award twice). He has also received the award for Best Technical Journalist seven times (2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) and Best Technology Reviewer three times (2004, 2006, 2008). The Australian IT Journalism Awards are Australia’s most prestigious awards for IT journalism. For more details, see http://thelizzies.com.

Freelance assignments

Darren is available for selected freelance work. He can be contacted at <darren at darrenyates.com.au>.

About this website

This will be where I put up some of my findings, thoughts, tips and tricks as much for my own memory’s sake as anyone else’s. In the future, I’ll also be throwing up some of the growing number of software tools I’ve developed. Some will reside here, others on separate websites – we’ll see how we go.

All comments are Darren’s own and should not be deemed to be those held by TechLife, APC, Bauer Media or any other organisation.

Comments (20)
Related Posts

#1 written by Greg 2 years ago

Hello Darren,

Love your programs. Thank you. I’ve historically used Userbench encode 2008 and now have installed Userbench 2009. Can I compare the results I got before with 2008, with results from 2009?

cheers

Greg

Reply Quote
- #2 written by Darren Yates 2 years ago
  
  Generally, no. The reason is that they use different versions of the open-source FFmpeg encoder. We’ve only just retired Encode 2009 a couple of months ago after about two-and-a-half years so although it’s a pain not being able to compare results, the idea is that we try to keep a benchmark going as long as possible. The only reason we change is because the benchmark is no longer fulfilling its role and testing products sufficiently. That’s the reason why we’ve brought in UserBench Encode HD – it does 720p video testing rather than DVD resolution to push the latest multi-core notebooks and PCs harder.
  Cheers,
  Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#3 written by Rob 2 years ago

Can you tell me what’s up with the PC User website.I’ve been trying to access it intermittently,for a few months now,using firefox ; to register some software. And i haven’t been able to get it to load. It’s always at night,thought it might be shut down then ,any ideas.

Reply Quote
- #4 written by Darren Yates 2 years ago
  
  Not sure, Rob. However, I can tell you that PC User is getting a completely new website in the very near future. “About time” will be the reply from many but I’ve seen it and I think even at this early stage, it’ll be worth the wait…
  Cheers,
  Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#5 written by Robbie Parker 1 year ago

Darren, I finally got around to installing the Auto Rip program on the March 2011 PC User DVD. When I installed the program I found it was Build 221.

I then inserted http://www.darrenyates.com.au/pcuar-win-update234.exe into web browser Firefox and I received an “Unable to find page” messsage.

Could you please advise me how to get to the updare.

Robbie

Reply Quote
- #6 written by Darren Yates 1 year ago
  
  You sure? Just checked it now and you should get a download box asking you where to save the file.
  Try it again.
  Cheers,
  Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#7 written by John Manak 1 year ago

Hello Darren,
Is it possible to have different operating systems eg; Windows XP, WIndows 7, Linux installed on individual hard drives in one computer?
If it is possible how do i go about doing this?
Thanks,
John

Reply Quote
#8 written by Rod 1 year ago

I’ve been try to convert files using RockPod 4. No matter what i try the audio gets out of whack by the end. These are Topfield REC files which i’ve renamed as TS. By the end of 60 mins the audio is out by a few seconds.
What am I missing?

Reply Quote
- #9 written by Darren Yates 1 year ago
  
  You’re probably not missing anything – it’s just FFmpeg isn’t coping with the file format.
  I’ll see if there is a fix when I get two seconds to rub together… :)
  Cheers,
  Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#10 written by Nic 1 year ago

Love your encode benchmarks. I have been using them for years to test and tune new systems.
I recently tried Encode 2008 on a newly purchased i7-2620M laptop and got scores that varied from 15 to 43 (with background software off). I also tested Encode HD and got good consistent scores (49 to 51).
Any ideas about why the old 2008 version would behave in this way on an i7?
Cheers,
Nic

Reply Quote
#11 written by Paul L 11 months ago

Hi Darren, I have enjoyed using the various pieces of software you have developed for Video encoding, and downloading you tube videos.

I’m setting up a HP Microserver with 6GB of RAM and was thinking of putting Linux on it. I would use PC User Home server but being 32 bit it won’t be able to address all the RAM. I was thinking of using Xubuntu (which I believe is the base for Home server), and would like to share some external drives. Is it possible to use the drive share beta on Xubuntu? Or do you have instructions on how to implement it manually.

Many thanks for all your work :)

Reply Quote
- #12 written by Darren 10 months ago
  
  Yep, it should be.
  Haven’t tried it myself but it’s the same base code so it should – unless there’s a problem running a 32-bit app on 64-bit Linux but it should work.
  Cheers, Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#13 written by Noel Barlow 11 months ago

Recently read your article in the PC User Mag Tech Life and while most of the mag isn’t my cup of tea (I’m strictly a PC computer user and not into tablets and smart phones) the article on viewing windows 8 in a virtual machine was intreguing and I tried to complete your instructions however my windows 7 laptop has only one cpu so got an error message. It would have been better if you had included the minimum requirements to achieve the task in the article and saved me a lot of time. I am a regular mag subscriber and always follow your articles with interest and was suprised you had included those facts. Keep on writing your articles.

Reply Quote
- #14 written by Darren 10 months ago
  
  Hi Noel,
  What CPU do you have? I must admit I don’t have a single-core CPU (is that what you mean by “one”?). Otherwise, it should have worked. Probably more the issue is that it doesn’t support Virtualisation Technology, which Intel calls VT-X. But if it’s a Windows 7 laptop, I’d be surprised if it didn’t work…
  Cheers, Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#15 written by leland 7 months ago

Hi Darren,

In Sep TECHlife you mentioned you purchased $75 Android tablet from ebay. Are you happy with it? If so, can you please provide details as I would like to also get one but am confused by the range available and one that is reasonably built for the price.
Cheers, Leland.

Reply Quote
- #16 written by Darren 1 week ago
  
  Sort of. Most of these cheapies come out of one or two factories and use the same single-core processor so they’re not particularly quick.
  The thing I didn’t like about this model I bought in the end was the error message that kept popping up. Nothing seemed broken but it just continually appeared. For the money though, it wasn’t too bad.
  One other thing, the power brick I received with mine was terrible. Plug it in and the tablet was unusable. Thankfully, you could power it through the USB port with a USB AC adapter and that worked well.
  Hope that helps,
  Cheers,
  Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#17 written by Mike Yancey 2 months ago

Well written discrete amplifier articles. I enjoyed them quite a bit.
Thank you.

Mike Yancey
Dallas, Texas, USA

Reply Quote
#18 written by Mark 2 weeks ago

I’m a longtime electronics hobbyist. I’m looking to purchase all original issues of Electronics Handbook magazine by C&E Hobby Handbooks and Don Gabree. I see you were an author on some articles. Do you have any to sell or do you know anyone that would be willing to sell them to me?

Reply Quote
- #19 written by Darren 1 week ago
  
  Mark, sorry for the late reply – been really busy… these last 12 months… but Electronics Handbook was many moons ago. I only wrote articles for it on a freelance basis. I’m not sure what happened to the magazine after the mid-90s. Hope you find them somewhere.
  For what it’s worth, I’m going to be building up a new electronics website that focuses on the basics of analog components. While everyone is interested in modern CPU development, there’s a real danger that understanding discrete components is becoming a dying art. Anyway, that’s for another time.
  Cheers,
  Darren.
  
  Reply Quote
#20 written by Darren Yates 2 years ago

Nope, sorry.
Cheers,
Darren.

Reply Quote
Type your comment

You may use these HTML tags: <a> <abbr> <acronym> <b> <blockquote> <cite> <code> <del> <em> <i> <q> <strike> <strong>

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree
Comment Feed for this Post