When Intel introduced the Atom processor and the concept of netbook and nettop,  many people in the industry was skeptical.   I remember watching Sean Maloney, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Intel with Jonney Shi,  CEO of Asus Tech showing off the first netbook prototype on stage in IDF Taiwan 2007 more than a year ago.   At that time, many people thought of netbook as a toy.   No one, including Intel themselves, expected the take off rate one year later.

The biggest fear in the industry today is whether netbooks will cannabalize mainstream notebooks.   Intel positioned netbook pretty ideally - it is supposed to be for those who only do simple things with their PC, like surfing web and writing emails.    It is also a good second PC for those who frequently travel.

The problem is for the past three decades,  leaders in the PC industry has successfully trained end users to look for faster CPU, bigger hard disk,  better graphics,  bigger screen size, etc. when they buy a PC.   The reality is PCs have over shot the true demand of many users for a long time.   However,  the industry kept pumping out better specs in order to keep the selling price from falling too fast.   Netbook broke that paradigm.

Intel is right in saying that those who need to do simple things don't really need that sophisticated a PC.   However, it is also true that most users belong in this category.   In reality,  an average user doesn't really need a powerful CPU nor a big HDD nor a high resolution graphics card.    Netbook actually is a great value proposition for a lot of people.

I bought myself a notebook some months ago just to test it out.   I was pleasantly surprised that even as a power user,  I can do most of my daily work with it and even watch youtube.  The only problem is the 8.9" screen is too small, but normally I connect it to my 22" LCD when I'm at home.  So there's very little difference between that and my full featured notebook unless I need to do more heavy duty stuff.      This is truly a classical example of innovator's dilemma.

The nightmare for all the PC component makers will start when enough users realize the power of netbook is good enough for them and they start to expect notebook to be priced at the $300 - $500 range.   This will pull down the price range for the entire notebook segment.    A Centrino CPU costs around $80 to $100.  Now, the Atom costs $25 or less.   Motherboards,  LCDs,  and O/S for netbook all came down in price signicantly and hence OEMs as well as users are expecting other components like HDD to follow.

On the average, HDD for the notebook PCs costs around $45.   That $45 used to be a much smaller percentage of a notebook PC BOM cost, but now it is the second most costly component next to the LCD.   HDD in a netbook is much more expensive than the CPU,  the motherboard, the graphics,  or the operating system.   This puts signficant pressure on the HDD vendors to provide a low cost product or else they will see their margin erode very quickly.    I can see the HDD vendors race to the bottom in this segment very quickly.   In the meantime,  netbook opens up new requirements for lighter and thinner HDD, both which add cost to the design.

In the longer run,  the netbook trend will favour SSD.   Some in the HDD industry are saying "That's not true.  More and more netbook models come with HDD instead of SSD".   Well that's true ..... for now.   The reason is the cost of SSD is still prohibitive.    In order to fit the budget,  only 4GB to 16GB can be used.    That's still too small even for moderate PC users.    When 64GB SSD falls to $45 or less, which is similar to an average HDD price for mobile PC, we'll see PC vendors start to adopt SSD in a much bigger way.

In addition,  the current generation of SSDs are still not delivering the promised benefits.    Therefore, when users see that they are not getting a better experience with SSD but they have to pay a much bigger price for it or have to make do with tiny capacity,  many of them will choose HDD over SSD today.

However, as I mentioned before,  I feel the tipping point for SSD will happen in 2011 or 2012.   That's when the SSD prices will reach sweet spot and presumably many of the technical issues will be resolved.

If we look at Intel's forecast :

The market for Atom based mobile device will grow to pretty significant size in 2012.   That's when the HDD vs SSD battle will really heat up.

Another trend that the HDD vendors must watch out for is the fact that Intel pretty much controls the PC hardware architecture.  It is conceivable that Intel will try to move SSD closer and closer to the CPU overtime.   While HDD is still stuck at the south bridge with most other peripherals,   Intel is championing the Open Nand Flash Interface (ONFI) which can enable SSD to eventually jettison the archaic HDD interface such as SATA and adopt something that delivers much faster performance and interface directly with the CPU, just like DIMM.    When that happens,  HDD will be at a signficant disadvantage compared with SSD.

Therefore,  HDD vendors should feel paranoid about the trend.   They should develop a lower cost HDD as fast as they can,  before SSD reaches its sweet spot pricing.   On the other hand,  they should also spend more effort enabling applications that fill up storage space quickly, such as video.    If HDD vendors continue to focus solely on delivering bigger capacity,  they will find themselves racing each other over the cliff.

As the cliche says it well.... Only the Paranoid Survives !

SONAR V-Studio 700 repräsentiert das erste und wichtigste Produkt in der nächsten Generation der V-Studio Line (Cakewalk's Hardware und Software Lösungen). Mit SONAR V-Studio 700 haben sich zwei führende Musik-Technologie-Hersteller zusammengetan um ihre beste Hardware- und Softwarekenntnisse in Produkte einfliessen zu lassen, welche die wachsenden Bedürfnisse moderner Tontechniker berücksichtigt haben soll.

Roland war der ursprüngliche Pionier für ein Konzept bei dem ein Hard-Disk-Recorder mit einer ergonomischen Arbeitsfläche verbunden wurde. Jetzt baut eine neue Generation von V-Studios auf diesem Erbe auf indem es die vertraute Hardware von Roland mit der Leistungsfähigkeit und Flexibilität von Cakewalk's SONAR Producer DAW verbindet. SONAR V-Studio 700 schliesst die 'Lücke' zwischen 'Budget'-Lösungen, denen es aber auch oft an wichtigen Features mangelt, und überteuerten Lösungen. Dazu berücksichtigt das Design von SONAR V-Studio 700 die Bedürfnisse von Post-Production Anwendungen indem es Video und Bilder steuern kann.

SONAR V-Studio 700 beinhaltet:

- SONAR 8 Producer & die Vollversion von Rapture
- Die VS-700C V-Studio Konsole
- Die VS-700R V-Studio I/O
- Den integrierten Roland Fantom VS Hardware Synthesizer
- Direkte Kontrolle von EDIROL Video Hardware wie den DV-7 und anderer Hardware mit V-Link Unterstützung

Preis und Verfügbarkeit:

Das SONAR V-Studio 700 System wird mit SONAR 8 Producer, Raptures Software Synthesizer, VS-700C V-Studio Konsole, dem VS-700R V-Studio I/O mit eingebautem Fantom VS Synthesizer, Kabeln und User Guide geliefert.

SONAR V-Studio 700 wird per Februar 2009 erhältlich sein und einen Verkaufspreis von ca. $4000 haben. Weitere Infos unter www.sonarvstudio.com.

So... the question is will SSD replace HDD?   My simple answer is - most probably.   The real question is when and in which markets.     I believe SSD will start to encroach in a significant way into HDD's primary market, which is PCs in about 3 years.    I will explain my view later.       However, it doesn't mean the end of HDD because there will be many new applications and markets where HDD will thrive while SSD will not play well.    I will reserve this topic for future articles.   For now, let's focus on why I think it's a matter of time SSD will replace HDD in PC and server and when exactly that will happen.

Many of the arguments I read in the media focus on cost per GB and performance.    The pro-HDD guys will say on a cost per GB basis, HDD will continue to outrun SSD for foreseeable future and the pro-SDD guys will say, that's true but the performance for SDD is much better.

The truth is HDD's cost per GB will continue to be much lower than SSD.  For example, the average price per GB for an MLC based SSD is between $2 to $3, whereas for PC HDD, that'll be between $0.25 to $0.4.   However, we cannot conclude that because of the 10x price delta, therefore, user will continue to choose HDD over SSD.   The critical question is - how much an average user is willing to pay to get "good-enough" capacity for his or her PC.   If we agree on that approach,  then the first thing to look at is what is "good enough".

I found a pretty good chart to illustrate this point from a slide by Samsung presented in the Flash Summit 2007.

The chart above may be counter intuitive to some but it's true if you think about it.   The % of HDD that is actually been used decreases over time.   Reason is simple.   HDD in PC doubles in size for the same price every 18 months or so.   Thanks to the speed that the HDD vendors are able to pack more capacity to the same physical dimension,  users are able to enjoy more capacity without paying more.   However, over time, more and more HDD space is left unused.

I did an informal survey myself - I asked around people I know how many GBs have they used in their notebook PC.  On the average, it's between 30G to 50G,  and these are people in the IT industry and supposedly heavy PC users.   I have also seen reports that says more than 98% of commercial users use less than 100GB of HDD.     The average notebook PC comes with 250GB and desktop PC with 320GB.  Very soon we will see the average HDD in PC at 500GB or more.

The HDD vendors are so used to competing with each other primarily on one thing and that is first to market with the largest capacity.    None of the HDD vendors pay much attention to the fact that what they are making is already more than good enough for their primary customers.    This is a great topic for another article to talk about what should the HDD industry do,  but for now,  it's pretty evident that if an alternative technology can either lower the cost for the "Good-Enough" capacity or provide other benefits that users truly value while offering the "Good-Enough" capacities at around similar price ranges,  many if not most users,  will switch.

Therefore, what's good enough?   I would say 128GB is probably more than good enough for majority of the notebook users and 250GB for desktop users.   Let me focus the discussion on notebook users as I believe they will appreciate other benefits from SSD more than desktop users and hence will be first to convert.

Let's assume today's price per GB for SSD is $2.50 and the cost goes down 50% every year.  By 2011, $0.3 and a 128GB SSD will be less than $40.   It will be at the same price as an average HDD in mobile at that time, although for that price,  one will be able to get about 500GB of HDD.  Then the million dollar question is how many users will prefer a 128G SSD vs a 500GB HDD at the same price.  The answer will be whether SSD can deliver by then the promised benefits, which are faster speed, lower power and reliability.   If there is little difference in performance,  then of course, one would choose the higher capacity option but if there are appreciable benefits while delivering good enough capacity, then the migration to SSD will happen.

The pro-HDD guys will say - well, so far SSD has not really delivered real-life benefits despite showing promises in benchmark tests.    That's to a large extent true.   The issue is mainly due to the immaturity of SSD and how the operating system is designed.   However, over time many of the issues such as wear leveling, parallel access, system caching etc.. will be resolved or at least improved.   Currently we are seeing promising improvements in all these areas from the second generation SSDs that were recently announced.   HDD has gotten more than 30 years of head start,  it is very reasonable to for SSD to take the next 3 years to stablize itself.

So, net net,  my view is in the short term, meaning in the next 2 to 3 years, the SSD's encroachment into the mobile and desktop PC market will be minimal.   The tipping point will come in year 2011 or 2012.   However,  the dynamics in the server world will be quite different.   The value proposition of SSD in the tier 0 storage is so compelling that I believe the adoption of SSD will be much quicker.    However, in the context of the total HDD TAM, the server storage is only a small fraction.

What should a HDD vendor do?   Well,  first of all,  I don't think any of them are paranoid enough to begin with.   They are still in denial mode and hoping that the tsunami will not hit for a while.   They should know that hope is really not a good strategy.   I believe they have 3 years and 3 years is a pretty short time to get their act together.  Either they will have to get into SSD and have a real competitive strategy against big boys like Intel and Samsung or find new applications that consume TBs of storage fast enough to replace the volume they will stand to lose in the PC segment.   In later blog articles, I will talk about my views on what can be done in this area.

Stay tuned !

Procesor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, 2200Mhz, un Front Side Bus de 800 Mhz şi un cache de 4 MB. Chiar dacă nu e chiar ultima generaţie de la Intel, acest dual-core e rapid, frate. Dacă ar fi să-i găsesc un corespondent nici nu ar trebui să caut prea mult. Cred că acest procesor e într-adevăr un Lamborghini Gallardo (Viteza maximă : 309 Km/h, acceleraţie 0-100Km-h în 4.1 secunde). Nu e cel mai rapid model, aici sunt de acord, însă comparându-l cu concurenţa sa, AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 sau TL-62 e ca şi cum ai compara acest Gallardo cu un Mustang. Binenteles şi Mustang-ul e o maşină performantă, puternică, rapidă, însă la un head-to-head ar rămâne mult în urma Lamborghini-ului. În plus, un Mustang consumă mai mult.

Display şi Video: Ecranul e un TFT WSXGA+ (rezoluţie de 1680×1050 cu un aspect ratio de 16 : 10 ), Color Shine (aşa le place băieţilor de la ASUS să numească display-urile glossy). Şi cum ASUS sunt recunoscuţi pentru calitatea display-urilor, nici acesta nu face notă discordantă. Nu e pentru profesioniştii în ale graficii (pentru care display-urile mate sunt perfecte), însă pentru muritorii de rând e excelent. Placa grafică este un GeForce 8600M cu 512 MB de memorie dedicată şi încă 1 GB prin TurboCache (adică placa video poate să „împrumute” ceva memorie din RAM). Nu e chiar cea mai bună placă video de pe piată (Nvidia a scos seria 9 în februarie anul curent, urmată apoi în iunie de seria 200, unde GTX 280 e regele), dar cu siguranţă orice joc de anul acesta va rula lin cu ajutorul acestei plăci. Aş fi vrut să compar experienţa vizuală a acestui laptop cu frumuseţea Jessica-i. Însă acest notebook nu a atins perfecţiunea, de aceea cred că se potriveşte mai degrabă imaginii Evei. Dar până la urmă e o chestie de gusturi.

Hdd & RAM : Memoria RAM e de 2 GB, extensibilă la 4. E un DDR2 la 667 Mhz (oare rotunjirea e din superstiţie?). Nici aici nu a fost atinsă perfecţiunea, DDR3 fiind succesorul care se impune rapid prin viteza sa superioară (Se ajunge şi la 1800Mhz, adică de aproape 3 ori viteza memorie notebook-ului la care se face referire aici). Însă cei 4 giga de memorie la care se poate ajunge sunt arhisuficienţi pentru cerinţele de acum şi mult timp în viitor. Oricât de lacom ar fi Vista şi alte aplicaţii, cantitatea e realmente impresionantă. Hard Disk-ul e de 200GB. Nu e mult, dar nici puţin. E destul. Şi oricând se poate suplimenta prin HDD externe. Etalonul? Teo. Nu e un foarte suplă, însă nici nu e rotofeie. Mai ales după cura urmată.

Multimedia : Notebook-ul dispune de player Blu-Ray, înlocuitorul DVD-urilor clasice. Era şi timpul deoarece DVD-ul e deja un bătrânel şi trebuie să intre în pensie după ce a servit cu onoare încă din anii ’90. Pe un blu-ray putem pune 25 GB (single layer ) sau 50 GB (dual layer). Pe un dvd normal cifrele erau de 4,7 respectiv 8,5. Diferenţa se vede de la o poştă (Când am văzut anul trecut în primăvară, în Franţa, X-Men 3 rulat pe o plasmă de pe un Blu-Ray am rămas tablou. Experienţa e incomparabilă cu cea a unui DVD normal). La capitolul audio notebook-ul stă excelent, calitatea fiind High Definition Audio. Comparabilă cu vocea Aliciei Keys.

Comunicaţii: Notebook-ul dispune de o reţea 10/100/1000 la care puteţi lega ţeava de net, de wireless 802.11a/b/g/n în caz că nu aveţi ţeavă dar aveţi vecini „binevoitori”, un modem 56K dacă mergeţi la bunici sau vă place tortura dial-up precum şi de Bluetooth pentru conectare cu telefonul şi descărcare de poze pentru hi5. Deci are de toate pentru toţi. Din punctul acesta de vedere l-aş compara cu Mircea Badea la emisiunea În gura presei . Pentru că vorbeşte mult, dar cu folos.

Alimentarea se face, atunci când nu aveţi o priză la îndemână, cu ajutorul acumulatorilor Li-Ion cu 8 celule. Acele 8 celule fac diferenţa. E o greutate în plus, dar beneficiul este o autonomie sporită. Tine mult, aproape cât o călătorie cu CFR. Cu deosebirea că în cazul notebook-urilor chiar dorim să dureze cât mai mult.

Sistemul de operare: Windows Vista Ultimate. Cel mai deştept Windows creat până acum. E Einstein-ul sistemelor de operare. Acum susţinătorii Linux sau Mac o să-mi sară în cap, însă aceştia nu fac împreună decât 9% din totalul utilizatorilor de calculatoare. De acea mă pun bine cu majoritatea.

Preţul: 11.267,54 LEI la emag. Adică 4036.8 X 1 verzişor. E doar pentru cei care chiar nu au ce face cu banii, mai ales că la doar 64% din preţ luaţi acest ASUS cu specificaţii clar superioare. Dar uneori marca face toţi banii. Eu îl recomand doar pentru cei care vor să se laude cu el.

But still, that sucks... :( oh well...

Secara umum, ukuran laptop di diantaranya mini (di bawah 10 inci), tipis, dan ringan (10 inci?14 inci), mainstream (14 inci?15.4 inci), dan pengganti desktop (17 inci?21 inci).

SESUAIKAN KEBUTUHAN

Jika ingin menggunakan laptop sebagai pengganti PC/komputer rumah, carilah notebook dengan ukuran layar minimal 15 inci sehingga Anda dapat bekerja dengan lebih nyaman.

Layar sebesar ini juga praktis sebagai media presentasi ke klien. Sebaliknya, bila Anda acap melakukan perjalanan bisnis, pilih notebook dengan ukuran 12 inci atau kurang.

PILIHAN PROSESOR

Jika hanya untuk mengetik atau pekerjaan rutin di Word atau Excel, maka prosesor standar sudah lebih dari cukup untuk memenuhi kebutuhan (misal Pentium 4).

Tetapi, bila menggunakan laptop untuk desain, editing video sampai bermain game, sangat dianjurkan untuk memilih prosesor yang mempunyai kinerja yang cukup baik (misal Core 2 Duo atau lebih).

JENIS LAYAR (SCREEN)

Walaupun sudah menentukan ukuran layar, tetapi Anda juga dihadapkan pilihan tipe layar, yaitu standar atau wide. Pilih format wide karena lebih nyaman dan enak dilihat dengan resolusi minimal 1024 x 768.

Ada pula tipe glossy yang terlihat lebih bersinar, namun kurang nyaman untuk membaca. Terakhir, tipe matte yang lebih memberikan kenyamanan saat berurusan dengan teks atau tulisan.

MEMORI

Semakin besar memori (RAM) maka semakin cepat kinerja notebook. Untuk pemakaian standar, memori dengan kapasitas 512 MB?1GB sudah cukup. Untuk desain grafis, game, dan edit video, 2GB adalah ukuran memori ideal.

HARD DISK

Bila file di dalam notebook adalah dokumen, hard disk berkapasitas 80GB sudah lebih dari cukup. Tetapi bila lebih banyak menyimpan file lagu, video, dan gambar resolusi tinggi, sebaiknya pilih hard disk berkapasitas 160GB atau lebih.

MEDIA PENYIMPANAN

Pilihlah notebook yang sudah dilengkapi dengan CD/DVD writer. Karena mungkin suatu saat kita butuh memindahkan file di dalam notebook ke CD/DVD atau sebaliknya.

Bila tidak ada, bisa menambahkan CD/DVD writer eksternal yang menggunakan koneksi USB.

KONEKTIVITAS

Konektivitas ini sangat berguna untuk memudahkan transfer file dari suatu peranti ke peranti lain baik berupa USB, Bluetooth (bila ingin terhubung dengan ponsel), WiFi atau Port Ethernet (local area network/LAN) untuk terkoneksi dengan internet atau area hotspot.

The problem started last friday, i.e. 19th October, when it ran very slow, and made me worried. At that time, i thought may be a restart will solve the problem, but when I restarted it, it took a hell lot of time to start, I remember, it took me around 20 min to start at that time. I was supposed to leave for Dublin, so I just shut it down, and forgot about the issue. But, then again on monday, it was running slow. I didnt have enough time during work week to figure out the problem so I thought will handle this rogue on the coming week. Ha Ha Ha, Date with the Rogue.

Also, during this week, i also noticed a click sound, which was coming from the hard-drive, I thought, man hard-disk is gone now, and it really pissed me off, as I have already lost one of my hard-disk and lot of important data with it. First think, I did was to take the back up of photographs that I have taken over the past 5 years, and then some important project files. I googled on the net, and learn that it is a known problem with DELL laptop. But I also came across one solution which recommended to change the power properties to let go off the problem of click noise with the hard disk. I tried but it didnt work.

Finally, I thought of nailing down this problem today. The first thing, that I generally do, whenever I observe my system slow, is to check task manager, if it can tell me which process is eating so much of cpu and making the computer run slow. Well, task manager was showing 99% CPU utilization. And I have enough RAM of 3gb, so i was sure it is not memory problem. Then I thought, may be there is some virus or trojan running in the background, smart enough to eat all of my CPU utilization but not showing up in the task manager. I tried a whole bunch of antivirus, malware remover, and all such stuff but to no relief. Then I downloaded 2 utilities process explorer and sea tools.

Process Explorer gives a more detailed view of task manager and sea tools does some test on the hard drive. Executing Process Explorer revealed the real problem but not complete. It showed that some hardware interrupt are eating up 50% of CPU. So, this means there is some problem with the hardware. Sea Tools passed all the test on my hard-drive which means, hard drive is possibly fine.

Further googling about hardware interrupt eating up 50% of CPU resources, revealed 2 solutions

1. Go To Bios set up and disabled PCI IDE bus master - I personally did not like this options, so just left it

2. Go To Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> Primary or Secondary IDE Channel -> Properties -> Advanced Settings.

Check out the Current Transfer Mode field,  if it's PIO, man you have solved your problem, if it 's not, then it is some other problem.  Uninstall the driver, restart the system and windows will automatically install the driven on restart and bingo, works fine now.

Well, in my case, it was PIO problem, I dont care  a shit what is PIO, it should be DMA. I do know about DMA which I read in my OS classes, it is supposed to handle interrupts related to memory and release hard disk from doing so, Well  i guess, its reasonable to choose DMA option  then.

Happy now, to resolve the problem which was pissing me off for quiet a long time. Hope it helps others also.

I have decided to pursue this deficiency in service with Dell. I will post any update on that front here. Anyways my system is up and running now. I will be slowly posting all the things on the blog soon, so stay tuned.

Also I have a big surprise coming. I will let you know as soon as I get the details. But rest assured its something big (atleast for me!) So stay tuned on that front!

Well, I read a couple of post on this issue, and finally came to the conclusion that this is a known issue with dell laptops and the problem is with the hard disk for sure. The sound is because of the spindle arm resting to the left. It goes for a rest and makes a sound. The solution is replace the hardisk :)

Well, I just thought when did this problem started. It started on the evening I was supposed to leave for dublin i.e. 19th Sep. So what is that I did on that day that can make my laptop cry out. As far as I remember I changed the power settings. Now, I have reverted back the power settings, lets see what happens now. But this problem has already spoiled quite a few days.

The moral of the story is, I am not happy with the quality of dell laptop. I have been using samsung laptop before, and they work so good.

ඔහු මට කිව්වා පොඩ්ඩක් ඇවිත් පරිගණකය හදලා දෙන්න කියලා. මම ගිහින් බැලුවා. ඒ වෙනකොට ඔහු ළඟ තවත් අලුත් හාඩ් ඩිස්කයක් තිබුණා. මට කරන්න තිබුණේ අලුත් හාඩ් එකට OS එකක් දාලා හොඳ වයිරස් ගාඩ් එකකින් ‍පරණ හාඩ් එක සුද්ද කරන එකයි. ඒත් මම එහෙම නොකර කිව්වා ඒ විදියට කළොත් අලුත් හාඩ් එකටත් වයිරස් එනවා ඒ නිසා පරණ හාඩ් එක මට දෙන්න මම මොනවා හරි කරලා වයිරස් අයින් කරලා දෙන්නම් කියලා. ඒත් ඒකෙ තියෙන පැරණි ගීත චිත්‍රපට මගේ අතර පත් වෙයි කියලා වෙන්න ඇති එයා ඒකට කැමති වුණේ නෑ.

අන්තිමේ දී හොඳින් බැරි නිසා නරකින් වැඩේ කරන්න මට සිද්ධ වුණා. ඔහුගේ ගෙදර ගිය වෙලාවක පැත්තකට දාලා තිබුණු පරණ හාඩ් එක හොරෙන් ම ගෙදර ගෙනාවා. මගේ පරිගණකයට හයි කරලා වයිරස් සුද්දයක් දැම්ම විට පෙනුනා ඒ හාඩ් එකේ ගිගා බයිට් 3 විතරම වැයවෙලා තිබුණේ වයිරස්වලට :-O ඔහු තවම දන්නේ නෑ හාඩ් එක මා ළඟ බව. අවශ්‍ය කරන දේවල් පිටපත් කරගෙන හිමින් සැරේ තිබුණු තැනින් ම ගෙනිහිල්ලා තියනවා. දවසක නැවත ඒක පරිගණකයකට සම්බන්ධ කළොත් ඔහු පුදුම වෙයි තිබුණු වයිරස් වලට මොකද වුණේ කියලා :-)

මම මේ කරපු වැඩේ හරි ද වැරදි ද ?

LA SOGLIA è STATA SUPERATA ORA!!!

Da tempo aspettavo questo momento per sostituire i DVD con dei bei mattoncini metallici da riporre nel cassetto.

• 1 DVD da 4,5 GB costa circa 60 centesimi = 13,30 Cent/Gbyte

• 1 Hard Diak da 1 TB costa circa 120 euro, diviso per 930 GB di spazio reale = 13,00 Cent/Gbyte

Valutiamo anche il fatto che l' Hard Disk andrà diminuendo di costo molto velocemente e che un Disco Fisso fermo NON si rompe, Wladipedia dichiara che da ora in avanti conviene comprare Hard Disk e metterli nel cassetto invece che DVD.

Per il Blu-Ray, si vedrà!

However this isn't exactly true. I don't know what the number represents but it's not the size of the drive once you plug it into your machine. I only get 149Gb from the former and 298Gb from the latter, which on the latter is a significant loss of space (close to 10% but more like 8%). It goes to say that this is beyond annoying! When you buy a hard disk, you buy it based on advertised size (hoping to get that maximum space possible) at least that's the general idea. If you advertise the size of something it should be the real size you will see when you start to use it! Not the theoretical size based on platters and cluster sizes!! BTW this is true for almost every hard disk vendor not just the one mentioned here.

Don't get me wrong the drives are fantastic. I bought them for that reason, they perform extremely well and have some interesting laptop usage safe guards. I am just feed up of expecting something and getting a different value in return... For crying out loud! Change your attitude, the industry needs to change its methodology and start giving us the real sizes - didn't this happen with TV to!

So HDD Industry wake-up, smell the coffee and stop lying to us about the size of your products! Gives us the real size...

Features :

• Controlling the health of your hard drives using the S. M. A. R. T. technology.

• Constantly monitoring the state of your hard drives in the background mode.

• Displaying the temperature of your hard drives.

• Disk free space info and control.

[Full list of Features]

[Download] (7.56MB)

Take a close look at the image.....Now try and guess or recall what it is....I hope by now, million signal transactions might have been occurring on your hippocampus.

I'm quite sure you - ingenious, would be guessed by now...................Any way scroll down to get some more info.......

Its a Hard Disk.

Yes....It is a 1956 made first ever hard disk. You will be amazed to know the capacity. Its just 5 MB.

IBM launched the first computer with this hard disk on 1956 - 305 RAMAC.

The Disk Storage was a major component of the IBM 305 RAMAC weighing more than a ton in weight.

Little more about IBM 305 RAMAC

The 305 was a flexible, electronic, general purpose data processing machine that enabled businesses to record transactions as they occurred and concurrently reflect each entry in affected accounts. It maintained records on a real-time basis, provided random access to any record, eliminated peak loads, and could simultaneously produce output by either print or punched cards.

The 305 system consisted of the IBM 305 Processing Unit (containing the magnetic process drum, magnetic core register and electronic logical and arithmetic circuits), the IBM 370 Printer (an 80-position serial-output printer with tape control carriage), the IBM 323 Card Punch (similar to the IBM 523 Gang Summary Punch, providing for 80 columns of output punching), the IBM 380 Console (containing the card feed, typewriter, keyboard and indicator lights and control keys), the IBM 340 Power Supply (supplying power for all components except the motors in the 350 disk storage unit), a utility table adjacent to the console, and the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit.

                                                                          IBM RAMAC 305

The 350 Disk Storage Unit consisted of the magnetic disk memory unit with its access mechanism, the electronic and pneumatic controls for the access mechanism, and a small air compressor. Assembled with covers, the 350 was 60 inches long, 68 inches high and 29 inches deep. It was configured with 50 magnetic disks containing 50,000 sectors, each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters, for a capacity of 5 million characters.

Disks rotated at 1,200 rpm, tracks (20 to the inch) were recorded at up to 100 bits per inch, and typical head-to-disk spacing was 800 microinches. The execution of a "seek" instruction positioned a read-write head to the track that contained the desired sector and selected the sector for a later read or write operation. Seek time averaged about 600 milliseconds.

                                                           350 Disk Storage in operation

In 1958, the 305 system was enhanced to permit an optional additional 350 Disk Storage Unit, thereby doubling storage capacity; and an additional access arm for each 350.

With storage capacities of 5 million and 10 million digits, and the capability to be installed either singly or in pairs, the 350 provided the 305 system with storage capacities of 5, 10, 15 or 20 million characters.

More than 1,000 - 305s were built before production ended in 1961. The 305 RAMAC was one of the last vacuum tube systems designed in IBM.

You may start appreciating this.................. 

Yay. I have found another very useful utility. It is called "WinDirStat", and it is a pretty straight forward program. All it does is give windows (xp, not sure if vista already has a program for it) the ability to show you which folders take up the most space. It not only does this the usual way, by saying program files takes up about 48% of the total disk space, but it also shows it in a very cool graphical form, as you can see below. This is very useful for trying to clean up a disk which is not yours, or a disk so full of porn that you can't remmeber where it all is. The graphical representation is quite interesting, where each small block is a file (i think) and each colour is a diffrent kind of file.

Homepage: http://windirstat.info/
Direct Download: http://windirstat.info/wds_current_setup.exe

Setting the Jumpers on a seagate hard drive

Cable Select. The drive is configured at the factory for a cable select setting. This allows the drive to assume the proper role of master or slave based on the connector used on the cable (see the UltraATA cable figure below). For the cable select setting to work properly, the cables you are using must support the cable select feature. Current UltraATA cables with the 3 colored connectors do support this feature.

Master or single drive. If you are installing your Seagate hard drive as the only drive in the system or if it will be the primary boot drive for the system, the jumper should be set on pins 7 and 8.

Drive as slave. If you are installing the drive as an additional drive in your system, the drive should be set as slave by removing all jumpers. Remember to confirm that the original drive is set to a master position (If the limit capacity jumper is required for your installation it will need to remain in place).

Drive as master with a non-ATA-compatible slave (Seagate® drives only). Set a jumper on pins 5 and 6 and a jumper on pins 7 and 8. Use this jumper setting only if the drive does not work as a master.

Setting the Jumpers on a Western Digital hard drive

Cable Select Configuration Options for PC Systems:

If you have determined that your system and all other IDE devices support and are using Cable Select, please use the following information to connect your IDE drive. The jumper should always be on pins B-D for Cable Select installations.

Installing the new drive as the only drive in the system:
If you are connecting your drive as the only IDE drive on the cable, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins B-D on the 2.5" drive. Simply connect the drive to the end of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the primary (Master) drive:
If you are connecting your drive as the primary (Master) drive on the cable with another IDE drive, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins B-D on the 2.5" drive. Please ensure that the second (Slave) IDE drive is jumpered as Cable Select as well. Connect the primary (Master) 2.5" drive to the end of the cable and the second (Slave) drive to the middle connector of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the secondary (Slave) drive:
If you are connecting your drive as the secondary (Slave) drive on the cable with another IDE drive, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins B-D on the 2.5" drive. Connect the 2.5" drive to the middle of the cable and other (Master) drive to the end of the cable.

Master/Slave Configuration Options for PC Systems:

Installing the new drive as the only drive in the system:
If you are connecting your drive as the only IDE device on the cable, no jumper is needed on the 2.5" drive. Connect the 2.5" drive to the end of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the primary (Master) drive:
If you are connecting your drive as the Master drive on the cable with another IDE device, no jumper is needed on the 2.5" drive. Ensure to configure the jumper on the secondary (Slave) IDE device as Slave. Connect the primary (Master) 2.5" drive to the end of the cable, and the secondary (Slave) device to the middle of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the secondary (Slave) drive:
If connecting your drive as the secondary drive on the cable with another IDE device, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins A-B on the 2.5" drive. Configure the jumper on the primary IDE device as Master. Connect the 2.5" (Slave) drive to the middle of the cable, and the Master IDE device to the end of the cable.

Mi chiedete la compatibilità con linux? Perfetta, anche se non potete usare quei 4 software di merda che ci rifilano sopra (AutoBackUp, Sync, Archive, Updator).. Grave eh?

Comunque volevo parlarvi di un fatto che non mi è affatto piaciuto.

Dietro alla confezione leggo:

• USB 1.1/2.0
• 480Mbps max
• USB powered (autoalimentato)
• SATA 2,5" preformatted (in NTFS, figli di puttana!)
• 5400 rpm
• 8 MB cache min

Bene, dicono anche USB 1.1 vero? Sapete che se lo attaccate ad una porta USB 1.1 non funziona e fa "bip bip bip" all'infinito? Così io in questo modo non posso usarlo nei miei pc vecchi..

Bisognerebbe fare qualcosa, perchè se c'è scritto USB 1.1 deve funzionare anche se 40 volte più piano! (12Mb/s invece di 480Mb/s)

Certe cose mi fanno proprio incazzare.. (Anche perchè è costato 80€ per 250Gb, che in fondo non è male considerando che è iper-portatile!)