Still As Life

I have Folding@Home running on all of my computers, I have run it for quite a while. I have no real reason not to. Now having it setup on the new computer, and watching the usage on the CPU, it is nothing like what I had expected.

On everyt other computer I have used it on, it consistently keeps the CPU usage up at 100% except when it is sending and receiving a new block to work on. On the quad core CPU though, even though it is set to use all of the idle CPU time, it seems to sit between 30% and 50% of the CPU time, it is also getting through pieces quicker than the old computer, despite only using such a small amount of the available CPU time.

No, this does not mean that I have gotten the new computer completely stable. It is close. I am still having a couple of problems. It seems that I cannot reboot. I have to shut it down and then manually power it back on. If I tell it to reboot it will get stuck in an infinite loop of rebooting. The only way around this is to either force it to power down and then switch it back on, or to boot into safe mode and then reboot from safe mode.

This seems to be the only problem remaining. I have a couple of times had the 200gb drive become read only, however, a shut down and then power back on has fixed that.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have put a fan in the front now as well. I accidentally killed my spare 120mm fan (I accidentally put a screwdriver through it. Don't ask.), so it's got my only spare 92mm fan in now instead (which is noisier than any of the 80mm ones that I have lying around). This seems to have fixed the problem of one of the drives constantly spinning up and down for no reason. It will definitely have to be replaced by a 120mm fan though as this single 92mm fan is producing as much noise on it's own as the entire old computer did.

Labels: hardware, software

I have been working on my new baby since I got home after watching Sweeney Todd this evening, trying to get it up and running. It's been over a week since I bought the parts, that's the longest it is has ever taken me to get a new computer up and running! Normally it's done in a day, two at the most.

I seem to have gotten it running pretty stably now under 64 bit Windows Vista. I also have the majority of the hard drives moved over to it. There are two remaining, the two 320gb drives that are in RAID 0. I haven't moved these two across yet as I will have to rebuild the RAID array when I move it over to the new computer and as with anything like that, there is no guarantee I won't lose my data. This means I have to backup around 500gb of data first. I can't quite do this sadly. I have about 320gb of free space between all of my other hard drives and I really don't want to burn around 200gb of DVD's. So what is the solution? Well, I'm thinking I will pickup another 500gb hard drive, the same as my other recently bought 500gb drive and backup the RAID array to this drive and the free space on my other drives. This takes care of the back up before rebuilding the RAID array. Then once that is done and the RAID is setup correctly on the new computer, pickup a third 500gb hard drive and setup a RAID 5 array between the three 500gb drives. This will give me a terrabyte of striped data with parity backup for all of the really important things, like my locally stored web work and related information.

This wouldn't replace the RAID 0 configuration as it will still be faster than the RAID 5 configuration due to the parity in RAID 5. While it is not a huge speed gain, it's amazing the difference that RAID 0 makes when working with many gigabytes of raw video files. Since I'm not working on any and not expecting to be working on any soon, it is not vital to get the RAID 0 over too soon, but it would be nice.

I have, of course, encountered a few problems with moving the hard drives over to the new computer. Surprisingly, not due to Vista. I know, it's amazing hey?

No, the problem is purely in that my case is not quite as spacious as I had thought. Put simply, the power and SATA cable for one of the hard drives runs through the video card heat sink because they physically cannot plug into the hard drive any other way.

As you can see in the photo, all three of these hard drives are very close to the video card and yes, the PCI-e power cable is turning very nearly at a right angle in order to fit.

Yes, there are two spaces below the bottom hard drive where I could have put the middle 400gb drive, but I need those two spaces for the RAID 0 array, and those two drives generally run hotter, so the bottom two spaces should be cooler for them.

I also uncovered another, hopefully only temporary problem. The 400gb drive in the middle is very slow to access, and it does seem to be spinning up every now and again, even though it isn't actually switched off. The cables seem to be connected fine, and it has been fine in the old computer and hadn't shown any signs of problems, so being the drive in the middle I'm thinking it might be overheating.

One of the main reasons I'm thinking this is that the hard drives are actually getting very close to being the hottest components. For that matter, this is the first time I have ever had a CPU that is the coolest component in the computer. Just using the stock cooler, it is cooler than the north and south bridge heatsinks on the motherboard, cooler than the RAM, much cooler than the video card, and the hard drives are pretty much on par with the video card heat wise. You could burn yourself on them, especially the middle one, if you touch it for too long.

I'm currently putting a 120mm fan in the front bay in front of the hard drives. I've been meaning to do this since I put it together, I just haven't gotten to it yet. This will hopefully help keep them a bit cooler, if not, than I guess I will have to find another solution.

You know what else is weird? I had my 5.1 channel surround sound speakers connected to the new computer, yet I could not seem to get it to output anything to the centre, sub, rear left, or rear right channels, only the front left and right. I could not figure out why though, there was no real reason. I ended up just unplugging them from the computer and plugging them straight back in. Didn't switch off any power or make any other changes, and instantly all the speakers are working. I really don't get that. I have no idea if it's to do with any of the hardware or if it's Vista or if it's the drivers, but ah wells, at least it's working now.

Labels: hardware

With my installation of 4gb of RAM in my new computer it became time to figure out what operating system to use. As I mentioned in my earlier blog about installing the OS on my new computer, Windows XP Professional 32 bit, Windows Vista 32 bit, and Windows Server 2003 would not see more than 3.5gb of RAM, even though I have 4gb installed.

I have been aware of this limitation in 32 bit operating systems for a while, but I had to try it out for myself, just to be sure. There is one thing though that has always had me confused about it. In everything I have read about people finding 32 bit OS's not seeing their full amount of RAM, it has seen various different amounts. Sometimes it would be 3.3gb, sometimes 3.5, 3.7, 3.8 etc.

I could not figure out why it was always different.

I've done some reading up on it though, and the reason for this is not that 32 bit operating systems can only handle 3.something gb of RAM, it is that they can address a total of 4gb of RAM.

This means that any devices that have their own RAM, such as video cards have their RAM saved first so that it can address the entirety of the video card RAM. If there are any other devices, such as some high end RAID controllers and so on, this RAM is added to the list of addressable RAM.

Then the system memory is the last lot of RAM to be added to the total amount of RAM.

So since my video card is a 512mb video card, and I don't have any other devices with their own RAM, and 4gb is the maximum RAM that can be addressed it is worked out as follows:

4gb - n = addressable system RAM

Where n = the total amount of RAM in other devices.

As I have 4gb of RAM, and 4gb is the total, and I have already lost 512mb of it to the video card, that leaves 3.5gb of addressable system RAM. That is why 32 bit operating systems would only see 3.5gb of RAM in my computer.

It turns out there are hacks available for both XP and 32 bit Vista to have them show the full amount of RAM, however, they will still only address the amount as worked out above.

In some of my reading it has also indicated that the 4gb limit is only a Windows limitation and is not present in other 32 bit operating systems such as Linux and BSD variants.

I am not certain on that last point though so don't quote me on it.

Labels: hardware, software, technology

My current workspace as you can see in the photo on the left is quite crowded, with both the old and new computers, the laptop, 2 keyboards and 2 mice. Yes, I have a KVM switch, but I prefer to work with separate gear for each computer where possible.

Getting an OS to work has been quite a mission, and I'm still not entirely sure that I have succeeded.

First off I installed Windows XP Professional, the standard 32 bit version. I didn't expect this to recognise my full 4gb of RAM due to it's being only 32 bit, and I was right, but I wanted to confirm this anyway.

Next up I installed Vista Business Edition. I was not aware that it was the 32 bit version when I got it, but it turns out it is, so again, this did not recognise the full 4 gb of RAM.

As I have received Windows Server 2003 through uni, I decided to try it out and just see if it would recognise all the RAM. However, it was unsuccessful as well.

Windows XP 64 bit has had driver problems, so I got a 64 bit version of Vista. This seemed to work well. It recognized the full amount of RAM and was running fine for about a day. I got to try out Unreal Tournament 3 which was absolutely amazing. However, today I was planning on moving all of my hard drives over to the new computer since Vista seemed to be working.

I put in the first one and low and behold, Vista shows its true colours. First off it write protected the drive. Upon a reboot it was still write protected. If I move the drive back to the old computer under XP, it is perfectly fine. Back to Vista and it is write protected. I have searched for solutions to this to no avail. The only solutions I have been able to find are to reformat the drive from Vista, which I simply cannot do as there is nowhere else for me to store almost 300gb of data at this time.

I decided to shut it down and switch the drive over to a different SATA port, however, upon doing this and booting it back up, Windows Vista BSODed twice before booting again properly.

When it booted up finally, the drive was all of a sudden able to be written to and data modified. So here I was thinking this is great, it's fixed. However, as I rebooted it to confirm that it was in fact working properly, it BSODed 3 more times before it would boot into Vista, and again, the drive was write protected.

By this point, as you can imagine, I was getting extremely annoyed. I shut it down and moved it to another different SATA port. Boot it up, a continual loop of BSOD, reboot, BSOD, reboot, BSOD etc. Force power it off and switch it back to the previous SATA port and the same story.

This was becoming very old very fast so I decided to reinstall Vista with the second hard drive already in the computer.

Upon the reinstall being completed, the drive seems to be writable and it seems to have remained that way after installing all of the latest updates and various reboots.

There was a single BSOD after installing the first required Vista update, the new update installer I think it was from memory. However since then it seems to have been fine.

Hopefully it will remain this way or I will seriously start to consider other solutions.

For anyone interested, Quadzilla achieves an Experience Rating of 5.2.

Labels: hardware, software

Why did I pick this case? Why the Cooler Master Elite 330?

Well, I've always liked the Cooler Master cases, especially the various models of the CM Stacker. Anyway, when I decided to buy a new case rather than just replace the contents in my old case, it had to be something reasonably cheap, particularly because I was already spending $150 on a new Antec Neo 650w power supply.

Normally I'm not fussed on most cases because under the paint and external cover, they are all a very similar chassis. However, this time I decided I wanted to get something with a more "user-friendly" chassis.

The vast majority of these better cases, Antec, Lian Li, Silverstone, Cooler Master and so on, are generally more expensive, some even ranging up to the $400 mark with no power supply.

This case caught my eye though because it was only $55 without a power supply and is the same as the one I chose for one of the new computers at work. As I've been inside the case at various times with the work one, I knew that it had a decent chassis and included some very simple, but also very effective devices that make it much easier to work on.

It is far from an ugly case as well, and like all Cooler Master cases, it is designed for maximum airflow. It comes with a 120mm fan pre-installed in the back of the case as well as an air intake duct leading from the side of the case directly to the CPU fan.

In addition to this there is a large vent in the side of the case that runs just short of the length of the video card, thus helping vent it.

Now, this is far from the least of the cooling idea's in this case. There is space for another 120mm fan in the front of the case, or if you prefer, an 80mm or 92mm fan.

Not only this though, but as you can see in the photo's, the majority of the front of the case is filtered vents. Even the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" drive bay covers are filtered mesh. So even with just the CPU/video card fans, single 120mm out take fan in the back and the 80mm power supply fan, the case has heaps of airflow!

There is of course more to it than this. I needed a case that would fit at least most of my hard drives. I was looking at getting a 4U rackmount case purely because they support full ATX motherboards and expansion cards along with fitting 10 hard drives. However, this was out of my price range.

The Cooler Master Elite 330 has room for 7 3 1/2" drives, I have 8 hard drives, I am going to do a little rearranging though and drop it back to 6 or 7, at least temporarily.

As I have this many hard drives and they are constantly being changed around as necessary, the easy to use, tool-free locks make it very easy to add and remove drives as necessary. They are definitely not the best ones on the market, but for the price of the case they are very decent.

I have been wary of tool-free expansion slots as I had one in a previous case that used a single screw to control every slot and this was extremely painful to use. However, the Cooler Master Elite 330 implements a very easy to use tool-free design. I imagine that once there are additional expansion cards in place it will start to have similar problems to the other ones I have used since it locks and unlocks every slot at once, however, as the design is significantly better than others I have used, I am hoping it won't be as bad. Then there is also the fact that with the amount of features on newer motherboards, I am using less and less expansion cards, so it may not become an issue at all.

Yes, I do have a beige drive in a black case, but that's okay. It will be getting replaced sooner or later anyway as it is starting to play up, for now though, it is perfectly fine.

Since taking these photo's, the first hard drive is in place and I have been working on getting the operating system running on it properly. As that seems to now have been successful, expect to see a blog about that soon.

Labels: hardware

Putting the new computer together was really no more complicated than any of the computer's I have put together in the past, except, the video card is gigantic.

Normally, I build in this order:
As you can see in the first picture though, the video card is not in yet, it is just sitting there because I realised if I put it in completely, I cannot get the RAM in because it is in the way of the clips opening enough.

Thus my order had to be changed so that the video card came after the RAM. No big deal really.

As you can see in the second photo, my 2 sticks of Geil CAS 6 RAM are very shiny, 4gb of awesome.

Thank goodness, it all fits. The video card is almost as long as the motherboard is wide though, so while I know it has been designed this way, I wonder if it may need a little extra support. It is not very obvious in the photo, but the end closest to the hard drive bays starts to bend down under the weight of the video card, which is almost as heavy as the motherboard.

I'm hoping that the motherboard southbridge isn't going to have a heat problem as well, as the video card covers part of it. Luckily it doesn't cover and of the SATA ports, as I am going to need them all, but it does come very close indeed.

I'm thinking that the video card fan should help with air circulation over the southbridge heatsink so that it doesn't get too hot, but you never know.

This case looks like it should give enough room to put hard drives in the couple of bays that overlap the rear end of the video card, but I am a little bit nervous that with the video card power cable and hard drive SATA data and power cables that it may become a bit of a problem. It shouldn't, but just one of those things since I am going to need all of the hard drive bays I can get.

Labels: hardware

First up, the new motherboard, a Gigabyte P35-DS3P.

Isn't it pretty?

Anyway, I was originally looking at a couple of different Asus boards when I came across this one and a couple of other Gigabyte ones.

My old motherboard is an Asus A8N-E, and apart from having to replace the southbridge heatsink a week after buying it because the fan failed, I haven't had any problems with it. Yes, I could have gotten it fixed under warranty, but then I would have had to wait to get it back and it needed to be working then and there.

Prior to the Asus though, I have almost always used Gigabyte boards, in my opinion, they are some of the most reliable motherboards in the desktop market. I used 2 of them in my own computers prior to the Asus, one of which was sold to a friend, the other is in my parents media PC, both of which have been going for 5 years plus now with no issues at all. In addition to those, we used Gigabyte's in both my brother and sisters computers. There have never been problems with these either except when there was a power surge that took out one of them.

So, when I realised the Gigabyte's were around $50-$100 cheaper than the Asus boards, and had roughly the same features, it was naturally very appealing. The deciding factor on this motherboard was the fact that it has 8 SATA ports, all supporting RAID 0 and 1, 6 of which support RAID 5 and 10, 2 support JBOD. Now, really, I only need RAID 0 and RAID 1 since they are what I have been using anyway, but RAID 5 would be far more useful than RAID 1. All of the Asus boards supported RAID 5, some of the other Gigabyte ones did.

The two Asus boards I was looking at, the P5KE Wifi and the P5N32-E both had decent sound, the P5N32-E included a Supreme FX/DTS sound card. The P5KE Wifi logically, came with wireless. Either of these things would be useful, but in the end, I already have a PCI wireless card, and the Gigabyte uses Realtek ALC889A audio with high definition support and is able to run surround sound up to 7.1 which is really more than enough for me. As much as I love my high quality sound, the Realtek audio on all of my previous motherboards has been good enough for me, so as long as it supports up to 5.1 surround sound, seeing as how thats what my speakers are, I am happy.

Finally, external I/O played a big part in the choice. The Asus boards had 4 USB connectors via the backplate as well as Firewire and e-SATA. The P5N32-E lost the mouse PS/2 port though.

This was a bit of an issue for me, I wanted Firewire, I don't care about e-SATA, and if I am going to lose a PS/2 port, there should be a reasonable amount of USB devices available without the need for a hub, especially since I have 5 to 7 devices regularly connected to my current computer, not including keyboard and mouse.

The Gigabyte had a much better solution to this problem. It has e-SATA, it has Firewire, and it has 8 rear USB connectors as well as support for another 4 via front case connectors. Excellent.

So it has the Firewire and USB bases covered, and if I ever need e-SATA, well, it has that too.

So not only was it a cheaper motherboard, but it is a brand I prefer, and it has a better feature set for my needs.

The reason I chose this model over other Gigabyte's comes down to very small differences. The other models I was looking at either did not have Firewire, or the only had 4 or 6 SATA interfaces, which is definitely not enough, especially with only one IDE connector.

I do not care about Crossfire or SLI, I mean, I got a Crossfire motherboard and an Nvidia video card, so this was not something I was worried about, as long as it meets my main requirements of being made of awesome.

That is all for tonight, more on the developments of the beastly Quadzilla tomorrow.

Labels: hardware

As you would have seen earlier, the box for my brand new Gainward Nvidia 8800 GT Golden Sample is bigger than my new motherboard box. Now, the unveiling of the contents.

As you can see in the photo on the left, there is a smaller box within the big box. In the other sections around it are the manuals, disc's and other accessories.

Basically, a TV out cable with HDTV support, molex to PCI-E power adapter, DVI to VGA adaptor and a DVI to HDMI adapter.

It came with the usual Cyberlink PowerDVD bundle along with the standard software. Additionally, it came with a full copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary.

Now, as you can see on the left, once I opened the smaller box, it was literally ALL video card!

Sweet.

This is easily the beefiest video card I have ever owned, and is also the first Nvidia graphics card that I have bought in a good many years, I have previously used predominately ATI cards.

So what is so special about this video card? Why did I buy it over any of the other brands of 8800 GT's, or for that matter, why did I buy it over the other Gainward 8800 GT's?

For starter's, the Golden Sample cost only $359 compared to the $308 for the standard version from Gainward. Now what is the Golden Sample? Basically, it's faster. It comes factory clocked at higher speeds. The core clock speed is 650mhz and the memory clock speed is 950mhz. The standard model is 600mhz by 900mhz. In addition, the Golden Sample comes with a bigger cooling solution to cope with the higher speeds.

In my opinion, the extra $50 is well worth it considering that to overclock the standard model to the same speeds and then add a better cooler to cope with the higher speeds would add up to $50+ anyway. Plus, it would no longer be under warranty where the Golden Sample is.

The reason for this brand over any other's was initially the price, it is on par with the prices of all the other brands and is actually cheaper than some others. In my previous experiences, Gainward are an excellent video card manufacturer, so to find that their prices are now equal to other brands, but with higher clock speeds, I jumped at it.

Next up, putting things together.

Labels: hardware

Here it is my friends, the beginning of a computer upgrade!

What you see in the photo is what I have purchased today.

Yes, the video card box is bigger than the motherboard box.

There is also a brochure for Luigi's Takeaway Cafe in the photo, they make very good Italian food. I strongly recommend them if you are in the Sunnybank area, and even if you aren't. Their phone number is 3344 3005.

So, what goodies do I have?

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU
• 4gb DDR2 800mhz kit of CAS 6 Geil RAM
• Gigabyte P35-Ds3P motherboard
• Gainward Golden Sample PCI-e GeForce 8800 GT 512mb
• Antec 650w Neopower PSU
• Coolermaster Elite 330 case

If you are anything like me, or even if you know me, you will know how exciting this is.

The only problem is, as soon as I finish my breakfast, I must go to work for a few hours before I can start to play with my new toys.

Labels: hardware

This is a pretty cool idea, though quite pointless really.

A Mac Mini inside a Macintosh 512k!



Perhaps using a colour screen would have made it a little bit more useful. However I suppose in doing so, it would have lost some of it's uniqueness.

Ah wells. Interesting all the same.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

With all the awe and wonder surrounding the official unveiling of the gorgeous new Macbook Air at the MacWorld Expo last week, another fantastic new Mac laptop has been somewhat overlooked.

The Modbook by Axiotron. This is not an official Apple Mac, however it incorporates the magic of OS X and the same components used in Macbooks with leading tablet technology from Wacom!

That's right, the Modbook is effectively the first and only Mac Tablet! With prices for the basic Modbook starting at $2290 US, it is not much more expensive than the basic Macbook Pro ($1999 US), and only slightly less powerful.

The standard Modbook comes with a 2ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor that can be upgraded, 1gb of RAM, also upgradeable, built-in iSight Camera, optical drive (either combo-drive or SuperDrive), and just in case you get lost, global positioning system (GPS).

It is based around a 13.3" screen, and since it doesn't close like, it is protected by chemically strengthened Axiotron ForceGlass™ to ensure it is as safe as possible from damage at all times.

The screen incorporates digitizer technology from Wacom and the included Axiotron Digitizer Pen is:

• Fast - 133 position updates per second
• Accurate - 20x display resolution
• Sensitive - 512 levels of pen pressure sensitivity
• Efficient - No batteries required

As it is based on a Macbook, it retains the full Macbook connectivity suite, including 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 (two ports), FireWire® 400 (one port), Bluetooth 2.0 and AirPort Extreme® Wi-Fi.

It does not come with a built in keyboard like some tablet PC's do. Instead, you have the option of either just tapping the letters you want on an on-screen keyboard (a little time consuming in my opinion), or just writing like you would on a piece of paper. The Modbook has full support for Apple’s Inkwell® software on Leopard, so writing is no problem at all! Alternatively, you can get a USB keyboard.

The weight and battery consumption is no different to the standard Macbook, so there is no real reason there to cause problems.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog got a demonstration of the Modbook on video which I have embedded below:



One thing I am not quite sure about from the video is that the Axiotron rep indicates that a wireless adapter would be needed. The Axiotron website though indicates that it comes with wireless (as I mentioned above). Either way though, it is still a very nifty and highly useful device.

If I didn't already have a Macbook Pro, the Modbook would be on my list way above the Macbook Air.

By the way, if anyone would like to donate me a Modbook, I would happily accept.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

This is quite an interesting little device, the Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card.

It's a standard size SD card that can be used in any camera that uses the SD format. It has a built in wireless radio and transmits photo's over a wireless network to a computer, or to any of the supported online photo services such as Flickr, Picasa, Webshots and so on.

Once it has been setup on the computer it all works automatically, making it very easy to have all of your photo's on your computer without having to find and hookup cables, or take the card out and use a card reader, or whatever other method you might use.

It is also compatible with Mac's as of the 14th of January, importing to iPhoto, with Leopard and Safari support.

Of course, they are a fair bit more expensive than your standard SD cards, but the uses may well make them worth it for many people.

Labels: hardware, technology

You have no doubt heard by now that Apple unveiled the brand new Macbook Air at the Macworld Expo this week. Given my recent purchase of a Macbook Pro, I have been very interested to see how these compare. After all, the Air is meant to be only 1.9cm at it's thickest point and 0.4cm at it's thinnest. Now my Macbook Pro is about 2.4cm evenly across the whole laptop. So this isn't logically that much bigger than the Air.

I just saw this video with a comparison of the two at the Apple booth and all I can say is wow. I think I would break it if I owned a laptop as small as this:



On the other hand though, I want one purely for the awesome factor.

There are of course a few downsides and at this stage it would not replace the current Macbook lines as it is a different market again.

The Macbook Air does not have a firewire port, or a wired Ethernet connection. It also only has a single USB port. A USB to Ethernet dongle is available, but then there goes your singular USB port. So no doubt a USB hub will be a required accessory for one of these, unless you are in a truly wireless environment, which I suppose, I kind of am. I use wireless on my laptop at uni, at home and at my parents place, and those are pretty much the only places I use it. For anywhere else, I have my 3G modem, which would take up the USB port. So I suppose, it would not be that big of a deal really.

It comes standard with a 1.6ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2gb of RAM and an optional upgrade to a 1.8ghz CPU. As for storage, it comes standard with and 80gb hard drive, the same as the ones used in iPods. The hard drive has an optional upgrade as well to a faster 64gb solid state drive.

So power and storage wise, it is pretty decent. Of course it doesn't compare to the Macbook Pro's which are still the workhorse model laptops.

The things that are, in my opinion, the biggest downfalls for it are the lack of a dedicated graphics card. It uses an Intel integrated GMA X3100 graphics processor which shares 144mb of RAM with the main system memory, and it does not have a built in optical drive.

For many people the integrated graphics card may not be a big deal, but for me, it is.

Apple have provided a solution the the lack of an optical drive with the external Macbook Air SuperDrive. Again, this is connected via USB to the single USB port. The external drive is something you can buy additionally, it does not come with the laptop.

I can understand that the market this laptop is aimed at may not necessarily have such a big need for an optical drive, and ultra-portability is more the key factor in the development of this laptop, but once you add all the things you need to carry around with you, if you need them, a Macbook or Macbook Pro may still be a better option. After all, they are still quite small.

The negatives aside, watch the video and be amazed at the new Macbook Air. Not only at the size of it, but the new functions of the touch pad.

The Macbook Pro (and I assume also the standard Macbook) has a very innovative touch pad system that includes extremely useful functionality such as, tapping with two fingers is a right click, touching it with two fingers and moving them the direction you want to go is scrolling etc.The Macbook Air builds on this with even more functionality such as zooming. Whether all of the functionality is available in all applications, or just in things like iPhoto remains to be seen (by me anyway), but it's just another step along the development path anyway.

Now if only my Macbook Pro could lose some weight and gain some cool aerodynamics such as the Air, but whilst keeping its higher powered components, that would be awesome.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

All I have to say is wow, the same size as two 24" displays, massively wide screen, inverse curves, I want two, and I promise not to violate them so crudely by playing World of Warcraft on them as Veronica suggested.



I would like to say something in response to her saying:

"It's a DLP screen, it's rear projection, but it has a faster response time than an LCD screen."

Yes Veronica, of course it's faster. LCD's are slow compared to their predecessor's, why should this be any different? What rock have you been living under?

If you are going to report on technology, at least know what you are talking about, please.

Anyway, now that that's out of my system, I will take two of these lovely Alienware behemoths please.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

Since returning home, I've gotten one of my other Christmas presents setup, a new Samsung SyncMaster 940BW Plus 19" wide screen LCD to replace my old CRT and compliment my 9 month old Samsung SyncMaster 940BW.

There is just enough room on my desk to fit them next to each other, almost perfectly, the difference between the two of them is absolutely amazing though.

In case you aren't aware, the all black one is the older 940BW, the silver and black one is the 940BW Plus.

I'm not entirely sure what it is, but the older one pales in comparison to the new one.

I had previously had the old one connected to the video card (Radeon x800GTO) via DVI, with the older CRT connected via VGA. When setting up the new one, I decided to use DVI for it and relegate the old one to VGA (I had thought I had dual DVI outputs but I don't). So I don't know if it's just the difference between the analogue and digital displays, or if it's a combination of that and age (though 9 months doesn't seem like that long really), but the quality difference between the display on the new and old one is amazing, even down to colour clarity.

I have set each LCD to have identical settings in the menu and so on, yet there is still a big difference. This leaves me to believe, that the newer model, the Plus, is remarkably better than the LCD that I once said when I first got it was the best 19" wide screen LCD I had seen. It is marketed as having a 2000:1 contrast ratio while the older model wasn't, and it is also marketed as being a 5ms response rate. I'm not 100% sure on this, but from memory, the older one was 8ms. So this isn't a huge difference.

I suppose I won't really be sure just how much better it is until I do a system upgrade to a video card with dual DVI outputs. That'll be fun.

Excuse the shocking photo, I think the flash being reflected from both sides confused the camera.

Samsung have always made some of the best LCD's, in game and watching DVD's, this is an amazing LCD, as was it's predecessor. If you are deciding on a 19" wide screen LCD, I highly recommend the Samsung SyncMaster 940BW Plus!

Labels: hardware

I came back up to Brisbane from Lismore this afternoon.

I've been watching the Eight Mile Plains Umart store over the past few days since it's just around the corner from my place, kind of. Anyway, I've been watching the online store because I noticed that the prices of hard drives seemed to have gotten quite cheap over the past couple of weeks with 500gb SATA2 Samsung and Western Digital hard drives at $129. Seagate are as usual a bit more expensive. 750gb drives are as cheap as $228 for Western Digital or $245 for Samsung drives.

Even 1tb drives are reaching a decent price with the cheapest at $370 for Western Digital, though 2x 500gb drives are still far better value than a single terrabyte drive. Of course, a terrabyte hard drive in a desktop PC does give one some bragging rights. Not many though.

Anyway, the 500gb hard drives from Samsung and Western Digital are what I was watching in particular. Of the two brands, Samsung are my preference as I have had nothing but good experiences with Samsung hard drives, and some bad experiences with Western Digital. Ideally, I would prefer Seagate, call me a fanboy, but if I could afford a Seagate everytime I was buying hard drives, it would be a Seagate. However, at the moment, the 500gb Seagate's are $56 more expensive at $185. Now, the Samsung drives have been out of stock for the past few days, so I was strongly considering putting in an order for a Western Digital drive, just as I was leaving Lismore though, I was having a look again just to make sure, and lo and behold, Samsung drives were back in stock!

So here I am at home, $129 out of pocket but with a shiny new 500gb SATA2 Samsung hard drive. Can you pick which one it is in the photo?

It was very tempting to buy a second one while I was at it and put them in RAID 0 to replace the current 2x 320gb drives in RAID 0 and rebuild them into a RAID 1 configuration for my server backups.

However, while it is only $129, $129 is still $129, especially when I haven't been working since before Christmas.

Can always pick up another one later anyway.

Labels: hardware

The Apple homepage has just recently been updated to advertise a new line of Mac Pro computers released yesterday that are described as a "Tower of 8-core power". According to the specs listed in the press release, this statement is perfectly accurate.

The standard 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of $2,799 (US), includes:

• two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses;
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory;
• 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots;
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; and
• ships with Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse.

In addition to the standard configuration, the Mac Pro offers numerous build-to-order options including: one 2.8 GHz, two 3.0 GHz, or two 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors; up to 32GB of 800 MHz DDR2 fully-buffered ECC memory; up to four 1TB Serial ATA hard drives running at 7200 rpm or up to four 300GB SAS drives running at 15000 rpm; Mac Pro RAID card; up to two 16x SuperDrives with double-layer support; NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 graphics cards; AirPort Extreme 802.11n; Apple USB Modem; Apple wireless Aluminum Keyboard; Apple wireless Mighty Mouse; and Mac OS X Server Leopard. Complete build-to-order options and pricing are available at www.apple.com/macpro.

With capabilities of running 32gb of RAM along with 8 3.2ghz Xeon cores, they really aren't kidding when they say these are the fastest Mac's ever made. Previously they couldn't claim this as in some scenario's, the previous G5 PowerPC's still outperformed the new Mac Pro's. This was even shown in the benchmarks on the Apple website. I can't find this anymore to link to it as it appears the performance charts have been replaced with new ones showing the power comparison of the new 8 core beasts. Though one does wonder why they are in some cases compared to the previous model with 4 cores and some compared to the G5's.

I suspect this has come around in part due to the release of 16 new Intel CPU's to the Penryn family of processors that were officially announced on the 7th of January, two days ago.

It wouldn't surprise me if the new Mac Pro's are leading the way for a new line of Macbook's as well. I have heard rumours of an "Apple Portable" but I don't know if there is anything to that or not.

My logic says though that it was only recently that a new line of iMac's were released, now there is a new line of Mac Pro's. That only leaves Mac Mini's and Macbook's/Macbook Pro's. This is purely speculation on my part though.

Labels: hardware, technology

Ah Christmas, this year, I received one of these Tattoo Bluetooth Headsets by Bluetrek because my parents always seem to call me when I'm driving, so they decided this would be a great idea.

It has been quite the mission though. I spent all day yesterday trying to get it to work. Once it had completed it's first full charge and I began attempting to set it up on my phone, I was unable to get it to work. My phone, a Panasonic x700 would pair with the headset with no problems, and the controls on the headset would work with the phone, but it would not send audio to, or receive audio from the headset.

Since this was being problematic, I paired it with my MacBook Pro and it worked perfectly fine!

So I spent the rest of the day fiddling with my phone settings and trying to get it to rout the audio correctly, but for some reason the battery finally died, far sooner than it should have. According to the box and manual, the Bluetrek Tattoo Headset has a 4 day standby life or 4.5hr talk time. It died after about 6 hours, mostly in standby.

After this I was unable to get it to charge again, the charge light would come on when it was plugged in, but it would only stay on for a few minutes, and as soon as I took it off the charger it would refuse to turn on.

So today, we took it back to the store and they replaced it with another thankfully. This new one would pair off with my laptop fine, but it still had the same problem with the phone. I tried it with mums phone though and it worked perfectly, which leads me to believe that for whatever reason, my phone does not fully support it. So if anyone else has had this experience with the Panasonic x700 that can offer some advice, that would be great. In the meantime though, I'm looking at a new phone anyway, have been for a while, so perhaps it will just have to come sooner than I had been planning. Good enough excuse for me.

The headset is a great little thing though. I can't stand some of the big bulky ones that are floating around. The Bluetrek Tattoo is tiny though and while it comes with hook type things to put around your ear, they are optional, and it is small enough, that it will stay in my ear on its own without needing the hooks. This is great cause it makes it much easier to cart it around with me than those big things. It is only 8.1g, so its tiny!

For anyone thats interested in these types of things, it also comes with 8 different "skins" so you can chance the look of it, hence the name "tattoo", but they are nothing overly special in my opinion. I'm quite happy with the standard black casing.

The ear piece is very comfortable to wear and has 3 different sizings that come with it, so it will fit most people with no hassles.

The audio is a little bit dodgy at times, if you move it around in your ear it fuzzes, but it doesnt have any trouble if you are walking around and so on until you get around 10m from it. The fuzziness when you move it around isn't a very big deal though because once you've got it there it's comfortable enough that you don't need to move it around.

It has a pretty decent range, as I mentioned, it does around 10m, including through a couple of walls. Nothing special, but it's about average in my experience with Bluetooth devices and it is more than enough for it's purpose. 10m is also the distance stated on the box as being the operation range, so it stands true to that.

If you are like me and need something very small and easy to cart around, the Bluetrek Tattoo Bluetooth Headset is a great little device.

Labels: hardware, technology

As you may recall from my blog last month about the new Skype phone on 3's mobile network, I was quite excited about it and looking forward to it's being available in Australia.

However, it seems my excitement was somewhat misplaced.

As great as the idea is and while it would no doubt save a lot of money for me where half of my calls could be made on Skype instead of via a regular phone call, it has come to my attention that it is only half as good as it sounds.

I have been looking into getting a new phone as my current Panasonic X700 which has been an excellent phone for the past two years, despite it's dying after the first year (though it was still under warranty so that was alright). It is now getting to the stage though where it is well and truly getting worn out.

I had been planning on getting a mobile phone that I could use as a modem, however as I covered in my blog about my new Vodafone 3G modem, this is no longer necessary. This put the Skype phone up at the top of my list.

However, as I have been doing a little more looking into it now that it is available here, I have found out, Skype can only be used in 3G coverage areas, and anyone that knows what 3's coverage in Australia is like knows that they have probably got the smallest 3G network of the top Australian mobile networks. This means that Skype is effectively only usable if you are in a capital city.

This poses a problem for me. I know that Skype can be used on dialup speeds. GSM networks can provide dialup speeds. So why can't Skype be used in GSM area's?

I can use Skype on my laptop with my 3G modem in a GSM area since Vodafone allow the modem to be used in GSM area's for no additional charge on top of the base 3G charges.

This means that I can still use Skype, even if it is only at dialup speeds. So this is a better option for me.

It looks like I'm back to looking at other phones. Sony Ericsson look very promising.

Labels: hardware, technology

As you may recall from my earlier blog about my recently acquired Vodafone 3G USB Modem on the 4th of December, I was having trouble getting the modem to work correctly on my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.1, or Leopard. I was following the provided instructions to the letter but it simply wasn't doing what the instruction manual said it should do.

According to the instruction manual, after installing the software, it should ask to reboot the system. It didn't, so I had been rebooting it manually in my attempts at getting it to work correctly.

Upon rebooting, you were meant to run the installed program and click "Activate" once it had detected the connection. This was fine, this worked. However, according to the instruction manual, it should have created a new connection program in the applications folder that you click whenever you wish to connect. It was not doing this. If you attempted to run the activation program again, it would freeze the program when you clicked activate and would not un-freeze without a forced quit (I left it for over 24 hours to see if it would un-freeze itself, but it didn't). If you re-install the software, you are then able to try the Activate program without it freezing, but after the first time, it will freeze again.

Yesterday I called Vodafone customer support about it as this was becoming quite a nuisance, and as much as I would have liked to speak to someone in Australia about it, I spoke to someone from "Vodafone Egypt" about it.

They provided me with a newer version of the Vodafone Mobile Connect software that is currently only available on the Vodafone.de website for reasons I fail to understand. As far as I can tell, this newer version of the software is still only meant for Mac OS X 10.4, however, it seemed to behave exactly as the instruction manual described the version that came with my modem should. However there was still one problem. The connection program was still not being created after the activation program was run.

The Vodafone Egypt guy provided me with some instructions on what to do though, before I had downloaded the newer version (so he didn't have to keep me on the phone). These instructions were different to what was in the manual. He said that after running the activation program, go into my System Preferences, then into Network. Once I was there, to select the USB modem and from there, click connect and this would connect to the 3G network. I tried this with the older version of the software before installing the new one, and it worked perfectly without any problems at all. Connected almost instantly and voila. It worked identically with the new version as well. Of course, you then also have to come back into the System Preferences whenever you want to disconnect or reconnect which is quite a pain. However, it has a little tick box that you can tick to display the modem status in the the menu bar the same way it displays the status of the wireless and blue tooth connections by default.

So having ticked this option, I can now choose to connect or disconnect it from the menu bar as I would with the wireless and bluetooth.

Now that I've gotten this sorted out it works great, it would seem I am able to share the connection between both my laptop and desktop when I am at home as well, as I had been hoping, so this is working really well now.

Generally the connection on both Windows and Mac seems to be as stable as a decent ADSL1/2/2+ connection, and it is far more stable than my ADSL2+ connection is.

The speed's are nothing to write home about of course, but I can generally download at a rate of around 200kb/s with 3 bars of 3G reception, so that's reasonable for what I am using it for and I am really quite happy with it.

Ironically though, my ADSL2+ connection became almost stable within a couple of days of my signing the contract for this 3G modem. Annoying yes, but while it has been fairly stable, it's still dropping out more frequently than I would like, so the 3G modem is still proving to be very useful.

Labels: hardware, internet, technology

My sub-standard internet connection provided by my lazy landlord has finally ticked me off enough that I went out and bought a wireless modem.

I've been looking into this possibility for a while now and have looked at the offerings from 4 of the major providers in Australia, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Three.

None of the offerings from Telstra or Vodafone were even worth considering given that they were overpriced and had a low usage quota, but Three and Optus had plans that were worth looking at.

Optus had plans beginning at $39 a month bundled with a phone for 400mb quota or 2gb for $49 a month. Or if you didn't want it bundled with a phone the USB modem was an additional $5 a month on 24 month contracts or $10 a month on 12 month contracts.

Three's plans were more to my liking starting at $29 for 1gb and $49 for 2gb. Both plans came with the USB modem for free on the 24 month contracts, or for $10 a month on the 12 month $29 contract or $5 a month on the 12 month $49 contract.

The thing that had me reluctant to go with Three though is that they allow 2mb of data for roaming usage and then you are charged at $1.65 per mb. That is way too expensive since I will be using it in other places then just Brisbane and I won't know if there is Three 3G coverage or not, and chances are, there won't be since their coverage is predominately in the capital cities and other major cities.

So Vodafone and Telstra were too expensive, Optus was a tad bit more expensive then I wanted to spend at this stage, and Three didn't offer suitable roaming options, so this is why I had not yet done something along these lines.

I noticed this morning though, when my connection was working briefly, that Three had a new offer that bundled a Nokia 6120 with $550 worth of calls and so on with a USB modem and 1gb of bandwidth for $69 a month on a 24 month contract. Of course the phone can be had for $29 a month and the modem and data usage for another $29 a month, but the real selling point is the $550 worth of calls on the phone thats with it. So I was seriously considering going with something like this, then I discovered that on the 3rd of December Vodafone had begun a limited time offer until the 31st of December with 5gb of bandwidth and the USB modem included for $39 a month on a 24 month contract.

I haven't liked the idea of a 24 month contract at all, but the exit fee is only $25 for each month remaining on the contract, so even for a year, thats only $300 which while its effectively dead money, isn't that bad. So with this higher available quota than any other provider for a cheaper price prompted me into it so I off I went to Garden City to the nearest Vodafone store.

Upon arriving there and pulling out all the details I could think of at the time that I needed to check. For anyone else interested, the main points are:

While you only get 3G speeds in Vodafone's coverage area's, which are predominately capital and major cities, it will automatically switch to GPRS anywhere else using Vodafone's GSM network and you will not be charged any extra for it, you will just be on GPRS speeds which are similar to dialup, from memory, a tad faster.

The Vodafone GSM network covers the majority of the country, so I have 3G speeds while I'm in Brisbane, and then GSM most of the other places I would be using, so this works out quite well, not as ideally as 3G everywhere, but Telstra are the only ones offering that on their NextG network, which is far too expensive for my needs.

The USB modem and software is meant to be compatible with Windows XP and Vista as well as Mac OS X Panther 10.3 and above. This is important for me as I need it for my Mac laptop as well as my Windows desktop.

Excess data usage is charged at 10c per mb, which is higher then I would like, but is not too bad really.

There is also no option for a 12 month contract, it's 24 months only and it has to be paid by direct debit.

That's about it really.

So I went ahead and agreed to get it only to discover they did not have any USB modem's in stock, nor did any other Vodafone store in Brisbane! How can a company, 1 day after the beginning of a promotion have none of the product?!

So I went around all the other phone stores, double checked that Optus weren't doing any deals I hadn't heard of yet, they weren't. Connectone didn't have any USB modems. Soul Mobile it turned out don't do Vodafone, nor do Strathfield, so they were out of the question. Finally I found Crazy Johns who lo and behold had heaps of the USB modems in stock as they had pre-ordered in anticipation of the offer, so I was in luck, or so I thought.

Everything was going well, until they went to do a credit check and they wanted me to ask my employer to lie for the credit check. How is this legal? Anyway, 2 hours later, I ended up getting the lady that was serving me to forget altogether about my sub-contracting and just use my store-based job for the application, so half an hour later once she sorted that out, I passed the credit check and off I go with my new USB modem and Vodafone Red SIM.