Technology Gadgets Food Toys Fun and Games

Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=822

Ever have a hard drive fail? Sure, who hasn't ... oddly there's a high failure rate on certain physical areas of the drive platter and no one seems to know why.

You’d think that after 50 years and many billions sold, disk drives would be well understood. And you’d be wrong. Take the case of the outer-track errors.

Thanks to zoned bit recording the bit density of each track is roughly constant across the disk. But more errors occur in the outer tracks - and on some drives on the inner tracks too. What could be going on?

Link: http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/hard-drive-manufacturers-to-stop-supporting-windows-xp-and-dos-by-2012-20100310/

If you plan on using Windows XP your choice of hard drive models will be thinning soon (2012)

Essentially, what it comes down to is that hard drives keep on getting faster and more efficient… but their evolution is shackled by the need to support a 512 byte sector size. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are free of that burden, but XP and DOS are insistent upon it.

Link: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/sapphire-radeon-hd-5970-is-the-worlds-fastest-graphics-card-08-03-2010/

Man, just look at the cooling on this thing. It's a safe bet you'll be running the latest games top notch for a few years - and that's good cus even though there's no price yet I'm betting you won't have any money for a new card for quite a while.

Link: http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/03/05/mini-wireless-keyboard-with-touchpad-and-laser-pointer/

This wasn't nearly as cool till the laser pointer part was mentioned.

There’s the “dazzling bright LED” backlighting, the world’s first touchpad that can be used in both the horizontal and vertical positions complete with advanced “capacitive sensing technology, comparable to a real notebook touchpad,” and the “innovative design of the navigation keys” that’ll make you “feel the thrill” of being able to play games wirelessly.

Link: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/nvidia-pulls-196-75-driver-amid-reports-its-frying-graphics-car/

Official word is that the fan control does not properly throttle up the fan under heavy use - there's already multiple reports of dead and fried cards - if you value your card roll back the driver or uninstall the driver and install a previous one.

Nvidia has pulled the driver and the older one is on the download page.

Link: http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20100302/netgear-rolls-powerline-kits/#more-38764

Netgear has a new ethernet over power kit coming out soon and it looks darn skippy. No word on price yet, check the specs.

they are able to offer greater speeds for bandwidth-hungry applications including lag-free Internet gaming, Voice over IP (VoIP), large file transfers to networked devices, and for home theater enthusiasts, even simultaneous 1080p HD video streaming to multiple TVs throughout the entire home.

I've just got into Readyboost. It's a standard feature of Windows Vista and 7. Basically it uses a USB stick / Memory Card or Drive to speed up your system by caching. Since the memory stick is faster access for some cache operations you get spiffier performance while you have 12 or 15 apps open during your days work.

Is it magic? No, in fact its a typical windows feature ... good but with Caveats. - Some of the good things ... it works... I've noticed an improvement - (I got a 16 gig SDHC class 6 card). It's a great way to use one of those spare cards you got lying around. For laptops - you can stick a card in and really not notice it's there (provided its not a long thin USB stick).

Cons ... Well, it can disappear. You can set the puppy up and on the next reboot it's gone. ... Vista also has a feature where it won't cache to the removable drive unless you go into removable drive properties and tell it to do so... (watch out for that one) - Another con is that it can disappear for other reasons. (I havent nailed it down yet - it's only my second day)

To help people using readyboost you can read the Dev FAQ HERE and decide if it's for you.

Also if your card or stick does not pass the speed test you can hack it to pass by reading THIS.

All in all, I like the feature - keep in mind 4 gigs is the max readyboost cache size so unlike me you don't need to get 16 gigs of memory card ...

Pro Tip - get a SDHC class 10 card 8 gig card and you'll be golden.... watch for that reboot thing.

I've been thinking about making the switch for a while now, the speed- the lack of heat and noise - perfect for laptops and HTPC's and NAS boxes.. two new showings of SSD's

Crucials got a new 6 GB/s model line HERE

and Sandkisk offers up their G3's HERE

They are limited (somewhat) in capacity and yeah, still come in at a premium price, but are certainly more affordable.

Whats holding me back is my laptop has a 300 gig drive and I've become spoiled with all the room. When I see one at that size I'll probably bite.

Link: http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448

Here's something to make you feel better for spending all that hard earned cash on the latest and the greatest. Benchmarking a p4 against today's best provides some damn spiffy results.

Yep, it's like looking back to '95 at the Athlon 1 ghz

Link: http://www.hardocp.com/news/2010/02/04/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5450_video_card

And a little bit in respectable gaming too - Easily HL2 and Crysis without all the bells and whistles.

Blaze - remember that 600.00 HTPC ? - add $50 to that and forget the onboard video -

The ATI Radeon HD 5450 is not meant to provide the best gaming experience, but it does bring DX11 API support and other features like Eyefinity down to the $50 price point. This means that AMD now has a DX11 GPU in every market segment, while the competition simply does not.

Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=7095&tag=content;col1

And they're pretty nicely priced too - course if you want the top end then expect to pay $3,000 - but for a decent gaming rig with great graphics you can get away with $1100 - and that aint too bad for an Alienware rig.

They look pretty darned spiffy too.

Link: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/the-classic-wrist-busting-atari-joystick-is-back/

Not totally a reproduction but holding to the original by 90% - ( notice the missing rubber slip cover on the stick ) - this certainly gets my interest for playing emulated 2600 games.

I remember in the day I wore the foot pads off these and broke all 4 directional buttons playing countless hours of pac-man or asteroids.

W00T !

Link: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/01/26/asus_maximus_iii_gene_motherboard_review

Hard OCP has some great things to say about this board - more than enough for a small (in size) HTPC/Gaming Multimedia rig with some serious attitude.

You should be able to run this whisper quiet with no issues. - Sure, it's a bit pricey at $197 - but for the results I'd have to say not only is it worth it but I'm considering it myself for a HTPC Gaming rig replacement.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/01/old-computers-get-young-with-ssd-upgrades.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

I've been hearing a lot about this and it sure makes sense - go and double your ram and get a new SSD Drive and you got yourself 3 more years of performance out of that machine - ( this would be a perfect pairing for that T40 laptop I linked)

Link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2521.html#xtor=RSS-182

Everything you need to know about cards today based on your price range - so weather you have $50 to spend or $500 you'll find the best card for the price. Nice.

Link: http://www.million-dollar-pc.com/systems-2009/special/lessdegrees/pius-edelweiss.htm

I spent way too much time drooling over this rig today. I don't know who did it or anything about it except for it's awesome!

Link: http://tv.hexus.net//show/2010/01/CES_2010_-_In_Win_keep_up_the_military_theme_with_their_chassis/

Some of these are really cool looking - all pre-modded for your system building happiness.

Link: http://hacknmod.com/hack/build-your-own-diy-dvr-old-pc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hacknmod%2FqjUG+%28Hack+N+Mod%29

Don't want to spend the coin on a new DVR / TIVO? Well, if you've got an old computer sitting around you have almost everything you need to make your own. This guide will get you on your way.

A DVR (Digital Video Recorder) helps all TV addicts record their favorite TV shows but a branded product like TiVo can be expensive. Instead, learn to make your own PC based DVR by following this thorough tutorial. A custom built DVR lets you do away with the subscriptions. Plus you can extend it by adding extras of your own.

Link: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1565824/hard-drive-shortage-predicted

The Inq reports of a shortage coming for both laptops and desktops which will probably be driving prices up - so get your 1 and 2 terrabyte drives now while they're still cheap.

Link: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=21311

an extreme board packed with an arsenal of high-end features, including an NVIDIA NF200 chip used to facilitate a trio of PCIe x16 slots for for three-way SLI/CrossFire configurations.

With 3 way crossfire you know this is a gaming big daddy -

the high-end board is armed with a bevy of overclocking tools, as well as the promise of an "ultimate audio experience".

Priced at £209 and expected to hit retail early in December, it's a high-end offering that hopes to become the perfect accompaniment to your Lynnfield Core i5 or Core i7 processor.

Link: http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/intel-cancels-larrabee-graphics-chip-2009126/

Well, that went out with a whimper... Intel was trying to multicore itself into a graphics contender and must have realized that people like Nvidia and ATI (now AMD) have been specializing in it for years and it isn't that easy.

Larrabee was Intel’s opportunity to offer system manufacturers a main processor and high performance graphics chipset without requiring parts from its rivals. We expected it to hit the market this year, but then Intel said 2010 looked more likely, now we may never see a commercial graphics chip carrying the name.

Link: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1564209/via-shrinks-boards

Holy cow that's small ...... now don't go getting the idea that you're gonna run a HTPC with this thing.... but for a net appliance like a firewall it's ideal and the power requirements are insanely small.

The 6cm x 6cm computer-on-module specification bundles in a core CPU, chipset and memory functionality and I/O that includes the CRT, DVP and TTL display support, HD Audio, IDE and USB 2.0, as well as PCI Express, SMBus, GPIO, LPC, SDIO and PS2 signals, through customisable baseboards.

According to Via, Mobile-ITX-based systems consume as little as five Watts and are a modularised design split between a CPU module card and an I/O carrier board.

Link: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/cheap_and_nasty_how_build_open_source_server

NAS - for those of you who don't know what that stands for it's Network Attached Storage - and a Free version based on Linux has advantages ... like for one it's free, and secondly the hardware you need to run it on is a lot lighter.

Build yourself a big 'ol network drive for free with that old desktop or laptop and get you some experience with Linux in the process.

We’ll show you what hardware you’ll need for a FreeNAS server, how to install and configure your server, and then help you choose between FreeNAS and WHS.

Link: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1563765/nvidia-rebrands

I'm no fan of rebranding, specially when you pay more to get the same exact product.

The Geforce 310 is a plain vanilla OEM graphics card for system builders who think their customers don’t know any better, and let’s face it, more often than not, that’s true. The card is a carbon copy of its predecessor, the Geforce 210, a 589MHz core clock, 1402MHz shader clock and 500MHz memory clock graphics card with 512MB of DDR2 memory on a 64-bit wide bus. Same specs, same feature set, same everything.

These cards are one and the same. Period.

Link: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/System_Drives/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=A3068734&dgc=BF&cid=27740&lid=1300639&acd=10723526-227502-A11A0A0B17A00185467A0

$169.99

The 2 TB Deskstar™ 7K2000 Serial ATA Internal Hard Drive from Hitachi features robust mechanical design that sets for high quality and reliability. It offers patented ramp load/unload design that allows data heads to move away from the disk thereby minimizing the risk of shock damage between the heads and disks. Additionally, this hard drive incorporates thermal fly-height control (TFC) technology that maintains a constant fly-height throughout read and writes operations to enhance overall data integrity, drive performance and reliability. Moreover, its power-saving innovations like HiVERT™ technology delivers efficient power management and thermal emissions to meet energy compliance targets and extend drive life.

Tell me there's one of you who couldn't use 2 TB of space - think of the backups you could do - or the music and movies this puppy will hold.

Link: http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/11/17/gigabyte_p55mud4_motherboard/

Hard OCP has the inside info on this overclockable micro ATX mobo featuring everyones favorite chipset - can we say perfect for HTPC and gaming? Yes, yes we can.

Looking for an overclockable micro-ATX board that doesn’t break the bank? If you answered "yes" then I suggest you read our evaluation of the GIGABYTE P55M-UD4 motherboard, it just so happens to have all those qualities and more.

Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/ventblockers/

Dirty Pc's that is -

oh come on, this is GeeG....

Link: http://www.drobo.com/

A resounding recommendation from one of our regulars....

My friend got one, says this thing is awesome. It doesn't care what drives you put in, how large or anything. When you add or remove a drive, it automatically resizes itself and keeps running. He dropped a drive, it resized, then added a newer, larger drive, it just resized and kept going

Nice - so you could drop a 3/4 Terrabyte drive on top of what you got and now you got more room...

Drobo products provide scalable, safe and thoughtfully engineered storage solutions. Designed from the ground up with the needs of professionals and small to medium-sized businesses in mind, Drobo combines the most straightforward user experience ever created with a feature set that scales as rapidly as your need for additional data capacity — all at the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry.

Link: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/1000_budget_pc_buyer%E2%80%99s_guide_%E2%80%93_october_2009

Right, we all get there now and then - you have an old rig that won't play the new stuff but not an unlimited budget.

So do you just wait and hang tough? Or maybe budget some lesser bucks and build a respectable pc?

Maximum PC has the goods to help you out.

We’re starting you off with a $1000 PC, which is a happy mid-way price point between the $700 recession special and $1500 budget surplus found in this year's Dream Machine roundup. $1000 may not seem like a steal for the truly frugal, but in a world of fluctuating economies and ever-changing technologies, getting the most “bang for your buck” is more important than getting rock bottom prices at the expense of performance.

Link: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/asus-launches-the-first-usb-3-0-motherboard-29-10-2009/

Take a gander at this beauty from Asus - even if it weren't for the USB 3.0 it's a rocking contender in the mid to high end field for the I5/I7 processor.

The Asus Asus Xtreme Design P7DP55DE-E Premium is an Intel P55 based motherboard, it comes with two USB 3.0 ports, as well as 10 USB 2.0 ports, plus a pair of 5GB.s SATA ports.

It also has six 3GB/S SATA ports, two PCIe x 16 slots for graphics cards and it supports both AMD’s CrossFireX and NVIDIA’s SLI cards, plus a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Oh I'm drooling - and I would bet the price is going to be in the $250 - $300 dollar range....

Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=5868

No matter what your budget, this article has a video card for your next rig (or upgrade).

It seems that gamers are no longer willing to blow $500 on a graphics card. More and more of you wan to know what’s the best graphics card you can buy on a limited budget.

In this post I will look at the best graphics card you can buy in four different price brackets.

Link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/budget-p55-motherboard,2436.html#xtor=RSS-182

Tom's has a nice review of some decent (but not costly) motherboards for the I5 Platform. If you're in the need of a new rig but don't have a massive amount of coin to spare, check these out. I figure you could build a really decent gamer system (provided you had a case monitor and keyboard) for $400-500 now.

Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=5759

I remember the Stealth 3D - had 2 Voodoo cards in SLI - and the landscape on the 3D front always shifts. It does not matter who has led for a while. What matters is who stays there.

Nvidias future is looking pretty bleak - they aren't making any more chipsets, they have no new technology - Amd has beat 'em to the punch with the new line...

I would not be surprised to see Nvidias dominance in the market fade.

Reports are circulating that NVIDIA is to kill off the GTX 260, GTX 275, and GTX 285 and exit the high-end and mid-range graphics card market. Is this the end for NVIDIA?

sad, I was a big fan - but then around the corner someone newer and better will rise out of the ashes.

Link: http://www.circuitcity.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4622464&sku=I21-6238&SRCCODE=CCDAFFL&cm_mmc_o=-ddCjC7BBTkw**%20**zuubkbzfwlCjC-d2CjC-uu&id=k3736&sessionid=gan_38239481

Circuit City is back - and this Iomega drive is a nice little external with some caveats. - It's not the fastest out there... and it has no off button.

Still, for 64 bucks it's a great safety drive.

Link: http://www.bigbruin.com/content/cupiocase_1

If you're looking for a quiet mid size pc case then take a look at this one reviewed by Bigbruin - It's quiet, cool and non invasive - making it a fine HTPC or bedroom rig.

The Gigabyte Cupio 6140 is one fine case, and Quiet PC USA has done well to increase the appeal with the quiet modifications. The fit and finish are top-notch, all of the features worked perfectly, and the tool-less chassis really surprised me with the external bays. It is definitely quiet, and doesn’t have loads of LEDs glaring at you, so it probably won't draw too much attention to itself.