Room to expand

Try #2 to write this post: (Much shorter version)

I just bought a SimpleTech 250GB USB2.0/FireWire HD. The specs are as follows:

1 Firewire 1394a port
1 USB2.0 Hi-Speed port
The enclosure itself is a prolific chipset. The internal HD turned out to be a Seagate 250GB
HD with 7200rpm spindle speed and 8MB cache.

The drive as it arrived from UPS (it arrived early in the morning the day after it shipped, but with no tracking number).



The box of the drive itself



The drive itself as packed in the box. The drive was packed pretty well, but I would liked a bit more padding.
The drive is made of metal, which hopefully will help disappate heat. It comes with drive stands and was designed to be upright, but without the feet it's possible to run it horizontally.



The drive came with 2 VERY short USB2.0 and Firewire cables. They are the shortest I've ever seen.



The firewire cord is only about 1 foot long. Which means the drive has to be right next to the laptop, if it has any chance of reaching.



The pictures were taken with my roommates' Sony digicam, as my Nikon is still broken.

So far I've formatted the drive, and have backed up my laptop's internal HD to it. It has about 50GBs of data on the drive currently. I have even been able to test whether the drive boots, good news, it does. I've also run a surface scan using Tech Tool pro, and the drive passed.

The drive itself is quiet, the only noise you can hear is the seek noises. Once in a while, theres' this thrashing sound that's quite a bit louder than normal, but I think it's normal. Hopefully it keeps working well.

MSI Radeon 9550 128MB 128-bit

The Radeon arrived today, 2 days ahead of schedule. Compulsory pictures are included. The card arrived at 2:30pm 4/20/05. I beat the FedEx guy home by about 5 mins. I think he was in front of me on the way home, but he had to stop at the UV.



The package itself was very light (only 2 lbs). The retail box itself was packed within.



A picture of the retail box itself, quite tiny.



The back.



The internals. It came with the bare essentials. Card, booklet, drivers.



A picture of the card itself. Notice the MSI heatsink.



A closer view. Excuse the paper towel I used to clean the case before hand.



A picture of both cards installed. I actually had some trouble getting the card installed. It turns out that NVIDIA and ATI do not co-exist very well, atleast their drivers don't. I had to uninstall the NVIDIA drivers before the ATI card could output a signal. Thank goodness my LCD has dual inputs (VGA adn DVI), so I was able to switch between without trading cables.



For comparison, a picture of my Geforce4 MX440SE PCI video card. It has been a loyal work horse for many years. It's time it was retired. From now on it will re-join my 733mhz Dell at home, this should help my mom play her games a little better. The Dell integrated graphics are not cutting it.



A few preliminary tests with Cinebench and 3DMark2001 indicate that the 9550 is performing at rougly twice the level of the GF4. 3DMark2001 scores are in the high 6000s. I have been putting the card through it's paces and it seem to play Homeworld 2 @ 1280x960 with all the graphics turned up, quite well. Later I hope to overclock the card to 9600 or even 9600Pro speeds.

New Purchase

Just purchased this:



It is a MSI Radeon 9550 w/ 128MB of VRAM. It is the normal 9550 with
the 128-bit interface instead of the SE's crippled 64-bit. I ordered
it today, and there seems to be a problem with my address verification.
Hopefully it will be resolved and I can write a review as soon as
I recieve the card and put it through it's paces.

Also from some of the research I've done, depending on your luck you may
be able to overclock it to 9600 or 9600pro speeds. Not bad, $120 performance
from a $60 card.

$60 @ ChiefValue.com

Ram is VERY good.

A few weeks ago I wrote an Ode to Ram. Well I've finally got some more ram for the desktop (1.3Ghz Athlon). I got a 256MB stick and a 128MB stick of PC133 ram from a friend. This means that the Athlon is now running 2x256MB sticks for a total of 512MB of ram. I have 2 extra 128 sticks that are destined for my Mom's P3 733. Navigating simple windows in Windows XP doesn't seem much faster (not as noticeable a jump as the 128->384MB jump of a few years ago), but once i start to run a few programs together the difference really starts to show itself.

Launching applications is not only quicker but also feel "sturdier". Yes, I know that describing applications as "studry" seems rather silly but that's the best adjective I could come up with. Withb more ram there is no split second delay as the memory is paged to disk, also there is no hard drive sound. This type of feeling, though hard to explain, seems quite tangible when felt in person.

Get as much ram as possible in your computer. You're computer will thanky you for it.

Dust is very bad.

I just cleaned out the Athlon again (increased the multiplier to 13x, so now it's running at 1.3Ghz). I decided that the heatsink/fan could use another cleaning. Before the cleaning, it was running at a moderate 49C at full load. Now, after the cleaning it is running at a much cooler 38C full load. What a difference cleanliness makes.

More mini pics

Here you go, more pics of the unpacking of the mini. Photos courtesy of Adam Meadows.


Another picture of the box right before the opening event.



The box of the mini itself is incased in a foam shell. That's right, the box is even protected. But with boxes as pretty as Apple's who could blame them?



Very well protected.



The mini box in all it's glory. The box is TINY.



The back of the box.



The inside of the mini box looks very similar to the ipod box. Notice that with apple gear, nothing is an after-thought, all parts have their own indentation in the foam.



Removed the manual (yes that tiny square was the manual.



The mini itself.



The cables and whatnot are stored underneath.



Top view of the mini.



The mini all set-up. For size comparison, Adam's mini is next to ... his new mini. The white base is a styrofoam piece is from the packaging of the mini.



A view of his setup.



Shortly after setting everything up, Adam installed the 1GB ram stick. It was ... an involved process at the very least. Not a procedure he would like to do again.



The top casing for the mini.

That concludes our adventures into box-opening land.

iPod Scare

The prospect of turning a $399 iPod into a very stylish $399 paperweight can be difficult to get through. Last night I remembered that a new software update was available for my iPod (a 3G 15gb model) that would enable some features that were release for the 4G and later models. This update was straight from Apple. I downloaded it here. After the update, the software informed that the iPod would reset. I was multitasking at the time, so I actually didn't notice that something had happened for a while.

After I remembered I tried to get the iPod to respond. The screen was completely blank and no responce from pressing any of the buttons. I listened very carefully and whenever I pressed a button I heard a small screeching sound, which I assume is the HD spinning up. This indicated that atleast the buttons were still sensing input. I held down menu+play to do a soft reset. After about 30 seconds the iPod rebooted. After that I asked me to plug it into my computer and it finished the update.

Just a warning to my fellow iPod people. Be careful with the 2005-02-22 iPod update. BTW, the update adds the "shuffle songs" item to the main menu, and changes the charging icon.

Cleaning a Logitech Wireless Keyboard

I decided that since it was finals week, and I REALLY need to study, today would be the completely wrong time to clean my keyboard. Naturally this made it irresistable. This process was much more complicated than cleaning my Microsoft Keyboard.

Removing the first set of screws was a straight forward process. This enabled the removal of the top layer of the keyboard (remove the batteries first of course). The second set of screws attached the main assembly to the bottom casing, with these off the assembly came away.

I chose to size the photgraphs at 640x480 in order to clearly see the condition the keyboard was in. The silver media buttons and main assembly are attached to a circuit board by VERY thing plastic connectors. Another set of screws were removed to free the circuit board from the bottom housing. At this point the keys can be pried off.

I regret not taking pictures of the main assembly "sandwich", but another few screws had to be removed to extract the dirtiest part (the plate that the keys attach to). Here are a few of the dirtier parts.





The flash on the camera hides exactly how dirty it is. After a few trial and error shots, I found a way to take some non-flashed photos. These photos shot just how bad the keyboard has become in it's 3 year lifetime.





Because the keyboard is black, any non-black dust or dirt shows up exceptionally well.



Here is a picture of the various parts, before I was able to put it back together.



Fortunately, after putting everything back together, it all worked. Enjoy.

Mac mini is here....

My roommate's mac mini and 1GB ram stick arrived to day. Unfortunately he wasn't here. I did take pictures of the box to send to him. He should be here tomorrow, and the opening of the box (and the mini) can be documented.



Quite a large box, especially considering how big the mini box (inside) will be.



I felt that pictures of the RAM package would be uninteresting, considering it was just a UPS bag. Stay tuned for further development.

Ode to RAM

RAM is a wonderful thing. No matter how fast the processor, how large the hard drive, how sophisticated the video card, without plenty of RAM, any computer will run like molasses. I speak from personal experience. My first RAM starved system was my P1 200. It had the odd configuration of 2x8mb SIMMS and 2x4MB SIMMS for a total of 24MBs. At the time, the most common total was 32MB preferably 64. The RAM wasn't a HUGE bottleneck for the system. This was due to the fact that it wasn't called upon to do anything strenuous. My main uses for the system were word processing , occasional gaming, and BBSs (this was before the time of the internet). To this day, that system still has the same RAM, and it feels just as slow. My next system came with 128MB of RAM. It was a P3 733. At the time 128MB was a little on the low side, but still acceptable. Running Windows ME was fine with this much RAM, as long as you only ran one or two programs at once. Any more than that bogged the system down immensely. After I upgraded the OS to XP, 128MB of ram was just not enough. Things felt sluggish, even when no programs were running. After I upgraded the RAM to 384 (added another 256 DIMM), the performance gain was immediately apperant. Windows loaded quicker, switching between applications was almost instantaneous. To this day, the only system I own that isn't RAM starved is my laptop. 640MB of RAM was a huge jump from the original 256, especially in OSX.

My sister's 1800+ has 768MB of RAM, and it seemingly can encode two times as fast as my 1.2ghz Athlon. The mhz difference is only about 300mhz, but she has over twice as much RAM. Of course the fact that her ram is twice as fast (DDR33 vs PC133) might also have something to do with it.

In terms of performance per dollar, RAM is the clear cut bang for your buck winner. Unfortunately it's also the component people are most likely to skimp on. Most new dell or Apple systems come with a paltry 256MB of RAM. While most modern OS' will run with that much RAM, it won't be a great experience.

Another misconception people seem to have about ram is that the older it is, the lower the price will get. This is NOT TRUE, which I found out the hard way. After a certain point, usually when the newer standard is released, RAM stops dropping in price. There becomes an equilibrium point where demand has fallen enough that manufacturers move on to the next standard. When that happens, prices start to rise again. This phenomenon has happened time and time again. If you check current prices of EDO, PC100 and PC133 RAM, you'll find that they actually cost more now than when they were popular. In fact the price of a 512 stick of PC133 is the more than the price of a 512 stick of PC3200 ram. It's gotten to the point where if you're running a system that uses PC133 ram, and you need more memory, it is more cost-effective to replace the motherboard and proc and buy the newer ram than to buy the old ram. Long story short, get more RAM when it's popular.

There's no such thing as too much RAM.

17" of LCD goodness...

At 2:10pm 01/26/05, my Dell UltraSharp 1704FPV arrived.

Admittedly the box isn't as awe-inspiring as an Apple box, it was still
a welcome sight. I immediaty set out unpacking.



The package includes:

1 VGA cable (blue)
1 DVI cable (white)
1 USB 2.0 Hi-Speed cable
1 Power cable
1 Dell configuration CD



The base/stand came as a seperate piece, with a VESA mount.


Though it looks light weight, it is VERY sturdy. The base probably accounts for
80% of the total 18.1 pound weight of the package. The base is also height
adjustable with tilt and swivel points.



The LCD itself clicked in nicely. As you can see, the native resolution is 1280x1024.



My roomate brought his 15" Gateway LCD in to compare sizes. He commented that the height adjustment will come in handy. He has to resort to chair adjustment to get within eye level of his monitor.



After some fine tuning, I was able to get the monitor up and running. The setup is still changing, but my keyboard, mouse, speakers and monitor finally match.



A closer view of the LCD.

Pros:

Beatiful screen.
No dead pixels
4 Port USB2.0 Hub integrated
Height, Swivel and Tilt points (pics to come later)

Cons:

Heavier than most LCDs (to help with one handel Swivel adjustments)

Note: Since I installed the LCD, I'm not able to watch DVDs. It seems like my video card cannot keep up with the movie. I'm not sure if it's because the LCD is so much bigger that it has to work harder, or its not installed quite right.

Update: I've since resolved the issue. After a quick reformat, the performance is great. DVDs look glorious on this screen.

New Apple Gear

New Apple Gear was announced today at MacWorld Expo. Unfortunately for me I had a test today. This divided my attention pretty badly. Well that's all behind me. On to the new gear. First up, the iPod Shuffle.


A brand new iPod that's available now. It weighs .78 ounces and is smaller than a stick of Trident gum. Because it's Flash, its completely skip-free (no moving parts for the storage). It doubles as a USB thumbdrive (from what I've seen). The best price is ... well the price. 512 for $99 and 1GB for $150. This is very competitive compared to other mp3 players in this price range.

Cons: The only con I can think of is the lack of screen. This might put off some buyers at first glance. Without a screen you can't tell what music song is coming up without actually listening to it. The more I think about it, the less of a concern it is. Personally when I'm actually using my iPod on the go (target activity for this iPod), I never look at the screen. When I'm walking or running, I just use the remote, which has the same exact controls as the iPod Shuffle. The other reason it isn't much of a concern is the way Apple decided to market the iPod Shuffle. Just like the name implies, the iPod Shuffle is all about shuffling your playlist. You have the choice of playing your playlist in order, or completely random. iTunes even has an "autofill" function which will fill your Shuffle with a random assortment of songs. For the would-be joggers and outdoor types this iPod is marketed to, it's perfect.

Next up, Mac mini



Yes that's the whole computer. It's hard to see just how small the mini is. This picture should give you a better idea.



The computer is smaller than most external burners! The specs are respectable for the form factor and price. The mini is available with either a 1.2 or 1.4 GHZ G4, 256MB of RAM standard, and a Combo Drive. A SuperDrive (DVD+-RW) is optional.

Cons: I have a few cons with this machine.

1. RAM - We all know that OSX loves RAM. The more the merrier when it comes to it. With 256, the computer will run acceptably, but not very well. This isn't anything new, Apple usually sells their computers with the bare minimum of ram, giving the consumer the option of upgrading when they want to. The reason this is a con is that from what I can see, there is only 1 slot in the Mac mini. This slot, from the factory will have the 256MB stick in it. This can be replaced, but only by removing the stick. The only way to get 1GB of RAM into this puppy is to buy the super expensive 1GB DIMMS. I guess it won't be as big a problem when the sticks come down in price.

2. Hard Drive: This is a desktop, and as such I expect to be able to upgrade atleast the most basic parts of it. I'm not sure if the hard drive will be user replaceable. Also to get a hard drive into something this small, I'm afraid they may have used a 2.5" laptop HD. Not only are these drives typically slower, but they're also much more expensive than the normal 3.5" IDE or SATA HDs.

3. Graphics Card: ATI 9200. This graphics card is really nothing to write home about. It would be nice to have a more powerful chipset, especially considering that the graphics hardware is not replaceable. I do understand that this is geared as a low-end entry level or second mac. Thus it doesn't need a great graphics card for games and such.

In Conclusion: I believe this Mac will be an absolute hit. It has all the sexiness of the doomed cube, but with a very reasonable price tag. I'm seriously contemplating getting one. As soon as I buy an LCD of course.