That new X300 is the sexiest laptop on the planet. And you can actually use it to get work done. Sorry, Apple. You’re outclassed on this one.
Category: Geek service
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“Do you smell something burning?”
The search started with the strange smell of burning plastic as we sat on the sofa. It took a few minutes to pinpoint the source as not being in the current room and not from the cellar, which only left upstairs. I ran my hand to the back of the tower case and felt the fan of the power supply still going strong, but when I opened up the side of the case it was obvious where the problem was.
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1 TB laptop from Asus
woah. Inevitable, but awesome.
ASUS this week announced what it claims to be the world’s first laptop that has a 1-terabyte (1TB) laptop. Called the M70, users are able to order the laptop with dual 500GB SATA drives both running at 5400 RPMs. The kicker here is that the M70 does not require users to swap out an optical drive in order to have both drives installed.
Now the next step would be to support on-board RAID.
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Incredible spacewalk pictures from Shuttle Endeavour
click to enlarge. These are amazing. Wonder if my G9 would be up to this task…
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the Atomic EEE
There are a number of products that seek to compare with the EEE, including the Everex Cloudbook and the new HP 2133 Mini-Note PC. Unfortunately, these all try to improve on the EEE by offering more hard drive space, larger screens, larger keyboards, etc. That is unfortunate, because then in order to compete on price they invariably use the Via processor instead of the baby Celeron that the EEE uses. The Via comes in a higher clock rate than the Celeron (in the EEE, its downclocked to 600 MHz, though you can get it to run at its native 900 using a BIOS upgrade). However, it’s performance just doesn’t keep pace. Plus, these competitor products have to use 4200 rpm hard drives due to the small form factor (they are too small for standard 2.5 inch notebook drives) and so they really suffer performance wise, especially compared to the solid-state disk of the EEE. Ultimately, the only true competitors to the EEE (on price and performance) will appear when Intel officially launches its new Atom processor in June, which is a truly state-of-the-art chip designed for mobility.
I find it surprising therefore that Asus is rolling out its successor to the EEE later this month, without the Atom processor. They moved up the release date purely as a response to all these Via-based units being rolled out. This is a mistake in my opinion. If you are in the market for a new EEE or similar device, my advice is to either buy the original version (which can be had with Windows XP preinstalled now) or wait until June for the upgraded model.
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it begins
Looks like TechCunch is jumping the gun a bit.
UPDATE: well, I couldn’t resist either. I also confess that I was taken in by Darren, but my excuse is that I didn’t take the time zone into account.
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Windows XP SP3
The official release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP inches closer. The latest release candidate (RC2) now includes support for HD audio, which was lacking in SP3 RC1 (and thus made my life miserable for a week trying to install Windows on my EEE). I think I will do a wipe of my EEE and reinstall SP3 when the final version is released.
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dreaming of an EEE Tablet
It seems that the next generation EEE, which will have a 9-inch screen and Windows XP preinstalled, will also feature a resistive touchscreen LCD. The unit may also include GPS though this has not been confirmed.
This is pretty intriguing news, though not in itself enough to make me lust for one. The inclusion of GPS is a great idea, it’s a fairly cheap chipset and will add tremendous functionality. But the touchscreen LCD is more promising because it suggests that a tablet EEE is not too far in the future. Tablets tend to be expensive and midsized, which are both disincentives to pulling them out in public and using them in tablet mode. But an inexpensive EEE tablet would be revolutionary. Imagine a tablet that you could truly hold in one hand, with a touch screen, and sporting GPS to boot. Coupled with WiMax you’d basically have the ultimate device. That’s something worth waiting for, as long as they keep it in the $500 range.
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Firefox easter egg
type “about:mozilla” into your browser bar in any version of Firefox. On Easter day alone, this will reveal the following message:
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
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upgrading to 250 GB
My T42 Thinkpad came with an 80GB Hitachi Travelstar hard drive. I’ve been living at 95% maxed out capacity for well over half its lifetime, surviving by migrating a lot of files to an external disk (mostly personal video and raw data from my MRI research). The Thinkpad is also starting to show its age in terms of cruft; my new Asus EEE is much easier to use in some ways because I’ve installed only a core set of software that I use often (limited by it’s tiny 4 GB SSD). A clean XP install – nlited to save me the hassle of installing service packs and software – is clearly necessary. So, an upgrade was clearly (over)due, despite my tightwad constraints. Winning a $30 Amazon voucher from Read/Write Web spurred me to action; I’ve just placed an order for a Western Digital 250 GB Scorpio drive. Since my Thinkpad is older, it only has an Ultra-ATA interface instead of the newer SATA ones. Hence, my choices were limited and I had to choose between 250 GB for $130 or 160 GB for $90. WD is the only manufacturer which makes a laptop drive at 250 GB capacity with the Ultra-ATA interface, but I am satisfied that the drive is worth the cost (partially offset by the Amazon voucher to boot). The performance of the SATA version is reputed to be excellent, and I doubt the UATA lags it much (as it happens, SATA requires slightly more power consumption, so what I lose in marginal performance, I will regain in marginal battery life).
I am planning to stay with Windows XP for the time being, most likely Service Pack 3 (which is not an official release yet, but you can download it as a release candidate from Microsoft). I’m not sure how well my Thinkpad will run Vista, since it’s only got a Dothan chip instead of a Yonah (aka Core Duo). Steven’s travails are also a cautionary tale.
My plan is to also order a cheap external 2.5″ case to house the old drive, so I can more easily transfer the data off (and of course reserve it in case I ever need to boot back into my old setup). Now I need to think about something a bit more rigorous for backup; at present I have the external disk I mentioned, but it would be better to invest in a NAS like a Linkstation Pro. Sigh. A print server would also be nice… argh! It never ends.
