Hardware Discussion and News

[willawake]

lets start a thread about the new hardware or new things you heard about hardware. what would be interesting to buy.......

I have been reading http://club.cdfreaks.com/ these past few days. i am interested in a new burner. i was suprised that the LG 4167 http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/242 gets good reviews. since it is also available in black here i will get one to test.

there is some news on that forum also that Plextor will release a Plextor Premium II cdrw in the coming months. that is interesting news because the Plextor Premium now discontinued was a great drive for copying games. Plextor kinda fell from grace with their later dvd drives.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

I've got the LG 4167B, it's a great drive IMO...

[willawake]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

Western Digital Raptor X 150gb 10.000 with window
http://www.wdraptorx.com/index.asp?bhcp=1

hey you can check out the head crashes!! interesting to see what is going on inside though from a technical point of view but dont expect anything too exciting hehe. the price is eye watering as well : $350..........

[Per Hansson]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

I think I'll be getting one, the Windowed version...

I've got the 74GB raptor now and am very satisfied with it...

I've always wanted a windowed harddrive but atleast have been sane enough not to try make one on my own

[willawake]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

yes it would be incredibly silly to open a hdd and try that. Hmmm nice to see you are satisfied with your raptor. I was always interested to try 2 in raid-0 for the OS. For other stuff i am not really interested in speed, more interested in big reliable storage. unfortunately i have gone off WD for the moment and am buying seagate now. i have had several WD drives develop abnormal sounds and vibration or failure that i replaced them early with seagate.

looking at the offerings here i see some other new drives with 16mb buffer now, i wonder if it is effective? looking at the scsi options there is seagate 36.7gb 10.000 ultra 320 scsi for 208 euro and 15.000 version for 300 euro. The comparable 146gb 10.000 scsi is 518 euro..cough...cough... So basically looking at 2x36.7gb 15.000 (600 euro plus controller 300-400 euro) it is quite an expense therefore i guess the sata raptors have their place

[Per Hansson]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

There is no point in running RAID-0 unless all you are looking for is STR, for everyday tasks and gaming RAID-0 will only decrease performance. Sure, HD Tach scores and such will increase but who cares?

And buying an enterprise SCSI harddrive delevoped for fileserver use is equally stupid; the Raptor beats any SCSI drive, they are just not designed for the kind of usage a single user cenario brings

Look at the review at www.storagereview.com and see for yourself

[willawake]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

I've got the LG 4167B, it's a great drive IMO...

burning 8x TY was ok but it choked on 4x TY burning around 1x instead of 4x. With firmware update to DL13 drive is good now.

[willawake]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

just reading a new edition computer mag so here are some bits and bobs :

google mars - you can see a map of mars!
http://www.google.com/mars/

o2 (a uk mobile phone company) is recalling 100.000 x1 handsets after reports of severe overheating during charging.

samsung is planning production of 32GB NAND solid state flash HDDs for next year.

samsung is producing a windows mobile 5 based phone SGH-i310 with 8gb storage, 2 megapixel and tv out

DRM - Digital Rights Management......i dont want to talk about this really.....they are going to really try to screw us this time.....

samsung is readying the SH-B022 BD Blue ray writer. at 576 english pounds its certainly not something i will be buying soon. blue ray disks are currently available with 25gb at the moment, 50 is coming later. it took 47 mins to burn 22.2gb of data. disks are going to be 10-14 pounds for the 25gb and 24-31 for the 50gb

Canon Digital IXUS 60 and the rest of the series gets good reviews all over the place, it is one of canon's series of pocket cameras. they really are amazing, its ready to shoot in 1 second.

MSI Starcam 370i webcam gets top rating and is only 15 pounds, it stands on the table on a long desk lamp style stand and has 3 white and 3 infrared LEDs for better viewing in low lighting.

a dual core 1u rack server is reviewed which has the new intel sossaman procs. these are based on dual core T2500 and are called the Xeon LV procs. they are compatible with current Xeon chipsets like the E7520. unfortunately they are only 32bit with and have 667mhz fsb but who cares really because they are much cooler and consume much less power. dual core is going to bring nice things to intel based servers. imho nocona based servers were a disaster, very hot. power consumption is becoming a major factor in large installations.

nexsan satabeast is reviewed which is a 4u rack enclosure with what looks like 3 12cm fans at the front and is for 42x500gb sata hdds. with 2 hotswap psus, 2 hotswap raid controllers and 512mb cache. for comms its got 2 FC 2gb ports and 2 gigabit ethernet. how much...well its a good price but too much for me 28.500 pounds.

they talk about vista and not very suprisingly need for speed most wanted doesnt run at the moment. hehe i remember when one need for speed wouldnt run on win2k when it came out.

[Galvanized]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

Re. o2 cell phone recall. I remember when Nokia and some other cell phone providers were having phones blow up. As I recall, one men lost a leg or it was very seriously injured. I did see a pic of a woman's rear jean pocket in shreds . A c(r)ap blowing up is one thing but a poorly manufactured or counterfeit battery is another. Scary stuff .

[willawake]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

yes there have been some serious cases with various products. it always amuses me though that recalls are usually when something is dangerous, ie battery/power supply or food contaminated with glass etc. (big lawsuit) how rare is it to see a recall on otherwise defective products.

anyway there is some humour there :



recalled



replacement fone.......err...i bought a clamshell and you are replacing it with a candy bar?...morons

[willawake]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

HP is recalling the firmware of 679,000 R707 digital cameras because of a defect which results in them charging even non-rechargable batteries when the camera is connected to the mains.

http://h41111.www4.hp.com/R707upgrade/en/

[Galvanized]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

AMD to cut prices.

http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/itnews.php?tid=613657

[gonzo0815]

Re: Hardware Discussion and News

Well, hope AMD had something in the line other than droping price. If not, i have no doubth that it would be a hard fight to stay in competition...... At the moment i can say, i like all AMD 64bit proc`s , as they are all in all fast, efficient and have some potential to tweak.
And even those who never ever want to buy a AMD proc (because those mainboard chip set`s arent that easy zo setup, if you are not familiar with) would have not mutch benefit if the last competitor will die.
Could be the same story like MS, they make produkts which no one want, but all will buy it nevertheless (e.g TCPA, DRM....).
But of course, i doubth that AMD has the (finaciall) power to develop to mutch procs.