by ·Comments Off on SSD Performance

After reading (and admittedly drooling) over the anecdotal performance increases of solid state drives vs. traditional hard drives for the last year or so, I finally took the plunge and purchased one with my holiday cash.  I’ve got to say that I’m truly impressed with the increases, and have some real world numbers of my own to back it up.

To say the numbers are night and day difference would be an understatement of epic proportions.  Just the “feel” of my computer now is amazingly faster.  From the time I press power to fully into Windows 7 is about 35 seconds.  Photoshop loads almost immediately.  I’ve not seen a drastic improvement in my game load times (possibly because the worst part of my level changes are always re-negotiating with the server, something I can’t control).  I chose to do a fresh install of Windows and my programs rather than do a drive image, and the whole process took at least an hour less to perform.  Windows 7 installed in roughly 15 minutes!

If you do decide to make the leap to an SSD, do your homework.  There are various tweaks you need to make to Windows 7 in order to make sure that you get the most out of your drive and extend its life.  Also check into the reliability of the controller software.  While it’s true that drives with the SandForce controller sets are some of the fastest on the market, they have a fairly high failure rate (10-15% based on non-scientific reviews from NewEgg).  I bought the Samsung SSD – which seems to be from observation, the most reliable at the present time.  Time will tell though, as this drive doesn’t have quite the age that some of the SandForce-based drives (like the OCZ Vertex and Agility have).

I’m now debating replacing the hard drive in my laptop with an SSD (albeit a smaller one, since I don’t have 15gb of games on my laptop).  I wonder what sort of increase in performance I’d see from my HTPC with an Atom processor with one of these babies.

by ·Comments Off on Karma’s a …

You know, karma’s a real b****.

Before I went home over Labor Day weekend, I knew that I needed an oil change.  I couldn’t remember if I needed a tire rotation or not.  I went in, they offered free rotations, so I took them up on it.  They get the tires off, and they’re at the wear indicators (which means I wouldn’t pass inspection for license renewal).  So I get 4 new shoes for my baby.

After that, I watched the Apple announcement for the new iPod lineup, thinking that with this, I could pickup a recent model on the cheap.  A week later, my 2nd generation nano (we’re on the 6th now) stops putting out sound through the headphones.

I left for home worried about losing power/internet at my house, and as such, my email.  It happens, so I get my VPS (which turns out to be not such a bad thing).

This past week, I ask my PC shop what would be a decent upgrade to help me with backing up/converting my Blu-Ray and DVD collection.  The answer – more memory (short of getting a new processor at $300).  Not even 24 hours later – my memory fries.

Of course, I’m writing this after I dropped more money on a new power supply, motherboard, hard drive, and cpu thinking one of those was the issue.  Don’t forget the money I’ve paid to my shop to attempt to diagnose the problem.

Yeesh, I’m due for some good karma here.  As soon as I picked up a few extra bucks after selling some of my stuff on ebay, all this other stuff crops up.  Just goes to show you that whenever you try to get ahead, life smacks you back down.

So, I’ll go pickup my system tomorrow, with some “temporary” memory until the new sticks I ordered from Newegg get here.  Then hope I can re-sell the old stuff on eBay for a few bucks.

Karma’s a real bitch sometimes…

by ·Comments Off on Kindle vs. iPad…

We’ve had 48 hours to hear all the news about the new Apple iPad (and God forbid, we’ll hear more about it in the near future more than many of us would care for).  Many of the pundits are calling it a true rival to Amazon’s Kindle and the e-reader market.

I came across a brief article the other day that asked the question “Is the iPad a game-changer?” (CNNMoney.com article)  The article lists a few valid points about the ultimate question of where the iPad fits into the computing scheme of things.  After taking some time to digest the specs and capabilities, as well as read some of the drivel (for everyone’s sake – there have been a few good ones out there) that many reporters have spouted about the iPad, I don’t think that it will be some huge seller or success like the iPhone is.  (see this CNNMoney article for the analyst’s predictions.)

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