Hardware

Windows Vista Craplets from Manufacturers

This post is about some of the bloatware, or crapware, installed by computer manufacturers like Dell, Sony, etc.

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Gateway NX860 X and XL Notebooks

I still get some great deals sent to me in my inbox from affiliate programs I am in, and here is one that arrived this morning from Gateway.com, but it is only good until January 6 2007.

$200 off Gateway NX860 X and XL Notebooks Use Coupon Code: NX860200 Gateway NX860 – Cutting-edge technology makes this notebook practically bionic. Our top-of-the-line NX860 Series is powered by an Intel Core Duo Processor and Intel Centrino Duo Mobile Technology for a dramatic boost in your mobile multitasking performance?perfect for multimedia enthusiasts on the go.

HD-DVD and Blueray DRM Cracked Already?

Apparently all DRM’s are crack able. Don’t think so? Just ask Muslix64, who recently said he had copied movies in the HD-DVD format, mainly because he had not heard of anyone doing so. Those darn kids.

The HD-DVD coalition includes companies like Microsoft, Intel, Toshiba and NEC; the Blu-ray camp has Sony, Philips and Samsung. Among studios, Universal is exclusively backing HD-DVD. Paramount and Warner Brothers also support HD-DVD, but not exclusively. Representatives of Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers are on the board of the Blu-ray group.

The two groups have taken different technical approaches in their efforts to prohibit consumers from making copies of movies and other digital material stored on discs. Both groups use an encryption scheme known as Advanced Access Copy System. The Blu-ray system also adds a software-based component that makes it possible to modify the copy protection scheme on new discs if the old one is broken by hackers.

In an accompanying video demonstration posted on the YouTube Web site, the programmer showed encryption keys for six movies and concluded by stating ?A.A.C.S. is unbreakable? I don?t think so. Do you? Stay tuned for source code in January. Merry Christmas.? Source: NYTimes

The programmer was supposed to release something today, but I haven’t really looked to see if I can find anything about it.

Added: Just found a video he posted online.

My advice, avoid HD-DVD and Blueray like the plague. If you are like me, it is way to soon to rebuy everything all over again, we just did that when we went from VHS to DVD. You can buy a device that will play all of your DVD’s in HD, the Helios X5000 will allow you to play and stream your DVD collection in HD. The hell with HD-DVD and Blueray, the studios can take that and all of their DRM bullshit and cram it!

Imagine being able to upscale your entire DVD collection and all your video files to the highest of HD resolutions ? 1080p! What more, now you can play native HD video files and enjoy them in the absolute clarity of real high-definition. Source: Neodigits

If I can get my hands on one, I will review it to see what the output looks like, send me one Neodigits, for a few weeks anyway.

Hybrid Hard Drives

I was reading some articles this morning and I saw one referenced on Techmeme by John Dvorak called Will Vista make an impact? Commentary: It’s just not the same as earlier Windows releases. In it he describes how Microsoft is slipping on promoting it’s own products and technology, specifically, [tag]hybrid hard drives[/tag], a device that is needed to see benefits from Windows Readyboost, Windows Readydrive and some other technologies. So, I thought I would post an article about hybrid hard drives that contained what little I already knew with what I could find online.

It’s possible that some buzz will evolve, but it’s beginning to look like a pretty standard news story rather than anything like the marketing events we’ve seen in the past. I have to assume that the promoters who put on a worldwide show for Windows 95, for example, have long since left the company.

One of the interesting things I’m seeing is the relative ignorance of the computer-using public in general about the system requirements for Vista. Most obvious is the complete lack of knowledge regarding the next generation hard disk that is required to make Vista perform well.

Knowledgeable folks who should know about these drives never heard of them except in some relation to laptop battery life which seems to be the only promotion done so far. The only reason I know so much about them was by an odd coincidence of moderating a panel that discussed the drives in great detail. Source: MarketWatch

A hybrid drive is a new type of large-buffer computer hard drive, it’s different from standard hard drives because it uses a large non-volatile flash memory to cache data during normal use, such a drive developed by Samsung has a 2 gig cache. Windows Vista can use this cache for non-volatile data storage, so the platters of the hard drive are not spinning all of the time, as they do in current hard drives. There are three main reasons this will help Windows Vista run faster, including, decreased power consumption, improved reliability, and a faster boot process. This will help most users as the drives are only used between 2 and 10%, in some studies, of normal usage, there will be situations where more drive access will be needed, because of opening and closing of files, etc, and the benefit will not be as great.

So, the drives platters will be docked most of the time, allowing for less power consumption, mainly beneficial to notebook users, the hard drives will not put off as much heat, again, mainly useful to notebook users, less wear and tear on the drives, so they should last much longer, less noise, faster performance since most accesses will be to the flash and not the hard drive and an almost instant boot up process. As is the case of the Samsung drive, boot up data for the operating system can be contained completely on the flash portion of the drive allowing for boot up times of less than ten seconds. It has even been said that since the drives will not be running as hot, they should be able to increase the maximum rotation of the platters to allow for faster burst speeds than the 15,000 rpm limit on SCSI drives or the 10,000 rpm limit on some ide drives.

Some drawbacks I have seen include increased pricing, and the seek time of some file accesses will be increased because the platters will be at rest when a file from the hard drive is requested. If you have been in computers very long, you will remember the sound of some of the first scsi drives spinning up when they were accessed and the extra delay you had in bringing your system back up after it went to sleep. It has also been mentioned that there will be possible security problems, since the flash is separate it will not be automatically cleaned by some of these data cleaners businesses use to clean data from their old systems and it could possible be used by malware to hide from anti spyware and anti virus programs.

Security conscious organizations are taught to be very aware of data left on hard drives when PCs are disposed of. However, [Flash] memory is nonvolatile, so a company could end up with up to 512Mbytes of data lying around in memory on the motherboard or on the side of the drive.

Few companies own the industrial-scale degaussing equipment that can instantly be used to fry the data on a drive, and instead rely on software that laboriously overwrites the magnetic surface.

Another security implication of hybrid drives is that, depending on the interface between the operating system and the drive, it may also be possible to hide malicious code in the Flash memory that is not detected by virus scanners. Source: Applied Miscellany

An article from Cnet in 2005 discusses some of the benefits as the drives were first being developed.

Typically, hard drives rotate. Hard drive motors, along with LCD screens, are two of the largest consumers of power inside a laptop.

In the hybrid, the drive rarely spins. In the prototype hybrid being shown off Monday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, the drive spins only about 30 to 45 seconds every half hour, said Ivan Greenberg, director of strategic marketing for Samsung Semiconductor. The goal is to get it to 30 to 45 seconds for an hour.

“The traditional hard drive takes up about 10 to 15 percent of the battery power of your notebook,” Greenberg said. Thus, in a notebook with a four hour battery, the hybrid drive could extend battery life by about 36 minutes. Source: Cnet

This post from PCWorld references Superfetch, a term I don’t think I had seen before, but apparently it is the portion that manages the memory and will eventually learn which you will need loaded and will copy that data to the flash drive.

Three HHD-related Windows features you need to know: Superfetch, ReadyBoost, and ReadyDrive.

SuperFetch, a new memory manager for Windows, uses available memory to proactively cache data that you’re likely to need. Eventually, it learns which applications and data you habitually use and when you use them, and it does this on a per-user basis. I’ll be interested to see if SuperFetch works well enough to justify adding lots of memory to desktop machines.

As Denny Arar explains, ReadyBoost makes more memory available to SuperFetch by creating new memory pages on USB flash drives and the flash memory in hybrid hard disks. Source: Today @ PCWorld

The benefits I see are great and I can’t wait to get a Windows Vista system with one of these drives to try out, if my older, still fast but extremely hot laptop had some of these drives, I would probably still be using it every day. If anyone wants to send me one, I’d surely give it a good once or twice over. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, Windows Vista will be able to use USB drives for cache memory using Windows Readyboost, you will actually be able to leave it plugged in and boot from it, and, if you need to remove it, nothing will be lost as it will just be caching files that are already on the drive.

Ready for Wireless Monitors?

Saw this post on Gizmodo, everything else is wireless, why not your monitor?

The new wireless XGA receiver WID101 allows the user to receive VGA to WXGA resolution video and audio from any wireless computer via industry standard 802.11 g/a/b network protocol. Simple to install, it takes only a few minutes to link a PC with a wireless network card and the WID101 receiver to show high quality video and stereo audio on any display up to 250 ft away.

Select any of the three available transmission modes, wireless 802.11 g/a/b, wired network, or local DVI port, to output picture perfect quality digital video, via WID101?s DVI-D port. Multiple PC can request to link to a single receiver, while the user of the active transmitting PC allows or denies to pass control to another user.

The WID101 is typically used in classrooms and auditoriums, museums, houses of worship, boardrooms, and for digital signage, because of the ease of use, it quickly connects without long cables, and also offers WEP secured transmission. Source: Teq Gear

Computer Manufacturers Using Flash Disks

Fujitsu has joined the ranks of computer manufacturers using flash memory in place of hard drives, offering 16GB or 32GB flash memory disks as an option on the new B-series machines due in late October and the Q-series machines in early November. Is this an advantage? Sure, the machines will boot up noticeably faster, the B-series machine will take about 19 seconds to start up running Windows XP Home Edition compared to 32 seconds for a hard-disk drive version. They will also have a longer battery life since the flash memory uses less power, adding 15 minutes uptime to the B-series and 30 minutes to the Q-series machines.

The flash memory is made by Samsung, who has already released two machines using the flash memory earlier this year, the Q30 laptop and Q1-SSD ultra-mobile PC. Sony is shipping one machine, a small size portable pc, released in Japan only.

The downside? Price. The 16GB disk will add $670 to the price of the computer while the 32GB disk will add $1340. Is it worth the small increases? Probably not yet. When there are more manufacturers shipping more machines using the flash memory, the prices will come down, but right now, I can’t see paying almost $700 more for 13 seconds of boot up time and 15 more minutes of battery life. Plus, with Windows Vista’s ability to use hybrid drives, using Windows Readyboost and Windows Readydrive, you will be able to add flash memory yourself to speed up boot up times.

My advice, if you are buying it for yourself, stick with a regular hard drive and save some money, but if your work is buying it for you, tell them you have to have it and let us know how much you like it.

Nortel’s MIMO Powered WiMax Gear

In a news release, Nortel says they are committed to leadership in 4G mobile broadband and will revolutionize wireless economics with launch of MIMO-powered mobile WiMax. The technology uses mulitple antennas, multiple in, multiple out, and using this technology, they will be able to deliver video-grade content for as little as one-tenth the cost of 3G networks. It will be able to deliver three times the speed and double the subscriber capacity with greater range and building penetration, and will deliver sppeds that rival broadband internet technologies, such as cable or dsl.

Their WiMax solution is based on OFDM-MIMO, and together, the transmission strengths of OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) and advanced antenna capabilities of MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) will allow more users to be packed into available spectrum at speeds more than 10 times faster than current commercially deployed UMTS networks and four to five times faster than HSDPA. Nortel is the only company to provide OFDM-MIMO in its mobile WiMax solution, currently.

“The power of WiMAX for high-bandwidth applications opens a whole new world of mobility, that provides new capabilities and processes for businesses and new revenue-generating services for operators,” said Godfrey Chua, research manager, Wireless and Mobile Infrastructure, IDC. “WiMAX has the potential to revolutionize entertainment, provide communication capabilities that haven’t even been considered yet, and bring the true Internet experience to the mobile realm.”

In addition to introducing the Mobile WiMAX portfolio, Nortel also announced its collaboration with chipset maker Runcom to fuel the WiMAX business advantages by delivering MIMO chipsets that will enable the WiMAX ecosystem of network technologies and devices.
Nortel’s WiMAX solutions are being trialed with carriers around the world, in Asia, Europe and the Americas – and have been deployed by Netago Wireless with the Special Areas Board of Alberta in Canada and Craig Wireless in Greece.

Nortel’s WiMAX solution offers flexible operations and is designed to operate in the 1.5, 2.3, 2.5 and 3.5 GHz frequencies. The solution is based on field-proven, next-generation platforms and leverages the Company’s leadership in supplying carrier wireless solutions, including CDMA, GSM and WCDMA core technologies. The solution is comprised of new MIMO base station transceivers, access service network gateways, connectivity services networks, mobile subscriber stations and network management systems. Source: Nortel

Nortel is demonstrating the new solution at the WiMAX World USA 2006 trade show in Boston, today through to October 12 at booth 323.

Overclocking the Dual Core Chips

Those guys at tomhshardware are always looking for some cheap thrills, this time, they are trying to overclock the cheaper versions of the new Dual Core Intel chips.

Low-cost processors have always lent themselves well to overclocking in the past. This is because all processors in a given family are created equal. Each wafer holds a few hundred processor dies, which, after going through functional tests, are turned into actual products. Whether a die becomes a Core 2 Duo E6500 or E6700 processor mostly depends on customer demand today. Since entry-level processors originate from the same source as that of high-end devices, they usually have the same overclocking potential as well.For entry-level Core 2 Duo devices with only 2-MB instead of 4-MB L2 cache, we might not be able to replace the missing cache, but we can certainly increase the clock rate. Can a simple speed increase overcome the cache deficit? What performance can you expect from an overclocked Core 2 Duo? Source: Toms Hardware

Depending on what you need, this can very well be worth it, but you might be better off just getting a faster chip.

Exclusive TigerDirect Deals Of The Week

Here are four semi exclusive computer deals from TigerDriect.com.

1GB MP3/WMA Player and USB Drive Silver $19*
17″ 12ms 500:1 SXGA 1280×1024 Black LCD Monitor $99*
InFocus DLP Projector w/FREE 76″ Screen $799
Samsung 50-Inch DLP HDTV – FREE SHIPPING – $1299

And here are the dynamically updated computer deals of the day.

Playstation Mod Chip Seller Hit with Million Dollar Suit

If you have been into gaming for very long, or do much research on the internet, then you’ve known about mod chips for awhile, whether you actually know what they do or how they work is another story, but I’ve seen ads all over the place. Anywhere from $50 to a couple hundred dollars you can get a mod chip, or even have them installed and they will let you play copied games in your console, Xbox, PS1, PS2, Xbox 360, Gamecube, etc, and the newer systems with the hard drives, you can copy complete games to the hard drive and play them from there. Making it very easy to rent a game, copy it to your hard drive and never having to rent or buy it again. Well, three such mod chip sellers are paying the price as Sony has accused them of violating the DMCA and they are charged with $9 million in damages.

Mod chip seller Divineo and two other defendants are on the hook for over $9 million in damages after a federal court judge found that they had violated the DMCA by selling mod chips for consoles. The defendants were accused by Sony of trafficking in mod chips as well as the application HDLoader, which allows owners of the PlayStation 2 console to rip and store PS2 games on a hard drive attached to the system.

Divineo is a company based in France that sells parts, accessories, and until recently, mod chips for the Xbox, Xbox 360, PSOne, PS2, GameCube, and other systems. Source: arstechnica

They had to know it was coming eventually, these people cost these gaming companies money, and they don’t like that. Most companies loose money selling the consoles and make up the difference in selling the games for them, something they can’t do if people don’t actually buy them.

Buyer and seller beware.