It seems Nvidia are coming out with their new gaming Graphics Cards, the GTX-200 and they really do pump out some power. I haven’t seen any pricing yet, but from the benchmarks, they are quiet impressive.
The 260 has 192 stream processors and 896MB of memory, while the 280 has 240 stream processors and 1GB of memory.
Link: Kotaku
I always try to organize my downloads, and they do get organized once I have finished my downloads. And that lasts a maximum of a day or two, then things get messed up once again when I add to the download list. I have been downloading a lot of anime these days, and I always download the latest HD movies out there, no matter how old. Another issue I’m facing right now is my torrent uploads, I have to leave my torrents on to keep my ratio up, and it has reached the point where my hard drive has gotten filled without me noticing it. So I have a few porblems now, my files are all messed up and need reorganization, and now my main hard drive is filled up and it only has 7.95 GB left from 698 GB (750 GB Drive).
HD Movies I’m downloading:
- Batman Begins 1080P
- The Spiderwick Chronicles 720P
- Be King Rewing 720P
- Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade 720P
- Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark 720P
- HULK 1080P
I do enjoy lugging a laptop around but the main problem I have with it is the battery. This is specifically with my Alienware laptop, and this has been the case with all of them, and I have been through 3 Alienware laptops over the past 6 years. And this one has reached its crappy limit, the laptop performs well and handles multiple applications without issues, and the best part about these laptops is the lack of what is called Bloatware (Preinstalled Applications). But at this point if I take the laptop off I only have 20 to 30 minutes of battery life which is insane, and even with a spare its down a lot, the problem now is getting a spare or new battery. They have excellent performing machine but the battery life always suck over some time and it cripples the mobility of the machine, thats its only downfall.
Now this is good news, two of my favorite game developers of all time are going to merge. I’m not sure of the technical details of the merger or the exact value, all I keep thinking about is the quality of games they will be able to come up with because these two game companies have been consistent over the years. I wonder what they are going to come up with next, I’m really waiting for StarCraft II.
- Interstate 76
- Mech Warrior Series
- Call of Duty series
- Spider-Man series
- Guitar Hero series
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Warcraft
- World of Warcraft
- StarCraft
- Diablo
I have always been a fan of high end PCs, and Voodoo sets a very high standard and with that comes a very high price. I wasn’t sure what HP wanted to do with Voodoo since they bought it, but it seems the track is clear, and the Voodoo Envy is the result of that collaboration. This is not meant a gamin PC but as a high end luxury business laptop, and it has more features then any other laptop I have seen of its size. It is developed and made by the Voodoo Business Unit which is trying to branch out with the non-gaming system.
- You can boot up in VIOS (Voodoo Linux) or Vista depending on what you want to do.
- Circular touch with Proximity Sensor, it switches off when you are using the keyboard. (To avoid cursor hop)
- Ethernet connection is through the power adapter which also acts as your wireless accesspoint for the laptop if you disconnect the power plug
- Ship with two USB ports, one which doubles as an eSATA jack, and an HDMI pot. Every Envy 133 ships with an external drive
- Carbon Fiber Casing
- 13.3 inch backlit LED screen
- 3.45 hours of battery life
- Wireless 802.11 ABGN + Bluetooth
- Proessional Backlit Keyboard
- Slightly thinner then MacBook Air 0.76 inches, the Envy is 0.70 inches
Price: $2100
I have been taking a look at the HP 2133 for some time now and it has been getting some mixed reviews. Some bad and some good, the Vista OS is the first problem that this machine faces.
The Machine:
- Windows Vista Business 32-Bit
- VIA C7-M Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) 1.6GHz Processor
- 128KB L2 Cache, 800MHz Front Bus speed
- 2048MB DDR2 (PC2-5300) RAM
- 120GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive
My Points:
- The keyboard is very nice and feels like a small laptop.
- The touch pad is a bit strange is the left and right click are to the sides and not the bottom which takes some getting used to.
- The overall case feels very clean and well made, but it is pretty heavy for its size
- The battery protrudes out the back which limits how much you can tilt the screen
- The speakers are one of the best laptop speakers I have heard, they are better then both my Alienware and Dell which is surprising since they are bigger
- The screen is comfortable and a good size
- You have lots of options with this machine such as: Express Card, SD Card, Ethernet Port, VGA Port, 2 USB, headphones, and microphone
- The biggest mistake was to preload Vista on this machine, HP wanted to push it to market and that is what caused mixed reviews. This machine would be perfectly fine running XP or Linux since it is well built with a lot of space. My friend is thinking of installing Ubuntu on this machine which I think is a great idea since its a very light OS in comparison. Its known that Vista is a resource hog so any heavy duty action feels difficult on this machine, it has nothing to do with being a VIA Chip or an Intel Chip.
- The laptop lasts 4.5 hours with the low screen setting and 2.4 hours with the high screen setting. During the day I just have it with the low screen setting.
Do I like the machine? Yes
Is there room for improvement? Yes
It could be lighter, the OS should be XP Pro, and a few other imrpovements.
This is one of the final stages of the Windows Home Server modifications, all other modifications will be on a minor scale. These are one the last major changes that I will be making for at least a few months.
Parts:
- 5 Slot Backplane
- 4 TB Western Digital Drives
- 36″ SATA Cables
Tools:
- One Thin Screw Driver
- Pliers
WHS Add Ons:
- Windows Home Server Disk Management – To get details regarding each hard drive status and temperatures, to replace any failed drive.
- Media Connect Controller – It is an Add-On that automatically formats videos in a way to play through your X-Box 360 which can only play specific formats but through the Windows Home Server you can see all the different files (MKV, MPEG-4, DVIX, and AVI).
I decided to move the CD Rom drive down to the bottom and installing the new Backplane just under the current Backplane. The current Backplane is filled completely with 1 TB Drives, and so will the new one. I will be filling it up with four 1 TB Drives and keeping one open for later purposes and expansion. I currently have 7.2 TB which will soon be filled up with all the Anime, TV Episodes, and Movies that I have floating around in the network. I still haven’t consolidated my network map due to some technical difficulties which I will be discussing later. So the process of dumping data onto the server will take a little longer then expected but it shall be completed in a timely basis.
The first issue I had with this case is to remove the flaps that could bloke the insertion of the Backplane which took sometime. After cleanly installing it and taking some time to organize my CD-Rom wiring I had to figure out how to wire the power to the Backplane. At this point K came into the picture and started rewiring to his usual standard and turned it into a work of art. I know I did a decent job for the start but nothing close to K’s perfection. The SATA Controller and Port Multiplier were moved around to accommodate the extra 5 drives and cleanly incorporate them into the setup.
After that the SATA connection was made to the Backplane, finally all rewiring was finished and the process was to begin. We started the backplane without any drives to check if everything was operational which passed that test. Then I inserted the four drives into the slots, I cleaned up the table, got rid of all used junk, paper, and other materials. It took about 8 minutes for the server to boot up since it was still trying to figure out all the drives to be identified which was the same the last time, after that it booted faster. After booting up into Windows Home Server the process of duplication starts the process of Balancing the server so it starts shifting data round which takes a few days to complete this whole intricate process. I now created more folders and moved the data around to make sure they are located in the appropriate folder names.
I completed one aspect which is online access during the WHS – Stage 3 about a month ago and I do have online access, but again after my network complication I need to figure out how to do it again. It was great having access to all my files at a specific URL. I would like to start syncing my machine but I still have to wait for the Windows Home Server Patch to make sure there aren’t any more read/write problems. Overall this is a great asset for those who store their data and would like a centralized location. The way I have my Windows Home Server is for large media use, it could be used differently, I haven’t even backed up any machines yet but I am looking forward to fully utilizing it. More details and modifications to come.
A lot of people use external hard drives for one thing or another, I tend to fill up some people external drives with Anime or TV Shows. Monichum dropped off his external since I have gotten him addicted to Anime. He has the Western Digital Portable External HD which is about 120 GB, enough for the shows, anime, and music that he wants to store. As I was using the WD I heard a clicking noise, I hate clicking noises with external HD’s, when that happened I listened very closely to make sure I wasn’t wrong, but then there was a clicking noise and the explorer window accessing it froze. I knew that something is very wrong with the drive, after a few trys I managed to drag 80 GB off the disk and lost about 20% of it, I was just lucky. I always liked the slim look of the WD but i kept hearing how much they fail, and now it did.
I tend to be very skeptical of external drives or drives overall because if it fails then thats a disastor. After looking around I decided that one of the better external drive after looking around online, I was between the Seagate and the Simpletech, and they only the Simpletech drive available in the local market so we picked up the 250 GB Simpletech Pininfarina External Portable drive for 36 KD and it is pretty good with a nice slim look to it.
Over the weekend I didn’t touch my laptop, I might have surfed on my N800 but that was about it. I didn’t check my email for a few days or anything else, it was just checking a few things out and getting some rest. Event though I know that there were a few pending emails, my Google reader was going to pile up with things and I knew I had to read all of them, I don’t like marking read without reading through it. It was just one of those things, but it did feel nice to be away from it for a bit.
I have been looking for a simple piece of software such as this for some time now. I have a very good idea what files are taking up space but this software puts the drives and folders in perspective, you can keep drilling down into folders and subfolders, giving you nice pie charts or bar charts. One of the drawbacks is that you can’t open the folder directly from the software, you would have to go through explorer. Just a useful tool to give you perspective on your drives.
Link: LifeHacker (Freeware)