I have been asked a couple of times by people who want to buy laptops, and what specifications to look for and what brand in Kuwait.
The first thing I ask them is do they really need a laptop or can they do with a desktop, the second question is do you need a laptop right now or can you wait.
My Recommendation for waiting:
- SSD incorporation in Laptops
- OLED screens incorporated into laptops (new type of screens)
- Improved type of Ram
- More stable version of Vista
- Apple Leopard will be released (So new Apple Hardware upgrades maybe in the works)
- incorporation of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray
- Decreasing the price of all this new technology
All this new technology is really being incorporated into the hardware over the past few months and will start becoming standard hardware over the next few months. I am telling people to wait at least until October or possibly the end of the year since there is a lot in the works. So if you want a laptop and can wait then don’t buy it and wait until the end of the year, even Dell is using SSD in their laptops.
It seems that Toshiba is coming out with its own line of Portable USB 2.0 Hard Drives in the 2.5 inch size. This seems to be a rugged looking portable HD with a special shock mount system, and scratch resistant housing. The capacities they have in mind are 100GB ($130), 120GB ($150), 160GB ($180), and 200GB ($230). Portable HD prices have dropped over the past year and a half, previously my 160 GB Seagate was going for $300 when it first came out but now you can get the same capacity for the half the price which is great.
Link: Engadget
Right now you have the option of buying Windows XP or Windows Vista with your new PC purchase, but by January of 2008 you will not have that option. Since Microsofts Windows XP agreement will end at the beginning of 2008 and you will have to buy Vista. That will be an interesting development to see what Microsoft does since not everyone is adapting to Vista since it still has its fair share of problems and heavy system requirements. It will be an interesting development for sure since people won’t enjoy that transition.
Link: Engadget
There has been a long wait for this latest development from Apple and it seems it has been delayed to October because they wanted to make the Launch of the iPhone. I’m assuming its going to be worth the wait since there are a lot of features and developments for this OS. So we shall see what happens from now until October. I’m thinking about getting a MacMini with the OS installed and connect to my KVM just to try out the OS! I bet it will be good, and the MacMini is a small investment just to try it out and use it.
Link: Engadget
This is fantastic news! At last they are putting SSD drives into laptops and this is the result! The laptop has extended the battery an extra 30 mins and the chance of the hard drive dying on you is extremely low! These hard drives are what the HD manufacturers are currently working on, Fujitsu is going at it full force. A few months down the line these drives are going to be extremely cheap. It was fitted with 32GB version but the highest SSD drive is 160GB but really expensive. Its going to be great, cant wait for more laptops with SSDs to drop the price.
Link: Engadget
All these upgrades this year needed to play the best games with DirectX 10 on Windows Vista first required you to shell out a huge amount of money, but now the upgrades seem a bit more reasonable. I might pick up one of these cards just to keep things running comfortably on my PC, I haven’t upgraded my graphics card in over a year and half, and in computer years thats like the stoneage.
Prices ranging from $229 to $90
- 256MB of GDDR3, a 675MHz core clock and a 1000MHz memory clock for the high end ones
- 128MB to 256MB DDR2 or GDDR3, 450MHz core clock and 700MHz for the lower end
Link: Engadget
Comes in a few varients:
- Red (160GB)
- Sapphire (320GB)
- Onyx (500GB)
- Gray (750GB and 1TB)
This also comes with a back software and a 2 GB account on Fabrick which is an online storage company. Since Fabrik bought out SimpleTech they are able to offer this service which is pretty good.
Link: Engadget
Well I was having some issues with my adapter while I was traveling in Germany, I thought it might have been something to do with the their electrical details since it was working fine in Kuwait before I left.
It doesn’t seem to be the case now, it has completely died on me so I’m going to ask for a replacement from the company I bought it from. I’m just happy I had a solution which I forgot about, its a pretty good soluton that I will be posting about later. If I didn’t have this other universal adapter then I would be in a lot of trouble since I wouldn’t get it for alittle while and I needed the laptop, but I had some luck this time!
For some reason or another my adapter wasn’t working so I haven’t been able to post or reply on my blog! Its really strange, it was working in Kuwait, at the Kuwait Airport, at Frankfurt Airport, but not at the hotel in Hannover. I was going nuts, it ran out of power and I thought I would just charge it, but for everything I did, it just didn’t work.
Its only working now because I kept trying different parts of the adapter and trying to connect different parts slowly seeing if it lights up. At this point my laptop is charging but I won’t move the power adapter for the rest of the trip. I will remove my laptop but I won’t move the power adapter at all. Now back to posting, too much to talk about.
It seems Buffalo has updated their Terastation line up with the Terastation Live which is perfect for the home media storage or SOHO which comes either in 1.0TB or 2.0TB configuration going for $896 and $1510. It comes with the Raid 5 configuration which is good for performance and being fault tolerant so you won’t lose your files. I can’t get enough storage and this is one great setup, prices of NASes are always dropping and this packs a good amount of storage.