Shanzai DIY netbook kit
March 18, 2010
Shanzai has come up with DIY netbook kits that allows you to build your very own netbook from scratch, and for the more enterprising ones out there, you might want to consider making your own version of a chassis instead of relying on something that is already pre-made. All you need to do to complete that would be to throw in a fair number of hard drives, the right amount of RAM and an operating system license, and you're good to go. Something tells us that more customized netbooks might just hit the likes of Etsy and eBay whether that kit catches on with the DIY enthusiast crowd.
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Orginal post by Mike
Eurocom D900F Panther notebook
March 18, 2010
Eurocom's D900F Panther notebook is special as it is the first six-core notebook from the company, which places it comfortably as a desktop replacement machine. Inside, you will find a speedy 3.33GHz Core i7-980X or Xeon 5600 processor, where you can hit resolutions of 1,920 x 1,200 or 1,680 x 1,050 pixels, as well as touching a whopping 24GB DDR3 RAM in the process. Storage should not be a problem since that monstrous notebook can hold a quartet of hard drives for a total of 2.56TB. Graphically-speaking, you can enjoy the wonders of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285M or the Quadro FX 2800M/3800M chipsets. All these need some serious juice, which is why Eurocom has thrown in a 12-cell, 6,600mAh battery, tipping the scales at a massive 12lbs. Prices start from $3,674 upwards.
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Orginal post by Mike
MSI GE700 gaming notebook
March 15, 2010
MSI is back with a bang, thanks to their new GE700 gaming notebook which features Intel's latest Core i5 processor, the able ATI Radeon HD 5730 discrete graphics card with 1GB DDR3 VRAM, a couple of cinema-class speakers, a subwoofer, a High Definition webcam that keeps up with the times alongside the ability to hold a couple of hard drives. When chugging along at full processing potential, expect the MSI GE700 to drain its battery super fast. Aesthetically speaking, the GE700 is pleasing on the eyes particularly with its luminescent touch hotkeys with shortcut keys that makes activation of various technologies including GPU Boost, Cinema Pro and Multimedia Control a snap.
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Orginal post by Mike
OCZ Onyx SATA II 2.5-inch SSD
March 11, 2010
OCZ is back with their new Onyx SATA II 2.5" SSD which aims to offer you the best bang for your buck, where it relies on multi-level cell (MLC)-based SSDs with 64MB of integrated cache to store your goods. Performance-wise, you get info transfer speeds of up to 125MB/s while reading, and up to 70MB/s during write operations. Since there is a considerable lack of moving parts compared to regular hard drives, the Onyx SSD is more resistant to shock and temperature fluctuations, coming with a mean day before failure (MBTF) rating of 1.5 million hours. You can give that a skip whether capacity is your main priority since the Onyx will initially come in only one size - 32GB at that, retailing for under $100.
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Orginal post by Mike
New Hard Drives To Spell The End Of Windows XP?
March 10, 2010
Despite the release of Windows 7, there are still many users out there who are clinging on desperately to Windows XP. Now it seems that it may not be Microsoft who will force users to ditch the venerable OS, rather hard drive manufacturers. A recent report indicates that manufacturers are looking to move away from the ancient 512 byte sector size, which has been around for ages now, to a 4K sector size. By doing so, they’ll be able to offer about 7-11% more details on the disk, as there is less wasted space where documents cannot be stored due to the area committed to storing error codes.
Modern operating systems such as Windows 7, Vista, OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and all versions of the Linux kernel released after September 2009 are 4K aware, so there shouldn’t be a problem, but for operating systems older than that, it might be an issue. Advanced format drives should still be able to manage with Windows XP via emulation, but despite there being a minimal performance hit when reading from the drive, it’s possible that there might be a 10% performance dip when goods is being written. So it looks like XP has taken another small step to that big operating system heaven in the sky.
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Orginal post by Mike
Active SaberTooth ZT 1.8-inch 64GB PATA Turbo ZIF SSD
March 9, 2010
If you’re looking for a new replacement 1.8-inch drive for your netbook, it’ll be worth your moment to take a few minutes to peek at the Active SaberTooth ZT 1.8-inch PATA ZIF SSD, which is available in capacities of 32GB and 64GB. With read speeds up to 100MB/sec and write speeds up to 85MB/sec (thanks to a DRAM cache), it should be speedy ample for you to go about your business. The lack of moving parts means that the SaberTooth ZT is rugged suitable to be used in industrial scenarios, or embedded and network computing applications. Since it has the same physical dimensions as your standard 1.8-inch hard drives, replacing your current 1.8-inch drive with the SaberTooth ZT shouldn’t be an issue. It’s currently available on Amazon for $169.95 (32GB) and $299.95 (64GB).
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Orginal post by Mike
Strobeshnik Hard Drive Clock
March 7, 2010
If you can’t figure out what to do with your old hard drives lying around the floor, you could always try and emulate what modder Svofski has done. Dubbed the Strobeshnik, it’s a hard drive that’s been turned into a clock that uses a stroboscopic effect to produce it look like the numbers on the clock are persistent on the face of the drive platter, when in reality the platter is spinning very fast. The set of LEDs behind the platter, coupled with a custom controller circuit makes the effect you see in the video (below). When it first starts up, the numbers don’t mean anything, but when it works itself up to speed, it does look quite cool. The funny thing is, that clock’s platter spins counter-clockwise, which seems rather ironic for a clock. Video after the jump.
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Orginal post by Mike
