I am sure that it may have crossed your mind to replace your main system drive from the old and slow mechanical SATA drive to a faster SSD. Looking at the prices of SSD will show that that it’s about £1 per GB (give or take) and to have full advantage of the speed on offer, you need to have a SATA III Connection (6GB/Sec). The main issue will be one of space; it is easier than you think to fill a 120GIG Drive. Recently I had a new works laptop (Dell Latitude E6420) and this came with a SSD Drive installed (Samsung SSD PM810) and the boot time of 30 seconds was impressive until you realise that this is a fresh build Windows 7 and not joined the domain.
Posts tagged speed
Is SSD a must have product?
Why Retail Stores Fail the consumer
Just the other day I decided to go out and replace my current Hoover to a shiny new Dyson DC24 and after doing some research on-line, I work out that the prices should be £200 for the Yellow model (called All floor) and about £240 for the DC24 Animal. I drove to my local retail park and first headed off to PCWorld / Currys (its a combined store). The prices looked rather high and as there was not a single sales person about – I ventured off across the road to the local Comet store. It was at this point it was clear how these stores work – let me explain.
NetWorx – Free Bandwidth Monitoring and Usage Reporting
NetWorx is a simple and free, yet powerful tool that helps you objectively evaluate your bandwidth situation. You can use it to collect bandwidth usage data and measure the speed of your Internet or any other network connection. NetWorx can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks.
The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system.
The incoming and outgoing traffic is represented on a line chart and logged to a file, so that you can always view statistics about your daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage and dialup duration. The reports can be exported to a variety of formats, such as HTML, MS Word and Excel, for further analysis.
Time for a New Smartphone
On the 4th April 2011 (or shortly afterwards) I shall be calling T-Mobile and saying with great Joy “I wish to give you my one month’s notice” and that will be the last payment from them. I have one month to use the phone and then it will stop. Originally I was going to just use my work phone until the iPhone 5 comes out but I have been hearing there is no such thing this year, this means I have to think about which platform I need to buy into, for how long and who with.
Browser Shootout, which is best?
The great thing about web browsers is they are all free and in reality you can load as many as you want on whatever operating system you choose. Recently though we had Internet Explorer V9 released to the world, we had Firefox V4 RC and finally Chrome is at Version 10 I think. You can scour the web and find benchmarks and these shows (Depending on which site they used to test them) that <insert browser name here> is the best. I want to explore this from my own personal view point, both in a work situation and at home and show that indeed, there is not one clear winner.
Firefox 4 Beta 12 with Adblock and Ghostery
I need to state here that websites need adverts, they use this as a mean to get money which in turn helps pay for the time and effort they put into producing the goods. Static adverts I can live with and even sometimes they show me something I might want to buy and all is good but when a site (mostly the video streaming sites) start to push adverts down your throat and they are loud and annoying and repeat over and over on each new page you go to – this is when you as a person need to take a stand.
While I Love the way Google Chrome works, there is just too many things that make me want to jump ship back to Firefox such as Adverts, flash slowing down the browser, my NAS box not working properly via Chrome and so forth. I have given the latest Firefox 4 Beta 12 a run and added a couple of extension and I will document how it is working out for me so far.
Intel Promises Big Performance With Sandy Bridge
We know that the next big thing to come from Intel is Sandy Bridge, which will be the biggest CPU overhaul since Nehalem.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini made mention of the upcoming processor generation, saying that it’ll be the biggest leap the company’s made yet in terms of processing power.
While Intel would never encourage prospective customers to hold off on a new PC – especially leading up to the hot holiday buying season – the CEO’s enthusiasm for Sandy Bridge could give reason to wait until 2011.
PogoPlug – Ongoing thoughts
After messing with this device for a week now, I felt it was only right that I add my thoughts on how it has been going. I wanted to show the good, the bad and the downright ugly sides of this device. What you can also see is that so far I have not returned this to the store, it is either because I am lazy or I feel it *might* turn out good in the end – let us see.
Soluto – Speed up your Boot time
Have you ever wondered why it takes so long for your Windows Machine to load up ever day? While there is tools out there that can help yo in the process, what about a nice graphical and very easy to use FREE piece of software to do the task for you? Soluto is that very tool and I gave it a whirl – read on to see what I thought.
Bigfoot Killer M1 Network Card
PCs often find themselves the playground for over-hyped tech – it’s almost as if manufacturers believe gamers will buy anything if you force enough marketing down their throats. Almost.
Cue the latest in a long line of interesting ideas rendered flesh in the hope of making a pretty penny: Bigfoot Networks Killer NIC.
