Recently in Hardware Category

When Calvin's Athlon 64 died, I got a backup Intel Pentium M system up. Now we have all his files and the operating system on a SATA drive, but I have an old IDE drive, so I'd like to use that instead. To do it, I have to clone the entire setup. I've actually never done this successfully, so here goes:

PCStats has a nice tutorial on how to do this. First you can use a professional program like Norton Ghost to do this, but there are also freeware products like HDClone that doe it as well. This freeware thing creates a bootable CD that scanes the drives on your system and then prompts for a source drive and a target and then copies. The freeware program only copies smaller to bigger drives though. There is also Ranish Partition manager but I'm a little afraid to use it as it was last updated in June of 2002. This tutorial is by th way of date, so here are the instructions for the new Norton Ghost v12.

1. Install Norton Ghost
2. Go to the Advanced Tab
3. Select Copy Drive Wizard
4. Select the Drive you are copying from
5. Select copy of the Master Boot Record and make the partition bootable
6. Select the Drive you are copying to

Now when you are done, you should be able to boot from that drive. Good luck!
It's that easy. Let's see if it works though

Storagereview.com says the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 is the nicest drive around. I need yet another one because my homebrew ASUS M3p seems to eat drives for breakfast. I've lost two so far. I think that notebook doesn't do a good job of handling shocks. In any case for a mere $107 or so I'm back in business. Pricegrabber has them for $107 while mpire has them for $113 currently.

If you have a later notebook which uses SATA rather than PATA, then Western Digital has just launched a 250GB (!!!) drive in notebook form. Wow, that's amazing storage.

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Our trusty old ASUS M5p that runs the digital photo printing and scanning setup at home has a failing 60GB hard drive. Nice that this SMART feature tells you that and the thing has been hanging. Its a nice notebook with the Dothan processor, so seems a shame to scrap it. It has a 2.5" disk and an ATA connection, so off to find a good replacement drive.

Pricegrabber

Gizmodo mentions that Hitachi was first out the gate with a monster drive, the Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 was announced mid last year and uses the PATA not SATA but is 160GB . Newegg reviews loved it, but, Pricegrabber":http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/masterid=21730756/id_type=masterid
Here are the reviews, it seems like we are at the start of the next generation of 160GB perpendicular drives, but they have reliability problems. It is tempting to get though because it is exactly the same price as the 100GB drive according to Mpire

Storagereview has a two year old review of drives and like the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 with 100GB capacity, 7200 RPM, 50GB/platter at $110. Mpire shows new at $115 from Newegg. If you are worried about reliability, there is the E7K100 which Silentpcreview likes and which is supposed to have enhanced reliability whatever that means, but it is the same price as the 7K100, but doesn't implement power saving modes for laptops, so you don't want that but apparently some of these features like unloading the heads automatically reduce the life of the system, so get the E7K100 for desktop/server and the 7K100 for notebooks

As an amazing aside, Hitachi announced a Terabyte in a hard drive. Called the 7K1000, it has 5 platters. Wow, how cool...

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Tong Family Blog: Mogo Wireless Bluetooth Mouse

Mogo Mouse

is really cool. I finally bit the bullet and ordered one. It fits inside your PCMCIA slot of your notebook and you can use it for presentations as a clicker and more importantly, for me it is way better than the touchpads. Expensive at $70, only from Tigerdirect, but a great gift! Newton Peripherals makes it.

Mpire has ebay auctions where they are as low as $65.

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Well, our kids are ready for their own laptops now. So the standard one is:

Lenovo T60. Although the review is for the year old T60 1951 that had the older Core Duo, the latest ones on Lenovo's site use the newer Core 2 Duo. It is a bit heavy at 5.4lbs but should be reliable.

The other good choices are well documents on notebookreview.com, they are the:

Sony VAIO SZ. While a little heavier than the TX series I've used at 4lbs, the bigger screen is really great. It also has the Core 2 Duo and uses the Xbrite and now had a built-in webcam and microphone. The SZ430N/B is $2100 at Newegg and has 2GB Ram, 2Ghz processor and 160GB hard disk. It also has a fingerprint reader to make loggin on easy. The main drawback is that its battery life is more like three hours with everything turned on. It uses an LED backlight which is very light and great quality.

MacBook Pro. This is the dream uhit for many of us although it is the most expensive at $2500 and it is heavy at 6lbs.

For those of you still crave ultrasmall, the Sony TX remains the leader there. It is slow, but it has amazing battery life and a wonderful screen for watching DVDs. I use it all the time since it is less than 3lbs. In system tests, it is about half the speed of the T60. YOu can easily get 5 hours of life.

: http://www.notebookreview.com Well, John's Sony VAIO is having a screen problem and he's worried about reliability. Personally I just love the T-Series VAIOs and have been using them for the last three years. Before that I was a Sony Portege man. For me, having something very small at 3 pounds (三磅 san bang4 or 1.4 kilograms, 一点四公斤 yidian gongjin) is just a requirement and this is still the only laptop that does this with a DVD player, bright screen and long battery life. The only thing I now regret is no webcam on it.

Hold off for the Core 2 Duo

In any case, here's a review of the so called thin-and-light notebooks, I personally wouldn't buy a notebook until the Core 2 Duo ships. It is about 2x faster in raw processing speed and with two cores is way more responsive. It should ship in quantity in October-November and PC Magazine has a good overview of some of the machines. This chip is just so much faster than the current Core Duo. Still if your laptop breaks and you have to have one today here are the recommendations. You can see the latest announced Core 2 Duo processor here with the most interesting one being the upcoming Macbook Pro which folks believe will ship with Core Duo 2 and accelerate graphics.

These are generally about five pounds or less. I personally only get a notebook with the Core Duo processor if you don't mind being bigger or the Pentium M ULV for the really small notebooks like the Sony T-Series and you should remember to include the charger in the total weight, what matters is traveling weight. To me a five pound notebook feels really heay while a 3.5 pounds is amazingly light. As an aside, this list only include Intel Core Duo machines (or Pentium M if weight less than 4.5 pounds) and there's a bias towards dedicated graphics with an eye towards Windows Vista which requires graphics acceleration. Here are top sites from light and light notebook review

Notebook Review

Notebook review has a great list of constantly updating Core 2 Duo (aka Merom) notebooks. Here's a quick review of the ones that are now available with an emphasis on finding a lighter one in order of what I'd expect to be good ones based on past experience based on PC Magazine as well which reports that these new Core 2 Duo are mainly faster for media applications like Photoshop and games of course.

1. Apple Macbook Pro 15.4 . This one isn't announced yet, but personally I'd really think about waiting for it. Rumored spec are that it will be 2GHz Core Duo, 512MB (you can upgrade the memory separately since Apple memory is so expensive), 80GB, 4x DVD burner, ATI X1600 grpahics card for $2000. Also it has a webcam and it can of course run both Windows and the MacOSx
2. Dell XPS M1210". As a the biggest PC vendor, they have a huge lead in the number of Core 2 Duo producs with the high end XPS flipping in particular the is very small while if you really want to splurge they have a 20" (!!!) notebook as well. These models are scheduled to ship in mid September right now. You can get it with a webcam, T7200 2GHz processor, 1GB DDR2-667 memory, 120GB hard disk, 8x DL DVD burner, nVidia Go 7400 graphics for a pretty amazing $1900. There isn't anywhere on the site I could find what it weighs though. In China you can order this direct from Dell buit they don't ship the M1210 with Core 2 Duo so beware. There is also a consumer version of this called the Precision M65 with T5600 1.83GHz processor, 15.4 Wide WUXGA panel, 1GB memory, 80GB, 8x DVD burner for $2K mainly because it has a nicer 15" screen. As an amazing aside, you can get a 24" widescreen monitor now for just $880 from Dell.
3. Dell XPS M1710 won the PC Magazine Editors Choice and although expensive at $2900 for the tested configuration (2.16Ghz, 2GB memory, 8.8 lbs, 17", 7900GTX graphics, 100GB disk, DVD DL burner, 802.11 pre-n

Cnet

The did a shootout and the most interesting thing is that as of last year, the Sharp M4000 won with 7.2/10 while the old Apple Powerbook G4 came in at 7.1. I've never owned Sharp, but this has a nice widescreen 13.3" screen, 3.7 pounds (4.3 pounds with charger). It streets for about $1600. It has a DVD drive in it, 5+ hour battery life and 1.7GHz Pentium M its perfectly good for the business guy.

About

They just did a review in May of the same category, but without any rigorous testing, this is more like a quick overview of what one person likes. I don't know if I'd buy an HP, but the ever so strangely named dv5190us has the perfect feature set with a very fast Core Duo T2400 (1.83GHz) processor, 1GB DDR2 PC2-5400 ram, 100GB 5400 rpm hard drive, 8x DVD DL Lightscribe burner, 15.4 widescreen LCD, dedicated nVidia GeFore 7400 graphics. The main tradeoff is that it weighs in at 6.5 pounds, but it is a very complete multimedia system. The other machine they like i the Toshiba Satellite M105-S3004 with similar spec having a 1.66GHz processor, 1GB PC2-4000 memory, 100GB hard drive, 8x DVD DL, 14" widescreen but it is lighter at 5.4 pounds and doesn't have high speed graphics you would need for games. I haven't ever owned a Dell and would worry about reliability but the Inspiron E1405 has a nice feature set with a 1.66GHz Core Duo, 1GB PC2-4200 memory, 100GB drive, 8x DVD DL burner, 14.1" wide screen at 5.4 pounds with the main tradeoff being the lack of dedicated graphics, so it won't look so great with Windows Vista.

Notebookreview.com

It had to happen eventually but there is finally a review site dedicated to just notebook PCs. The other two reviewers above have high page rank, but they aren't specialized (read better) information sites so these are more detailed:

Toshiba Satellite U200 is a consumer oriented notebook with all the features (4.1 pounds, 1.66 GHz T2300E Core Duo, 1GB DDR2@533MHz, 100GB hard drive, DVD DL burner, 12.1 wide screen, bluetooth) Performance wise, its about the middle of the pack of Core Duo machines. It has a 4.5 hour battery life and Bluetooth is nice for those of us who Skype alot. Main drawback is lack of accelerated graphics, but that' smainluy a furutre issue.

AnandTech: Western Digital and Seagate: 320GB Grudge Match . A very good review of the Seagate 7200.10 320GB. If you can believe it this drive is just $99 right now as is the competing Western Digital drive. The performance results you can read, but these are both screamer drives with the WD being slightly quieter.

The big difference is the five year warranty for Seagate. I've had about 30% of my drives fail, so that's a big issue. Right now I have three of the 7200.10 750GB. They are really expensive at $350 compared to a 320GB at $100 but I like them because of the density. I can get 1.5TB into a small desktop.

Only note is that if you are going to have drives running at any speed make sure to have a front case fan. This drops the temperatures of the drives by 20% and is a big factor in failure IMHO. I use the expensive Nexus Silent Fans. They are bit 5.25" fans and cost $15, but are so quiet. I have one front case fan in one of our machines and will put them in the rest shortly.

So now that I've ordered a 750GB Seagate 7200.10 drive to cart data back and forth, its time to find a good small enclosure so that I can get it from Seattle to work around the world. Now I'll never have to worry about running out of room for photos or home movies again. A quick search for usb sata external enclosure review revealed some good products that only cost $30-40. The main question is whether the controllers on these drives will support 750GB which only Vantec says for sure that it does.

Kingwin Nighthawk TL-35CS. $36. The critical things are that it is 210×122×40mm (8-1/4"×4-3/4"×1-1/2") and weighs 580g (1.27 pounds). It says it only handles 500GB hard drives but does have a 40mm cooling fan which you need for modern drives. It has both USB 2.0 (pretty slow these days) and also a SATA connector on the back so it can really run fast if you've got an external connector on your PC. In performance tests, it ran at 27MBps on USB 2.0 which ain't too shabby. Kingwin has a whole line of these

"VIZO Luxon USB/SATA 3.5" External HDD Enclosure":http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/vizo_luxon/index.shtml. This is a similar product but is just slight smaller 210×125×34 in height. The main issue is that there aren't any fans, so it probably isn't meant to be run regularly and hard. It is pretty quick though running at 90MBps which is still slower than the theoretical SATA 150 running at 150MBps but pretty good for real world performance. Average speed is 29MBps so very similar to the Kingwin not surprising. Benchmarks wtih done with HD Tach from Simpli Software

Vantec Nexstar3 NST-360SU-BK Drive Enclosure. Supports up to 750GB drive according to Vantec but it does include an internal SATA to eSATA PCI bracket. This basically takes an internal drive connector and then routes it out of the box with the so called external SATA (eSATA) connector and cable. With a USB 2.0 connector, the speed was 32.2MBps average and 34MBps burst as it ran up against the limits of the USB 2.0 speed. With eSATA it was as fast as an internal drive (although it was just 86.7MBps peak vs. 134.7MBps for an internally connected drive) and 46.8MBps average, particularly for average speed. It's about $45 and a good buy with the eSATA connector. Vantec is a specialty vendor, so a pretty good choice. They have a large collection of components and have both NAS Servers with network connection and also USB and SATA connection. This one also lacks a cooling fan, so that's probably the main issue. Pricegrabber has them for $45.

As a comparison, I ran HD Tach 3 against my 750GB Seagate 7200.10 running against the nVidia nForce3-250 SATA controller and got 137MBps burst (very close to the 150MBps theoretical maximum) and averaged read of 90MBps, so an internal SATA controller is quite a bit faster than a USB 2.0 connected drive. For my 300GB Maxtor DiamondMax III, the burst was about the same at 134MBps, but average read was 45MBps reflecting the lower density of the drive. Both spin at 7200rpm, so with twice the density the Seagate is going to be about twice as fast.

XFX - Products : Models

GA-CP03-SK0200G
XFX XGear Dual Reflex PC Controller

We got this as part of a XFX 7800GTX bundle and finally with a reinstall of Windows, got it to work properly. You need to download the drivers and then install the gamepad. For games like MVP 2005, you pretty much have to have a controller like this.

It has forcefeedback and dual joysticks plus tons of buttons

iGo Store - Product Information

Go auto/air85 Notebook Power Adapter with iGo dualpower accessory

. I've had great success with this auto/air85's older brother called the iGo Juice70 Universal Notebook Power Adapter. The main thing is that the older unit weighs 9 ounces, so nearly as much as my 2 pound notebook itself. This one is only 7 ounces and is way cheaper at $80 list vs. $120 list.

I also lost the air adapter, you can get a replacement for $25 from the site. Kind of a ripoff that you pay $25 for a little cable, but otherwise you lose all the capability.