Category: Computer Hardware

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MSI Wind Nettop 100 Assembly

The MSI Wind Nettop 100 is one of the first Dual-Core Atom N330 Processor computers out on the market. It runs at the same 1.6GHz as the Single-Core Atom N270, but provides double the multi-threaded processing power. And remember that the Atom has hyperthreading, so you’ll see 4 logical processors in the OS.

The Nettop 100 is cheap at around $170-180. Since it runs at an average of 35W, it’s also light on the power bill. It will make a nice 24/7 linux home server.

We recommend that you get 2GB DDR2 533MHz CL4 200-pin RAM. This is the optimal speed for the computer. If you buy faster/more expensive ram, it’ll still run at 533Mhz, but with a slower Cas Latency (how long it takes to get a bit of ram). Since it’s only 1 stick of ram, you can’t take advantage of dual-channel, so you’ll want to get the fastest stick that works for this pc.

If you want a large, quiet, and efficient hard drive to go with the rest of the system, the Western Digital Green 1TB is a good choice.

As you can see in the chart below, the graphics is the limiting factor in the computer, but you’ll only notice if you run at high resolutions or play newer 3D games. For the monitor, we suggest you don’t go above 1280×1024, and the computer outputs only VGA (no DVI/HDMI). When we went any higher, the image was cropped and no amount of tweaking on the monitor itself could get the entire screen to display. If they come out with a version that has HDMI, it would make an excellent HTPC (home theater PC).

For the performance, we’ll use the Windows Experience Index (using Windows 7 beta 1):

Component What is rated Subscore
Processor: Calculations per second 3.2
Memory (RAM): Memory operations per second 4.8
Graphics: Desktop performance for windows Aero 2.3
Gaming Graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance 3.0
Primary hard disk: Disk data transfer rate 5.6

Video Assembly:

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Kindle 2 Announced

The long awaited Kindle 2 by Amazon was finally announced today.  It was just as the rumors predicted in appearance.  It has several desired improvements but a few shortcomings as well.

Shape and Size

The Kindle 2 is more attractive than the original.  The new thinner design is impressive.  The tradeoff is that the device now has a bigger footprint.  In some cases the original Kindle would fit in your purse, the Kindle 2 may not.  But the same is true for the thickness giving the Kindle 2 an advantage.  With its new thinness, the Kindle 2 can probably fit more easily into some thin pockets in a bag.  Overall, the new shape is an improvement.

Battery Life

The Kindle 2 has 25% more battery life than its predecessor.  The original Kindle had a very impressive battery life already. It is a good idea to turn off your wifi when you aren’t downloading a new book to get longer battery life.  Under typical use of a heavy reader, the original Kindle would last a good week with wifi off.  More battery life is always a welcome improvement to any gadget though.

Page Turning

The page turning buttons have been redesigned.  One of the biggest complaints about the original was how easy it was to unintentionally turn a page.  The Kindle 2 buttons are smaller so they are not as easy to hit accidentally.  Another welcome improvement is pages now turn 20% faster.  The first Kindle wasn’t exactly slow at page turning but you were often left wishing the page would render just a little faster and now the Kindle 2 does.

Storage

Amazon claims “more storage” in the Kindle 2.  This is a bit inaccurate since it really just has more built-in storage.  The original Kindle had an SD card slot for extra storage which means it could hold more if you used that slot.  The Kindle 2 does have more built-in storage but has removed the SD card slot so you are stuck with just the internal memory.  That isn’t a big problem since the internal storage can hold 1,500 books now.  And if you fill it up, you can delete books but still own them.  At any point, you can have a book re-downloaded to your Kindle.  The SD card slot was probably removed to help allow the device to be thinner.  While this is technically a lost feature, it is an acceptable tradeoff for the new thinness.

Screen

The new screen is very similar to the original except that it now has 16 shades of gray.  This allows pictures to look much better.  If you just read books, this is almost pointless.  But if you read newspapers on your Kindle, this will greatly improve your reading experience.

Book Cover

The original Kindle included a leather book cover.  Unfortunately, now this is a $29.99 accessory for the Kindle 2.  To protect your expensive Kindle 2, you have to buy the book cover which makes the Kindle 2 more expensive than its predecessor.

Conclusion

Most of the changes are positive.  Overall the new Kindle isn’t a huge jump over the original, it is more of several small design improvements.  This is a device any avid reader should definitely have.  For a full description of it, check out the Amazon Kindle 2 page.

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Wireless Draft N Compatability Issues

There are many flavors of wireless networking. Most common are 802.11B, 802.11G, and now 802.11N (Draft). 802.11N is “draft” because the standard has not yet been formalized, despite the sale of draft-N devices for over a year. For most people, this won’t cause a problem. But hitches do come up.

Draft N Works, Usually

When I was recently setting up a D-Link draft-N router with a MacBook Pro, I noticed that the wireless connection would drop regularly or show a connection but be unable to receive/transmit. This was due to the incompatable N implementations. The solution is to go into the router settings and switch it to only using B/G. In most cases, I have found draft N devices to work without any issues.

Future of WiFi Standards

The 802.11N standard is expected to be finalized by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802) in November 2009. Then all the current draft-N manufacturers promise a firmware upgrade that will make them interoperable. Of course by November 2009, we might be looking at buying new draft wireless standards, as described by PC Magazine:

802.11s, a mesh networking specification that’s been on the drawing board since September 2003. (It probably won’t be final until September 2010.) Laptops and other devices with 11s support will function as mesh points (or MPs) and form links with each other, allowing packets of data to skip from device to device across the network as needed. Mesh has been around for a while in many proprietary forms, and is important not only because it can extend a network’s range but also because it has self-configuring abilities: Mesh devices can move about without impacting overall performance. In such a network, data will hop around from mesh point to mesh point along the shortest path to where it needs to go. Actual 11s is already in use in at least one product: the One Laptop per Child project’s XO laptop uses it to communicate with XS school servers, in some tests over distances as great as 2km with 802.11s data hops from device to device.

802.11u, called “InterWorking with External Networks,” will provide a Wi-Fi device with methods of connecting securely to a network, based on the external network’s type. For example, if you have access to the cellular connection that provides Internet access to the Wi-Fi router on a bus, 11u will keep that connection secure. It will also allow a Wi-Fi device to discover more information about that external network, such as whether it’s free of charge or not. 11u could be published by March of 2010.

802.11z “Direct Link Setup” is the 802.11 Working Group’s take on improving ad hoc connections, at least for business users. It’s entirely unrelated to what the Wi-Fi Alliance is doing for device-to-device communication. 11n allows two laptops that would normally communicate on a secure network to form a P2P connection to talk to one another exclusively. This happens only after they’ve authenticated security credentials through an AP. It’s a super-secure ad hoc that requires the right security setup.

See a full list of 802.11 standards and approval timelines from IEEE.

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MacBook as your Desktop

It used to be you needed both a laptop for travel and a desktop for more power. But nowadays laptops are a lot more powerful than they used to be and the cream of the crop are the MacBooks. With an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, and usb hub, you can easily switch from laptop mode to desktop mode with any MacBook by just plugging in 2 cables.

External Monitor

You can get an excellent big screen LCD for a lot cheaper than you used to.  You can hook it up to your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air with a DVI adapter and the exact adapter varies based on your model.  The original MacBook Air was nice enough to come with this adapter.  The new Airs and MacBooks do not so they’ll cost you an extra $30.  One of the best value monitors you can get is the Acer V223-WBD 22″ LCD (pictured above with MacBook Air).  Macs are smart when it comes to detecting external monitors so you can just plug in and the new monitor should almost immediately become an extended screen once powered on.  When you unplug, the Mac is similarly smart and goes back to single screen mode.

Keyboard and Mouse

Since we’re talking about Macs, the best keyboard to go with is the slim Apple Keyboard.  Pretty much any usb mouse will do but I highly recommend the Logitech MX518 Mouse. It is technically a gaming mouse but I just love it for the precision and extra buttons on the side that can be setup to quickly access expose.

USB Hub

A terrific USB hub is the D-Link 7-port USB hub.  7 ports may sound like a lot but with a keyboard, mouse, ipod/iphone cable, and external hard drive, you’re already mostly full.  With the hub, all your USB devices are plugged into this and then you just have to plug in one USB cable to your MacBook.

External Hard Drive

One area where laptops are still greatly lacking is hard drive space.  If you don’t have much in iTunes or iPhoto, you might be fine with just a 80-250GB laptop hard drive.  If you need more space, you’ll need to get an external drive such as the Western Digital 750GB My Book.  To move your iPhoto Library to your external drive, copy the “iPhoto Library” file from your Pictures directory to your external drive.  The next time you start iPhoto, hold down the option key and you’ll be given a choice to select where your iPhoto Library is.  Once you select the library on the external drive, you won’t have to hold down option again.  The only downside is you will need your external drive hooked up to see the library.  Similarly, you can copy your Music directory to the external drive and then open iTunes preferences and go to the Advanced tab.  There you can change the iTunes Music folder location to point to your external drive Music directory.  You should only do these things if you need to.  Often you might just have to move just iPhoto or just iTunes based on your usage.

Time Machine

If you plan to use Time Machine, which we recommend, you should consider partitioning your external drive into 2 partitions using Disk Utility which can be found in the Utilities directory under Applications.  Select your drive on the left of Disk Utility and then select the Partition tab.  You can slide the separator up and down to adjust the partition sizes.  We recommend giving yourself room to grow for your data such as iPhoto and iTunes and then leave whatever else for Time Machine to utilize.  When you are happy with your settings, click Apply.  You can then setup Time Machine to use 1 partition and put your iPhoto and iTunes data on the other.  The reason you need to setup 2 partitions is because Time Machine will continue to grow until it’s partition is full so you need to ensure your data has a separate area to grow.

Summary

With a little planning, you can have all the benefits of a laptop and a desktop with just one laptop.  Just plug in a USB cable to activate all your USB devices.  Plug in your external monitor to use your desktop sized LCD.  These principles can also be applied to a Linux or Windows laptop although not with such ease.  The performance of the MacBook line is what makes them ideal candidates for desktop-power uses such as photo editing.  If you have a MacBook, you likely don’t need a desktop and just buying an external LCD is a very cheap desktop solution.

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Macworld 2009 Preview

Macworld, the expo for new Apple and 3rd party products, will be January 5-9th. As usual, everyone is speculating about what new products might be coming.

Computers

The new 13.3″ MacBooks and 15″ MacBook Pros arrived September 2008, leaving the 17″ MacBook Pro still to be upgraded.

The iMac is expected to get a big upgrade with the new Intel chips announced today. The Mac Mini should be updated as well.

There have not been many rumors about a new Mac desktop, but it is possible that the Mac Mini could be redesigned to better fit some standard desktop components and reduce costs. This could be a return of the Mac Cube.

Also not expected, an Apple netbook (small and relatively cheap) is a possible new product that has been speculated about. But with a MacBook Air already being so thin, the role of a small Apple laptop is taken. Apple does not typically try to compete on price in the low end of the market. Perhaps a small touch screen laptop (an iPod Touch-like device) could be on offer.

Operating System

The computer updates should be adding new dedicated GPUs (graphics cards) so that Apple’s entire line can take better advantage of the upcoming Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 which will allow applications to use GPUs for non-graphics tasks. Snow Leopard’s new capabilities, mainly under-the-hood improvements for stability and speed, are expected to be a big part of Macworld.

iPods

The iPod Nano, Touch, and Classic were updated in September 2008, so no updates are due. The Shuffle has received several color lineup changes, but has not really changed since September 2006. With many new small and cheap competitors, Apple could update the Shuffle or just continue to slowly lower its price.

iPhone

There are rumors from case manufacturers that a new iPhone Nano with a smaller body will be coming out. This is a heavily debated topic, as many Apple fans believe this doesn’t make sense. But Wall Street analysts expect an iPhone Nano to be arriving soon.

The iPhone 3G has been at 8 and 16GB models since its July 2008 introduction.  A jump to 32GB would be logical in early 2009, especially since the iPod Touch can have 32GB. The sale of 8GB refubished models currently at $99 also supports the move to higher capacity models.

No Steve Jobs

A big concern among Apple fans is that MacWorld will not have a keynote by Steve Jobs. Instead VP of Marketing Phil Schiller will be keynoting on Tuesday January 6th at 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. PST. The unfounded speculation is that this is because Steve Jobs is having health problems, perhaps related to his pancreatic cancerous tumor which he had removed in 2004. This story was revived again today with a new “reliable source” saying that Steve’s health is a bigger problem than we realize.

Even if this is the case, we should remember that Steve’s personality and views are now a part of Apple. He made his return to Apple in 1996, when Apple purchased his company NeXT to use in their new OS X operating system. Steve Jobs setup an executive team that includes award winning designer Jonathan Ive, who created the iMac, aluminum PowerBook G4, MacBook Pro, iPod and iPhone. The executives share Steve’s vision and would be able to carry it out even if he had to step down as CEO.

Apple says that this will be their last Macworld. They appear to be trying to tamp down the fanfare and anticipation of new products, replacing it by regular new product introductions that better fit their schedule.