You are looking at posts that were written in the month of November in the year 2007.
When I first purchased 2 of these Raptors, I set them up to run as RAID 0, and from my experience I felt they were just as fast as many of the SCSI RAIDS I had used in the past! I was quite impressed, but soon realized I wanted test their speed and benchmark them in comparison to what I was so use to already, which was having a Primary and Secondary set of Seagate’s 200Gb, 7200 RPM. There was no comparison!
Here is a few Specifications about the drive that I believe any media user, graphic artist, or gamer would like to know about:
Rotational Speed
10,000 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size
16 MB
Average Latency
2.99 ms (nominal)
Start/Stop Cycles
20,000 minimum
Formatted Capacity
150,039 MB
Capacity
150 GB
Interface SATA
1.5 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive
293,046,768
Seek Times
Read Seek Time
4.6 ms
Write Seek Time
5.2 ms (average)
Track-To-Track Seek Time
0.4 ms (average)
Full Stroke Seek
10.2 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA)
1.5 Gb/s (Max)
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk)
84 MB/s (Sustained)
I would give this drive 5 out of 5 stars!
This is a great external hard drive line - one of the best ideas Western Digital has put out, other than their Raptor SATA drives, which I will review in the upcoming days.
These days, I have found most monitors to be the same. Some that are dreadful, some that are spectacular, but most are just OK. One monitor that’s a good bet for the Spectacular category will be the LG Flatron L226WTQ ~ the world’s first LCD computer monitor that LG is claiming to have a 5,000:1 contrast ratio.
A high contrast ratio, for those not in the know, keeps images from looking washed out. You get very dark blacks, very bright whites, and ultimately a better picture. It’s not that useful when you’re editing images, doing desktop publishing or other dull office tasks, but it’s jolly good for watching movies and for a great gaming experience.
The word so far on the street about the L226WTQ for the last few weeks has been the typical comments like “we can’t verify the exact contrast ratio” (few people can), it’s packing some seriously BLACK Blacks, and awesome WHITE Whites. The color reproduction seems pretty good too, plus you get 2ms gray-to-gray response time, HDCP over DVI-I for high-definition content, and a one-touch zoom function that lets you switch to lower resolutions if your eyes can’t cope with 1,680×1,050 pixels.
The L226WTQ is available in black or a rather unattractive shade of gray for around about $300-$350. Look to see it at Best Buy, H.H. Gregg, NewEgg.com, and TigerDirect in plenty of time for Christmas.
The good: Dominating performance in current-generation games; catches up to ATI on current-gen image quality; first card out with support for DirectX10 and next-gen gaming features; amazing value proposition.
The bad: Will likely require you to beef up your power supply in SLI mode.
The bottom line: This one is easy. Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 GTX not only beats ATI to market with its next-gen 3D graphics hardware, it also eliminates ATI’s image-quality advantage in current-generation titles. Throw in its sheer horsepower, and Nvidia gives the high-end enthusiast every reason to make this purchase.
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The humble USB drive could soon be using a new type of memory thanks to research from the Arizona State University.
The college’s Center for Applied Nanoionics (CANi) has developed a new technique for storing memory that could lead to flash memory being superseded in a number of years.
The new memory technology, which is known as programmable metallization cell (PMC), has been developed to counteract the physical limits of current memory storage technology. The college claimed that PMC could be a 1,000 times more efficient than existing flash memory and could enable devices like USB drives to greatly increase the memory of digital cameras, MP3 players and laptops.
It looks like the bottom has finally fallen out of Blockbuster. After numerous failed attempts at attracting new customers, the company is finally spiraling out of control.
Sad as it is, the end is near for Blockbuster, and all that pressure it has been placing on Netflix will be lifted.
And in the end, Netflix will be left standing to fight another day.
Although Blockbuster tried everything it could to create a compelling reason for us to use the service, the company could not overcome its downfall. For years, it was hated by those people who saw it as a monolithic organization that enjoyed charging exorbitant late fees and had little or no care of what the customers wanted most. So when Netflix offered an entirely new service, the dynamics of the industry was inexorably changed, and Blockbuster was left playing catch up.
rented this the other evening to watch over halloween, as my local blockbuster did not have much of a selection.
by the end of this film, i was disappointed in the overall storyline and character - and the ending was a complete disappoint to me.
read more for additional information…
Let’s immediately cast off a few of the less desirable product editions.
Windows Vista Starter. Since Windows Vista Starter is only available in a limited number of regions and cannot be purchased at retail, we won’t discuss that version here any further.
Windows Vista Home Basic N and Business N. Created to satisfy power-hungry antitrust regulators in the EU, the so-called Vista N Editions are just like their related non-N versions, but drop Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, and other Windows Media-related technologies. These products have proven enormously unpopular in Europe for obvious reasons, and I expect that trend not continue. Skip them.
Windows Vista Enterprise. A new offering, Windows Vista Enterprise is available only to Microsoft’s Software Assurance (SA) customers via volume licensing. From a functional standpoint, it is very similar to Windows Vista Business, but with a few additional features. I’ll highlight those in the tables below.
This leaves most people with four Vista product editions to consider: Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. But we can trim it even further: Since Vista Home Basic is crippled and does not include some of the best features found in other Windows Vista versions, I have some very basic (ahem) advice: Do not purchase or use Windows Vista Home Basic. It’s that simple.
In the end, most Windows users are going to want to choose between Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. And what’s interesting is that the first two of these choices correspond almost perfectly with the two mainstream Windows XP versions that are currently being provided on new PCs today: Windows XP Media Center Edition and XP Professional, respectively. Windows Vista Ultimate is brand new and can be considered a superset of the home-oriented features in Vista Home Premium and the business-oriented features in Vista Business. So those who want it all–and don’t mind paying for it–should snag Vista Ultimate. That’s the version I’ll be using.
Regardless of my opinion, you should make your decision based on which version of Windows Vista meets your needs. And the way to figure that out is to compare which features are available in which Vista product editions. So, in the following tables, you can find that information. Note that individual features will be discussed and rated in later parts of this review.
