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January 25, 2007
Got your Flash USB Stick there?
With Vista Ready Boost able to use qualified Flash USB to speed up operations, it's become even more interesting what performance and speed we are getting out of various brands of Flash USB.
Because they are such a commodity, people just buy them from PC shops, supermarkets or Swap Meets and places like Kuala Lumpur's Low Yat Plaza.
However, there can be significant performance differences and such things can also be fakes with slower speeds.
I have an EagleTec 2Gb that I purchased from a Melbourne Swap Meet stall holder. This tests out at 4 Mb/sec Read and 6 Mb/sec Write. It's supposedly rated at 133x speed.
I bought a 2Gb Pretec i-Disk Tiny from a Low Yat Plaza stall holder. This is disappointing. It rates 3.3 Mb/sec Read and 1Mb/sec Write. The Write performance is abysmal. It's pretty small though and swivels so there's not USB cap loss but my EagleTec is even smaller.
There was an EagleTec lookalike at Low Yat but I had had problems with the EagleTec back clip breaking off - Now, I am quite happy to buy that shape again because I mixed 2 part epxoy resin and filled the non USB end with solid epoxy.
Apparently Windows Vista wants 2.5 Mb/sec using 4Kb blocks random read and 1.75 Mb/sec using 512 Kb blocks for random writes (quote from Ed Bott's article).
I didn't have a specific test program so simply used Steel Byte's HD-Speed (Warning: The Write test deletes your data and volume. For heaven's sake don't destroy your hard disk by choosing that to test. Of course, it will delete the data off the Flash USB that you are testing as well.)
So, how fast is yours?
(You can post your results as comments or at this Bleeding Edge Forum thread.)
Posted by Anandasim at 03:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 24, 2007
Google also wants you to Look Up!
Hot on the heels of the Microsoft and Australia Day Council Look Up and Smile campaign for Australia Day, Google have got special clearance to fly over Sydney at an altitude of 600m to add some close up detail for Google Maps Sydney. You can check out the Google Plane flightpath and schedule and do whatever you feel like to be embedded into Google Maps, I would also strongly advise you make your choice of activity or dress code before you have had a few drinks for obvious reasons. (via - SMH)
Posted by Stephen at 04:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
MS Office Compatibility Pack
With the launch of Microsoft Office 2007 you may soon start to receive attachments using the new Office Open XML formatted files. By default the new 2007 versions save in the Open XML format and that can easily be changed in the settings for each application to be Office 97-2003 compatibility mode though some users may end up sending the new format which you would be unable to open. You can now download a File Compatibility pack for Word, Excel & Powerpoint XP/2003 that will let you open, edit and save in the new file format. This will also add compatibility to the Word, Excel or Powerpoint 2003 viewer applications.
Posted by Stephen at 04:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 23, 2007
Microsoft Vista & Office Launch
Microsoft's latest flagship Windows Vista will become available to home users on January 30th and with some interesting news out of Redmond last week regarding the Windows Vista Family Discount Offer giving the average punter with a couple of PC's at home who purchase Windows Vista Ultimate Full/Upgrade version to jump online and grab up to two extra license keys for Windows Vista Home Premium for an extra US$49.99 each, such a shame you have to be a US or Canadian Resident and I doubt we will get this as a benefit of our recently launched Free Trade Agreement.
Harvey Norman stores in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will be open from 11pm 29th Jan to 1am 30th Jan if you want to get in early so to speak. (via Frank)
There will be no doubt some OEM versions hitting the streets and I shall follow up that in another entry and what you need to know regarding the difference in the licenses between Retail and OEM with particular regard to Microsoft Product Activation. Windows Vista & Office 2007 Recommened Retail Pricing are on the next page of this entry.
| MS SKU | Windows Vista Version | AU$ RRP |
| 66G-00017 | WINDOWS VISTA HOME BASIC UPG DVD | $199.00 |
| 66G-00021 | WINDOWS VISTA HOME BASIC DVD | $385.00 |
| 66I-00017 | WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM DVD | $455.00 |
| 66I-00018 | WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM UPG DVD | $299.00 |
| 66I-00490 | WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREM UPG AE DVD | $179.00 |
| 66J-00022 | WINDOWS VISTA BUSINESS DVD | $565.00 |
| 66J-00023 | WINDOWS VISTA BUSINESS UPGRADE DVD | $379.00 |
| 66R-00020 | WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE DVD | $751.00 |
| 66R-00021 | WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE UPG DVD | $495.00 |
| MS SKU | Office 2007 Versions | AU$ RRP |
| 79G-00007 | Office Home and Student 2007 Win32 English CD | $249.00 |
| 021-07709 | Office 2007 Win32 English Academic Edition CD | $236.00 |
| 021-07746 | Office 2007 Win32 English CD | $690.00 |
| 021-07668 | Office 2007 Win32 English Upgrade CD | $399.00 |
| W87-01076 | Office Small Business 2007 Win32 English CD | $749.00 |
| W87-01029 | Office Small Business 2007 Win32 English Upgrade CD | $499.00 |
| 269-10305 | Office Pro 2007 Win32 English Academic Edition CD | $299.00 |
| 269-10342 | Office Pro 2007 Win32 English CD | $849.00 |
| 269-10294 | Office Pro 2007 Win32 English Upgrade CD | $549.00 |
| 76H-00299 | Office Ultimate 2007 Win32 English Academic Edition DVD | $433.00 |
| 76H-00049 | Office Ultimate 2007 Win32 English DVD | $1,173.00 |
| 76H-00300 | Office Ultimate 2007 Win32 English Intl Upgrade DVD | $939.00 |
Posted by Stephen at 09:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Australia Day - Look up and Smile
This Australia Day 2007 the Australia Day Council and Microsoft have teamed up for a unique perspective on the day that is all things Australian and are asking us to 'Look Up and Smile'.
Microsoft have tasked a satellite and a few aircraft into taking a few snapshots across Australia Day this Friday. The Australia Day Council have organised three enormous artworks to be created around 100m x 100m each with the task of grabbing snapshots of each of these events in NSW, QLD & WA by satellite, one of the interesting observations though will be what ends up on the fringes of the 1.5km image radius photos (Aussie's will be Aussie's)
The other side to this event has to be the photo competition where you upload your photo of what is 'Your Australia Day' and the best community entry scores $5,000 and the best individual winner grabs a 30 night $100,000 family holiday with $15,000 spending cash to the best around Australian Vistas (Uluru, The Whitsunday's, Tropical North Queensland and Western Australia.) Once the photos start appearing on the website Australia Day the public voting begins until the 16th February when the top 20 photos as voted by the public will be judged by a panel of judges to find the winner. You might even gain some inspiration from past Australia Day photos at Flickr.
Look Up and Smile, Windows Vista is coming as is the MS PR!
Posted by Stephen at 12:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 08, 2007
2007 40th CES International
The 40th Consumer Electronics Show is getting ready to kick off in Las Vegas Monday morning US time showcasing the latest products from the tech industry heavyweights. Previous notable products that have been first showcased at the CES include the VCR, Pong, CD Player, Commodore 64, Nintendo, DVD and the Microsoft Xbox.
What is in store this year would be anyone’s guess including Windows Home Server from Mary Jo Foley though one of the most popular interest points has been from a viral marketing campaign by Microsoft called Vanishing Point Game that has extensive coverage over at Neowin and Australian blogger Long Zheng is at CES and has some photos up from outside the Bellagio Casino where the whole Vanishing Point launch is going to happen.
You can keep an eye on the CES from Engadget, Technology Evangilist or CES Blogs.
Update: Windows Home Server is now a reality, You can watch a video about it over at on10.net
Posted by Stephen at 01:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 04, 2007
2006 In Review
It is that time of the year when Bleeding Edge looks back on another 12 months of technology … which this year happens to be a particularly dangerous manoeuvre, what with the speed at which we’re heading in the opposite direction.
In 2006, after a sedate couple of years that followed the megahertz wars – a period when Intel and AMD tried to outdo each other every few months with incrementally faster releases - the computing world sniffed the air, caught a distinct whiff of cash, and suddenly pressed the accelerator.
Even those of us in the grip of Toad of Toad Hall Syndrome - we’re mad for speed, God help us - had to wonder quite where this new trend would lead. Rather than dabbling with megahertz, the CPU manufacturers started adding entire CPU cores.
Both Intel and AMD began dabbling with dual-core technology in 2005, but when Intel released its Core Duo CPU in January, then upped the stakes in July with the Core 2 Duo – bundling 291 million transistors on to the silicon, which boosted performance by up to 40 per cent, the technology really entered the mainstream. By the end of the year – ahead of schedule – Intel released its first quad-core CPU. At this rate, you can expect to be doing weather forecasting and calculating fluid dynamics on your little desktop PC in a year or two.
The new technology allowed Intel again to overtake AMD’s power advantages, while at the same time matching its once superior environmental credentials. The Core 2 Duo consumes 40 per cent less power than its predecessors.
Even Apple, mired for years in mediocre performance by Motorola’s inability to boost the performance of its CPUs without virtually cooking the Mac, acknowledged the superiority of the PC’s power source, switched to Intel’s Core 2 Duo and even higher-end Dual Core Extreme chips, giving the new-generation Macs the option of booting up under Windows XP.
RAM got faster too, and AMD gained DDR2 capability during the year. Computer users couldn’t get enough of the stuff. With Windows Vista finally released to manufacture after a five-year gestation, the accepted minimum for more than basic operations jumped from 1GB to 2GB. Fortunately, after a savage price spike during the year, by year’s end it was becoming more affordable. Perhaps even more significantly, the price of flash memory tumbled, and with practically everyone wearing a USB key or storing photos on digital cameras, it couldn’t have been more welcome.
With all those advances in hardware, software advances were relatively subdued. Vista offers security enhancements and some visual goodies, but it isn’t quite as powerful as it was supposed to be. In the death march to get it out the door, the architects were forced to strip out some of its more advanced features, and the initial release was confined to the business versions, meaning consumers will have to wait until late January. The effort to ship the product apparently took its toll on Bill Gates, with Microsoft’s chairman pre-announcing his retirement, in 2008.
Microsoft’s most promising performance for the year was the new Office 2007. It’s new interface, with its distinctive “ribbon”, offers users probably the first real incentive to upgrade since perhaps Office XP.
Australians fortunate enough to be located close enough to the right telephone exchanges also got a taste of high-speed Internet access. After a game of brinkmanship with the Federal Government, Telstra dropped its proposal for a high-speed FTTN (Fibre To The Node) network, but it finally joined ADSL2 pioneers iiNet and Internode in rolling out genuine broadband connections of up to 8Mbit/s. By December, that allowed more ISPs to re-bundle their service, and offer competitive high-speed connections. They will undoubtedly be in great demand, because 2006 saw broadband Internet connections take off. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, broadband connections almost doubled in the year to June, accelerating browser speeds, streaming video and downloads for roughly half (2.3 million) of local household Internet connections. Faster links also added to the attraction of Voice Over IP services, which became increasingly popular during the year.
It was also the year of broadband wireless. Sydney-based Unwired joined iBurst in rolling out a city-wide radio network, and at the beginning of October, Telstra offered even wider high-speed wireless coverage with the launch of its Next G telephone network. By last week, it had rolled out two USB modems which would allow users to access its download speeds averaging 550k to 1.5Mbps. With prices on a 12-month plan, ranging from $39.95 to $49.95 for 200MB of data at 256kbps, and $49.95 to $79.95 for the faster “Super G Fast” plan, and excess usage charges 15c to 30c per megabyte, it appears much too fast for Bleeding Edge’s wallet, although corporate users are no doubt delighted. We’ll have to see what 2007 does to our bank account.
Posted by cw at 10:19 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Current workhorse PC
What sacrifices we make, here at the Bleeding Edge cave. We should have made our Christmas cake weeks ago. Instead, we’ve been checking out chip sets. Musing on motherboards. Monitoring … umm … monitors. Four times a year, our review of the components for a workhorse PC interferes with our work/family balance, and brings us into heated confrontation with the forces of commerce.
The manufacturers want you to buy something much more powerful than you need, or charge you a premium for average components. It’s our job to crack the codes that make the exercise far more complex than it ought to be … and it’s not getting easier.
This is a particularly critical period. A lot of people will be upgrading their PCs to handle Windows Vista, due for consumer release in January. The new operating system – which we still suggest you should not be rushing to install - demands more resources than Windows XP. But if you’re not constructing complex mathematical models and haven’t become hopelessly addicted to game playing, you don’t have to mortgage the house. GTO_Pontiac caters for the extravagant - and for that matter the impecunious - with his monthly recommendations on the forum.
This quarter, we’ve decided to return to the Intel camp. The company has wrung more energy efficiency from their CPUs, and we’re impressed with the Core2Duo. The bottom-of-the-range E6300 is perfectly adequate for most users, at $248, but after our recent extravagance – the E6600 costs $449 – we’ll understand completely if you decide to splash out on a 6400 at $305.
We agonised over the motherboard. We probably should have gone for the Gigabyte GA945GZME-RH at $110, but the features of the Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 convinced us that at $169 it’s much better value for money. Our one gripe is the fact that it doesn’t have on-board FireWire.
Although we splashed out on a 512MB Leadtek 7950GT for our latest PC, we don’t recommend the expense - $425 – for the average PC. The best value card for gamers is probably Gigabyte’s 7600GT ($215). Our recommendation remains the distinctly low-end 256MB Gigabyte 7300GS ($85). Anandasim, however, points out that it may block you from using the latest standard for widescreen monitors, so you might want to invest a little more. Our thinking is that we're in an unusual hiatus with video cards right now, and whatever you buy is likely to be a stop-gap measure. If you do invest in a widescreen monitor, you're also likely to be doing so with Vista. And at that point, you're likely also to be switching to a new DirectX 10-capable card. At the moment, the price of these things is too horrible to contemplate, but they'll get cheaper. If you're a gamer, you'll be compelled to spend A LOT more, and in that case, Tom's Hardware might give you a guide.
It’s just over a year since we finally switched from CRT monitors to LCD monitors, for the simple reason that we could no longer source CRT monitors at acceptable prices. That’s no longer the case, however, and if you’re not a slave to fashion, you might be interested in the Viewsonic E90+SB flat-screen CRT at $147.
If you don’t want to sacrifice desktop space to a bulky screen, however, last year’s choice - the 17-inch Samsung 740N, with an 8ms response time - has dropped from $335 to $258. We’ve settled again for the slightly cheaper 17-inch BenQ FP71G which has dropped $10 to $235. If you yearn for more real estate, the 19-inch BenQ FP91G at $285, looks like good value.
The price of RAM seems to be settling down again too. Last November there was a sudden spike with 1GB stick of DDR-400 Kingston RAM rising to $149. It dropped back, then rose sharply again, but roughly 12 months later it’s $148 for the more advanced DDR2 variety. You can buy 1GB of 667MHz generic RAM for $136, and our experience with our latest PC suggested it was no less reliable than branded RAM. If you plan to upgrade to Windows Vista, and you’ll be doing any serious multi-tasking, we’d recommend 2GB.
We’ve also allocated a little more for hard disk storage, opting for the 320GB Seagate 16MB cache SATA II at $149. It’s worth the $28 premium on last quarter’s 250MB Maxtor, and $4 less than we paid last November for a 200GB Seagate.
While the total price, at $1272, adds $70 to last quarter’s bill, you’re getting much more power and capacity. If you’re not amassing huge multimedia files, you could opt for a smaller hard drive, and buy the cheaper motherboard. We know what it’s like to have to make these sacrifices. Our Christmas cake will never cure in time.
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Posted by cw at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack