As what I mentioned before, I received a new PC building project, code name “Project DR”. This is the list of confirmed parts.

• 
  Intel Core2Duo E7600 3.06GHz 1066MHz (3MB L2)
• 
  Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R
• 
  Kingston 2GB DDR2 800MHz x2
• 
  Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB
• 
  Sapphire ATI Radeon HD5770 1GB GDDR5 128bit
• 
  LG GH24NS50 DVDRW Sata24x
• 
  Cooler Master Centurion5 + CM Extreme Power 500W
• 
  Acer H233H GBmid monitor
• 
  Creative Inspire T6100 5.1channel Speaker
• 
  Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave
• 
  Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

More updates coming soon.

Facendo pulizia nella mia stanza/studio/ufficio/salaprove stavo per gettare nella spazzatura un bel po’ di materiale che invece si è rivelato essere utile. Per prima cosa ho trovato una scheda madre polverosa con sopra un Intel Pentium III… mi sono detto “che tuffo nella preistoria”. Poi pesco un HD Western Digital da 20GB… poi spunta fuori un alimentatore mezzo spaccato e senza ventola da 250W ma miracolosamente funzionante… e ancora una RAM da 256Mb 133Mhz e infine una scheda video PCI di non so quale casa produttrice sconosciuta! Mi sono detto “cavoli! questo è un PC pronto da assemblare!!!”.

Mi sono messo all’opera e ho assemblato il tutto in un vecchio box di legno per subwoofer che avevo in garage… giusto per dargli una forma. A questo punto già ci vedevo schiaffata sopra una DSL (Damn Small Linux), bella veloce, scarna e dotata di una reattività che sarebbe utopia su un sistema del genere. Ma qualcosa non mi convinceva… troppi compromessi, poca intuitività. Del resto sono cose che affermano il team di sviluppo stesso: “poco consigliata a chi cerca un sistema intuitivo e facile da configurare”. Quindi il via alla ricerca.

Non dico di non averla mai conosciuta, ma ci passavo sempre sopra senza nemmeno accorgermi di lei. Proprio come accade al liceo quando la ragazza più bella che hai mai visto non ti degna nemmeno di uno sguardo… si dico a te. Si proprio tu nerd brufoloso XD.

PC Linux OS… precisamente con LXDE… favoloso! Non mi sarei mai aspettato tanta versatilità e semplicità. Mi pento di non averla mai provata prima. L’installazione è facilissima e il parco software standard è già fornitissimo e inoltre accoppiato con apt-get potremo avere qualsiasi programma desideriamo! La leggerezza e la reattività sono i punti forti di questa distribuzione, almeno nella versione che ho provato io con LXDE… di certo su un sistema come quello sopra descritto non potevo pretendere di farci girare senza bestemmie un DE come GNOME o KDE.

Sono presenti Midori come browser predefinito, davvero leggero e veloce nella navigazione… nulla da invidiare a Firefox, comprese le tab. E’ già presente emesene e XChat per soddisfare qualsiasi esigenza di instant messaging. Abiword svolge alla grande il suo ruolo di write editor… non vi svelo altro e vi invito a provarla anche nelle altre versioni e magari mi dite cosa ne pensate!

Saluti.

Has a review of 3 drives with 500GB per platter and 7200.  Western Digital comes out on top.  Click here for more details.

I have written here about deals on gear before. Black Friday is supposed to be a day of one time deals. The idea is to bring you into the stores to buy other non discounted stuff along with the cheap deal. The problem with this idea is that the odds are against you on actually walking away with a deal. Retailers often only stock a small quantity of the deeply discounted items. Do you really want to get up at 3am and stand in the cold just so you could find out that they only had 2 $300 HDTVs in stock and you are third in line? In my opinion it is way too much work to get that deal than its worth.

The truth is you are not going to find a Black Friday deal on a Canon 300mm f2.8 IS. Believe me I have looked. What you will find are some of the lesser items you need such as bags, memory cards and various off brand accessories. I have compiled a list of some Black Friday deals along with some things that you can buy right now at discounted prices. These are things that I believe a working photographer might use.

Black Friday Deals:

• Memory Cards from Sandisk. Quite a few retailers are offering deals on memory cards and not just shitty, slow, off brand SDHC cards. Office Depot has 8gig Ultra II CF cards for $19.99 and 4gig Ultra II SDHC cards for $12.99. That is a pretty good deal on an 8gig card although it is unsure whether or not you can order these online on Friday to avoid the crowds (I’m not sure how big crowds can get at OFFICE DEPOT). Remember HD video from your 5D Mark II or 7D is only 5.5megabyte per second. These cards are rated for 15mb/s. Abes of Maine also has good deals on memory cards: Sandisk 4gig Extreme III SDHC or CF cards for $19.99 and Sandisk 8gig Extreme III SDHC cards for $29.95.

• Hard Drives. There aren’t very many stellar deals on HDs. However, Target is offering 1Terabyte Western Digital Elements desktop drives for $59.99. They don’t actually list this drive on the website being currently for sale, so I am not sure how much of a discount this is for them. Amazon currently lists the  drive for $99.99. It has a high rating with customers.

• Cameras. The truth is that most of the cameras that I would even consider buying, either a point-and-shoot or DSLR, are cheaper right now online from Amazon, B&H Photo and Video, J&R or Adorama Camera. Also a lot of the cameras that are listed in the circulars are older models or have been discontinued.

Current Deals:

• Memory Cards. Adorama Camera currently has some great deals on bulk cards. Some of these require rebates but most do not. You can get 3 Sandisk Extreme III 4gig CF cards for $89.99 without a rebate. That makes each card $29.98. You can also get 5 (five, thats right, five) Sandisk Extreme III 2gig CF cards for $49.99 without a rebate. That makes each card less than 10 bucks. If you are willing to fight to get a rebate you can get 3 Sandisk Extreme III 8gig cards for $94.95. That is with an $80.00 rebate, so each card would be $31.65. Great deals available right now.

• Hard Drives. Newegg has the Lacie 2Terabyte 2Big Quadra external hard drive for $294.99 with free shipping. I use Lacie drives for everything and love them. Lacie currently lists the drive at $399.99 on its own store. Western Digital drives are pretty cheap everywhere right now.

• Digital Cameras. Pretty much every ad shows a discounted digital camera that is actually cheaper right now online. Best Buy has the Canon SD1200 IS p-n-s for $179.99 on Friday with an extra battery (off brand) and case (also cheap off brand). You can get the same camera at B&H for $170.95 with free shipping and no sales tax. Best Buy also lists the Canon Rebel T1i with 18-55mm lens for $699.99 on Friday. You can get the same kit for $719.00 with free shipping and no sales tax today from Amazon.com. The reason why I keep listing the no sales tax thing is because sales tax in Colorado is anywhere from 6% to 9% depending on the city. So a $699.99 camera is actually $748.99 with tax at 7%. Cheaper online.

The point I am trying to make with this post is that you need to do your homework before venturing out to fight the crowds. Often things that you will actually want to buy are just a cheap click away. I know I will be enjoying my coffee in my bath robe, waiting for deliveries, while everyone else is fighting for a “deal” on Friday.

Western Digital, la firma norteamericana que es pionera en el almacenamiento de datos, renovó sus productos con más performance y capacidad y los presentó a la prensa de una manera original.

La sanción de la ley de impuesto electrónico que grava a ciertos productos importados no parece afectar a plan de ventas de la firma norteamericana Western Digital (WD), una de las más grandes empresas de hardware del mundo.

En una estancia de Capilla del Señor, devenida en bucólica plataforma de despegue de varios globos aerostáticos donde pasear periodistas, fue la original acción promocional que la compañía eligió para presentar en la Argentina su nueva línea de discos rígidos internos, externos y sus reproductores multimedia. El lema de campaña “Put your life on it” (“Pon tu vida en ello”) que hace referencia a la capacidad y confianza que tienen los productos para almacenar archivos digitales podía leerse un rato más tarde, al atardecer, en las canastas de los globos que flotaban por el cielo de la zona.

“Para esta nueva línea se pensó mucho sobre el usuario final y sus necesidades, desde las prestaciones en sí del equipo hasta la forma en que una persona elige y compra un disco en un local”, sostuvo David Fadda, Terrytory Manager de WD, cuando explicó los fundamentos del rediseño de algunos modelos y las mejoras en la identificación visual de los nuevos productos.

Estas mejoras son más evidentes en la línea de discos internos para PC, donde brilla el modelo Caviar Black SATA por su capacidad de 2 terabytes y 7200 rpm, ideal para las máquinas de gamers y para aquellos que quieran una performance extra en su sistema, sin caer en la tecnología más costosa de los SCSI.

“Es nuestro producto de alta gama, para usuario final y soluciones empresariales”, afirmó Fadda, en otro aparte del día de campo que la empresa compartió con Cronista.com.

El Caviar Green, otro HD interno que también llega a los 2 TB, es la opción eco friendly: reduce el consumo energético un 40% más que otros discos y promete ser más silencioso. El modelo Caviar Blue es la opción básica y alcanza los 750 Gb.

La compañía también presentó en Capilla del Señor los WD TV de entretenimiento hogareño, un dispositivo que conectado por USB a un disco externo, como el “My Book Elite” o sus hermanos menores los “My Passport” (ver galería adjunta) permite reproducir en un televisor HD películas en alta definición.

Vaya pensando en deshacerse de sus dvds de una vez. La posibilidad de guardar todos sus archivos digitales en un soporte portable, más seguro y reproducirlos o transferirlos desde allí es lo que llegó para quedarse.

“Almacenamiento y portabilidad, son dos conceptos sobre los que la compañía continuará su desarrollo”, concluyó David Fadda.

It’s been distracting me for the latter part of the week. I picked this up for a friend and needed to understand how it worked so I could provide support in the future. I know, I’m very good to him, but if I don’t do it, it will never be fully utilised and things like that really annoy me. To be honest, its also interesting to see how it shapes up compared to my personal ”White Elephant”, my windows 7 media centre.

So for the last few days, I have been looking at thumbnails and other things on this player, so it acts like a proper little movie jukebox. I found a nice little application from www.tvixie.com, which goes and grabs images, movie descriptions, ratings and casts for each folder/movie, even allowing you to set up new models and tell it what the images are called when they are created.

I even discovered that a nice gentleman had produced a homebrew firmware, which allowed you access more functionality of the linux core and drop in over the top a better interface (On Screen Display= OSD). Which allowed better use of the information produced by the TViXie application above. The WD TV Live has network functionality, which makes life a lot easier, so it and it’s attached USB drive appear on the network. It will even see my NAS box (Synology, a bloody excellent products, though a little bit expensive). At this time, it’s struggling to play a certain file type, but I am sure that upcoming firmware from Western Digital will resolve that issue.

Once the file type issue is resolved, I will probably homebrew my friends firmware to allow for the better interface. But all in all it’s a nice little device. If you are tempted, for gods sake get the network functionality, you never know when it may come in handy.

Given the old WD TV Live vs Media Centre, from an ease of use standpoint the WD TV Live wins, but then again it doesn’t come close to the functionality of the media centre. It does what it does very well, given it’s such a new product. Obviously there are improvements I’d like to see, but since it’s not going to be my toy in 7 more days, I don’t really mind.

PS – Friend is an actual friend, not me talking about myself in the 3rd person.

PPS – Warhammer is going well, but not really a lot to write about. Still quiet in guild, but fingers crossed it will pick up.

The title of this post pretty much says it all… but let me elaborate.

Had the main hard drive die on my media box the other day. My own fault… dumb setup… one of the first PC’s that I ever built and I failed to put any redundancy into the system (RAID, etc). As a result, I’m facing the daunting task of reloading 1TB (backups of my DVD collection).

A quick side note… for those of you who don’t have a computer hooked to your TV, consider doing it. Once you’ve copied your music and movie collections over to the computer, it is so nice not having to mess with discs anymore. You can just put them in the closet and forget them. You don’t have to worry about scratches, kids getting fingerprints on them, etc.

Anyway, I ordered two new 1TB drives and an 80GB for the OS (stick with Western Digital drives… never had one fail but this is my third Seagate failure)… NewEgg.com is awesome, great price and had them in my hands with free shipping in three days. When they came, I had the sinking realization that I’m out of SATA cables for the two extra drives that I was going to add. I figure “no problem”, I’m going to the gym tonight so I’ll swing by Best Buy which is only two blocks from there.

I get to Best Buy, find two SATA cables on the shelf (price sticker underneath is blank), and head to the checkout. $43… WTF??? Totally pissed, I decline to pay for them, and upon returning home, pull up NewEgg’s website and order a handful of 5-star rated SATA cables for $2 apiece.

Instead of shaking my head in disbelief, I’m just going to chalk this one up to “should have known better”. Let me explain;

As a computer programming major in college, I had a lot of programming software on my machine that I didn’t have on my wife or kid’s computers. So when I suffered a power supply failure my senior year during the middle of a big project, I didn’t have time to wait. I ran to Best Buy and had to bite my tongue while purchasing a 500 watt power supply from them for $100. After getting my computer back up and running, I went to NewEgg’s website knowing that I wasn’t going to like what I saw. Sure, that exact same PS was $60 with free shipping on their site.

Or how about the Dynex (Best Buy proprietary brand) internal USB All-In-One card reader that I bought for my wife for Christmas last year. Spent a day trying to get that thing to work on three different PC’s before finally giving up, returning it, and then going through the frustration again because the replacement didn’t work either.

Or when we bought our new 42″  HD LCD also for Christmas last year. Wasted my time checking Best Buy before finally purchasing the exact same model from NewEgg for almost $300 less and again, free shipping to my door.

Or how about the stack of several hundred Dynex DVD-R’s that my wife bought me for my birthday two years ago when I started backing up our movie and music collections. Sure, she thought she was getting a good deal price-wise, but now they are just sitting in the corner in my office collecting dust because I won’t even bother with them and their 50% burn failure rate anymore. Just pick one up and you’ll realize they are crap… only about 3/4 the thickness of a real DVD.

In summation, Best Buy is DEAD to me. Their prices suck, their proprietary brand is garbage, and my eight year-old knows more about tech than most of their floor staff (I asked one of their salespeople how much memory a particular laptop on their shelf had and he quoted me the hard drive size).

At  the risk of sounding like a paid advertisement, shop NewEgg.com for all of your tech needs. The prices are awesome, emailed questions are answered quickly and knowledgeably, shipping is free for a lot of their stuff, and their customer service is great if you do have any issues. Also, they allow customers to leave feedback on all of the items that they sell so that you can see quickly whether people feel that a particular item is a turd or not (I stick with the 5-star rated items and have never had a bad experience).

It is always difficult to build a new PC configuration from scratch. It takes hours long of searching various quality/performance/price informations across the web and even talking to assemblers about their own experience. The match budget-quality-performance is tricky to master. Temptation arrives all the time, trying to drive you from your goal to get yourself a more and more powerfull machine. The run to power never ends unfortunately

Enough of blabla, here is what I went for (you are warned we are going into the technical layer):

1. CPU: Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.8 GHz
2. Thermaltake Spin Q cpu cooler
3. RAM: 4 Go of DDR3 G.Skill cas 8-8-8-24 (a 2×2Go set for Dual Channel)
4. Motherboard: MSI P55-CD53 with Overclocking Genie, no SLI (you will see it is not needed and it saves money)
5. Graphic Card: Zotac GTX 295
6. LED Samsung SyncMaster (expensive but excellent image quality comparing to LCD)
7. Antec three hundred case
8. Corsair Hx650 power source (put only the cables you need, no extra fuss)
9. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI (cheaper than PCI-e and no quality diference for the user)
10. Hard Drive Western Digital Velociraptor 300 Go (fastest drive you can find on the non professional market, programs load quicker, it really helps a lot in getting your computer faster). Good for being a system disk.
11. 1 To Western Digital Caviar Black mass storage disk

What do I prefer in this configuration? I would say the most surprising thing is that I am going MSI for the motherboard when a huge majority of people only stick to Asus. The 1 button push overclocking with perfect adjustment between memory bus speed, cpu ratio and Vcore voltage is a big hit as for me; it made me save many hours trying to find the right values so that the system is perfectly stable. HardCore overclockers will find the Over Clocking Genie a nice to have trick, offering you the idea of the right cpu ratio/mem bus/Vcore. If you need more than 3.5 GHz (base was 2.8) you can do it by yourself and will win time, beacause the Genie can point out the are in which to search.

P.S. : eventually, my system is not stable during cpu stress testing, it means the overclocking is not OK. This is a big drawback considering the MSI motherboard. As soon as the tests become cpu intensive i get blue screens or hangs. So, I would not recommend the MSI P55-CD53 for overclocking.

As a conclusion, here are some pictures of the used material:

Specs:

Processor: AMD AM3 Athlon X2 240 2.8ghz Dual-Core

Mobo: ECS A785GM-M AMD black edition

HDD: 640gb WDC 16mb sata

Memory: GEIL 2GB 1333 Dual Channel

Power Supply: HEC 500 watts Raptor

DVDRW: LG 22x sata

Casing: atx x-side

Total: 17, 620

to follow:

GFX card: ATI DDR5 (4.2k php)

You will probably be interested in the reviews of the WD and Fujitsui.  Click here to read.  Both are recommended.

After a couple weeks hiatus, hard disk drive prices are heading downwards again.

Fry’s is now offering Western Digital’s Element 1.5TB external USB drive for under $100. That’s about $66 per terabyte. A better deal than the already low $78 price tag for SimpleTech’s 1TB drive.

WD beats Seagate on low price

Our last check on the external 1.5TB drive category showed a Seagate disk for $125.

On the same page today, Fry’s is advertising Seagate’s 1.5TB internal drive for $100; still more expensive than Samsung’s 1.5TB drive that sold for $80 in early October!

For next week’s Black Friday, I expect most of the drive makers to align their price to Western Digital’s and perhaps to go as low as $100 for an external 2TB drive or a whopping $50 a terabyte. Currently, an external 2TB drive costs about $170.

Western Digital is first in the world to create a 2TB hard drive. As they say, you can never have enough storage space. Somehow no matter how much space I have available it will get filled. I guess it’s the collector in us that like to keep stuff. Maybe one day I will need it? The other thing is that more and more people are becoming aware of the risk of loosing all the data. So not only do we want to store a lot of data, we also need to back it up.

Today 10 percent of the 3.5” hard drive sales are 1 TB or higher. These 2 TB drives will come handy and help many people out. The Western Digital Green 2TB hard drives come with many different advanced technologies. Everything from StableTrac that helps secures the motor and reduces vibrations to IntelliPower that helps the balance of the spin speed. The price for this disk has been set at $299.

Read more here

Its been a few days since I wrote on here.  I’ve been busy with school, work, and social life.  Jimmy Johns dinner delivered.  PBR drank over the weekend.  Facebook status updates.  Artbattle on Saturday.  Working at Founders Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Played a show Friday night at Jukes.  I’m in CIRCUS PIG!.  Its pretty fun.  Pandora radio.  Microsoft Word to type a paper.  Western Digital hard-drive.  Using an iMac to access the internets.  Wearing my Budweiser pants I received when I worked for them.  Wearing my Dickies brand steel-toe boots.  Brand, image, lifestyle.

Hitachi and Seagate are the price leaders in the 2TB internal drive category

At the current pace, an internal 2TB drive will cost under $100 in about 6 months.

So by the same time next year, it will be as hard to find 1TB  drives as it today for 500GB! And I won’t be surprised to find some Black Friday deals for 2TB drives (internal or external) close to the $100 barrier.

Interestingly, the 1.5TB drive category didn’t really had time to establish itself in the market, squeezed by the super low cost 1TB drives and the 2TB drives.

In the 2TB internal drive category, Hitachi – which also owns the low-cost Simpletech brand – and Seagate are the price leaders. For 1TB internal drives, Western Digital is still the company to beat at less than $60.

Price 99.99

Western Digital Elements 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

Product Description
WD Elements Black USB 2.0 external hard drive is an easy, reliable way to add more storage to your PC or Macintosh®. Simply plug it in to a USB port and start saving or backing up your photos, music video and files. It’s preformatted for immediate use. The compact, durable metal case provides extra data protection.

Reviews

This is, by far, the most robust external hard disk I’ve ever owned. And, when I say solid, I mean almost 3 lbs. solid (I didn’t put it on a scale but it feels that way), 100% metal casing, likely to survive a building collapsing on top of it. Given that I bought it for backups, not for travel, I actually like it this way. I like it very much.

It’s probably helpful to enumerate the features I feel are worth being aware of before one buys it (and I shall answer any additional questions if you drop a comment, to the extent that I can):

# Heavy, solid build, almost bullet-proof enclosure.
# 8″x4″x1″ rectangular prism (these are not exact measurements but I’m confident it’s close.
# USB port for data transfer, cable included.
# External power supply.
# Silent run – you can’t hear it spinning unless you place it close to your ear.
# Cool – after one night of uninterrupted operation it was barely warmer than room temperature.
# Not a speed demon but I backed up 50GB in something like 20-30 minutes.
# Formated as FAT32.
# Comes with no software but it was instantly recognized by both Vista and my PS3 (more about that later)
# There is no manual to speak of – and no manual is needed.
# One year warranty.
# 30-day free tech support during the warranty period where the clock starts running after the first call to WD.
# Lacks the (to me annoying) carnival lights that some other drives have these days – only one blue LED, on the back, blinks when read/writes are performed.

I can’t think of anything bad to say about this device. I went for the 1TB size because I wanted to back up several smaller computers on it and my 320GB PS3. For a stress test and if you are going to use it with XP or Vista you may want to reformat the disk as NTFS – Microsoft will be spinning your disk for many, many hours and, if you bought a dud, chances are it will stop working during the 10-12 hours format process. Or, you can check the ‘fast format’ option and the formatting will be done in less than one minute.

After the overnight test was passed, I partitioned the disk into 4 using Vista (no problem whatsoever) and I formated 3 of them as NTFS and one as FAT32 (get FAT32FORMAT off the Net because Microsoft’s utility does not work on a 300GB partition). Backups ran flawlessly with Microsoft’s backup interface and backing up the PS3 was incident-free too – it instantly recognized the FAT32 partition and I have a nice PS3 backup now.

I highly recommend this drive as a backup device that does not travel a lot.

P.S. – if my review seems to be coming from someone who uncritically gushes over little gadgets, do check my other reviews of electronics or my reviews in general. I am trying to be as objective and as factual as possible and, in this case, I believe, we have a good, solid device that fully meets expectations.

Solid, simple, quiet, cool, efficient, value,

By	Chong Lee Khoo (California, USA) -

Aragorn’s review is spot-on.

Plain and simple.

No-nonsense looking, matt-black finished, metal case.
The texture of the finish is high-quality: very fine, yet industrial.

It feels really solid.
While not an ultra-portable, I actually feel more secure carrying it around than my other lighter enclosures.
I would say it is ’substantial’, rather than ‘heavy’.

No fancy and flashy LEDs to distract from its purpose.
That one blue LED at the back does it job without fuss and works very nicely for me, thank you very much.

Note that no sync, encryption or backup software is supplied.
Take a look at My Passport Elite if that’s what you need.

Quiet and cool.

While not absolutely silent during access (and especially on start-up), you’d be hard pressed to hear it otherwise.
The one way I can be very sure it is spinning at the moment is to put my palm on it to sense the tiny vibrations.

It gets only warm to the touch after long and heavy access.

Power efficiency.

No power switch to bother with. Just connect power adapter and USB cable.
It powers up automatically when connected via USB to a running computer, and auto shuts-down when disconnected.

When connected, it auto spins-down after 10 minutes of inactivity and auto spins-up when accessed again.
These are out-of-the-box with my XP and NSLU2 devices (uNSLUng 6.10 firmware on flash drive).
No need to install any utilities or write spin-down scripts.

Great value.

I am getting a second one to backup the first one serving its duties as my always-available network storage and server (via the NSLU2).

Amazon’s price for this is extremely competitive, and I do love buying my gadgets here (with Prime and no-hassle returns, you can’t go wrong)

For more information Click here

Indocomtech 2009

Hari ini gw ke pameran Indocomtech di JCC Senayan sama temen-temen kantor. Dari rumah gw udah siapin catetan barang2 yang mau gw beli: HDD External, Ransel Laptop, Headset sama starter pack IM2 Broombastis. Menurut gw harga di pameran lumayan murah =D harga tiket masuknya cuma ceban, berikut ini adalah jajanan yang gw beli disana:

Card Reader

Rada bete karena ternyata laptop gw ga bisa baca memory card di Canon SX120 IS yang jenisnya SDHC (SD-Extreme III) ditambah lagi Corby gw ga ada kabel datanya, akhirnya gw memutuskan beli card reader dengan speed 480Mbps yang support “banyak macem memory card” in 1 card reader. Pembelian card reader ini sebenernya out of plan sih, tapi karena harganya cuma 20 rebu perak akhirnya gw ambil aja =D masih nawar pula jadi 15 ribu, tapi ngga dikasih sama mbaknya hehe. Merknya “Accessories”, merk abal2 sih ngga jelas gitu, tapi pas gw tes dirumah ternyata memuaskan.

Dia support:
Slot 1: T-Flash, Micro SD Card
Slot 2: Micro MS (M2) Card
Slot 3: SD, SDC, SD-Pro, SD-Pleomax, SD-Ultra, SD-Ultra II, SD-Ultra II Plus, SD-Extreme III, SD-Ultra X, SD-Turbo, SD-Super, SD-Max, Mini SD, Mini SD-Pro, Mini SD-Pleomax, MMC, MMC-Pleomax, MMC Pro, HS-MMC, MMC Plus, MMC-Plus Turbo, RS MMC-Pleomax, RS MMC-Speed, RS MMC-Max, MMC Mobile, MMC Mobile-ProC, MMC Mobile-Pocketnet
Slot 4: MS/MS Pro/MS Duo/MS Pro Duo
Gw sendiri sih baru nyoba untuk baca memory jenis micro SD, SDHC (SD-Extreme III), MS Pro Duo sama Micro MS (M2) Card.

IM2 Broom Paket Asik

Berhubung akses internet di kantor udah mule dibatesin abis2an, gw akhirnya merasa butuh juga untuk beli IM2, secarrra modemnya udah punya lama tapi ga punya kartunya, pake IM3 ato simpati boros banget, pernah kena Rp50rb untuk online selama 2 jam pake Simpati, I know what you guys thinking “ya eyaalaaah”. Tadinya mau beli Broombastis Unlimited yang top up per bulannya Rp200rb, tapi dipikir-pikir mahal euy toh kebutuhan gw juga ngga perlu yang segetonya. Akhirnya gw ngikut Waw aja, beli Broom PAS – Classic harga starter pack nya Rp125rb dah include voucher perdana senilai Rp50rb dan dapet gratis unlimited selama sebulan, setelahnya yaa kembali ke tarif normal

HDD External 2.5″

WD Passport Essential 320GB

Awalnya gw nge-budget-in untuk beli Seagate Freeagent yang 320GB, waktu browsing di online store langganan, disitu harganya sekitar Rp697rb – Rp 715rb (tergantung kurs dollar), pas nanya harganya di booth tempat gw beli card reader ternyata harganya Rp750rb, setelah tawar menawar mentok di harga Rp720rb, ya kaga redo lah gw selisihnya aja bisa beli card reader satu lagi, masih kembali 3000 perak pula, akhirnya ga jadi beli disitu.

Pas lagi celingukan nyari tempat tas Targus, Waw ngasih tunjuk booth resmi WD, yaudah mampir aja, seinget gw di situs online store yang (setau gw) paling murah di Mangga Dua Mal, untuk Western Digital Passport Essential 320Gb (New Model) harganya sekitar Rp745rb – Rp756rb, ternyata harga di pameran lebih murah lagi cuma Rp730rb garansi resmi 3 tahun. Waktu beli, transaksinya ga ada 10 menit, gw disuruh milih warna terus langsung bayar deh, pas diliat isi kantong plastiknya ternyata udah dapet soft case & t-shirt WD yang ukurannya “S” duuuh si mbak SPG nya tau aje ukuran gw. Dari 320GB, free disk space nya cuma 297GB, karena udah kepake untuk CD Drive WD SmartWare 446MB. I wonder kemana sisanya pergi, but never mind, gw cukup seneng dengan tampilannya yang mungil, sleek, dan warnanya gonjreng hehe red is one of my favorite color ^_______^

Targus City Fusion Backpack (Bonus Targus Headset)

Targus City Fusion Backpack

Berhubung ransel Export merah yang gw punya dari jaman SMA udah jebol 3 hari lalu, karena selama training PHP Framework bawaan gw di ransel udah kek orang mo camping hehe, jadi ransel laptop pun jadi prioritas di list jajanan gw. Awalnya sih gw naksir ransel Caselogic yang warna kuning supaya matching sama Corby gw, tapi begitu gw liat fisik aslinya ternyata beda ama di gambar euy, jadi ngga napsu. Akhirnya gw balik ke booth Targus, lumayan lama ngacak2 tas disitu ada 5 tas yang gw cobain, gw ngincer tas yang gede supaya muat banyak baju + laptop buat klo konsinyering jadi ga usah bawa tentengan banyak, tapi tas yang gede2 itu malah bikin gw keliatan kayak kura2. Akhirnya gw pilih yang ukurannya sedang sedang saja *dangdut mode on* Sampe rumah, pas dijejerin sama ransel bodypack gw ternyata masih gedean si Targus.

Harga di pameran ini sebenernya sama persis sama yang ada di mangdu, tapiii… di sini dikasih BONUS, nah tas yang gw beli itu kebetulan bonusnya headset, kata Waw “lumayan lah dapet headset walopun merknya merk tas” hehe. Emang udah rezeki, sebelumnya gw sempet mampir ke booth Sennheiser yang harganya bikin mata melotot, hampir aja gw ngambil earphone biasa yang harganya pek go, pas discuss sama Waw dia bilang klo sumbernya jelek walopun earphone-nya bagus juga ngga akan ngedongkrak banget, yaa berhubung Axioo gw speakernya emang ga bagus, akhirnya gw urungkan deh niat beli tu earphone. Ternyata headset merk Targus itu suaranya manteb beneeeerrr… begitu bening dan mendayu dayu *halah* pokoknya w suka banget, dah gitu bisa dilipet jadi irit tempat, ditambah lagi katanya sih harga tu headset senilai Rp160rb =D

Pokoknya puas banget deh gw jajan di Indocomtech 2009, dari jam 10 AM – 2 PM mayan juga keliling-keliling disitu, bikin betis kenceng hehe. Mas Tfn beli laptop Compaq, Waw beli starter pack Broom PAS sama modem sierra dan semua pun pulang dengan hati senang =D

WD S25: SAS σκληρός δίσκος 10.000 RPM, από τη Western Digital! – ( HWBOX ) O/C on first boot

Πριν λίγα χρόνια, μόνο και μόνο που θα ακούγαμε ότι η Western Digital αποφάσισε να μπει στην αγορά των SAS και SCSI, θα μας φαινόταν αληθινά παράξενο και παράδοξο, αφού η εταιρεία είχε γίνει πλέον από διάσημη στα μάτια μας με τους WD Raptor και WD Velociraptor σκληρούς δίσκους των 10.000 RPM και δεν φαινόταν η “ανάγκη” να μπει σε μια αγορά όπως οι enterprises. Τώρα όμως, τα πράγματα αλλάζουν και με τους SSD να υπάρχουν στην αγορά και τις μεγάλες εταιρείες ακόμα να εμπιστεύονται τους SAS HDD για τις δουλειές και τους servers τους, ο WD S25 φαίνεται να είναι μια από τις ιδανικές λύσεις.[next]

 

If you want to bring all your media content to your television (High Definition or Standard Definition) or any other screen supporting DVI with HDCP or HDMI and for less then 100 EUR.

Without WD TV

• I have to connect the laptop to my TV using a DVI to HDMI adapter for the IMAGE
• I have to connect 3 cables to the audio jacks from my laptop to my surround receiver for SURROUND SOUND
• I have to connect the power cable to the laptop because my TV isn’t anywhere near my desk
• I have to configure my laptop so I get a descent image on my TV
• I have to position my laptop in such a way the screen does not shine into my eyes or configure the TV as single display

With WD TV

• I have to put the movie on usb disk
• Connect the disk to the WD TV

How do I connect it?

Audio:

• HDMI
• Optical (toslink)
• red-white stereo cinch

Video

• Composite
• HDMI

What does it do?

I mainly use it to play 1080p and 720p video’s. I’ve had it for a couple months now and the only format I encountered that did not play was WMVHD (which is not supported). These images below show all the supported formats. You can also play .ISO files and Dolby Digital EX and DTS ES are also supported (if your receiver supports it). I have some HD movies with DTS ES and get 6.1 channel sound. There is no mention of this in the manual.

If a video should have multiple audio tracks (for example Spanish and English) or Built-in subtitle you can enable/disable these during playback. It is also possible to add your own subtitles (SRT, SSA, ASS and SAMI) by naming the file exactely the same as your movie.

VIDEO FORMATS              AUDIO FORMATS                      IMAGE FORMATS

—  —   

How does it look?

As you can see, if you put a .jpeg in the same folder with the same name as the movie, you get kinky thumbnails. I’ve only done this for a few movies. You have to do it for all movies or put the view on ‘list view’ otherwise it’s just ugly. (As you can see)

I thought it would be convenient to show the supported output resolutions/refresh rates. Put in on auto if you are not sure what framerate your video is.

An this is how the main menu looks. You can play music and do other things simultaneously as shown in the picture below.

Sound and image quality

Sound and image for HD video’s is superb.

A lot of HD files only have DTS or Dolby Digital audio. YOU NEED A DTS and/or DOLBY DIGITAL CAPABLE RECEIVER to playback the audio on these files. Don’t be fooled by the analog stereo output.

I’m photoshoping some images for use on my senior project.  I plan on printing these images on HP iron-on transfer paper.  My Western Digital 1 terabyte hard-drive is coming in pretty handy to save all my computer stuff on.  No idea where the t-shirts are going to come from for this project, or where the cotton comes from, or who grew the cotton, who made the shirts, who shipped them to the store I am going to buy them from.  I feel that the more I think about all the ’stuff’ in my life the more questions that arise.   People have been completely removed from the products I use.  I am tied to these things – the only people I communicate with concerning these products are sales people or tech support.