SSD are expensive and when I first saw them in netbooks around two years ago I could not understand why someone would pay a lot of money for a mere 16GB SSD. Today, SSDs have grown bigger in capacity but they still don’t compare to standard hard disks in terms of capacity and price.

In a recent study by J.Gold Association they noted that companies actually save more in a three year period when investing on SSDs compared to standard disks. A computer with a standard disk would cost around $970 USD in warranty support and repair compared to a …read more

Tom Yager of InfoWorld is all praises for the new 15″ MacBook Pro. Well almost all praises. There are some minor flaws in an otherwise great notebook.
Quoting from his article
The 15-inch MacBook Pro is the best of the tier-one commercial notebooks, full stop. My two complaints — that the SD card sticks out of its slot and the USB ports remain too close together — are overshadowed by the new display, seven-hour battery, faster CPU, and the fact that there is an SD card slot. There are cheaper notebooks, but I’d challenge you to find one that’s faster, quieter, and …read more

The new MacBook Pros now all come with sealed batteries. This was just once the territory of the mighty 17 inch model. Not anymore. The recent refresh brought that technology to its smaller siblings, the 15 inch and the recent addition to the MacBook Pro line-up the 13 inch.
According to Walt Mossberg who had the chance to test both the 13 and 15 inch MacBook Pro and put it through the paces of his own battery test, both laptops performed well. The 13 inch lasted a slighty below the 5 hour mark while the 15 inch was 21 minutes above …read more

Intel is now pushing it’s dual core technology to ultra thin notebooks as announced this week. The dual core processor are the Celeron 740 and the SU2300 which features a core clock of 1.3 GHz and 1.2 GHz. Both processors also has identical 1MB L2 cache, 10W TDP and 800MHz FSB.

As per announcement:
Intel recently added two dual-core CPUs into its CULV platform targeting entry-level ultra-thin notebooks – the Celeron 740 and SU2300, according to sources at notebook makers.
The Celeron 740 and SU2300 CPUs feature core frequencies of 1.3GHz and 1.2GHz, respectively, while both share the same 1MB L2 …read more

I recently got a new battery for my laptop. I’ve been working without a useful battery for quite some time now. I couldn’t even get all the way through an initial startup without getting a critical battery alert if I wasn’t plugged in. Now I’m happy to say I’ve got a new battery and can truly work wirelessly again.

After checking a variety of websites I ended up at DuracellDirect.com and purchased a replacement battery for my laptop. After receiving my battery, on the paper that was included with the packaging it gave me some tips on prolonging the life of …read more

I’ve realized that my last Tech Channel Roundup was nearly a month ago and I’m guilty of it. So, bear with me as I overload you with a number of interesting links that I found in some of the sister blogs.
Milo discovered a product especially useful for enterprises of all sizes called Nightwatchman, a good news that Microsoft didn’t lay off anybody in the Vista team. I knew that they didn’t touch the Silverlight team, but frankly I’m surprised about this because Vista hasn’t been very profitable to Microsoft. Or has it? One bad news is the Windows 7 minimum …read more

I use an old Lenovo T60 and like to grumble about its performance. I’m sure the feeling is mutual. I also use a docking station at work. Makes life simpler. Recently, I had a problem with the way it powers the laptop.
The laptop had been docked, but the power supply unplugged due to some neighbourly reasons. When I restarted the laptop, it simply shutdown. When I powered it again, it brusquely answered with a series of flickers across three of its LEDs (power supply, battery life and something else that I don’t remember now) in a most NSFW manner. The …read more

eWeek had a great article/annoying slide show about the top 10 security risks that your users pose to your organization. One interesting thing I noted was with all of the increases in security (firewalls, IPS/IDS, NAC, password hardening, etc) in today’s organization, most of these are not even looked at.
Think about the easy of someone to walk out with their laptop and have it lost on the train (with not encryption)… Or someone with P2P software on their machine (that is sharing out their entire C drive)… Or worse yet, wifi (without separating it from the rest …read more

As an IT guy, I very rarely leave my cell phone, laptop, Blackberry or other computer-related device behind. I hate the though of going somewhere without being connected to the rest of “my world”. The internet is supposed to be a never-ending place. And I never want to be without it just in case it does end. I would have to be the first to hear it.
When I started at Rohm and Haas, I was without a phone, desk, computer or login accounts for 3 days. This was one of the strangest feelings I’ve had …read more