$1000.00 Computer Case

15. August 2008 by Myke.

Yes, you heard right folks, there is now a $1000 computer case for sale (well, September 1, 2008 anyways).  HP will sell 25 of it’s Blackbird cases on a first come first serve basis on September 1, 2008.  If you are interested in ordering one, please feel free to call HP at 1-877-776-4752…if you do not mind, I would like one too.  I can give you a post dated check for say 2025 if you do not mind waiting. 

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x86 Turns 30

15. August 2008 by Myke.

Everyone in the IT world that has ever support hardware, built hardware or used it is going to celebrate the 30th birthday of x86 next month.  Little did Intel know back in 1978 that they would be birthing the beginning of computers world wide.  Without the x86, there is no telling where we would be today.

 Happy Birthday x86!

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Heavyweight Champion Hard drive

21. July 2008 by Myke.

The new “Heavyweight Hard drive Champion of the World” is, Western Digital’s Velociraptor 300GB 10K drive. This is a much needed drive since the 150GB Raptor X. Every drive manufacturer out there started to go after the Raptor X but WD never really responded. Well I can speak from first hand knowledge, this drive is awesome and fast.

Before I tested this drive the, fastest drive I had tested was Samsung’s HD103UJ 1TB drive. I understand that these two drives cannot be compared side by side or spec by spec but the only test we ran was speed. The WD drive is only 300GB, but it is selling for about $299 which is the same price as the 150GB Raptor.

So the drive is fast but one other very cool feature is the size of the drive, 2.5″. Plus we cannot complain about the price either. The drive is currently selling for $299.99 over at Newegg.com.

Single Drive Test Results

HDTach Burst (MB/s) - 255.1
HDTach Random Access (ms) - 7.1
HDTach Average Read (MB/s) - 104.6
HDTach Average Write (MB/s) - 96.7
PCMark05 Overall - 9457

RAID Test Results

HDTach Burst (MB/s) - 229.9
HDTach Random Access (ms) - 7.2
HDTach Average Read (MB/s) - 100.8
HDTach Average Write (MB/s) - 93.5
PCMark05 Overall - 8471

The one thing that folks need to understand is that this drive is not built to placed in a laptop. This is a desktop or server drive only. The power requirements would trash a laptop.

Of course if you are looking for storage and not speed, then the Samsung is still the top dog.

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Best of the Best PC Technologies of All Time

18. July 2008 by Myke.

We all sat down and came up with a list, Best of the Best of all time.  The items we have chosen have had significant impact on the PC world.  Without them, who knows what would have happened.  This list is not in any order and we have also included the year in which this item made an impact on our lives.  To me, the number 1 item is the last in this list.  Without it, we would be in a world of hurt so to speak.

Microsoft Solitaire 1992 - everyone has played it and a lot of people still play to this day

UPS “Uninterruptible Power Supply” 1984 - the one thing to have saved many pieces of hardware over the years

Control-Alt-Delete 1981 - where would we be without the trusty old ctrl-alt-del

Skype 2003 - bringing friends face to face for years

Mozilla Firefox 2004 - the first real competitor to IE

DSL 1998 - is the only thing to have challenged Cable Modem and of course this is my choice of Internet…thanks to Comcraptic

SATA 2003 - finally a way to get past ATA

IOMega Zip Drive 1994 - come on now, you know you used them fro backups and trading MP3’s

Apple Powerbook 100 1991 - the first sweet piece of portable hardware

Flash Memory 1984 - the beginning of a new age of storage

Bittorrent 2001 - the best way to share “archive” secrets with the world

ATA 1986 - good, but not great

Red Hat Linux 1995 - here comes the Penguin and soon to follow, the penguin lovers

TRS-80 Color Computer 1980 - I personally started on a TRS-80 monochrome and then moved on to a Laser 128, which was a portable Apple compatible machine

Hitachi 7K1000 2007 - mmmmmmmmmmmstorage…my best guess is that the Petabyte will be here in the next 5 years

Liquid Cooling 2000 - YES!  The best way for me to cool my personal gaming machine.

DVD 1995 - we finally get to rid ourselves of VHS or for some folks, Beta

Lotus 1 2 3 1983 - easy as 1 2 3

Microsoft Word 1989 - better than 1 2 3

3.5 inch Hard Drive 1987 - storage begins to shrink is physical size

Intel Core 2 Duo 2006 - speed takes a turn for the better, next up, glass vacuum tubes will be making a comeback…mark my words

AGP 1987 - video begins to become a big part of our lives on the PC

AOL IM 1997 - let the men seeking women begin

Windows 95 1995 - it was introduced with a Rock song and has forever changed the way Windows has grown

Intel Pentium 1993 - we finally get to see what some speed looks like

Mirabilis ICQ 1996 - what we could not say on the phone or face to face, we shared over the Internet

Starcraft 1998 - it was a toss up here, it was either TA or this and I decided that Starcraft had a bigger following

3.5 inch Floppy 1983 - 1MB of storage, man we were cool then

Napster 1999 - can you say…Gentlemen, start your MP3 collections

Windows 98 SE 1999 - FE was a bust but SE was okay for home users…but it did forever change the face of desktops and laptops everywhere

Commodore 64 1982 - if you had one, you loved it

CD-R 1988 - and so begins the era of copied software, music and PS1 games

PCI 1993 - finally a slot smaller than 12 inches

GL Quake 1996 - 3D rendering and gaming…yes it has begun

Adobe Photoshop 1990 - we start faking pictures and adding our ex’s into piles of poop

ATX 1995 - goodbye AT mobos and soldered power supplies

CD-Rom 1984 - no more floppies, finally

Half-Life 1998 - gaming takes another turn and Half Life also brings in a new group of gamers

Cable Modem 1996 - the first real high speed Internet…ISDN does not count folks

DDR SDRAM 2000 - what no Rambus…seriously folks, we finally see RAM move at a great speed

IBM PC Keyboard 1981 - the keyboard that shapes them all

Fast Ethernet 1995 - goodbye horses…I mean goodbye token ring

MS-DOS 1980 - to this day, those of us in the support world still use DOS for almost everything…CLI rocks baby

Mouse 1963 - yes, the first one looks funny and all but it started the revolution of clicks

MP3 1991 - people started to convert music to MP3 and for some reason, we loved it

DirectX 1995 - desktop graphics are starting to make a change for the better

Doom 1993 - EVERYONE played this game man, even old people played it

Quake 1996 - the 3D engines are making a change and Quake not only brought us gaming, but it brought us rock music to keep us going

Windows XP 2001 - this was pushed out 2 years early thanks to Windows ME “suck big time”, and is the face of just about every company in the world and every pc at home

NCSA Mosaic 1983 - the one the only, the first web browser

3DFX VooDoo 1 1996 - without this little piece of video card you might still be playing Castlevania…you remember

Atlavista - the first web browser search engine…and it came from DEC, my maker

Intel Pentium II 1997 - this chip was a CPU packed with a daughter-board in the form of a slot based proc, the first real fast proc on the market

USB 1996 - there has never been a more significant connector in the computer world than USB…if it was not for USB, where would we be today???

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The Best Hardware of 2007

18. July 2008 by Myke.

There is a lot of hardware out there and yes our answers may not make you happy, but this is our world.

Best CPU - Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650

Best Mobo - ASUS Striker II Extreme

Best Air Cooler - Zalman CNPS9700 LED

Best Case - Cooler Master Cosmos

Best Videocard - ASUS EN8800GTX

Best Optical Drive - Samsung SH-S203B

Best Monitor - HANNS-G HW223D

Best Wi-Fi Router - D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Wireless Router

Best Backup Drive - Seagate FreeAgent Pro

Best Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB

Best Thumb Drive - Corsair Survivor 32GB

Best Digital Media Player - SanDisk Sansa Connect

Best NAS Box - QNAP TS-109 Pro

With all of the hardware out there and what is coming out so far this year…I cannot wait to see what this list looks like in 2009.

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