The Smorgasbord

I think the most exiting thing to happen in computing in over a decade is the SSD or Solid State Drive. Many believe Solid State Hard drives will eventually replace spinning disk hard drives (the slowest part in a PC). SSD’s certainly are the buzz right now because of the allure they offer in speed and data transfer, in addition to making laptops and gadgets like iPods and cell phones both lighter and more powerful (more storage). I will teach you everything you need to know about Solid State Drives in this article, and provide you with all the places they are currently available and why or why not you should get one, and maybe even give you enough information to decide for yourself if they are the “next big thing” or not.

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

First, let’s talk about what a Solid State hard Drive is. You get the definitive answer from Wikipedia of course. Let me give you some details from that Wikipedia entry:

A Solid State Drive, or SSD, has no moving parts. Think of it as a huge flash drive. Because it has no moving parts, it eliminates the seek time and latency of a traditional spinning disk hard drive – and it’s faster. So because you’ve eliminated electro-mechanical delay, you’ve also eliminated electro-mechanical failures. It’s not to say an SSD wont go out, but at least you know it can’t go out due to moving part failure.

A Solid State Drive is comprised of either Flash RAM or SDRAM. SDRAM SSD’s are “fast access”, and data access is less than 0.01ms (250 times faster than the fastest hard drive in 2004). SDRAM SSD’s have an internal battery, and if the power goes out, whatever is in memory (RAM) can be copied to disk. There’s a distinct advantage over a spinning disk. Flash memory is slower than SDRAM, but because it’s more durable and rugged – it’s more widely used in SSD’s. Flash based SSD’s do not have a battery and use non-volatile memory.

SSD Pro’s:

• Faster startup and boot time
• Faster I/O (data access, see time)
• Longer lifetime (10 years of normal use)
• No moving parts
• Easy to ‘wipe’ clean
• Lower weight and size

SSD Con’s:

• Price ($8/GB compared to 0.25 cents/GB for spinning disk)
• Data possibly harder to recover with drive failuer vs. spinning disk
• Possibly affected by magnetic fields / static charges
• Slower random write speeds

Now, let’s give you a better perspective by sampling some information about SSD’s from across the net. Popular Mechanics calls the Solid State Drive the 3rd most Brilliant Gadget of 2007. They also mention the use of the term “solid state disk” as an oxymoronic term.

Tom’s Hardware reviewed the Solid State Drive 4 years ago, and one of the things that I noted was the fact that they said their test unit literally didn’t get hot at all and was virtually silent. In addition to being smaller than a traditional hard drive, it’s power consumption was way less than a spinning disk, and nearly nothing at all when not in use. These are definite distinct advantages that didn’t seem to come up in the Wikipedia article. I’ve had many computers in the past that had 3-4 hard drives installed, and they not only sounded like an airplane hangar – some of the drives would get very, very hot. SSD drives would definitely completely change that picture. They also mentioned that the drive could be used in nearly any environment, which I didn’t think about. Spinning disk would not work as well (or at all) in extreme heat or cold, but an SSD should. In this article you can view the performance graphs taken during testing showing how much faster and better performing the SSD was compared to 20-odd spinning disk hard drives.

So let’s recap what we’ve learned here…

• SSD Solid State Hard Drives boot faster than spinning disk drives
• SSD’s weigh less, don’t get hot, and use less energy than traditional HDD
• The SSD cost much more, but prices are coming down
• You see how well an SSD can function in a mobile situation – like a laptop or portable
• Solid State Drive’s are worse than traditional HDD is sustained data transfer – which means it’s not well suited for saving, moving, copying lots of large files or functioning in a constantly data intensive situation, like a database server
• SSD’s should last longer and be way less succeptible to failure than traditional HDD

If you’re considering getting a Solid State Drive:

• Can you justify the price vs. the benefit
• Are you better off waiting for prices to come down?
• Do you do data intensive work that is better suited to a traditional HDD?

Last – I’m going to provide you with some links so you can get current pricing on SDD Solid State Drive’s.

There are several Solid State Drive’s listed on Amazon:

Here are the most recent eBay auctions for solid state drives:

OCZ Technology 30 GB Vertex Series Solid State Drive
	USD 79.99 (0 Bid) End time: 2010-09-04 00:37:42

17-inch MacBook Pro Solid State Drive (SSD) EXCELLENT!
	USD / 3900.00 (0 Bid) End time: 2010-09-03 21:20:36

Lexar 16GB ExpressCard External Solid State Drive (SSD)
	USD 54.99 (0 Bid) End time: 2010-09-04 01:13:05

Intel X25-M SATA Solid State Drive-160GB
	USD 290.00 (0 Bid) End time: 2010-09-04 07:10:13

Do you own an SSD? Have an opinion about Solid State Drives?

I’m going to show you “How to Fix MP3′s” today because we all have digital music for our ipods, cell phones, computers, and laptops. Most people I know have thousands of songs, some have tens of thousands. Today I decided to sit down and cleanup my collection to make it more manageable, searchable, and listenable.

There are 3 basic problems with MP3 files:

1. The MP3 filenames are all screwed up and unreadable with crazy characters
2. The MP3 volume levels are all over the place, some are low and some are really loud
3. The MP3 “tags” are screwed up and the names come up wrong or weird in an iPod or MP3 player

I’m going to show you how to fix all 3 problems, using FREE software with no NAGS, no hidden things to install, no garbage, and no trials! 100% freeware utilities that just plain work!

How to fix MP3 filenames

First download 1-4a Batch File Renamer. It’s a freeware windows utility for renaming files. I have used dozens of file renamers, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this! There seems to be nothing it can’t do.

When you first fire it up it looks like this:

you have simple options to find and replace things. The left pane are your filenames before you make changes, and it shows what they’ll look like once you make the changes in the right preview pane. This works for a lot of instances – but there is an absolutely INSANE expert mode!

Here’s the expert mode screen:

You can use almost unlimited conditions. I removed all extra spaces, replaced underscores with dashes, and capitalized the first letter of every word on 1,000 mp3 files in about 5 seconds! I also remove the first 5 characters from 875 other mp3 files, and I had a bunch of files from one artist with song name but no artist. So I pre-pended those 50 files with the artist name in seconds!

You can clean up your MP3 filenames with this batch renamer utility more quickly than anything I’ve ever seen. The beauty of this little utility is that it works for any kind of file, so you can use it on your digital pics, movie downloads, or anything else you have!

How to “Normalize” and fix MP3 Volume Levels

The next most common thing wrong with MP3 files is that they volume levels are all different. Some are really low, so you turn it way up, and then a really loud once comes on and about blows you out of the room! There are many mp3 file editors that will normalize your mp3′s for you – but again, most of us have thousands of songs or more. I don’t have time to open my MP3′s one by one and fix them in a damn editor. That’s why I was so exited to find a batch file renamer – a utility that would rename all my MP3 files at once. I was just as excited to find this next one. Now, Download Mp3Gain and install it. It’s a windows freeware utility that does exactly ONE thing and it does it well – it normalizes the volume levels on MP3 files in batches!

That’s right – it can rename 1-10,000+ mp3 files in batch mode! Personally, I recommend doing them about 1,000 at a time if you’re in a time crunch or using your computer all day. Else, you could load say 10,000 in a batch and do them overnight while you sleep. See, unlike the file renaming, this utility has to actually analyze and change the volume level on your each MP3 file, and then save it back again. For me to do about 1,000 mp3′s on my laptop with 2GB ram as I worked took about 30 minutes. Oh – and don’t worry, it doesn’t change the sound quality of your MP3 files at all (just the volume level). It’s a completely lossless process.

Here’s a screenshot of Mp3gain in action on my laptop – you can see that the volume levels for my files was all over the map, some higher, some lower. I made them all a good default of 89db (decibels).

How to Fix MP3 Tags

The last problem we all seem to have is the tags on MP3 files are usually all over the place too. Some are great, some have artist but no song, others have song but no artist. You get all kinds of weird characters, mis-spellings, and more. Now download Mp3 Tag Editor, and install it.

When you start the program first you will need to open a folder that contains MP3 files, and it will read and analyze the current tag information like this:

Once your files are imported you click to look them up on freedb or Amazon. I chose freedb, and then you get a dialogue box like this one:

A lot of times you can just lookup your missing (or bad) song information from what’s already in the tags (or filename). I my particular case – that didn’t help me because my mp3′s (in this case) were karaoke files and the file information within them didn’t really help look them up in freedb at all. I chose to “determine via web search”, and guess what – JACKPOT!

You can see in the image above that my lookup found exactly what my mp3′s were down to the very last detail! Check out what happens when I click “ok” and the changes are saved:

My MP3 files are completely updated with accurate information – so they will (now) display properly in any CD or MP3 player! I’ve used a lot of Mp3 tag editors in the last so many years, and this one is free, fast, and very accurate!

Conclusion

If you use the 3 freeware MP3 utilities I told you about today to clean up your MP3 collection you will be much happier with your music collection! Maybe then your friends will want you to fix theirs too – or you could be a DJ!

I came across this great article full of “Linux Terminal Shortcuts” this morning and thought I would share. Well the title of the post was actually “50 ways to impress geeky linux friends”, but I think there were some good tidbits in there for people using linux that might not know how powerful the command line is. Although it requires a bit more effort than the dumbed down “point and click” world – I think you might find these features far more useful (and advanced) than any version of Windows.

Out of the 50 tips, here are the ones I picked out to be most useful Linux Terminal Shortcuts:

1. Rip a DVD: You wouldn’t think it would be this easy, but you can rip a DVD on the command line with the following: dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/cdrom_image.iso
2. Encrypt your files: Easily encrypy any files from prying eyes using this command: gpg -c filename.doc, and simply enter your password twice. Then to decrypt them later, just run this command: gpg filename.doc.gpg and enter the password you used.
3. Block a Web Site: Kids use your laptop a lot? Boyfriend spending too much time on MySpace? You can block any web site in linux quickly and easily. Just run this command to open a file: gedit /etc/hosts, and then add 127.0.0.1 website.com one by one to block any web sites you want!
4. Scan Wireless Networks: If you want to scan for all available wireless networks, run this command: iwlist scan, and get much more info on each than you would ever get in Windows.
5. Convert text to HTML: Linux shines in it’s ability to process information, and particularly in conversion utilities. For example, convert a text file into HTML like this: recode ..HTML < file.txt > file.html
6. Schedule a download: Say you want to download an 800MB file but want to do it when everyone is asleep? Just run this command: echo ‘wget url’ | at 01:00

I’m sure there are tons more not in that article – post yours now below!

[nms:linux hacks,8,0,0,smorgas.linux.hacks]

My “Free Online Storage” review of 10 different online backup services shows you how you can protect your digital photos, mp3′s, multimedia, documents, and more online (for free!)

A co-worker recently told me that he had two external hard drives that he’d been backing up photos and mp3′s to – and they were about out of storage space. He wanted to know what his options were for more storage space, and if tape backup were still a viable thing to invest in.

I think this is a good question, one that more and more people have as digital pictures start piling up – and as more of us buy music online vs. having a pile of cd’s lying around. It used to be the only thing you worried about was a fire destroying your precious family photos or music collection. Nowadays – I think that people are much more careless with “digital” versions of memories or paid music. Think about it, have you ever had a computer die, motherboard fry, or a hard drive go bad?

I few years ago my own daughter was heartbroken when over 2 years of digital photos were lost (in addition to he mp3′s) when her hard drive crashed. No matter what I did I couldn’t bring that drive back long enough to get data off of it. I should have done then what I told my co-worker to do now.

If you’re in a similar situation – you can of course buy more network storage as I’ve written about in the past. You could also get a wireless hard drive, or a Buffalo Drivestation – but by purchasing more hardware you still aren’t safe from a fire – unless you are backing up and then taking those external drives to a secondary location on a regular basis (like a safe deposit box).

My recommendation to my co-worker was to signup for “free online storage”. This way you’re protected from a natural disaster in addition to computer issues. In addition – you can also access your files from multiple computers if necessary, and getting at your files when you get a new PC or laptop is no problem. All this sounds expensive – doesn’t it?

There are 6 different online storage services featured in this c|Net review, but I decided to also add some services to this list that they left out. All in all, every online storage site listed below has a “free” option that you can use – and if you signed up for them all you could get more than 100GB of free online storage space combined!

We start with Windows SkyDrive, and they offer 5GB of online storage for free. It’s password protected storage, and I would be a bit surprised if this is something they don’t try and push as a “feature” of the next version of Windows. This services looks pretty simple, but I wouldn’t be surprised if was only completely usable from Internet Explorer (and most geeks I know use Firefox). You can make files public, personal, or shared.

MediaFire is a completely free online storage service that claims “completely unlimited storage”. Looks like their banking on that model of getting tons of online users and worrying about how to pay for it later (and maybe being bought for big bucks like YouTube!). They have options for making files public or personal. There is a limit of 100MB per file, but that shouldn’t affect the majority of people.

The XDrive has been around awhile – it was one of the first online storage services that I can remember. You get 5GB for free, then it’s $9.95 per month after that. XDrive was purchased by AOL some time ago – so you need an AOL username to login or create an account, but an AIM ID will do if you have one of those. You can upload files one at a time, or there’s a “java accelerator” for multiple files. You can share files and folders with this service as well.

You can get 2GB free online storage with MozyHome, or pay $4.95 per month for unlimited. Purchased by EMC, this service has been around about 2 years. Unlike the services listed so far, to use MozyHome you have to install an application that will backup your email, documents, and photos. You can choose (in “expert” mode) what files are or aren’t backed up, and how often backups occur. Mozy runs in the background looking for changed files to backup on a regular schedule.

Carbonite is probably the most heavily advertised online storage servies, with (currently) ads on the radio every hour. You get unlimited online storage space, but the cost is $4.95 per month, or $50 if you pay by the year. Carbonite is like Mozy, it’s an “online backup” service that runs in the background backing up your PC or laptop as you work. The difference between Carbonite and all the other online backup and storage services is that your files are encrypted before being securely sent from your PC to the Carbonite servers. That might not be important to some people, but as far as privacy and personal and confidential documents are concerned – it should be. Especially since most PC’s are riddled with personally identifiable information like resume’s, financial information, claimforms, and maybe even copies of paystubs or timesheets. If you own a home based or small business you would be smart to choose Carbonite for this one reason alone.

Box.net offers 1GB for free or 5GB for $7.95 per month. The free account limits individual file size to only 10MB per file. There’s also a 10GB per month bandwidth limit (if you’re repeatedly updating the same files), and they have a java drag and drop application that you can use. Even though this service seems a bit limited and restricted (for the free account), it does have uses that the others listed so far don’t. You can use this service to host blog or eBay photos and then placing the link on the appropriate page. It might be a handy account to have for just those types of uses, or for smaller short term online file storage.

ADrive offers 50GB of free online storage and they offer a “desktop backup client” as well. Something ADrive offers that the others don’t (or at least didn’t mention) was the ability to edit documents online. You can share files, and ADrive boasts a “search tool” as well, something I hadn’t seen any of the other services list in their offerings. ADrive sounds like a great service since it has lots of free space AND an online backup tools, but I hope that the intermittent problems I was having with their web site aren’t indications that their servers are maxed out (from too many users).

iDrive offers 2GB of online storage space for free with additional accounts starting at $4.95 per month. iDrive is advertised as working for both the Mac or PC – and you need to install their application to work with the service. You can select what to backup, or have true archiving and “sync” of updated files – and even access up to the last 30 versions. You can search and restore, or even explore your backed up files from a “windows explorer” like view.

Humyo offers 30GB of online storage space for free, which also includes the ability to edit files online. You don’t get a desktop client with the free version or encrypted file transfers (you can get 100GB and encrypted file transfers for $59 per year). You can send files via email with this service with no restrictions on size. The unique feature of Humyo is the ability to “publish and embed” media. You can put your media (movie file, mp3) on a blog or social networking site, and Humyo automatically embeds a “player” on the page – making it a snap to publish your media wherever you want. This would be a great feature for artists or bands.

Orbit files offers 6GB of free online storage space. You can edit your files online, and OrbitFiles offers a “tag and search” feature I’ve not seen in other services. You can add friends and share files, zip folders, and create public or private photo albums. Two features unique to OrbitFiles are the ability to enable RSS, and the ability to “sell files”. That’s right – you can sell your files online, whether it be PDF, eBooks, MP3′s, photos – you name it! They only charge a small 2% commission on the sale price – which really is quite cheaper than most options for selling digital content online!

There are all kinds of other online storage services that seem to do something different to set themselves apart. Like Omemo for example, which bills itself as the “world’s largest drive”. You sign up, and “share” part of your free hard drive space with others, for a huge “peer to peer virtual drive”. DropBoks offers 1GB of space in what appears to be about the simplest online storage interface I’ve seen. In.solit.us offers free online storage that you can even access from your iPhone. divShare offers 5GB storage and 10GB bandwidth per month and boasts integration with WordPress, Facebook, and iPhone. They have an API that can used to integrate their storage space with any online application. SendUit offers the ability to send files via an expiring download link that you can set from 30 minutes to one week.

Whichever service you choose – you should be able to find at least one online storage service that meets your needs!

We need to find some “floating shelves” after the post about our new surround sound system the other day. You know, the kind that look like they’re just floating on the wall. Since we have a flat screen hanging on the wall – what the heck do we need a TV stand for? I want to get that audio equipment off the TV stand, take it out, mount it on the wall and free up room in my living room!

I’d been thinking about this for some time, and the floating shelf concept was one I had in the back of my head, but hadn’t seen anything even remotely like what I wanted at the store. I took 5 minutes to search Amazon today – and lo and behold they have exactly what I need!

This set of floating shelves is only $100, much cheaper than anything else I say, it’s quality and can hold heavy weights like a big audio video receiver, they are stylish, come in three colors, and very functional! It’s exactly what I wanted and they are on order now! You can check out the floating shelves here!

These audio rack shelves came in a close second, and if I had wanted something on the floor – this would have been exactly what I chose. Maybe when we put a system together for the basement family room this is what we’ll get!

Ever lost a password? I did today, and I found a “free password reveal tool”. Actually, what happenned was that I had a password saved in my browser, but I didn’t know what it was anymore and I wanted to change it. When I tried to change the password, it wanted the old one before I could enter a new one…and well, that was the start of a way to figure my password out.

Back in the day (like 10 years ago) I remember when we used to download all kinds of Windows utilities to do handy things, and there was this thing called a “password revealer” that I used to have. When you ran a small executable file it would open a “loupe” (fancy word for jewelers maginifying glass). When you moved the “loupe” over a password field it would turn the dots or asteriks into their real letters, numbers, and characters revealing the real password. w00t!

Now today I wanted to find this utility or a very good reason – I wanted to figure my own password out. Unfortuantely there are people out there who would want to use this tool for ill gotten gains, like hacking your myspace password, breaking into your hotmail account, or for an easy way to steal your yahoo password. What I’m saying is, I’m going to give you a tool you can use to reveal most saved password, but it would be in your best interest to uninstall when you were done to keep prying eyes from getting into your business! Like I said – there’s a reason that less than 100 people per month search for “password revealer”, but more than 2,000 each search for “hacking myspace password”, and “hotmail password stealer”?!?

When your dealing something like looking for a “password revealer” tool – a lot of the search results are spammy or trying to get you to buy some piece of software to solve your problem. I was lucky enough that Lifehacker saved the day (again) with their post Recover Lost Passwords. They linked to a site and post I forgot about – Snadboy’s Revelation 2.0, which is course is a freeware password revealer. It worked for me! If it doesn’t work for you, try some of the other tools on the Lifehacker page, and report back here what works and what doesn’t!

Don’t lost valuable documents, mp3′s, and digital photos use a “Buffalo Drivestation” to backup your valuable data.

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

When I wrote my “Network Storage Review“, one of the first things in that article was the “Buffalo Drivestation”. I was thinking about the Drivestation this week because I had a family member who had a hard drive crash and lost all of her family photos and mp3′s she’d purchased, in addition to saved tax returns, and many other valuable documents.

I think sometimes people forget what kinds of “digital treasures” are stored on your PC or laptop, and what kind of chaos could ensue if it suddenly disappeared tomorrow. The Drivestation came to mind because it comes in so many different sizes (from 320GB to many Terabytes), and because it’s so easy to use. Just plug it in, push the button, and you’re backed up! They make models big enough for most small to medium sized businesses, and the versions with “RAID” have 2 hard drives inside for dual mirroring. That means if one hard drive fails, there’s another as a backup. The disks are even encrypted, so if anyone takes the unit, they can’t access any of your data.

It’s like insurance for your computer in a way. You have insurance for your car and home don’t you? If you have an accident or a fire your insurance company will replace what you have lost. Not only is there no insurance for your computer, but the personal documents and data you lose there likely can’t be replaced at all. If you have pics of your daughter’s wedding on your computer’s hard drive, for example, if they were lost no amount of money could compensate you for that.

I recommended the Buffalo Drivestation to my family member that lost her data, and I recommend it to you because of it’s ease of use, multiple connections (firewire and USB), and because it works with both Macs and PC’s. The price is reasonable for the value you get, and even your Grandma or the most tech-clueless office manager or secretary could set one up.

You can nearly always find Drivestations on eBay, or Amazon (below).

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I have become so frustrated by to cost of gasoline in America that day by day I’m out to “find the cheapest gas”. I use the web each and every day from daybreak until bed, so it’s only fitting that I created my own page to find cheap gas. Just click on the tab at the top of any page on this site for a map:

All you have to do is input your zip code at the top to get gas prices in your local area for all listed stations and immediately find out “who has cheap gas” by you!

I commute a lot, and spend a LOT on gas each week. This will help me save money on gas quite a bit I a logon to check the prices every morning before I leave the house. I encourage you to bookmark this page and regularly visit to find the cheapest gas by you too!

I just love gadgets that stand out, and this pocket sized solar charger is no exception. As you see in the pics it comes with adapters for just about every major cell phone manufacturer, iPod, and mp3 player. It will work with anything you charge through usb connection as well. It has a built in rechargeable battery, so you can actually charge this thing when the sun is out (charging it’s battery), and then use it to recharge your iPod in middle of the night or in the car on the go!

This would be a VERY handy gadget if you were going on a camping trip, to the cabin by the lake, any just about anywhere that you won’t have the ability to recharge your gadget. You could use the solar panel to charge the battery in your windowsill at home, your car dash, or in your office at work (if you have a window). The entire thing is $25 including shipping on eBay, mine’s on order now!

[nms:multi purpose pocket solar charger,5,0,0,smorgas.solar.charger]

Check out this dude that made his own Panzer tank in college! It’s half scale, and so bloody scary that when he drove it down his parents street for fun the neighbors called the cops thinking it was WWIII or something! It runs on an old diesel generator motor, and the turret and canon actually work – shooting both paintballs and empty red bull cans (powered by a Co2 container in the rear). Who wouldn’t kill to have their own working tank? Maybe it was the geek in my, but I thought this was really cool!