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?

Is the Samsung BD-P3600 better than the Playstation 3?

Do you need a Blu-Ray player, but don’t want or need the gaming aspect of the Playstation 3? The Samsung BD-P3600 one of the highest rated non-PS3 Blu-Ray players on the market. The features on this player are a laundry list of what you will need to never leave your couch again (or so the marketing people say). According to cNET (the holy grail of tech reviews) “The Samsung BD-P3600 is a huge leap ahead for standalone Blu-Ray players with blazing-fast operational speed, tons of features and excellent image quality.” Well let’s see if this player reaches its potential, or lags back like the rest of standalone Blu-Ray players we’ve seen in the past.

The player claims to boast a new innovative Video Quality Enhancement (QVE) feature that further improves the picture quality by adjusting brightness, flickering and other visual “noise”. While this sounds like an awesome feature it really only goes so far to improve video quality. This feature is clearly targeting videophiles but most videophiles have manually tweaked their settings anyways. We’re talking about guys so geeked about their home entertainment that they’ll spend $120 on a single oxygen free gold plated HDMI cord. This is not a mark down, but a heads up.

Besides the QVE vido enhancement this player really shines when you see all the options for viewing your media. First it has your Blu-Ray player, of which the benchmarks of the loading times met or came close to the industry leader, PS3. Next, it has a Netflix instant streaming player, which in term of performance works only slightly as well PS3’s Netflix player (but at least it’s there). It also has a Pandora Internet radio player but it feels tacked on and load times are on the slow side. Finally, the player offers the ability to stream content from your PC or laptop. Once again the feature seems tacked on, and not as full featured as it could be. It seems like it is only there so Samsung can say “look what we did!”

I really wanted to like this player. It seems like for everything it does right, it does two things wrong. If you are in the market for a Blu-Ray player or you are looking to upgrade, get a Playstation 3. Its really easy and it offers all the features of this player and much more, but it does it all much better.

This is my Amazon Kindle 2 Review. This post was originally from September 2008 and when I first wrote this post the Kindle’s were about $400 retail from Amazon. It was even pricey when the Kindle 2 first came out in Jan 2009, but now you can get one for around $200. I’ve always like the Kindle, but the video review below shows exactly why and you get to see my Kindle 2 as well – it’s only about 6 minutes.

Original Review

Last year in 2007 I remember when the Amazon Kindle was launched, and I thought “that’s kinda cool”. But it’s yet “another device” that does something you can already do on your mobile phone AND computer AND laptop! So, my first impression (back then) was that it was “cool” but not completely necessary. Now, let’s talk about what makes it viable as a gadget and why it’s becoming more popular.

The Amazon Kindle is an “eReader”. It’s meant for you to take it with you and read things, from novels and books, to newspapers and blogs. Battery life is long and it only needs a charge about every other day, and the screen is what they call “ePaper”. It’s not like your cellphone, laptop, or monitor screen – it has no glare (and it’s not backlit). It’s easy to read in any light, just like a book or newspaper.

Kindle has an “EVDO” connection just like the high speed connections of cell phones. This means that it’s “wireless”. The Kindle is different than other eReaders because it can get new content, download new books, or get fresh newspaper or blog content from RSS feeds “on the go” wherever you are. Don’t be fooled – you have to buy the books, but the “e” version is much cheaper. A latest New York Times best seller might be $26.99, but on Kindle it’s probably $9.99. Newspaper subscriptions cost money too, but with Kindle you can download the first few chapters of a book or read two weeks for free on a newspaper subscription before you pay anything. At least you can test drive before you pay. Magazines are available too like Time and Forbes.

You can’t exactly surf the web with Kindle, but one feature that is available is the ability to look anything up on Wikipedia. The included of the New Oxford American Dictionary could be very handy as well. It also has an annotation feature and bookmarking – so you can keep notes or keep track of where you were. One of the more controversial features are the RSS feeds. You can subscribe to any one of hundreds of RSS feeds (which are freely available on the web) for about $2 per month. Many people feel these should be completely free, as they are on the web. What they fail to realize is that kindle has no wireless charges at all – once you buy the unit there are no monthly fees. Your subscription fees basically cover the EVDO wireless access charges.

I didn’t even mention that it has an SD memory card slot, and that you can email documents to your Kindle for review, like pictures, PDF files, and Word docs. Now – it’s a tool you can use to review documents for school or work.

Here’s an Amazon Kindle review from a tech evangelist that has used many other eBook readers before he got the Kindle, this was his first review 12 hours after he got it.

Another Kindle video review:

I think that the Kindle could be one of the few gadgets you could give as a gift to people that are so “geeky” if you know what I mean. It’s easy to use, and Amazon has done a good job of taking away all the technological barriers away. It doesn’t have to be charged that often, and it never has to be connected to a computer or anything to work – it’s completely independent. This could actually be a really cool gift for Mom or Dad, Grandma or Grandpa. If you’re an avid reader or on the go a lot – the Kindle may be for you. There’s two ways to get one, and they are of course “new or used” Amazon Kindle’s. There are some for sale on eBay – check out these auctions.

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In addition, you can buy one new directly from Amazon itself here:

Need a Blu-Ray player, but don’t want or need the gaming aspect of the Playstation 3? The Samsung BD-P3600 one of the highest rated non-PS3 Blu-Ray players on the market. The features on this player are a laundry list of what you will need to never leave your couch again. According to CNET (the holy grail of tech reviews) “The Samsung BD-P3600 is a huge leap ahead for standalone Blu-Ray players with blazing-fast operational speed, tons of features and excellent image quality.” Well let’s see if this player reaches its potential, or lags back like the rest of standalone players.

The player claims to boast a new innovative Video Quality Enhancement (QVE) feature that further improves the picture quality by adjusting brightness, flickering and other visual “noise”. While this sounds like an awesome feature it really only goes so far to improve video quality. This feature is clearly targeting videophiles but most videophiles have manually tweaked their settings anyways. This is not a mark down, but a heads up.

Besides the QVE this player really shines when you see all the options for viewing your media. First it has your Blu-Ray player, which benchmarks of the loading times met or came close to the industry leader, PS3. Next, it has a Netflix instant streaming player, which in term of performance works only slightly as well PS3’s Netflix player. It also has a Pandora player but it feels tacked on and load times are on the slow side. Finally, the player offers the ability to stream content from your pc. Once again the feature seems tacked on and is only there so Samsung can say “look what we did!”

I really wanted to like this player. It seems like for everything it does right, it does two things wrong. If you are in the market for a Blu-Ray player or you are looking to upgrade, get a ps3. Its really easy and it offers all the features of this player and much more, but it does it all much better.

Final Rating is a 6.5/10

As a Sprint subscriber the news of the HTC Hero Android Phone was like a wet dream. The first android phone to be offered on sprint could have been the biggest phone news of the year. The bad news, for me, was that I just recently locked myself into a brand new 2 year contract with the purchase of the Palm Pre in July. I want this phone for myself, but let’s see if good enough to ignore my brand new 2 year contract.

This phone is nearly identical to the T-Mobile MyTouch, which we reviewed earlier this year. That is not a bad thing as the T-Mobile MyTouch is one of the best look android phones on the market. The device its self is about half an inch thick and weighs about 4.5 ounces, which is also known as smaller than the iPhone! The phone, as previously mentioned, sports the Android OS and also includes HTC’s Sense user interface which helps you customize every aspect of the phone. Generally speaking we do not like phones that include special proprietary software but the Sense works so very well that we are willing to make an exception. The phone has a super responsive touch screen with multi-touch.

This phone simply just works and it works well. You have up to seven home screens and can create shortcuts for apps, folders, widgets and anything else your heart desires. The touch keyboard works surprisingly well with great accuracy and auto-correcting. There are a few surprising features that work very well including Flash Lite in the web browser. Speaking of the web browser, it works well. There are although there are some long loading times for flash, but unlike most phones it includes it nativity. The android market continues to improve and currently offers well over 10,000 apps to choose from! The 5.0 megapixel camera was just okay, the pictures had some blurring and was very hard to focus most of the time.

The phone is $180 with a contract, which if you’re on sprint and are coming up on a chance for a new phone, this may be the very best option available on the market. Despite the camera, the features this phone offer are fantastic and this phone is a great addition to new Smartphone’s that offer the Android OS. This is the first Android phone on Sprint and is one of the best phones available on the network.

Rating 9.5/10

Sony T90 Digital Camera

Sony’s new T90 camera boasts a 3 inch touch screen and a 12 mega pixel image sensor. Is it worth its 265 dollar price tag? Find out now!

The T90 is the the absolute thinnest point and shoot I have ever seen, hands down. I was so enamored with its form factor I almost didn’t see its many flaws, almost. It may be thin but its main selling point, the 3 inch touch screen, is just a gimmick. It feels very fragile and feels like if I pushed to hard it would crumble to dust. Also it has that bleed affect when you touch the screen, kinda like an old LCD, not 2009 technology. The buttons are big and the menus are okay to navigate but call it a touch screen is a little deceiving as requires more nail than finger.

Even though I hated the screen I really don’t hate this camera. It is loaded with all sort of detection software. It detects smiles, faces, and it even detects the environment of the picture and picks appropriate settings. Those features are nice but what really matters is the image quality. The quality of pictures are decent but nothing fantastic. Also low lights are pictures are grainy and just not impressive. The image quality is an improvement over other Sony cameras but with so many good point and shoots on the market, just okay is not good enough.

265 dollars is just far to steep to justify purchasing this camera. Its main selling point, touch screen, is just to gimmicky to really work with everyday use. I feel like with so many other great options out there I just can’t recommend this camera at the price tag. This camera is with around 200 dollars and if the price is dropped I could see the purchase justified. Look for this on your favorite electronic stores clearance rack in the near future.

My Rating: 5.75/10

Since I’ve been looking at Netbooks, the HP Mini-Note should definitely not be overlooked since it was one of the first to be classified in this category as an ultra subcompact laptop gadget. I like the fact that it’s not Intel, and that you can configure the hard drive and memory to your liking, in addition to both Windows and Linux flavors. It can be a little more pricey than the others depending on how it’s configured, but it was one of the only ones to pack a 1280×768 resolution into the tiny 7.8″ screen! What more could you ask for though – you get Wi-fi, a webcam, and both express and SD card slots – in addition to the normal USB connects. All in a little 2.8lb case!

Here’s a video review:

You can find the HP Mini-Note for pretty reasonable new and used prices on ebay, here are some ending soon:

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I’ve recently discovered the wonder of the “netbook” that everybody seems to be clamoring about. Basically the sub-compact or “mini-notebook” is very popular and this category is now dubbed the “netbook”. Probably because it’s small, about the size of a book, and primarily used do do things on the ‘net.

I’ve reviewed one before, but at the time the phrase “netbook” wasn’t yet coined. I posted twice about the original Asus eee PC review (linux), and the Asus eee PC Windows XP review.

Although there seems to be quite a few “netbooks” out on the market now, the one that every seems to know other than the eee is the Asus Aspire One netbook. I can only imagine what kind of problems this is going to cause for the tech clueless since the names are so darn similar (Acer, Asus).

If you’re in a hurry and want the short version, here’s a video review you can watch of the Acer Aspire One:

The Acer Aspire one is a 2 lb wonder. Depending on model screen size varies from 7-10″, same for HDD size 120-160GB+ (unless you get one with a SSD, which would probably be 8GB or less). Most units seem to have 1GB Ram, and I’ve seen a few claiming to be able to run Vista Ultimate. They all seem to come with a webcam (although crappy .3 megapixel), and a headphone jack. You also get 3 USB jacks, a microphone jack, and even a monitor out if you need to hookup to a projector. You get of course a LAN jack and Wireless b/g, speakers, a card reader, and usually Windows XP loaded on the system. There is of course a Linux version too. Supposedly the new Windows 7 is designed to run on portable netbooks as well (without the hardware constraints of Vista).

You’re probably wondering – what do people that bought the Acer Aspire one really think of it? Well I can tell you that PCWorld gave it a damn near 5 star review. The same goes for nearly all the reviews on Amazon. Boot time is just over 20 seconds, and normal tasks like Facebook, Myspace, watching video on YouTube, using Firefox, and copying over your favorite album are all quick and easy.

If you’re up for one of these little wonders, I would definitely check out some of the latest auctions for both new and used ones on eBay right now:

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There are a lot of portable MP3 players on the market, and we review the Nextar T-30 with Christmas looming just months away…

I think a lot of people often wonder what’s out there besides iPod’s in the portable MP3 player space. Nextar now has the Nextar T-30 for under $100, and it’s just a half inch thin, and weighs only a few ounces. You get a 3.5″ display in 320×400, 4GB of internal storage, and 8 hour battery. It has an FM tuner (and recorder), and has a voice recorder and eBook reader. It even has an SD slot!

The iPod is so wildly popular (and still expensive) that competitors are coming out with quality products that have features the iPod doesn’t.  I’ve had iPod owners tell me “I don’t care about FM radio”, but you know, it’s nice to have when and if I want to use it!  And in my opinion Apple is very self serving (and stupid) for not equipping all new generations of iPod’s with SD card slots.  I’m sorry, if you are going to sell me a portable multimedia device capable of viewing movies, pictures, and music – there better be a damn card slot on it so I can interchange between my cell phone, laptop, digital camera, or whatever!  I think for $100 the Nextar is a steal…

Here’s the best prices you can get a Nextar T-30 for now (buy an Xmas gift early!):

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