Category: Technology

Shutdown.  Unplug 74 GB Western Digital Raptor.  Plug in 150 GB Western Digital Raptor.  Boot up.

No hard disks detected.

I was scratching my head in disbelief when I saw the above error message after installing a Western Digital Raptor 150 GB in my system.  It spun up and wasn’t detected.  I thought, ‘OK, maybe this thing needs more juice.”  Then, I thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute, my Antec TrueBlue 480W powered two 74 GB Raptor’s in RAID 0.’  Let’s try another Serial ATA port.

Shutdown.  Unplug Raptor.  Plug Raptor into Serial ATA port 1.  Boot up.

No hard disks detected.

At this point I’ve become a roaring lion.  Not literally, but you get a picture.  I conclude it’s either the hard drive or the motherboard, with the hard drive being the likely culprit.  Google time (on another PC): ‘IC7 Raptor 150‘.

Bingo.

There’s a compatibility problem with the Abit IC7 motherboard and the WD Raptor 150!? Not good.  What to part with: aging IC7 motherboard or state-of-the-art Raptor 150.  Hmm.  Buh-bye IC7!  Hello new, cheapo ASRock S478 motherboard for short-term until Conroe is released.

Bottom-line: In the tech world, Google is indeed your friend.  It helped pinpoint the problem in a matter of minutes.  One less grey hair.  Phew.

You’ve probably been asking yourself, “Should I buy a CPU now or wait?”

Well, wait no more.  Updated prices for?current AMD CPUs and upcoming Intel CPUs are disclosed below (from confirmed sources):

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+  Current: $303 USD   July 24: $152 USD
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+  Current: $365 USD   July 24: $187 USD
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+  Current: $558 USD   July 24: $240 USD
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+  Current: $696 USD   July 24: $301 USD

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86 GHz; 2 MB cache)  July 27: $183 USD
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13 GHz; 2 MB cache)  July 27: $224 USD
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40 GHz; 4 MB cache)? July 27: $316 USD
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67 Ghz; 4 MB cache)? July 27: $530 USD

Given the updated prices above (and the recent release of the socket AM2 CPUs), it appears that AMD will suffer revenue losses in the coming two quarters in order to persuade consumers to purchase their CPUs.  I think it would be wise for AMD to release their X2 Turion processor ahead of schedule, before Merom hits the market.

Update:

According to this article, Intel’s NDA’s with reviewers expire today — July 13.  Conroe will be officially unveiled on July 27, with Merom (notebook version) to follow the same day.

Update 2:

AMD fights back.

Update 3:

Official updated prices from AMD.

Microsoft realized they were losing $2 billion a year due to the piracy of their operating system (among other software).  So, Microsoft’s product managers got together and decided they needed to end piracy of their primary operating system once and for all.  But how  They tried various techniques, all of which inevitably failed. Fast forward a couple of years.  Some brilliant mind at Microsoft decides to write a tool to help determine whether or not a given PC is running a genuine copy of Windows.  Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) was born.

It worked.  Sort of.  That is, until it starting disabling PC’s running legitimate copies of Windows XP.

Taken from Groklaw.net:

21. However, WGA can malfunction and mistakenly identify a licensed Windows XP copy as unlicensed when, for example, a user transfers his legitimate Windows XP copy to another system with different hardware or significantly changes the hardware on the original system (e.g. installs a new hard drive). In this way, WGA impinges on users’ fair use rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 117(a)(2) to use legally space-shifted Windows XP copies.

Once I activate Windows XP, I dislike having it audited by the WGA tool repetitively. I understand Microsoft’s concerns, but what about the user. Users have concerns, too. Users don’t enjoy putting up with endless prompts to verify the operating system they paid for.  Users don’t enjoy knowing that Microsoft could be gathering sensitive information from their computers (although they claim otherwise). If you don’t understand how irritating this can be, read a post I wrote earlier.

Well, to keep it short, I hope Microsoft learns from the recent wave of class action lawsuits against them.? Otherwise, they can slowly watch the market share of their operating system decrease.

I’m referring to no other than AMD and Intel.  AMD has held the processor crown from the latter part of 2005 through most of 2006.

Things are about to change, for the better.

As I previously stated, Intel is releasing their new Core 2 Duo (codenamed Conroe) processor on July 23rd.  I was skeptical as to how much of a performance increase could be expected until I read this article.  Conroe outperforms AMD’s best processor by up to 50%.

Impressive.

AMD is not hiding in a cave either, as they are planning significant price cuts on their X2 and Sempron processors on July 24.  AMD has already cut the prices (mid-June) on their AM2 Athlon 64 processors by up to 50% — most likely to persuade consumers into purchasing their CPU’s before July 23 😉

AMD also has another trick up its sleeve: reverse hyper-threading.  In Layman’s terms: reverse hyper-threading allows certain software titles to dynamically utilize the dual cores (eg. 2.8 GHz each) in a processor as a single logical processor (eg. 5.6 GHz).  All AM2 processors have support for reverse hyper-threading, but it won’t be active until Microsoft releases a new processor driver to activate the feature.? Being a software driver, it probably won’t work in Linux in the same manner that Intel’s HT implementation did.

After the Intel NDA’s expire on July 28th, we’ll see if AMD retains its crown in the CPU world 😉

After days of waiting patiently, I finally decided to stay up until the wee early hours on a Friday evening to download Microsoft Vista Beta 2 at breakneck speeds.

Was it worth the wait? Well, I’d have to say, ‘No!’. In fact, 30 minutes after I’d installed it (to take a couple of pictures), I nuked it from my system. Read on to know why. (Yes, I actually took pictures — I wanted to test out the white balance on my camera.)

Let’s review the Vista installation.

The Vista installer features a clean interface, but hides most of the background tasks from the user. It’s too simple in my opinion. Advanced users, such as myself, prefer to see what’s happening ‘behind the scenes’. Anyways, a couple of mouse clicks later and I was on my way. I decided to install Vista on one of my cleanly formatted drives, a Western Digital Raptor 74 GB 10,000 RPM drive. The installation procedure took 20 minutes. Not bad. That includes the time the Vista installer took to copy the installation files from my 16x DVD-ROM to my primary hard drive (another identically configured Raptor).

Here’s the first screen you’ll see after installing Vista on your system (well, I opened the Device Manager — you’ll see why below):

1. I was very disappointed that Vista did not include a driver for the legendary 3Com 3C905C PCI ethernet card. Notice the question mark beside the Ethernet Controller (click on the picture to have it maximize in your browser). Maybe, 3Com is to blame for not supplying newer drivers. If that is the case, I will be prompted to purchase Intel ethernet cards in the future.

2. My Envy24HT (VIA chipset) based sound board wasn’t detected either. Yes, another annoyance. No network connectivity + no sound = Useless Windows.

3. The user interface. Bravo. I have to hand it to Microsoft for the user interface — yet another thing that Microsoft copied from Apple (among other things).

Resource usage:

I guess Microsoft wasn’t joking about the minimum requirements. 512 MB of RAM just won’t cut it for Vista. Notice the amount of RAM in use in the image above. That’s a fresh, out-of-the-box install. Guess what happens when you install a virus scanner and other resource hogging programs? (Yes, you can tweak Windows to use less RAM, but most users can’t be bothered). Microsoft needs to make Vista more efficient — it’s a resource hog.

Now, let’s examine the disk space utilized by Vista:

38,181 files in 6,768 folders, occupying 7.54 GB of space. Windows Vista just dwarfed Windows XP by over 300%.

Bottom-line: I think it’s best to stick to Windows XP for the foreseeable future. According to a recent survey, 71% of respondents thought that Vista’s minimum requirements were a bit too excessive. After evaluating it first-hand, I tend to agree.

Update:

Microsoft Windows Imaging installer unveiled.? The article essentially provides some insight into why Microsoft went with the simple installation interface, and also the fast installation times.