Lately many people have approached me asking my opinion on recommendations for new laptops or for tips on upgrading their desktop.  With all the different specs related to computers and the corresponding marketing campaigns behind many of the biggest computer producers it is easy to confuse which specs really make a significant performance difference  and which are just aimed at moving more machines out of the warehouse.  This will be a short post because the answer is buy a Solid State Drive – in the form of the Intel X-25 II.  For example lets say you are looking at buying the new MacBook Pro 13 inch model, on the site they have listed two options.

Which option is best you say?  The answer is not neither.  For the best overall performance it would be wisest to get the cheaper 1099.00$ Macbook Pro and then use the 300$ to purchase the Intel X-25 160 gb solid state drive.  Six screws removes the outer case and 2 more screws remove the internal hard drive, in 10 minutes you can self install this component and you will never look back.

What about the Solid State Drives offered on the Mac Store already?  This is a good sign that these options are now appearing on the store but unfortunately the Apple store does not sell the Intel X25 and this model is still the industry leader by a large margin.  That is not all solid state drives are equal and for the money it is better to stick with Intel’s product.

The difference between and Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.4 GHz versus 2.66 is absolutely meaningless for 98% of computer users.  Both processors are extremely fast and with either one you will most likely rarely or possibly never be bottle necked by this component.  The rest of the specs on these machines look very similar except for Hard Drive Size.

With Intel’s new release of the i5 and i7 they have even furthered their developmental lead over AMD and produced an even better performing processor.  This kind of processing power is great for database enterprise style servers but for most consumers who again getting the faster processor looking for a faster feeling machine in a day to day productivity style setting you may be disappointed.

Traditional spinning hard drives are cheap and large.  Sadly even faster 10,000K (or even 15,000K SCSI) spinning drives cannot deliver data fast enough to keep up with today’s 4 and 8 gigabyte RAM machines with Intel Core 2 Duo processors.  The traditional spinning drive has been the slow poke for sometime and upgrading components around will result in only minor visible speed increases.

Changing to the Intel X25 Solid State Drive will result in a 30-40% feel in performance gain in everyday use.  The system boot time will drastically be reduced, cold starting programs will launch at a unbelievably faster rate.  In fact I predict that in less than two years the majority of all desktops and laptops will have their primary drive be a solid state.  If you are looking to upgrade a Desktop again it is best to go with the same Intel x25M drive and perhaps by a secondary large 2 TB drive for media storage.  The key is getting the OS and main program files loaded onto the Intel X25-M.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167024&cm_re=intel_x25-m-_-20-167-024-_-Product

Having managed a number of Windows 2003 Servers and optimizing various Windows Desktops you will quickly see the built in disk defragment tool is lacking in speed and efficiency.  Especially in the server environment the built in defrag tool simply fails to defrag a large variety of formats, backup sets, log files, etc.  Having tried a multiple products over the years, idefraggler, Ultra Defragmenter, my defrag, contig, and Auslogics Disk Defrag – it is clear that the latest version of Ausologics Disk Defrag  is ahead of the competition.

The latest revision of this free utility tops that of many of its commercial competitors.  This is the safest, quickest and most overall effective disk defragging software available – free.  Although Disk Defragging is not a common day to day activity – it is nice to have a utility that can accomplish this task in minutes rather than hours.

I would recommend this tool for anyone running Windows Operating systems Windows XP, Vista, or Server 2003.  If you are already running Windows 7 or Server 2008 I would stick with the built in utilities as Windows has done an excellent job upgrading the scheduling and functionality of this utility in their latest iterations of the Windows OS.

Download Below or from CNET

disk-defrag-setup

When it comes to online documents, collaboration and storage most people probably think Google Docs right away. Without taking anything away from Google and its excellent selection of free services – I want to mention another cloud based system that offer better functionality in many respects.

One of the biggest complaints I have heard about Google Docs is its inability to import complex documents and its lack of features as a word processor. If you have shared these concerns I would suggest you check out Zoho.com. Zoho is very similar in functionality to Google Docs but just comes with a more full featured word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.

In addition to offering full functional clones of Excel, Word and Powerpoint – Zoho offers a variety of online tools making it probably the most overall complete package in terms of providing a full suite of productivity tools online.

Zoho is a free service for individual use – Interestingly it has been rumored that Google is considering buying Zoho as a way of upgrading its current services.

With the eminent release of Office 2010 online – Zoho might find itself lost among the major players.  Still will an obvious technological advantage over Google Docs I would not be surprised to see the Zoho logo become a large G for Google.  (Easy way to catch up if Microsoft Online System is better)

Here is a screen shot of Zoho loaded running its Writer Application.  Notice the tabs across the tab – much better set of editing and formatting features than Google Docs.

The other day I received and email about a broken intercom system at Southwest Elementary.  I was curious about this system because in the email was a picture of the system which made it appear to be an old early pentium or perhaps 486 based PC.

As you can see from the photo the device is clearly in a PC chasis but is it a PC?

On site taking a closer look it appears that the system is somewhat of a hybrid.  It uses a standard PC power supply although BIOS is customized to run through on board modules and the program is run by ROM chips attached to a circuit board powered by a molex connector instead of a traditional hard drive.  Probably a good idea that this machine does not use a hard drive since with being powered on almost 24/7 this part would have failed much earlier.

Inside the machine are a series of peripheral expansion cards ISA slots – a quick look at the board confirms this machine to be running an386 or i486 with ISA expansion ports.  (I remember my first soundblaster card used the 8 bit ISA slot and my second computer 486 used the ISA 16 with a Soundblaster Pro 16.

On the site I could here a Pop sound from the power supply when it was attempted to power-on, on closer inspection I could see a blown capacitator inside.  Considering the machine has been running for years not stop without a break I am not surprised this old 250 watt power supply finally died.

Luckily I store lots and lots of parts at the High School and simply swapped out this part with a newer 350 Watt P4 power supply (obviously not using the P4 extension) and connected it to the motherboard and to one circuit board via a molex connector – and wha laaa the machine came to life and is working.

This is a picture of the old power supply – standard ATX 250 watt power supply.

Replaced it with a ATX 20 pin + 4 pin 350 watt supply (leaving the extra 4 pin not attached)

Here is shot of the back where the custom extension ISA peripherals attach at the back.  Not really much of a point to this entry other than I still find myself fascinated by the endless combination of PC components used in any number of devices.  Since my first computer was a 286 12 mhz machine with 512 kb of ram (yes half of 1 mb) I like it when I encounter legacy hardware that still works great.

Recently I came across a Lenov0 Y710 gaming version laptop with a broken keyboard. A quick look at the machine and I could see that this keyboard was held in place by 4 screws and a by some clips. Unlike other IBM thinkpad and Lenovo models this model(Y710) and the (Y510) do not have replacement keyboard parts available for purchase. The approved way to have this keyboard replaced is to send it to Lenova who will replace it for around 150-170$.

Looking at similar Lenovo models it turns out that although they don’t officially sell this replacement keyboard – another Lenovo keyboard is identical and works great.

To replace this keyboard look for a keyboard with a part number 39T7417.  Strangely if ask Lenovo they state that this keyboard is not compatible – when in reality it is identical and works great.

I found this part from laptopexperts.com and from buy.com http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=212000765&listingid=51020421

Order Details:
————————————————————————
Quantity: 1
Item: Laptop Keyboard
(39T7417)
Unit Price: $35.10
Total Price: $35.10
————————————————————————
sub total: $35.10
shipping: $12.24
————————————————————————
total: $47.34

As you can see from my order receipt that 47.34 looks a lot better than 150-170$ from Lenovo, plus you don’t have to ship anything in and do not have to wait 2 weeks.

Keyboard is a perfect match.