Computers

About six months ago I purchased a new desktop.  I wanted Vista for DX10 and after considering a few performance issues, I decided that 64-bit would be a wise choice.  Why 64-bit?  It was so that I could max out the RAM.  The theoretical maximum for a 32-bit machine is 4GB, but Windows will only make use of 3GB of that.  64-Bit is limited only by the slots on your motherboard. Flash forward to five months later and I was still running it off the 2GB of RAM that it came with.  Yesterday, after much procrastination, I went to the store and picked up a 2GB pack for about $60. I considered going for 6GB, but then talked myself down to 4GB; it turned out to be plenty..

The hardest part about installing the RAM was figuring out how to get my case open. I have a wide full tower case that gives plenty of room to work on the system.  Once I got the case open, it was a twenty second operation to put the fresh RAM into my machine.  I actually expended less energy on this upgrade than I did swapping DVI cords for my monitor.

Firing up my machine, I did not notice too many changes.  Boot times did not alter drastically; not that I had expected them too.  The improvements came when programs loaded.  I typically have a lot of stuff open.  I usually have at least two instances of Firefox, sometimes running upwards of ten tabs in each.  Add to that, MS Word, Photoshop, Excel and Acrobat and yet get a fairly heavy system environment.  My machine could handle the load on 2GB, but it would move like molasses under the strain.  Now, I am able to do all that and create a disk image at the same time.  Flicking between applications is instantaneous; the machine really came to life.

For noobie system builders and those that have never tried, I will put a How To Install RAM post up this evening or tomorrow.

Right, before you AMD fanboys go all loco on me, hear me out. The fact is that the top of the line Intel offerings outperform the top of the line AMD offerings in every way. I would love to see AMD trump Intel and it is good to see them take a new direction with the Phenom X3.

So what is it that sets the Phenom X3 apart from Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad range? The Phenom X3 is a three core processor; however, there is a substantial difference in the architectures of AMD's model and those of Intel. The difference is that while Intel's multi-core chips are essentially four processing cores bound together, the Phenom X3 cores all run off the same piece of silicone. It has been billed as true multi-core processing and that is what it appears to be. AMD is claiming as much as a 30% performance improvement, over dual core chips operating at the same frequency.

Will the Phenom X3 live up to its expectations? AMD had better hope so, they have been hemorrhaging profits since 2006 and racked up an astonishing $3.38 Billion last year alone. If they can capture a piece of the performance market it will be a timely win. Intel has gone uncontested for far too long and CPU prices are fast becoming a major headache.

Source: Reuters

The more devices that you have the bigger the problem of keeping everything in sync can become. SugarSync is a web-based service that aims to change all of that.  It is PC and Mac compatible and will allow you to share files between as many systems as you want.  It takes the work out of synchronization.  You do not need to have all of your systems online in order for it to work.  It would seem that the documents, images and other files that you sync are uploaded to the SugarSync server, from where they are sent out to the other systems that you own.  It is a common sense approach; sort of like Foxmarks for files.

SugarSync also brings your mobile devices into line; not all are equal in this department.  Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices can handle whatever you throw at them, but the iPhone will only display pictures.  According to the review in USA Today, the Mac software is presently in Alpha stage, but will be advancing to Beta shortly.  It is apparently a little buggy but gets the job done.

Quite obviously, services like this are not free.  The cost of your service will depend on your data synching needs:

"A basic subscription gives you 10 gigabytes of online storage for $5 a
month or $50 a year. A 30-GB plan costs $10 a month or $100 a year. The
top-tier 250-GB plan costs $50 a month and $500 a year. SugarSync
includes a 45-day free trial. First year prices are half off for
Sharpcast Photos subscribers and SugarSync beta testers."

As we get more devices and our mobile devices become more capable, synchronization is going to become somewhat closer to a necessity than a convenience.

The Asus G70 is essentially a scaled down version of what ASUS promised us quite a while ago. We were initially promised up to 8GB of RAM, now we get 4GB, which is more than enough for most gaming scenarios that you are likely to encounter in this day and age. It rocks a pair of GeForce 8800M cards in SLI. The standard configuration will give you 400GB of storage. Sound is supplied by Altec Lansing who have managed to build in stereo speakers and a subwoofer.

I am not quite ready to jump on this whole gaming notebook bandwagon. All of the components that are jammed into them make them extremely heavy and you can forget about battery time. I understand that some people view them as desktop replacements, but I have to say, I like having a desktop. Desktops are easy to tinker with yourself, whereas with laptops things become a lot more complicated. Dropping the max down to 4GB of RAM is not really an issue for today's applications. It is a beast of a notebook, but I have to say it is not for me.

Sources: SlashGear, PC Launches