Lookin Good
LooKInMyPC won’t fix your PC the next time it throws a wobbly, but it might make it easier for you, or someone who knows their way around computers, to track down the fault. When called into action it produces a detailed system profile and diagnostic report about all of the hardware, running services, drivers, updates, startup programs, networks, Internet connections, event logs and a zillion other things about your PC that could prove useful. Save the report when the PC is behaving itself and if things do go awry and help isn’t at hand you can email the report to a knowledgeable friend or tech. You don’t even have to install it on your PC after you’ve downloaded the program you get the option to install it on your hard drive, or on a removable drive or UDB memory stick. Hopefully you’ll never need it (some hope…) but if you do, it’s ready to help.
Display Your Disks
For most Windows PC users the only insight into what they have on what’s stored on their hard drive is clunky old Windows Explorer. True, it tells you how much space a file or folder occupies, but what you really need is the big picture, a way of telling, at a glance, which files are taking up the space, and how much you have left. I’ve recommended a number of graphical disc usage utilities over the years but this one, called OverDIsk is arguably the best looking. Key features include a good assortment of disc and file statistics as you hover your mouse, you can drill down into any folder and sub-folder by clicking on it and the window is magically resizable It’s still in beta form and the author admits there’s a couple of bugs that needs sorting but they appear to be a very low level and it performed flawlessly on my test PCs but as usual, you download and this program entirely at your own risk
Soft Cell Netbook
There’s no denying netbooks have become hugely popular and they are an essential travelling companion, but like all laptops, large and small, they have one big drawback. Somehow they always run out of power at the most inconvenient moment. That won’t be a problem with this new one from Norhtec? The Geko Edubook looks like just another 8.9-inch cheapie, and the starting price is competitive, the baseline model will be a touch under £170, but the big bonus feature is that it doesn’t use a proprietary rechargeable battery pack. Instead it uses a set of 8 standard AA cells. It will run for up to 4 hours on NiMh rechargeables, and if you get caught short all you have to do is pop into the nearest shop and drop in some Duracells and it’s good to go for another 6 hours, thanks to the very low power consumption (there’s no fan and it uses an LED backlight). It even has it’s own built-in charger so there’s no need to lug a mains adaptor around with you either. The rest of the spec is fairly routine. It has a 1Ghz processor, it comes with 256, 512 or 1Gb of RAM and there’s a choice of standard hard drive or SD flash storage. Needless to say it supports Windows XP or stick with the pre-installed Ubuntu Linux operating system. They’re taking orders now for US delivery, unfortunately there’s no word on the European release just yet.
GDrive Coming Soon?
Rumours of the fabled GDrive have been circulating for at least the last three years but just recently there seems to be a marked increase in chatter, with several normally reliable pundits predicting an announcement this year, so let’s add to the buzz.
But what it is it? We’ll, if you haven’t already worked it out, the GDrive is a multi-gigabyte online storage facility provided by Google. It’s not a new idea and several companies already offer such a service, but for a fee, and that’s the key difference. Everyone expects GDrive capacity to be free, and there would be plenty of it, possibly enough to match the kind of hard drive capacities we’re used to on desktop PCs. If that happens something magical and a bit scary could occur. Read more
Wooden you know it
I have lost count of the number of wood-cased PCs I’ve seen over the years, one or two even made it into production, so it’s not exactly a new idea, but the spin Asus have put on its new Bamboo Series notebook is quite novel. It says it ‘redefines green computing’, exactly what that means is a bit of a mystery, but Asus is trumping its green credentials, claiming that the machine’s Super Hybrid Engine technology extends battery life by between 35 and 70% — compared with similar notebooks. The bamboo capping and panels have a tensile strength that rivals some metals and it grows really quickly, so it’s easily sustainable material. Read more
Fit For Purpose?
fitpc
What’s all this then? At first glance it looks like it might be some sort of wireless gadget but believe it or not it is a complete PC, and no, that’s not a giant key. It’s called Fit-PC Slim and the whole thing measures just 10 x 11 x 3cm, which isn’t much larger than a pack of 20 cigarettes. Inside the box they have managed to squeeze an AMD Geode CPU running at 500MHz, there’s 512Mb RAM, a 60GB hard drive, Wi-FI and audio adaptors plus all the usual inputs and outputs. It comes pre-loaded with Linux or XP; there’s no fan, so it’s completely silent and all it needs to run is a simple 12-volt power supply. Amazing stuff, though you might now be asking why, and I have to say that I have no easy answers, but for someone out there it’s just what they’ve been waiting for!
Seeker and Ye Shall Find
Have you ever lost a file or forgotten where you’ve put it on your hard drive? Of course you have, we’ve all done it, and if you’re lucky you may even have found it by searching through folders, or using the Windows Search facility. The one in Vista is actually quite good, but even that won’t be able help you if you can’t remember what the file was called.
Here’s something else to try, it’s called Seeker and in addition to searching for files by all or part of the name, it also looks inside files, for keywords or phrases. Again it’s something Windows can do, but this search tool is fast, very fast in fact, thanks to a powerful algorithm and an unusually flexible range of search criteria. Read more
Flash in the Can
Hard on the heels of Hitachi’s 5 terabyte hard drive (see below) comes more data storage news, this time the promise of cheaper and more reliable and longer lasting solid state drives (SSDs). Later this year Samsung are about to start production on 64 and 128Gb SSDs, with 256Gb drives in the pipeline later in the year. The Flash memory modules are mounted inside a metal case that’s the same size and can directly replace standard SATA II type hard drives in laptops, and since there are no moving parts they are not only faster than HDDS but they also out-perform and consume less power than rival first generation SSDs.
Hitachi Hard Drive with Half a Brain
I am so old that I can remember when PC’s boasted having one kilobyte (1kb) of storage and I can still recall placing a special order, and waiting weeks for 1Mb hard disc drive, which I was convinced that I could never fill in my lifetime… So it is with a world-weary shrug that I learn than Hitachi is planning to market a 5 terabyte hard drive, probably within the next 18 months.
What makes this particularly interesting, not to say a bit spooky, is that Hitachi’s Dr Yoshihiro Shiroishi reckons that just two of them will be need to match the storage capacity of the human brain, which he estimates around 10Gb. Frankly I find that hard to believe; a lifetime of memories in a mere 10Tb, when a 2–hour movie swallows up 5 gigabytes? There must be some pretty impressive compression involved… Read more
How Flash Memory Works
Flash memories are solid state electronic devices with random access memory capabilities used for fast digital information storage. They are used in a wide range of applications, such as storing BIOS routines in typical digital computers, as medium capacity hard drives for digital cameras or as memory cards for laptop computers and video consoles.
The technology used to manufacture flash memories is based on EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) chips, which consist of memory banks formed of storing cells disposed in a grid of columns and rows. A basic storing cell has two MOS-FET transistors at each intersection, and are separated by an oxide layer. The two transistors are known as the floating gate and the control gate. Read more
