This thread is a free-for-all.
Please feel free to talk about anything you want just as long as it is related to computers in some way, shape, or form, be that shape 0-dimensional, 1-dimensional, 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, 4-dimensional, 5-dimensional, or even 11-dimensional.
I do this as an experiment to see how many different topics of conversation we can go through in one month. Please try to keep this thread near the top.
MOD - please lock this thread at 8:11pm MST (-7 UTC) on March 6th 2011.
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Solid state drives? Are they worth it? Should I toss out my old IDE/SATA platter drives now? It seems to me that hard drives are still the bottleneck of system today, as they were 10 years ago.
Discuss.
with for shopping
I was just told, that the new 'hybrid' drives are much faster then normal hard drives in most ways of use. They cost only abt double of the normal drive against 10x for the real SSD.
And apparently some of the ssd consume lot of power, more then the mechanical motors do.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
This seems to be completely contrary to what I have heard. What are hybrid drives though? They have platters and NAND flash? :S
How is it possible for an SSD with non-moving, non-mechanical parts to consume more power!
Next you will tell me that some LEDs consume more power than CFLs! 
Are you talking about the SSDs that use actual RAM? I could see how those could consume a lot of power.
from very own experience.
I had in my last job the order to develop led backlight for monochrome lcd to replace the clf and the hight voltage trafo.
After many experiments, selection of parts , the backlight was ok, but took exactly same power as the cfl and the leds had to get heat disspation surfaces.
Consulted all with the manufacturer of the white leds, they told me I did no mistake, all correct, this is simply the fact, period.
For same light and same life expectation, the led has advanatge that no high voltage inverters are needed, therefore less noise and other troubles.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
True, some SSDs (Kingston SSDNow) consume close to 5 watts, much more than some green drives, but green drives have been notoriously slow. Contrast that with the more efficient SSDs (Intel) that consume less than 0.2 watts and are faster than just about any hard drive made. You just have to know what you're buying.
Is it worth it? That's very much a judgment call. Last time I checked, SSDs ran about $1.80 a GB while traditional hard drives were under 15¢ a GB. I am really interested in solid state, but the price difference needs to come down to about 4:1 before I'd consider going SSD only.
That said, I would like to see much faster thumb drives (read that as faster on small files). I'd gladly pay $2 a GB for a 32 GB SSD in standard thumb drive format, especially if it was USB3 compatible. [It has to be energy efficient and cool running though; don't want a thumb drive that burns my fingers when I go to remove it.]
as far as i know the only SSD drives out there are SATA not PATA. i have not seen a PATA SSD larger than 1.8" and those cost more than a Server/workstation.
Dont throw your PATA drives out. you dont have a choice
other than geting a PCI (PCIe) Sata card
I was under the impression that you could buy SSDs that use a standard IDE connection. SATA connections would certainly make sense. Perhaps I'm mistaken.
beside those mentioned 1.8 models now there exist some, like buffalo
they are still very expensive
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
there are no PATA SSD drives larger than 1.8". (use PATA because IDE is no longer used.)
if you want a PATA SSD drive you will have to purchase a 1" to 2.5/3.5" depending on your needs. oh and thats Compact FLASH to PATA :). the largest sixe in 1" drives is 256GB last i checked online but those cost your soul and your firstborn's as well.
ask them , they have them , and I have seen some others as well
then also transcend, we have them here in webshop
http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/overview/0413070/IDE-SSD-Festplatten-25
http://www.computeruniverse.net/list.asp?groupid=30001381&home=false&pro...|10000934&menu=1
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
not in the US. :http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/CatList.asp?FldNo=21&LangNo=0&Func1...
What's the big deal about the physical size? As long as it fits in the case I can figure out a way to secure it.
It has instead turned into a discussion about hard drives. Also, I meant what I said about locking it after precisely one month. That's in about 3 days, 1 hour, and 25 minutes. I want this thread to be epic!
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
My use of Google indicates that I am insane.
turns into epic fail. D:
i have been lookin into geting a netbook.
my preferance is one that has a Dualcore HT capable processor and dedicated integrated graphics with Vram (example is the Nvidia ION and Next Gen Ion)
any recommendations.
so far i have been looking at the Asus eeepc 1015PN the ASUS eeepc 1201PN. i cant find any others.
I can't seem to find any other dual-core Ion netbooks. I don't think that the Ion platform has been a big success. Even with a better graphics chip, netbooks just aren't well suited to gaming. The keyboards are just too small. Also, powering a better video chip means lower battery life, which negates one of the main reasons for netbooks.
You might look into one of the ones with the new Athlon Neo X2 processor. While they don't seem to have dedicated graphics, the Radion chipset is supposed to have video capabilities close to the Ion.
I haven't tried either myself. My netbook is a two year old Acer with the old Atom N270. Not much for games, but it does still get 8-10 hours battery life. I can play older games like Unreal Tournament on it, but that uses about twice as much power as normal.
almost every laptop that i worked on that was not salvageable was an AMD powered laptop. i wont touch another AMD laptop with a 1000ft Cat5e cable. The Ion is much different than the radeion chipset as the ION has 16 CUDA core (making a nice portable wifi cracking system) and 512MB gddr3 Vram. thats why i am looking for an ion based netbook. i want CUDA!