Hardware Archive

NetBooks To Get Serious Performance Boost Next Year

Thom Holwerda 2008-12-19 Hardware 26 Comments

There might be a lot of companies stating that netbooks are just a fad, and that the whole thing will pass (Sony, Apple), but that isn't stopping several chip companies from putting serious effort into improving the performance of these small netbooks. NVIDIA, AMD, and VIA are all hard at work at improving several aspects of netbook computing.

Submitted by moleskine 2008-12-11 Hardware 39 Comments

There has been some concern among enthusiasts that the emerging netbook market is nothing but a fad - it's fun and interesting now, but it will die out soon enough. Intel and AMD sure seem to be very careful about the netbook market, but according to figures from DisplaySearch, the market for small notebooks has exploded over the course of a year.

Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer: the Biggest Flop in Computing

Thom Holwerda 2008-11-29 Hardware 27 Comments

El Reg has a write-up on the amazingly beautiful and hopelessly impractical Honeywell Kitchen Computer. We've covered this bizarre piece of computing history before on OSNews, in my list of the ten most beautiful computers. For those that have no idea what I'm talking about, read on for more details. Trust me, you want to know.

AMD Will Ignore Netbook Market, Intel in Doubts

Thom Holwerda 2008-11-28 Hardware 84 Comments

Netbooks are still all the rage these days, but according to Intel, this is going to change soon. The company has stated that they first thought that netbooks, who are almost exclusively powered by Intel chips, would be for emerging markets, but as it turns out, they are especially popular in Europe and North America. Intel claims that while these devices are "fine for an hour", they are not something for day to day use. And AMD? They are ignoring the market altogether.

Private Computer Museum Offers Glimpse Into the Past

Submitted by Ward D 2008-11-24 Hardware 22 Comments

The private computer museum of Max Burnet has every bit of computing nostalgia imaginable, ranging from the first UNIX PDP-7, a classic DEC PDP-8, the original IBM PC, a string of old Apple's including the Apple Lisa, a ~~Spectrum~~ Sinclair (doh!) ZX81, Bill Gates' personal favorite the MITS Altair 8800, a DEC VT100 terminal, and a range of IBM mainframe consoles from the 1960s and 1970s. If you have never seen what this old stuff looks like, this slideshow offers a snapshot of the past. And if you thought PCs became fashionable with the Apple iMac, then you haven't seen the lime green or powder blue consoles of some of DEC's machines from the 1970s.

EeePC Return Rate is Similar for Windows and Linux

amjith 2008-11-21 Hardware 54 Comments

Last month we covered an article titled, "MSI: Wind Doing Well, Linux Version Not So Much" which revealed that Linux MSI Wind netbooks saw a return rate upto four times higher than the Windows equivalent. But in a recent interview with the CEO of Asus he revealed that Linux and Window versions of Asus Eee PC have similar return rates. He also described the plans for 2009 and talked about some changes to come in the Operating System for the netbooks.

Guest post by Flatland_Spider 2008-11-21 Hardware 8 Comments

What's after electrical charges and electricity in computer storage? Lasers and excitons. Theorists from the John Hopkins University have drafted a theory that uses low-power lasers and crystalline insulators to store data. In the theory, lasers would excite electrons in a crystalline-like lattice in order to record data; the atoms would vibrate at a certain frequency to indicate the type of bit. A side effect of using lasers and insulators is reduced heat output. The heat is reduced because the atoms do not exchanging electrons as current computer components do. The EE Times has a more detailed write up as well as WebIndia, TopNews.in, Eureka Alert, and Small Times.

Nvidia Announces “Personal Supercomputer”

Submitted by caffeine deprived 2008-11-19 Hardware 19 Comments

Nvidia and partners are offering new "personal supercomputers" for under $10,000. Nvidia, working with several partners, has developed the Tesla Personal Supercomputer, powered by a graphics processing unit based on Nvidia's Cuda parallel computing architecture. Computers using the Tesla C1060 GPU processor will have 250 times the processing power of a typical PC workstation, enabling researchers to run complicated simulations, experiments and number crunching without sharing a supercomputing cluster.

USB 3.0 Is Ready to Go

Thom Holwerda 2008-11-17 Hardware 23 Comments

Unveiled on Monday by the USB Implementers Forum, the USB 3.0 spec can theoretically support data-transfer speeds of up to 4.8Gbps - 10 times the speed provided by USB 2.0. The new standard, also known as SuperSpeed USB, is also expected to be more power-efficient than its predecessor. "SuperSpeed USB is the next advancement in ubiquitous technology," Jeff Ravencraft, the president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that promotes USB technology, said in a statement on Monday. "Today's consumers are using rich media and large digital files that need to be easily and quickly transferred from PCs to devices and vice versa. SuperSpeed USB meets the needs of everyone, from the tech-savvy executive to the average home user."

SanDisk Claims Hundredfold Speed Boost for Flash

Submitted by Gregory 2008-11-06 Hardware 32 Comments

It's no secret that SSDs suffer from performance penalties when it comes to small random writes. Even though more modern SSD try to solve some of these issues hardware-wise, software can also play a major role. Instead of resorting to things like delaying all writes until shutdown and storing them in RAM, SanDisk claims it has a better option. At WinHEC yesterday, the company introduced its Extreme FFS, which it claims will improve write performance on SSDs by a factor of 100.

Guest post by Flatland_Spider 2008-10-31 Hardware No Comments

Real World Technologies has posted a code level dissection of the Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 and an AMD Athlon FX-62. While rather dated, the two processors were state of the art in 2006, the article does an excellent job of detailing why the processors behave the way they do. Many publications will say, "Game X runs better on processor Z, so processor Z wins", but that does not tell the reader why. This Real World Technologies article, on the other hand, explains why. For instance, they used the game Prey to test the CPUs and found "Prey tends to favor more complex x86 instructions that likely either use 3 inputs, or have 2 output."

Review: Acer Aspire One

Eugenia Loli 2008-10-31 Hardware 29 Comments

Geeks.com, known for their cheap laptops, sent us the Acer Aspire One for a review. Thom wrote a review of the popular laptop recently, but here's my take on it. Update: After this review went up, and within two hours, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 (time is 4:10 AM here, couldn't sleep until I had Ubuntu in there). Using this very nice tutorial, I have everything up and running.

ARM To Enter Netbook Market

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-23 Hardware 43 Comments

Netbooks use various types of processors, but most of them are built around Intel's Atom processor and architecture. There are more exotic options, such as the Chinese Longsoon processor, but those are quite rare and hard to come by - and certainly not as powerful. Apparently, another contender is preparing to enter the netbook processor market. Say hello to ARM.

Embedded Device Makers Turn Away from Linux

David Adams 2008-10-07 Hardware 21 Comments

An EE Times straw poll of embedded device makers in Europe found that while last year 50% said they planned to use Linux, that number had dropped to 33%. 26% said they planned to use a commercial OS, up from 15% a year ago.

MSI: Wind Doing Well, Linux Version Not So Much

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-05 Hardware 105 Comments

The netbook craze is currently in full swing, with these small laptops being advertised everywhere (at least here in The Netherlands); in fact, you can already get netbooks with 3G from the mobile phone carriers at severely reduced prices (but with a one or two year contract, of course). Netbooks are also welcomed by the Linux community as the break they've been waiting for: many netbooks are available with Linux pre-installed. One of the more successful (and powerful) netbooks out there is MSI's Wind, which is also sold under different brand and model names by other companies. In an interview with LaptopMag, MSI's Director of US Sales Andy Tung, however, has some bad news for those that believe the netbook will be the foot in the door that the Linux desktop has been waiting for.

Review: Asus Eee PC 4G 701

Eugenia Loli 2008-09-16 Hardware 19 Comments

Our friends at Geeks.com, known for their cheap laptops offers, sent in one of the most popular netbooks around: the Asus Eee PC. The model is the 701 4G, with 512 MB RAM, and Windows XP in it. Read through for a review of the product.

Netbooks and Mini-Laptops Buyer’s Guide

Thom Holwerda 2008-09-12 Hardware 41 Comments

As some of you may have noticed, I'm slightly obsessed with my Aspire One netbook, and actually, with netbooks in general. They are great little devices, more powerful than you'd give them credit for upon first encounter. And, but that might just be me, netbooks are what laptops should have been from day one: truly portable. El Reg has put together a buyer's guide for today's netbooks, and while the guide is generally spot-on with its assessments, it does present some odd choices here and there. Read on for some of my own thoughts grown out of experience.

8 Cores, 64 Bits, Building a Better Workstation

David Adams 2008-09-10 Hardware 48 Comments

It this post Geek.com offers a walkthrough of the building of a powerful, yet affordable workstation. Each of the parts was carefully chosen and the build was extensively detailed. There were some problems, but those were worked around and the end result was an impressive 64-bit workhorse.

China’s Godson 3 Processor To Take on Intel, AMD

Thom Holwerda 2008-09-09 Hardware 62 Comments

When China launched its first microprocessor, the Godson 1 in 2002, it wasn't much of a competitor to what Intel and AMD had to offer. The 64bit Godson 2, released in 2005, still didn't worry the Western chip makers, but the chip did start to pop up here and there outside of China. Expect to see a lot more of them in the coming years, as the Godson 3 promises to be a chip that can compete head on with the big ones: quad-core, eight core version in the pipeline, and 200 extra instructions aiding in x86 compatibility.

Review: Eee Box

Thom Holwerda 2008-09-08 Hardware 6 Comments

The Eee Box is the latest addition to the Eee family, and this article takes a closer look at setting up and using the Eee Box. "Unless you've had your head in the sand for the past several months, you've probably heard of Asus' line of Eee PC laptops - low-cost, ultra-portable laptops with solid-state hard disk drives. Over the past several months, the Eee PC has evolved. Newer laptop models come with Linux as well as Windows XP Home, standard hard disk drives, and even the new Intel Atom processor. Now, we have a desktop version of the Eee PC - the Eee Box. Here, I will detail the unpacking and initial setup of an Eee Box unit using text and images."