NAS Vs. File Server
Since storage is 1p for 4GB (at time of writing on a 1TB drive) there is really no reason not to have a central storage solution. Even if you only have one computer its still very useful because you may have a PS3, 360 or even a blu ray player that can read file servers. But the question is do you build/buy a machine that can handle all your file sharing needs and many more or do you buy a network attached storage device?
Well 3 years ago you would have laughed off such an idea and had said network attached storage (NAS) since they were cheaper and used less power than a traditional server.
Now its role reversal a U1 NAS box can now cost about 3 times as much as a cheap U1 windows server (with OS). now since NAS boxes can be evil to set up and maintain, mainly because they use a very cut down version of Linux/Unix so when something goes wrong it normally means digging through Google search results for a few days until you find a solution.
So in an rack environment a server wins without question since you can actually have control over it remotely without headaches (as long as you install a full OS on it).
But how about in a small business or home environment, The reason I’m lumping these together is because to be honest they have very similar requirements these days, apart from a small business will do backups more often (in real life this is never the case).
Now this is where it gets a bit more complicated. If you are sensible about this you can avoid massive headaches and punishment to your bank balance. ok so a cheap single bay NAS box will set you back about £30 – £100 (though £50 is about right), this are great though they lack raid and other features from the dual or quad disk boxes (Though for a cheap solution go for it).
Now the Quad boxes are a total waste of money you’ll pay over £250 for once on these (with no disks). These are only useful when up time is critical since you can have a hot swap. But from experience you spend more time restarting Netgear readyNAS drives than actually using them (not used any other 4 bay NAS).
For this just get a server and save yourself the headaches and wasted days. When you think about it you can get a cheap motherboard with RAID that support 8 disks, a CPU, PSU case and RAM for the same price as these.
This just leaves the 2 Bay NAS boxes, this is a strange area of the market since they cost between £50 – £150 and the cheapest ones aren’t generic no brands.
D-Link and netgear have a good foothold here but the major difference is the D-link models are much more user friendly (really it shocked me to) and you don’t need to restart them once a week like the netgears (also netgears have a bad habit of overheating). In netgears defence they offer better more expensive models and they also run much more quietly.
If you are wondering about technical support and advanced features like OS plugins then netgear wins, but there support is still horrible (but D-link is next to none)
For £60 you can get a DNS-320 (pictured above) which is a bargain and with features like one touch backup and print server it will suit a home or small business no problem.
This only leaves small business servers for 2 disk drives. This is a very fast developing part of the market that used to be highly dominated by VIA. In recent years the Intel atom has come onto the scene bringing the price down rapidly. the D510MO (pictured below) is only £50 and offers a 1.5 Dual core HT chip passive cooling, 2 SATA and 8 USB (it only lacks raid).
So there are viable solutions in the small business/home data storage server department but they will set you back about £200. So for this sector NAS still wins.
Conclusion
Its rather simple really NAS boxes are still a cost effective way or getting simple file servers up and running quickly (no permission per user etc. etc.). But when it comes to more complex setups such as in a rack or 4 Bay NAS boxes for small/medium business A server is more productive and in the long run can be a lot cheaper (due to lost time dealing with the NAS boxes mini OS).
For Joe Bloggs in the home the NAS box still wins for the simple things in life regarding media/file sharing and backups mainly because of the cost of home NAS boxes. Though for the people out there who need more than just a file share a nice ITX setup will be the best choice by far (shame about the cost though).
Netbook Confusion 2
Well I looked some more and I found 2 that were almost perfect apart from the first one was battery life and the second was price and battery life.
Samsung X120
Asus Eee PC VX6
http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=30dqaE10a0LUo9XJ
But now I’ve given up I surrender it doesn’t look like we are getting any of the nice netbooks the states have had since this time last year any time soon so I’m gonna bite the bullet and loose 168 pixels 
so its either
Samsung NF210
Samsung N150
in terms of number there both pretty much the same apart from a few minor details (thought the NF210 is £60 more!)
Though another very good netbook (which I’m gonna look at again) is the
Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3s
its 760p but the problem is its almost impossible to find a 6 cell model (4 cell is £200 on amazon) which means its battery life it about 5 hours plus its a single core. But for the extra pixels it might be worth it. bah I’m confused again
Netbook Confusion
This shouldn’t be this hard…
First off my problem was I needed a portable computer solution so I spent a long time (3 months) weighing up the pros and cons of each.
my needs are
- to be able to write code easily on the go with the possibility later to have 3G mobile internet for emergency work when ever and where ever I am.
- watch video (HD if possible)
- long battery life (7 real hours+)
- short charge time
- small form factor 11.6 screen max
- matte screen (unless I opt for a touch screen device)
- sub £400 price tag (a little flexible here)
Tablets
now I was first I didn’t even consider a tablet since the amazing iPad step backwards in technology but then the Zoostorm SL8 caught my eye (plus it was £410 on ebuyer)
Now first off the think looked really sexy with its 11.6" "HD" multi touch screen, HDMI, long battery life, 32GB SDD and for a shockingly low price when you think about it. But it would of been nothing more than a pointless toy since it lacked a keyboard and touchpad.
Though I could of easily used it with an external keyboard and mouse and it would of worked easily as a horizontal 3rd monitor for work but alas ebuyer sold out (no surprise), plus It didn’t really fit my "portable" computing solution package.
Multi Touch note/netbooks
now this would be the ultimate package for me a nice multi touch (swivel of course) netbook/notebook. first off the reason why the netbooks ones are bad.
well for one there is only really two of them first being the Eee PC T101MT and the second being the new Dell Inspiron Duo Sparta.
first up the Eee PC T101MT the major issue with this one is that it uses the dated GMA 3150 graphical chipset which only output at 1024 x 600 (and not much better externally). other issues are is uses an N450 atom CPU 1.66Ghz, which in turn means DDR2 is its limit. Then you look at the price £445 and yea it just feels very expensive.
Next up was dells lovely looking but strangely named Duo Sparta, this is priced just below the Eee PC T101MT. Now this baby is loaded to the teeth with its N550 dual core and its 1366 x 768 screen (still 10.1 using the dated GMA 3150) and its multi touch "hybrid" screen (which I think would would better than a swivel, less things to go wrong). Along with Accelerometer and magnetometer (the later seems pointless). It also comes with 2GB DDR3 (for some reason clocked at 800Mhz).
Now this seems almost perfect at the first glace but it still has the GMA 3150 (just overclocked a little to get the extra oomph) but it failed at battery life. Dell states UPTO 4 hours battery life, which is shocking since Samsung use the same CPU and chipset and they state 13 hours (ok in real life it 8.5) but we all know they over state the battery life.
In the notebook field they are normally around the mid £600 mark and offer a nice balance of speed and battery life along with 11.6" screen but they are very hard to locate any solid data on any products you can actually buy. the only one I could find that was kind of in stock was the Acer Aspire 1825PTZ on amazon.
i5 "budget" (SU series) cpu with 8 hours battery life, decent gpu and multi touch, shame its a tad bit expensive at £580) and 2 years old.
Netbooks
now this is an interesting market since they all use the same cpu’s and gpu’s across the board. Which is rather annoying since NVidia have some lovely mobile chips (ion and ion 2 ) designed for netbooks but not even managed to get a glance of one this side of the pond.
To make matters worse the N550 (dual core atom) only in a few models so its an N455 or leave it. Then if you do find one with a decent cpu and battery life the graphical side lets it down. Its damn annoying.
The Samsung N150 with the N550 CPU seemed to fit the bill perfectly (for my needs so no touchscreen) for a lovely price of £200 but the damn GMA 3150 gpu lets it down. Now if it had a 768 high screen instead of 600 I would be sold I wouldn’t even mind losing some battery life for it (battery life is 8.5 real hours) and paying some extra bucks but paying more money doesn’t seem to be able to get you a 768 high screen in the UK which is starting to get a little annoying.
Conclusion
None, I’m still as confused as when I started. There just doesn’t seem to be a notebook/netbook that fits my requirements. The Samsung N550 was the closest since it was the only one that came under the £400 price tag but it lacked the extra 168 pixels. its an annoying compromise to make I would rather drop down to a lower CPU for the sake of the GPU but that isn’t a real option.
iPhone 4: The bad bits I missed
well not so much… I’ve done even further reading into the “amazing” iPhone 4 and I’m really really not impressed.
I’ve even had a play with the iPhone OS4 sim on the mac.
I thought I’ll have a look at some basic stuff that I take for granted on my blackberry and they simply just aren’t there on the iPhone jackbroken or not.
Fair enough there has been a bag of improvements but they are still missing the basics.
Oh and we can’t forget you will need to by a rubber case for it if you want to make a phone call for more than 10 seconds (or any at all if your left handed). Anyway that’s not important
For example after 7pm on my phone I no longer receive notifications anything I deem work related so the device becomes “disconnected” from work during the evening and night.
full integration with camera and GPS with any app installed doe not exists with the iPhone in fact hardly any integration what so ever.
NO push email… regardless of what apple says. For one you need to use a “certain” email address or have a mobile me account i mean WTF why should I have to pay for a service like push!?.
nothing comparable to BIS or BBM or even the basic message centre…
no “bedside mode”
no decent calendar without the use of mobile me
CANNOT set custom ringtones per email address/ multiple calendar events or custom LED notification
still not bluetooth transfers
no shortcuts
and still horrible email
still no integration or very basic integration for IM or social networking sites.
and multitasking only works with some apps >_<
I think I could go on but that sums up enough I think.
I’m a little ashamed of myself I got sucked into the Apple bullshit hype regarding the amazing no OS4 when the only decent “advanced” thing is the new screen, which in all fairness is i think about 30% greater than the BB atm (200dpi) but its the same as most other new phones on the market.
oh and a final note SECURITY! and the lack of it on the iPhone
also the complete lack of accessibility options. This doesn’t affect me but the BB has god damn hearing aid support as well as a good UI for scaling the iPhone does not.
So all in all the iPhone has a GPU and apps… which is cool but I don’t think I can lose what I have now and suffer the Apples laws of hardware use just for that sake of a few games…
If this multitasking pays off and they open up the API for real integration options and not to mention add REAL push support as well as a decent Email client then i might look into it.
Conclusion
I have cancelled my iPhone 4 order just because because the thought of using it is stressing me out (also it means I’ll have to install bloatware aka iTunes). I’ll wait for OS 5 to see if Apple will attempt to dent the blackberry market rather than just take users from none smart phone backgrounds (though give it another 18 months and the install base should be larger than RIMS).
Also Apple are total retards at times. they tell you to hold it differently but just look they can’t do it either.
Images from
Need for speed facing its final days
well looks like EA has come to there senses and might be dropping Need for speed studio Black Box now its a major shame another studio is going to suffer cuts but at the end of the day if its stop these awful Need for speed games then i’m up for it, and to be honest will you miss them considering there steady trend of getting worse and worse each time considering they almost turned the game into driver this time what’s next another GTA clone…
EA please do us all a favour and drop them or atleast drop need for speed and or even better move the studio on to a worth while project.
the only problem I have with this is if EA are dropping this Chav fest of a game which in all fairness is a good seller this will probably mean more games being rushed out the door so basically more expensive shovel wave like mirrors edge. ok harsh comment on mirrors edge but strip back the graphics and the original idea and that what EA did to it.
oh also in other news Zavvi have gone a dropped the price of the 360 to £99.99 now after the drop they did on the PS3 last Friday I honestly didn’t expect the 360 to drop as well.
one last purchase
today I will be purchasing the over powered Crysis mainly because I want to see if the new rig can handle it well its better handle it. well it can’t be as bad as my last attempt
its kind of funny i”m not really that interesting in the game but its kind of like the fry cry and doom 3 of yesteryear if your pc can run it then its top notch if not its still top notch just not amazing.
the mad thing is I can run every other game as top spec now it just seems more cost effective to buy a new rig rather than upgrading the ram in the old one.
I do hope its not to expensive
Always do research
well that was stupid i’ve managed to get an undowngradable PSP and its Square enix’s fault for releasing FF tactics damn them… I wish i had waited now for M33 (basically Dark_Alex) to release the custom firmware I wouldn’t be sitting here hunting for a cheap battery…
ok there is a way to downgrade back to the very nice 1.5 version then back to the 3.90M33 but it requires a hard mod of my battery basically i just need to disconnect the battery from battery memory sounds simple… but I still don’t get it what did they changed in the firmware so that the battery memory loads no matter what but hey a pair of wire cutter will soon sort that out…
I still think its funny that sony put software onto a battery…
but nows the fun bit finding a battery to replace my hardmodded one because once i snip that it will be forever a pandora battery… well I suppose I i could snip it then bend it then solder it back on…?
well at the very least i haven’t got to go on the hunt for a battery that i can turn into a pandora battery but even thats not that bad anymore thanks to Datel they have either the TOOL version or a HOT WIRE version i have no idea what the difference is but i have the feeling that the HOT WIRE version is just a pandora battery nothing else, which sucks £30 for a “battery” that doesn’t work
oh a word of warning to www.orderoftheflame.co.uk the PSP-2007 has issues (the a model number not year) so be warned if you end up with one. oh and for the silms you will need to make a hard modded battery i’ll let you use mine considered the “new” sony batteries don’t work
Throttle this!
ok I’m now 100% positive of what causes my PC to throttle itself… its my phone i know it sound totally far fetched but now that I think about it the problem has been going on for about as long as i’ve had this phone… but its been hard to test because it only screws up if I’m receiving a call or a message and it must be within 1m of the PC…
now the test i’ve run have been the standard stress tests and i’ve been F@H folding for the last week as well as playing music from my external HDD at the same time… and nothings happened until someone calls me or sends me a text the second that happens its spikes to 100% and then gets stuck at 40%… the same thing happened when folding was on and off (just didn’t see the throttle on the task manager but everything pretty much locks up)
it also does it when i’m not receiving a call but you know when you O2 just connects to your phone (like once every 3 hours) it does it then… so atleast that’s solved so if i keep my phone well away from the computer there shouldn’t be a problem right?…
well lets just see.
oh and update on my knee the swellings gone but it still feels very tight and soar but atleast it on the mend
Nokia: Bend em shake em
Ok as you may or not already know Nokia is one of those companies who aren’t afraid of a little off the wall research as the nokia 888 in 2005/6 showed us. but now they have moved one from the ugly looking nokia 888 to another made concept the Nokia Morph.
this ugly green thing is well nothing short of amazing if its actually possible to make make a release in 7 year (some how I don’t think so).
Watch the video (64 MB) and you can see what nokia is aiming for
Its certainly a feasible product if the research was put into it but I don’t think it will be within anyone price range from another 15 years atleast.
Still a bit of a pipe dream though but technology like this could really change the way the world functions. they’ve certainly come along way in the last 3 years and when you think about moore’s law 7 years isn’t that mad really… certainly one to watch
Crysis: Ouch
ouch just ran the Crysis demo with my system overclocked to the brink of stability and I still only get 1024 by 768 res and everything on low and it runs at between 20-25 frames a second I would dread to think what it would be like on the min spec PC.
if you load that up full you can see how bad it looks at low res this game was made to be played at high res with DX10 nothing else which is fair enough but it can’t be good for sales right? it will be interesting to see what the sales figures are for this game after next week.
and for the record here was the spec when I ran this thing
CPU: Athlon 3500+ @ 2.64 Ghz
RAM: GEIL Dual Channel DDR400 1GB @ 210 Mhz
Graphics: Geforce 7600GT 256MB @732Mhz GPU@ 683Mhz