My realtor sent me some computer specs this past week and asked for my opinion on it, since I get paid to keep up with this stuff these days and he doesn’t. I thought my critique of the system might help other people.
All posts tagged rpm
Is this a good computer for the money in 2013?
Posted by Dave Farquhar on March 27, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/03/is-this-a-good-computer-for-the-money-in-2013/
Yes, SSDs are “finally worth the money.”
Slashdot asked today if SSDs are “finally worth the money.” I’m wondering since when they haven’t been. I’ve been buying SSDs since 2008.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on September 17, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/09/yes-ssds-are-finally-worth-the-money/
Milestone: Enterprise SSDs are cheaper than enterprise HDDS
Partly due to flooding in Thailand pushing up disk prices, and no doubt partly due to the natural progression of new technologies driving down the prices of flash memory and related components, enterprise SSDs are now cheaper (at around $2 per GB) than enterprise 15K RPM HDDS (at around $3 per GB).
Posted by Dave Farquhar on November 15, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/11/milestone-enterprise-ssds-are-cheaper-than-enterprise-hdds/
How about hard drives that vary their speed based on workload?
Facebook wants hard drives that slow down when the data they hold isn’t in high demand. They estimate that slowing a drive from 7200 RPM down to 3600 RPM could cut its power usage from 7W to 3W. We already do something like this with other hardware. Why not with hard drives?
Posted by Dave Farquhar on August 21, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/08/how-about-hard-drives-that-vary-their-speed-based-on-workload/
Tom’s Hardware asks: Is an SSD the best upgrade for a slightly old PC?
Not surprisingly, they find the answer is yes. Specifically, that a PC equipped with an SSD gets about a 30% across-the-board performance increase. I don’t agree with everything they say in the conclusion, namely, that it’s pointless to put an SSD in a netbook. Indeed, when you put an SSD in a netbook, you get [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on August 11, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/08/toms-hardware-asks-is-an-ssd-the-best-upgrade-for-a-slightly-old-pc/
Upgrade and repair diary: IBM Thinkpad T30
I picked up an IBM Thinkpad T30 this week. People ask me occasionally to keep an eye out for an inexpensive used laptop, and Thinkpads from 2005 or earlier are a good choice because they’re generally well built, easy to find, and most importantly, parts and information for them are plentiful if anything goes wrong. [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on March 20, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/03/upgrade-and-repair-diary-ibm-thinkpad-t30/
SSDs and pricing
Mainstream SSDs cost around $2 per GB to buy right now. I was curious, so I decided to try to relate historical SSD pricing to the historical pricing of conventional hard drives. It didn’t take long for me to find a correlation.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on March 10, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/03/ssds-and-pricing/
Ways to speed up an aging laptop
Yesterday Lifehacker did a feature on laptop tweaks and upgrades, that basically came down to reinstalling the OS, adding memory, and upgrading to an SSD. All of those are good things to do of course, but there’s more you can do. I posted a response there; I’ll elaborate a bit here, where I have more [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on January 8, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/01/ways-to-speed-up-an-aging-laptop/
Are Black Friday computers a good deal?
Black Friday is going to be here before we know it. And historically, that’s been a good day to snag a deal on consumer electronics. But does that hold for computers? I’ve studied many Black Friday computers–I have two Black Friday specials from years’ past sitting in the basement as I write–and I have to [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on November 14, 2010
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2010/11/are-black-friday-computers-a-good-deal/
It’s been 15 years, and computer stores haven’t changed much
In the early 1990s, I learned how to fix computers because I got tired of long waits and shoddy repairs from computer stores. Last month I took a friend to go buy a computer. I didn’t want her to get stuck with retail junk, so I took her to a computer store that I knew [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on November 3, 2010
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2010/11/its-been-15-years-and-computer-stores-havent-changed-much/