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Archive for the ‘Computers’ Category

Random Tech: Like an SSD but without the price tag

Aug 7th
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: , ,
1 comment


Momentus XT Hybrid Drive

Momentus XT Hybrid Drive

I don’t normally do hardware reviews, but I decided that this was worth while.  I recently purchased a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Drive, not the best named piece of hardware but it does the job.

The Momentus XT, as the name implies,  is a hybrid hard disk drive. It combines a standard hard drive with some NAND flash memory, not that you can tell once you are booted into your Operating System.  The Momentus XT comes in three flavours 250GB, 320GB and 500GB.  Each flavour includes 4GB of NAND flash memory, which is used to hold all your most regularly used files.

4GB may not sound like a lot of space, but when it’s only being used to store the files which the OS uses the most it’s more than enough. In the case of Windows, it stores some of the page file and lots of DLLs (especialy the .NET ones!).  So my main problem, the speed at which Visual Studio worked, was solved just by caching the .NET frameworks!

One of the plus points of the HDD looking after the Flash storage within firmware, is that this drive will work on any machine that supports SATA! There are no special drivers so it will work with Windows, Linux, etc etc.

Now down to the numbers,  over a standard Laptop drive running at 5400 RPM I get around an 18% performance increase.  Where as an SSD would give me around a 20% increase, but for an extra £250 (for the most basic 250GB SSD)!!

My boot time is now around a minute, and resume from hibernate is a matter of seconds.   The proof that this drive gives a speed increase is my task bar on a clean boot. Normally you see Windows Boot, and then your Virus Scanner loads, followed by the firewall and slowly the rest of the tray icons. With the Momentus XT drive, the all load at once, and the system is booted as soon as you can see the desktop!!

All in all, the Seagate Momentus XT drive gave a massive performance increase to my Dell XPS M1530, and it only cost me £79 (delivered!) from www.scan.co.uk. Rather than £100s of pounds for the same size SSD.

For more info about the Momentus XT range take a look at Seagate’s Momentus XT Range.

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Random Tech: Synergy for Ubuntu and Windows 7

Jul 2nd
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: , , ,
No comments

How many of us have got more than one computer on our desks? The answer is almost certainly a lot of us!  I have just set up my office in my new apartment (I moved on Monday!), and I decided that I didnt need to have to two keyboards and mice.

I have used synergy before, and have decided to use it again.  For those that have not seen synergy before, it is akin to a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse sharing hardware) but is purely software.  I can share a keyboard and mouse with any other machines on my network, they don’t even need to be in the same room (although what use that would be I don’t know!).  The best bit is that synergy is free, and runs on Linux, Windows and Mac, and takes moments to set up.

I have a Windows 7 laptop and an Ubuntu 10.04 desktop, synergy runs as a server on the laptop allowing the desktop to connect to it.  Installing Synergy on the desktop is easy, just download the installer from the Synergy website, as for Ubuntu just type:

sudo apt-get install synergy quicksynergy

Once installed you set up the server (in my case on the Windows machine) with a few simple clicks:

Synergy Screenshots

Synergy Screenshots

All you have to do is add the “screens” aka machines to the top list (Badwolf is my laptop, Paladon is my desktop : guess the naming convention!), then tell Synergy where the screens are in the links pane. You can get posh and set up the vertical positioning of the screens, e.g. 50% of the left of one is to the right of another, but I don’t see the need unless you have several machines.  This screen is accessed via the “Configure” button on the right hand screen shot.  Once set up click “Start”.

Read the rest of this entry »

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TTPMO: Virgin Broadband are all asses

Jun 29th
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: , ,
1 comment

Well I’m writing this from the wordpress for iPhone application, as I currently do not have Internet access (apart from GPRS). I moved into a new house yesterday, with my lovely girlfriend Emma.

Last week I contacted Virgin Broadband’s “Home Movers Team” to inform that I was about to move house. I spoke to a very kind lady called Katherine l, who told me hat she would arrange for my service to be cut off from my old property in the morning and it to be connected in the afternoon. She also found that the previous tenants had not ended their contract, so she would get that sorted and call me if there were any problems. Simple aye?? Unfortunately not so.

Yesterday early afternoon I called Virgin’s “Quick Activation” team to get everything going. It seams I was with wrong team, so the put me through to Customer Support who spoke to me q while and put me back again.

Apparently Katherine never did anything, my service was still connected to my old flat, and the previous tenants service had no been removed. So the “man from India” (no racial slight intended) told me he “would submit the form, and contact me most quickly when he had the response from the requested form he had sent just now”.

An hours worth of phone calls later and I am told that the property has no Virgin Service (so what did they waste my morning disconnecting) and they must send round an engineer. Regardless of the fact that I have already connected everything and just need them to “flick the switch”. So I get Internet on Wednesday, and intend to get at least a months refund on Thursday once I speak to their complaints department!!!

Sorry if this post rambled but it’s hard to type a good one via an iPhone!!

UPDATE: Virgin Media tweeted back at me!! They said,

@jamesakadamingo Really sorry about the problems James, moving house is stressful enough. Do get in touch if you need further help. ST

I will get in contact with them, and see what ST can do to stop me being angry!!

Oh and look it’s a virgin service point in my flat how did thy get there, maybe it was ALREADY here?!?!

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Seriously back up your databases!

May 23rd
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: , , ,
No comments

Backups Backups and more Backups, always an important mantra. I was surprised to find that a fellow geek wasn’t backing up his MySQL database that runs his website. Yea he has backups for all the code files, but not for his content!

It frightened me when I found out how many people don’t backup their websites SQL databases. Every WordPress blog runs off of a SQL (normally MySQL) database, if you use a WP-Hosted blog then your safe as they back it up for you. If you host your own WP blog (or geeklog, drupal, etc, etc) then your backups are up to you!

It is for that reason that I have just finished knocking together a page detailing how my simple Linux script backups up my databases at regular intervals (some hourly, some every two, some once a day!) zips them and emails the smaller ones to me!

Check out the article on “Backing up MySQL databases automatically in Linux“.

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On-line backup for my laptop

Mar 21st
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags:
2 comments

I, like many of us in the IT field am often painfully aware that my precious files are not being backed up.  I have over 10GB of pictures alone, which I would be devastated to loose.  Add to that my personal documents, save games and code files, I have  a lot which I would not like to be without.

The company that I work for recently started looking at some on-line backup companies with the aim of switching from our current in house backup system.  So I took a leaf from our book, and started to look at a personal backup solution.  The first provider I came across was Backup Direct, who are a subsidery of Iron Mountain.  I took a trail account with them for two weeks, and then took on a full account.  The account allowed me to dynamically backup 5GB for £10.00 a month.

The backup solutions provided by most on-line solutions generally backup files only when they have changed, and then they only upload the actually changed files.  For instance, your 1GB email folder from outlook may take a while to upload the first time, but from then on only the new emails (or bits of emails that have changed)  will get uploaded, this makes things much faster.  Add to that compression and encryption and your on a win.

Unfortuantly for Backup Direct, they were unable to beat an offer from another company.  Carbonite On-line backups are based in the United States, as such their data storage charges are much lower.  So through no fault of Backup Direct’s I chose to migrate my backups to Carbonite.  Carbonite’s service gives me unlimited storage for $54.965 year (around £37 at the time of writing), and a very intuitive interface.

Needless to say I am now doing the initial backup to Carbonite, with 12GB done and 2GB left to upload!!

Anyone that is interested in trying out Carbonite, drop me a line and I can provide a referral email which will give you a free month trial, and another free month when you pay!  The best bit is that they don’t even want any credit card details for you to do the trial!!

2 Comments »