T.

Toshiba M200 and a Solid State Drive

By In Technology0 Comments1,753 Views

So I decided to amp up the performance of my Toshiba Protege M200 tablet by installing a Transcend 64GB SSD into the already awesome device. And I must say: Wow! So quiet! And it got a huge boost to hard drive performance all the way from 4.4 to 5.8 in the Windows Experience Index. On top of that it’s a lot cooler now but did I mention quiet???

I have my power options in Windows to allow the processor to lower it’s speed even on full power so the fan barely comes on. Even while I type this post, the fan it totally silent so this computer is emanating NO SOUND what so ever and holding steady at 55c for the processor temp. Now of course compared to my new 45nm quad core AMD which is 45c at full load, doesn’t come close. But for a 90nm processor in a 5 year old tablet laptop, I’m doing pretty damn good.

Q: Does it really boot faster with SSD?

A: I’d say it shaves about 2-3 seconds off the boot time of mine*.

Q: Does your profile and applications load faster?

A: Definitely seems more responsive, yes. For both loading my profile and applications.

Q: Is Aero any more stable with the SSD?

A: Not really.

Q: Do games play better with the SSD?

A: I may see a bit better on loading screens but overall frame rates will probably remain the same.**

Q: Has your battery life improved a lot?

A: Solid State Drives require far less power than traditional hard drives, but how much they actually draw on the battery I can’t really say (verses the cpu or gfx). Presumably I should, but I haven’t had the chance to test it yet well yet. So far Vista estimates about 2:30 hours on the battery with my current setup. I’ll know more when classes return.

*Specs: 1.8 GHz, 2GB PC2700, Clean Vista Ultimate Install

**No games installed yet

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P.

PC Woes

By In Technology0 Comments1,705 Views

So conveniently on the day after I lose my phone my computer’s Hard Drive dies, there goes 130GB of personal data. Although I did make a recent backup since I had to send in my motherboard for repair which only came back to me about a week prior. At the moment I’m running my desktop computer with an old old old… old 80GB Maxtor drive which I figured I’d use to try Windows 7 RC while I wait for my hard drive to come back.

So what are my first impressions of Windows 7?

Well… it’s very… blue. I changed as much of the colors that as I could the second the install finished. But so far it seems decent, although my old HDD isn’t attributing anything good to the overall performance. What are my performance ratings?

Processor: 7.3

Memory: 7.5

Aero GFX: 6.1

Gaming GFX: 6.1

HDD: 4.3  (awww……)

Anyway I’ll see how much of it all improves when I get my other HDD back.

P.

PHP PhotoGallery + Slimbox 2

By In Technology0 Comments2,568 Views

I decided to make my own php photo gallery that dynamically renders thumbnails and such, but also uses Slimbox 2 to display the full image.

Download

Installation is easy, just copy and paste the files into your image directory and it will go on it’s own. You can edit the index.php file to change some settings which mainly is just for controlling the images themselves. You can also edit the template.html file in the ‘data’ folder to change the overall look of the page.

I don’t have a demo yet, but I’m working on uploading some pictures now which I’ll use as a demo.