T.

Toshiba M200 and a Solid State Drive

By In Technology0 Comments3,516 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

Previous ArticleNext Article
O.

Oops… they did it again.

By In Technology0 Comments3,268 Views

Well it seems my faithful cell provider sadly broke the Internet on their cellular network  again*sigh*. I’m referring back to the previous problem I had with accessing any streaming services on the mobile browser on my Samsung u740 about a year or so ago. They eventually fixed the previous problem after about 1-2 months of me acquiring the phone and reporting the problem. This time around however they’re blaming it on their recent separation from a sister company and that they no longer support streaming on their network. Of course after mowing through several Customer Service Monkeys I eventually discovered that they no longer support their paid streaming, which I could care less about. But the fact that I cannot access current streaming services on the Internet is in fact a problem on their network, but not that they don’t support streaming. At any rate, I was finally able to submit a ticket to their data analysts about a week ago… still no response.

C.

Computer woes.

By In Technology0 Comments3,356 Views

So to celebrate me getting a new motherboard/CPU/Memory combo I decided to top it off with my new Coolmaster Case which I got in the mail yesterday. Being all nice and prep’d to get this new case all together I drove right into moving my parts over… but I decided to leave my memory and CPU on the board as I moved it (my mistake). Well thanks to the weight of my 8 GB of memory and the CPU heatsink I bloody well broke my old motherboard (new one yet needs to be sent in for RMA) while I was holding it.  So now I’m with out my awesome setup until I get my new motherboard back from NCIX, but on the bright side at least the new case turned out really cool as well.