Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Is branding still a useful activity? Are reach and frequency still useful metrics? - http://ping.fm/SIDXB

Incandescent bulbs making a comeback, GE still launching new LED lights

On the eve of Christmas 2007, quite a few obituaries for incandescent light bulbs were penned. News was slow, time was short and Congress had just outlined a new energy plan that would essentially force these energy-wasting bulbs out by 2012. Now, however, legions of scientists are racing the clock to develop new incandescents that will still meet the upcoming guidelines, with a Deposition Sciences technology paving the way for a post-2012 model from Philips. Without drowning you in technobabble, let's just say that said tech has seen 50 percent efficiency gains in the lab, which is more than enough to please even the most outspoken tree hugger in Washington. In related news, GE has issued two more LED light bulbs: the 7-watt Energy Smart LED PAR20 and 10-watt LED PAR30. Both of 'em are aimed more at commercial customers than at actual homes, but you'll be hard pressed to find a better option for lighting up your makeshift basketball court.

Read - Incandescent bulbs stage comeback
Read - GE Energy Smart bulbs

Filed under: Household

Incandescent bulbs making a comeback, GE still launching new LED lights originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OCZ cranks clock speed, DRAM on Vertex Turbo SSD

While every other solid state drive maker is thinking of snazzy new model names to slap on their next-gen wares, OCZ Technology is actually breaking up the monotony with its Vertex Turbo SSD. While we won't go so far as to say that these things are overclocked ('cause let's face it, they aren't), OCZ has bumped the core clock speed and the SDR DRAM cache to 180MHz (compared to 166MHz on the original). These drives also posses a custom firmware designed specifically for performance junkies, and the company claims that users will see read and write speeds of up to 270MBps and 210MBps, respectively. We're still waiting to hear back on pricing, but you can expect capacities of 30GB (32), 60GB (64), 120GB (128), and 250GB (256) to hit the shelves in short order.

Filed under: Storage

OCZ cranks clock speed, DRAM on Vertex Turbo SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nike Salutes Your Right To Keep And Bear Awesome T-Shirt Guns [Guns]

Have you seen that t-shirt gun in the new Nike commercial? It's cooler looking than any t-shirt gun I have ever seen—hell, it may be the coolest product Nike has ever made. And they are actually selling it.

Seriously though, even if you did have a legitimate use for a t-shirt gun, getting your hands on one is not going to be an easy task. The guns are limited edition models—each numbered and engraved with the signature of a Nike athlete. They also cost $1500. You would think that price tag would be a deterrent, but the guns are already sold out. [Nike via Doobybrain via Likecool]

Toshiba Portege R600 Review: 512GB SSDs Are the Bee's Knees [Review]

Just last summer, Toshiba's Portege R500 was the first laptop with a 128GB SSD. A year later, Toshiba's Portege R600 is the world's first 512GB SSD lappie. So for this one moment, Toshiba is on the top of the world.

Design
Note: The R600 has been out for several months, we just tested their updated system with the mega SSD. So if you've read about the build before, you can skip down to our section on performance.

For $3,500 (as tested with 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9400, 3GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Intel 4500MHD graphics, DVD burner, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi n), the Portege may be a bit of a disappointment right out of the box. Yes, it's ridiculously light, starting at 2.46lbs, but that weight comes at a cost of feel. It's plastic, and no amount of metal paint can get around that. But luckily the plastic is fairly smudge-proof and part of a "shock absorbing design" complete with "spill resistant" keyboard. In other words, the system may be more durable than a Macbook, especially with so few moving parts.

The 12.1-inch screen is technically WXGA (widescreen) resolution, though something about the system's shape makes it look more vertical, like a 4:3 screen of yore. This is a minor point, of course, and its non-glossy screen gets just bright enough to use indoors by a window. In full-out sunlight, you can one-button switch the system into "transreflective" mode, essentially using the sun to brighten the screen. High brightness (in standard mode) is still the brightest setting, even under dir! ect sunl ight, but the transreflective setting probably uses a lot less power.
Extras, from the effective fingerprint scanner to the eSATA and SD ports, do a lot to sweeten the deal on the small, utilitarian system. And in this era, it's straight up shocking to see an optical bay pop out of a system that's just .77 inches thick.

Performance
The R600 runs Vista very fluidly, especially given its stature. Firefox, Windows Media Player, HD content streamed from the web—none of it will leave you waiting. But given the system's Intel 4500MHD GPU, don't get any fantasies of gaming.

Many will expect the computer to boot nearly instantly given the SSD—I've heard this expectation a number of times—but the still takes about a minute to fully load. The bottleneck here is simply not the hard drive.
How does the R600 compare to other light systems like the Macbook Air or Lenovo X301? Just as you'd expect from the specs on paper, it's slower than the Macbook Air. But even with the same processor, it outperforms the X301.

Then you have to check out the speeds on the SSD.
Fast! This isn't some bargain basement drive that Toshiba shoved in a laptop for bragging rights. I mean, a 512GB SSD is clearly for bragging rights, but it's Toshiba's biggest and fastest drive made in-house—way nicer than we see competition from Lenovo and Apple (which we believe to both use earlier gen, Samsung drives).

But what does this speed chart mean in real life? Copying a 700MB file on my Macbook Pro (with a 320GB, 7200 RPM hard drive) took 35 seconds. On ! the R600 , that same copy may have legitimately cracked the 8 second barrier. I'd like to say that I never took the speed for granted, but I totally started taking the speed for granted. Superman doesn't bow down and thank the sun every time he avoids traffic by flying over Metropolis, so why should I be any different?
Toshiba's 6-cell battery is rated internally at 7 hours, 32 minutes. I found that it offers 3 hours and 35 minutes of MPEG4 playback (screen maxed bright, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, performance settings normal). Our test is rigorous, and it's pretty common for laptops to only get about 50% of their rated battery life in our real world use simulation. Of course, the computer could probably eek out another 30 minutes to an hour with less taxing processes and a dimmer screen.

I Might Buy One...In 2011
The key to remember, of course, is that the 128GB R500 ran $3,000 just a year ago. Now, their 512GB R600 is $3,500. Even with the price bump on their top tier system, Toshiba has the right idea here: Push the envelope and force the market to adapt. Keep topping the sundae with cherries and someone will be hungry enough to buy it (meanwhile those of us who aren't will have plenty of dropped cherries to munch on).
Still, I don't know that I'd recommend this fully stuffed R600 with full gusto. It's simply not as beautiful as premium, small-form laptops like the Dell Adamo or Apple's Macbook Air (side by side above), and the prices of flash storage will certainly come down (and quickly at that). But I'm glad Toshiba made the thing because, frankly, somebody needed to load a laptop with a legitimately beastly SSD first.

The huge SSD Is fast

Under 3lbs, less than an inch thick

Substantial ports and extras

For $3,500, it feels a bit like a Pontiac