Category Archives: Hardware

Category containing all information relating to hardware.

PC sales to fall in 2009… except for netbooks.

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Gartner has today announced that PC sales are set to fall across 2009 by 11.9% (per cent) to around 257 million units. The company has said that this is going to be “the sharpest decline in history”.

According to Gartner, the PC industry is facing extraordinary conditions due to the economic downturn. When it seemed as if PC and notebook sales were increasing rapidly in 2008, we are beginning to see how the credit crunch is affecting the PC industry.

However, Gartner have also said that they are expecting an increase in the sales of laptops and notebook – more specifically the new mini-laptops or netbooks. 

So we’ll have to see what happens to sales over the course of this year, but it looks like many brands could be in trouble. I would like to hope that the rush of new technology might help ease the pain of the economic downturn on computing, but we’ll have to see what knock-on effect the downturn has this year.

EI System 1201 with 2GB RAM – Tested and confirmed

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Well after my post I did a little while back, I decided I would pluck up the courage and actually go and buy a 2GB RAM chip for my laptop.  It arrived today (special delivery from Crucial) and I just got it fitted. Guess what? Works an absolute dream! Vista is so much faster and usable!! Absolutely love it. Would recommend any day!

So for those who are interested, this is what I bought: 2GB PC-5300 DDR2 200pin SODIMM. Make sure you get the 2GB chip and not the 2x1GB kit as the laptop does only have one slot.

Once its fitted, fire up the laptop and see how quickly it boots. It doesn’t boot quickly first time as it works out it’s had a hardware boost, but once you’ve booted it for the first time shut it down and boot it again. With any hope, it will be much quicker.

So, there you go, for the people who were wondering, you can run an EI System 1201 with 2GB RAM. Sorted.

SiS’s lack of driver updates is becoming frustrating

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It’s not like it’s a huge issue, but the lack of driver updates from SiS (Silicon Integrated Systems) is becoming a little annoying. I have a SiS M672MX graphics chipset in my laptop which hasn’t been updated by SiS in nearly 6 months, which I find a little bit of a pain. I mean, the card works fine and I have no problems with it in XP or Vista, but don’t you think I would at least here some news or something for SiS?

My main PC uses an ATI Radeon card, and I almost can’t keep up with the updates that ATI release for the card. They seem to release a new driver once a month (sometimes even more often) which is more than enough.

I’m not sure whether to think that there are no updates for the chipset because it just doesn’t need them or because SiS can’t be bothered to update it.

And it’s not just my card that isn’t being updated. In fact, (at the time of writing) the last update issued was on the 2nd of October 2008. I’m not complaining, but it just makes me feel a little neglected. SiS seem to rarely ever update their website, and it just gets to the point where its just a teeny bit annoying.

I might get in contact with SiS and find out some sort of reasoning as to why there’s been very little news from SiS.

What’s the difference between the Freecom Network Drive and the Freecom Network Drive Pro?

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I get a lot of Google searches from people who want to know the difference between the Freecom Network Drive and the Freecom Network Drive Pro. So in this post, I’m going to explain the differences.

Well, other than the price, there aren’t a huge list of noticeable differences. The first thing I can see is that there is only FTP support on the Network Drive, which means that it is only accessible via public FTP on the internet. However, the Network Drive Pro has FTP and HTTP access, which means people could access it as a normal webserver if they wanted to.

The next thing that you’ll see is that the Network Drive Pro has Gigabit LAN, and the Network Drive doesn’t. This means that the Pro will have slightly faster transfer speeds, both locally and over the internet. Gigabit LAN is capable of 1000 megabit transfer speeds (potentially, it won’t ever happen) whilst megabit LAN is only capable of 100 megabit speeds (again, potentially).

The Network Drive Pro has a cooling fan, whilst the Network Drive doesn’t. This means that the Network Drive may overheat occasionally if it is constantly used (however I have never experienced this with my Network Drive). The upside to not having a fan is that the drive does use less electricity, but I doubt there is much of a difference.

Both products come with the NTI Shadow backup system – which I hate – but some people may find it useful and it does actually work.

So, if you need to make a decision put it this way – if you need a high capacity occasional-use Network Drive for occasional internet access (but generally home use) by the Network Drive. But, if you need a faster, more powerful and more internet-accessible system, go for the Network Drive Pro.

Netbooks are the future. They just are.

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I’ve been having a good play-around with a couple of recent netbooks. The first one being the EeePC 701 and the second being the Acer Aspire One. They are both really good laptops. They both will run Windows XP (there is some difficulty one the EeePC – I’ll explain later), they are both relatively fast, they both have decent battery life, and both have expandable memory.

The EeePC 701 uses an 8GB solid-state drive whilst the Acer Aspire 701 uses a 120GB normal hard drive (although it is available with a solid-state drive). 8GB will not get you very far, even if you don’t have any music or video, but you can expand it with any SD or SDHC card. The 120GB hard drive in in the Aspire is relatively fast whilst fairly quiet, although it does drain the battery quite a lot. And ofcourse, because the solid-state drive has no moving parts, it saves battery and is less suceptable to damage from drops.

As for the battery power, they are both very good. The EeePC will run for just over 2 hours whilst working quite hard, and the Aspire just a tad longer. I believe the Aspire does have a slightly better battery, but there isn’t a huge amount of difference and both are fine for going on short trips.

Neither have an optical drive which is quite a downside if you want to watch a DVD on the move. You could add a USB DVD drive but this would probably hammer the battery life. There are netbooks available that will cope with a USB DVD drive, but these two will both struggle to make it through a DVD movie on one charge.

The screen size is definately a bit of a pain on the EeePC. The 7″ display is quite hard to work with, especially in Windows XP. It will run 800×480 without scrowling the screen, but you can run 800×600 or 1024×768 with the catch that you’ll have to scroll down the screen. The 8.9″ on the Aspire One (also available in 10″) is much more usable and can run 1024×768 without screen scrolling.

As for trying to install Windows XP, it can be a right nightmare on the EeePC. It will install fine, but trying to get programs to work properly is utter hell. Windows Live Messenger seems to fail horribly, and then you get issues which collide with other pieces of software. The Aspire is much better and will install software with ease. It will even run Google Earth with fantastic performance.

I really think notebooks will be the future. They aren’t perfect at the moment, and you definately get what you pay for. I wouldn’t go and buy one right now, but give it a few months and I think they will definately be the thing to have by next year.

When you see the potential of these mini laptops, you begin to think why you lug around these huge 15″ laptops which are several kilograms heavy every day.

They just don’t have the power right now. I couldn’t bear having to use a 1Ghz computer for general use – I can’t live without my lovely dual core processor – but I think this technology will come as processors get smaller and less power-hungry over time.

So, no, don’t go buying one now. If you’ve got a decent laptop now, it isn’t worth it. But give it a little while, and hopefully manufacturers will be able to get more RAM, bigger harddisks and better processors without costing a bomb. It will all come in time.