Tech Weekly

Have some good sized Compact Flash cards laying around that you don't use anymore? Would you like to experience trying out the latest computer speed craze? Well for about $50.00, a Addonics Quad CF PCI adapter and a couple of Compact Flash cards you could  have a taste of solid state speed and quiet for your data storage source. This adapter will accept any mixture of up to 4 cards.

 

The adapter includes built-in firmware, which allows the four CF cards to be configured as one large volume, four individual drives, or configured for redundancy with support for RAID 0 (Striped), RAID 1 (Mirrored) and RAID 10 (Mirrored Striped). With the increased capacity and lowering costs of flash media, replacing the hard drive with CF as a boot drive is now a viable alternative because CF offers lower power consumption and no moving parts. Moreover, the device supports not only CF Type I, but also the Type II and MicroDrive formats. (via Gizmo Watch)

Will I run out and try this out probably not. Even though visions of how I could build an ultra quiet solid state machine based on this card as a hard drive source and the gOS Developer Board shown to the right?

With the latest technology within the 1.5GHz VIA C7-D processor, an ultra power efficient processor based on the 'Esther' core that includes support for the efficient VIA V4 bus and an extensive feature set within the StepAhead™ Technology Suite. The VIA C7-D processor is also the world's first carbon free processor.

The VIA pc2500 Platform boasts the world-beating power efficiency and hardware security of the advanced VIA C7-D processor and the rich digital media feature set and extended connectivity of the VIA CN700 chipset to provide a high performance yet ultra energy efficient computing platform. Fully compatible with Microsoft® Windows® XP/2K/CE and Linux operating systems, the VIA pc2500 Platform combines next generation silicon with its excellent thermal and physical properties and market-leading power, security and performance characteristics to deliver all the necessary performance for productivity, education and entertainment. (via ClubIT.com)

Labels: Do-it-yourself

 This is Part 2 of my mini-blog series Third World Pc's. In Part 1 I talked a little bit about the recent mass market release of both the Asus Eee Pc and the One Laptop Per Child organization's the XO-1. And before I continue on with that I thought I would look and see are these the only computers in the works for developing third world countries out there that having an impact?

What I found right away was an organization called Geekcorp's. Last year they worked on a project computer called the Desert PC. Now while this is not a laptop like the previous two machines they are non-the-less having quite an impact on a town called Bourem Inaly in Mali. If you click on the Google Map link for the village you will see that it is located literally in the middle of no-where in Africa.

The Desert PC is a sealed, fanless system based on VIA Technologies’ Mini-ITX form factor. It has a heatpipe for passive cooling, a solid state disk to eliminate moving parts, and a Linux distribution, Kunnafonix, customized by IESC Geekcorps to minimize the number of disk writes.

While regular computers consume approximately 300 watts, the Desert PC (including the screen) normally consumes only 35 watts or less of power, with a peak value of 60 watts. I.e., it uses less power than a 60-watt light bulb. Low power consumption makes it suitable for low energy sources like solar panels; IESC Geekcorps reengineered existing solar panels while on site in Bourem Inaly to increase their efficiency by 20-30%. (The Desert PC Spec Sheet PDF)  Via (Geekcorp's page)

While the cost of the Desert PC can be $300 more than an equivalent regular computer, its total cost of ownership is lower, because it consumes much less electricity and requires fewer solar panels, both significant costs in Mali.

After IESC Geekcorps developed the Desert PC, the team developed a new low-cost model using Internet service from Regional Broadband Global Area Network (RBGAN) small satellite systems. They disabled graphics and installed loband to reduce bandwidth consumption by 5-20%, reducing the cost of RBGAN service (which is billed per kilobyte) by 80-95%.

The Desert PC system and loband RBGAN Internet connection brought tangible results to the isolated community of Bourem Inaly:

• The staff of Radio Beeray has access to quality information via the Internet, and as a result, the entire community gets better information from the community radio.
• The increased efficiency of the solar power system resulted in more electricity, which increased radio transmission and lighting usage by two to four hours per day.
• Because the staff no longer has to travel to cyber cafés to send email, etc., Radio Beeray was able to reduce monthly operating costs by nearly US$100. With these savings the station could afford to hire a new staff member.
• Radio Beeray is able to afford independent maintenance of the system.

Based on the Desert PC’s success throughout the pilot, it was proposed for future rural area Internet access, including all remote Africare sites, and to sites in Niger. (Partial Excerpt from Geekcorp's description of the fantastic project)

Though this computer as you see cost's a lot more than the two previously blogged laptops and is by no means commercialized. I say it is having a more profound effect on the people of environment that the mass marketed ones.

Labels: Editorial

Have you seen the latest in affordable computing? Currently there are two flavors of affordable ultra-portable laptops. One is the Asus Eee Pc and the other is the result of the One Laptop Per Child organization the XO-1. I had started to blog something about this earlier this summer prior to the open market release of both of these machines but have only now had a chance to do so.

I am really intrigued by not just the thought of being able to finally offer an affordable laptop for children or adults in developing countries, but also the impact they will have on the rest of the already computerized world. With a glut of fully functional machines such as these eventually available for in most instances less than what most folks earn in a day at work they will be literally everywhere.

I would like to spend the next week doing a blog series touching on both these machines. How they have faired since they have gone public so to speak and where they are being used. Sorry I hope to not be to boring but these are such cute and functional machines and I have found already a lot of talk about them out on the web so I hope to be both entertaining as well as informative.

Labels: Editorial

Even though I use Windows Live Writer currently to write to my blog. I have become a huge fan of Ubuntu and have it running on my second PC and will probably soon move all of my machines over to it or some version of Linux. So stumbling across THIS post about Blog editors for Linux was great. Give it a read.

Labels: Editorial

Well it's time again to see what patches and help for Windows Microsoft has for us this month. There are two bulletins one is deemed "CRITICAL" and the other "MAXIMUM SEVERITY". I don't know but both those descriptions sound equally important to me but here is the quick breakdown:

• MS07-061: This update addresses a vulnerability in Windows URI handling, which could allow remote code execution and has a maximum severity of Critical.
• MS07-062: This update addresses a vulnerability in DNS which could allow spoofing and has a maximum severity of Important.

In addition one bulletin was re-released:

• MS07-049: This update addresses a vulnerability in Virtual PC and Virtual Server and could allow elevation of privilege. This is a change to the installer code only, to address some limited installation problems that we have seen.  There’s no change to the update binaries, so if you have already successfully installed this update, you do not need to reinstall it.  Please refer to the bulletin revision notes for more detail.

For additional information and a more detailed breakdown of this months patches check out this SITE.

Labels: Patch Tuesday

I second Aaron Tiensivu's thoughts HERE. He suggests that you get your @live.com email address while they last. As MS puts it this can be your chance to start fresh with a good email address that does not look like this: techweekly1234@live.com I recently went out and got not only a email address for this website in case I ever get tired of my Gmail account or if the Live.com service ever surpasses it I will be ready. You can get yours HERE.

Of course they want you to download their Live software but if you notice the highlighted portion of the web page you can see the link that you will need to click on to get you new @live.com email address as well as you live.com blog space if you like.

Labels: Do-it-yourself, Editorial

I am filing this under helpful "Tech Blasts from the Past". Even though this how to was originally posted in 2005 its new to me and possibly other folks. I know that for students traveling abroad or just perhaps going to college in a new city this might be useful.

Imagine all those iPods out there that we are carrying around and then imagine loading subway maps, street maps etc... in them for easy reference. How many of you have gone to at one time Map quest or Google Maps to get directions to somewhere you needed to be and printed them off only to find as you are searching that you either did not get as much of the map as you needed or even that the step by step directions you printed out are off somewhat. Well if you have a video or photo iPod you can load those maps onto it at different zoom levels and have them for easy reference.

I happened upon the how-to HERE. This shows how to do this with a Mac and iTunes. I will keep looking for a how-to for PC's and post it here shortly.

Labels: Tech Blasts from the Past