Microsoft Windows Vista – ReadyBoost

August 28, 2008

Last year I bought a new laptop for work, and ended up with a HP Pavilion dv2530ea.  It had Windows Vista Home Premium installed, 2Gb RAM and 160Gb HDD.  The main problem for me was speed.  As an IT evangelist, I wanted the full Aero experience, and with the standard 2Gb RAM the machine was noticeably slow.  Task Manager showed 1Gb of RAM being used for the core OS, so opening a spreadsheet and some documents really hit the computer hard.

I had a look at Kingston for memory upgrades, and I’d need 2 x 2Gb  DIMMS to max out the momeory since there are 2 x 1Gb DIMMS installed, and the cost with delivery rolled in around £75.00

I’d seen the Windows ReadyBoost tab when I’d plugged in a couple of USB drives, but none of them were fast enough to be used as extra RAM.  I did some more research and found that the HP Pavilion supported SSD and Lexar had a ReadyBoost compatible SSD card.  In the interest of science I ordered a 16Gb card through Insight thinking that 16Gb would make a massive difference to the performance.

In all honesty it has, though I didn’t use the full 16Gb as Vista limits the amount it uses to 2 or 3 times the amount of physical RAM installed.  In my case, I have a 4Gb ReadyBoost cache file on the drive.  However, 12Gb is a great amount of storage for shuffling data between machines.  Last year I was backing up some user profiles but the network was too slow.  So I used the SSD card and the transfer times were quick.

There are 3 capacities for these particular SSD cards; 4Gb, 8Gb & 16Gb

I mentioned earlier that the 4Gb RAM upgrade was £75.00, well the 16Gb SSD card was £133.92 with all taxes and delivery.  While it’s almost double, there is built in scalability – when I eventually upgrade the laptop to 4Gb physical RAM, I can have an 8Gb cache file.

There are loads of devices out there that have the potential to use the ReadyBoost feature.  As a starting point you should consider Grant Gibson’s ReadyBoost Compatibility List.  The site has a list of over 1100 devices and lets you know if it’s compatible or not.

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Posted by Noel

iPhone 3G

August 11, 2008

So it’s a month since the iPhone 3G launch, and I’d love to be able to say that it’s been a great month with this new device.  But it hasn’t.  It’s been a great 21 days with the new iPhone.

On the 10th July I decided that I wouldn’t be getting up early on the 11th July and queueing with the crazies.  However, I did go out to a Carphone Warehouse store at noon on Friday, only to be told that there were no 16Gb models left.  However, if I sighned up there and then I could have it couriered to me for Monday 14th july.  This seemed reasonable to me; I didn’t want to queue, andI already had a first generation iPhone so knew that I could upload the 2.0 firmware to that and have a look at the new features.

Only the iPhone 3G wasn’t delivered on Monday the 14th, I didn’t even get a phone call to let me know.  When I chased this on Tuesday, I was told to call central distribution.  On speaking to them, I was told that my iPhone would be with me by Friday 18th.  On Thursday 17th I received a phone call that it wouldn’t be with me until Friday the 25th, and would I like to opt for an 8Gb model instead since they had loads of those.  I contemplated this for an hour or so, and then said no, I’d wait for the 16Gb model.

In the end, it arrived on Monday 21st July.  It’s incredible that Apple didn’t foresee this demand and build more units.  Even if they delayed the worldwide rollout until 1st July, I’m sure they would have sold a lot more than the reported 1 million units in the first weekend.  There could be fiscal reasons for getting these sales into the 2nd quarter of 2008, or there could be the free international marketing from the frenzy outside the various Apple and carrier stores worldwide.

There are loads of reviews of the iPhone on the web, so I’m not going to do one here.  If you’ve never seen one, go and see one.  They’re great.  The Apps Store is a real addition to the iTunes Store, with loads of applications ready to download.  My favourites here are Bloomberg, WordPress for iPhone, Super Monkey Ball and PacMan.

I’ve renewed my £35 per month contract and paid £99 for the new iPhone.  At that price, I think they may well achieve serious market penetration.  I’ve been a long time fan of BlackBerry and Sony-Ericsson, but unless these devices morph into something similar to the iPhone, their market share will definitely fall.

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Posted by Noel

The coalescing web

August 2, 2008

Over the past few days I’ve been getting used to WordPress since moving my blogs from Blogger.  I did this primarily because WordPress has the ability to have the url drop straight into designed web pages and then allow a link to a blog – when I was using Blogger in anger this wasn’t available, and it’s how  wanted my business website to work.

  While there have been teething troubles getting this complete, I’m beginning to sense that  the various technologies are starting to gather together, to interoperate better, proving that you can get the best tools from each organisation and tie it all together.

For example, when I started my first blog with Blogger, you had to have the .blogspot.com domain name.  Now there’s no harm in that for people looking to create a blog or web presence for free, but once they offered forwarding through registered domain names, I purchased one immediately.  Not long after that, Google announced Google Apps, offering mail, calendar, webspace, docs and more – all for free, and a premier option if you need 99.99% guarantee of email availability.  Again, I signed up immediately for this, nad used Google to purchase my business domain name through GoDaddy.

  This is the first relationship I want to discuss – with Google using GoDaddy for domain names, they essentially took the confusion out of getting a domain and linking it to Google Apps.  Even if you only go for the free Google Apps account, GoDaddy get a domain name sale, and Google still has the opportunity to advertise at you.

Over the past few years, WordPress has gone from strength to strength with lots of serious websites using the software for the own webservers.  The creation of wordpress.com gave everyone without their own webserver the opportunity to create websites with professional tools.

Google has teamed up with WordPress creating a calendar widget.  And more recently there’s been developments for domains using WordPress nameservers to create MX records and have email directed to Google Apps Mail.

This is great news for the man on the street, and more importantly it’s great for these organisations.  Rather than diluting their skillsets with product diversification, they are building relationships giving them access to eachothers leading edge developments.

I’m really pleased with WordPress, and I’m disappointed that Blogger hasn’t developed as rapidly.

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Posted by Noel