Mushkin - Get More
If you follow my blog, it's really not often that I give plugs for products or services. But sometimes, when your experience is just overwhelming positive, you just have to give credit where credit is due.
Three years ago, I brought a Dell Dimension 2400. It's a 2.66GHz P4 computer--paltry by even by yesterday's standards, but it was cheap...about $500. I brought it on a whim, and since then, it's become my main development machine. However, I had only brought it with 512MBs of RAM...which I thought was more than enough at the time.
Enter Firefox 2 stage left. The elephant that easily eats up 230MBs.
Like I lamented before, I've been having productivity slow-downs due to applications using an extraordinary amount of memory. I was actually watching screens redraw itself because the swap partition was being exercised like crazy. I had sworn off Eclipse because I felt that for what I used it for, it was eating up too much memory. But at the end of the day, what room was left by Eclipse was taken up by Firefox 2.
In the end, I succumbed and went out to buy more RAM for my machine while waiting for Firefox 3. But it's been so long (2 years) since I brought hardware, I didn't know what to get. Kudos to Dell for providing easy ways to look up what RAM you need by its model number. I use to revel in being able to look up specs to find the lowest price, but I simply don't have the time anymore. Dell was offering 1GB RAM for $109. Seemed reasonable. But I decided to check Mushkin.
I've used Mushkin since my sophomore year in college (8 years ago!), and none of the RAM I've ever purchased from them have ever failed so far. Believe me, RAM fails. Probably not as fast as hard drives, but RAM fails. And when it does, it's the last thing you assume that has failed. As a result, you waste so much time in your dorm room debugging it instead of out there mixing it up with the co-eds.
I revisited mushkins for the first time in a long time, and I have to say that while they have a dizzying array of RAM from hardcore hardware enthusiasts (what I use to be), they also have easy-to-find components for owners of stock computer models (like for me now). Not only that, they offer the same type of RAM for $30's less. Tres awesome.
Normally, if I just saw Mushkin out of the blue, I don't know if I'd trust them. But having used them all these years, and given that their RAM keeps on ticking, they stand by their quality, however they do it. Not only is their stuff quality, but their shopping experience is a breeze.
So I'd recommend their stuff. If I get Mobtropolis to a point where I need huge servers, I know where I'm getting my RAM.
Ok, next time, will be more coding related stuff, as I have some interesting things to post that have been gathering in the queue. Stay tuned!
Showing posts with label hardware. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hardware. Show all posts
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Surface computing and building your own hardware
Microsoft Announces Surface Computer
Microsoft recently announced their surface computing platform. It's where you get to manipulate objects with your hand on a screen. I think after Minority Report, everyone wanted something where you could manipulate virtual objects. Since there, there's been a realization of that. But few of us had the imagination/drive/ability to actually do something about it.
I had seen simple demonstrations of this type of interface at malls, where a projector and a camera would use occlusion to calculate interactions with the objects. But it was kinda like having a stub to manipulate objects--you couldn't pick them up and manipulate it. Microsoft's surface computer seems to have done away with that, and added a sense of interaction between real objects and the virtual ones in the surface of the desktop--so one can load photos, simply by dragging the photo 'into' the camera.
As for multitouch sensing aspect of surface computing, it's not the first. The idea has been around since the 80's, if not earlier. However, the first demonstration that permeated the web was Jeff Han's demo at TED. Multitouch-sensors weren't available commerically, so you'd have to be able to build your own. According to Jeff in the talk, he said it was low cost and scalable. It makes me suspect that many EEs could have built it. But we didn't.
However, I've taken a new view to the quote. When I think about all software, they all process information in some way. The input has to come from somewhere, and the output has to go somewhere to realize the bits in some form. However, the inputs are limited by what humans are willing to enter, and more importantly in this post, what kinds of hardware that will collect this data.
I can't wait until clothes keep track of themselves and match themselves. Technically, it's possible now to write the software, but one would have to enter the information by hand so that the computer can do the tracking and matching. But if there was hardware for clothes to serve this information, then it expands the space of information for software to operate on.
In this light, I can see where the quote is applicable. To expand the reach of software to access information that is only currently available in the physical world, you'll have to be willing to build hardware.
Microsoft recently announced their surface computing platform. It's where you get to manipulate objects with your hand on a screen. I think after Minority Report, everyone wanted something where you could manipulate virtual objects. Since there, there's been a realization of that. But few of us had the imagination/drive/ability to actually do something about it.
I had seen simple demonstrations of this type of interface at malls, where a projector and a camera would use occlusion to calculate interactions with the objects. But it was kinda like having a stub to manipulate objects--you couldn't pick them up and manipulate it. Microsoft's surface computer seems to have done away with that, and added a sense of interaction between real objects and the virtual ones in the surface of the desktop--so one can load photos, simply by dragging the photo 'into' the camera.
As for multitouch sensing aspect of surface computing, it's not the first. The idea has been around since the 80's, if not earlier. However, the first demonstration that permeated the web was Jeff Han's demo at TED. Multitouch-sensors weren't available commerically, so you'd have to be able to build your own. According to Jeff in the talk, he said it was low cost and scalable. It makes me suspect that many EEs could have built it. But we didn't.
"People that love software want to build their own hardware." - Alan KayI use to think that this quote was only applicable in the days when software was much closer in abstraction to hardware; when people were writing in assembler and C. Nowadays, the only people that seem to do that are embedded programmers, and having done embedded programming for sensor networks, I can say it's not half as fun as web or application programming. Having to manage memory, or build your own malloc wasn't fun, to say the least. It was kinda having to time the spark plugs in your engine to go, instead of just pushing on the gas pedal.
However, I've taken a new view to the quote. When I think about all software, they all process information in some way. The input has to come from somewhere, and the output has to go somewhere to realize the bits in some form. However, the inputs are limited by what humans are willing to enter, and more importantly in this post, what kinds of hardware that will collect this data.
I can't wait until clothes keep track of themselves and match themselves. Technically, it's possible now to write the software, but one would have to enter the information by hand so that the computer can do the tracking and matching. But if there was hardware for clothes to serve this information, then it expands the space of information for software to operate on.
In this light, I can see where the quote is applicable. To expand the reach of software to access information that is only currently available in the physical world, you'll have to be willing to build hardware.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Hackszine.com: Detecting and reducing power consumption in Linux
Hackszine.com: Detecting and reducing power consumption in Linux
Power consumption was usually something of secondary concern for desktop computer engineers for a while. But not so today. When you're cramming all those transistors in such a small space, operating at high speeds, power definitely becomes an issue. Now that mobile and embedded devices are experiencing their slow infiltration of our daily lives, power should be on the table for improvement. Google has been doing some work for this, and they now build their own power supplies, and even build their data centers where power is cheaper (old news, so I won't link it).
Battery life is one area of computing that really is way behind. I'm still hoping for some feat of chemical engineering to save us...but hopefully, in this time of scarce energy for mobile devices will drive some creative hardware engineering.
Power consumption was usually something of secondary concern for desktop computer engineers for a while. But not so today. When you're cramming all those transistors in such a small space, operating at high speeds, power definitely becomes an issue. Now that mobile and embedded devices are experiencing their slow infiltration of our daily lives, power should be on the table for improvement. Google has been doing some work for this, and they now build their own power supplies, and even build their data centers where power is cheaper (old news, so I won't link it).
Battery life is one area of computing that really is way behind. I'm still hoping for some feat of chemical engineering to save us...but hopefully, in this time of scarce energy for mobile devices will drive some creative hardware engineering.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)