Flash-based solid-state hard drives are soon going to be the way of the future. They’re faster, and they use less energy. Those are two of the primary ingredients needed in making any computer batter. Flash has been utilized for years in RAM, but it’s only in recent years that a limited number of computer manufacturers have begun to create a hard drive system of flash hard drives.

They require less energy because there’s no disk to spin up within the computer. The elimination of this movable parts that only both the computer because it doesn’t have to spend anything up, but it also helps to keep the computer cooler enabling the other parts of the computer to work more efficiently.

You get a direct boost and you get an indirect boost from using flash drives. You might even call this synergy.

Flash hard drives to represent a new technology and as all new technologies go their prices are much higher. However historically the price of all hard drives always comes down, and this is been true in the flash market relating to ram and portable flash drives.

It will not be long before people adopt more solid-state flash drives and computers take another small quantum leap forward.

Link to PC World - Solid-State Drives Coming on Strong

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Not too long ago I upgraded my kitchen. We tore out of wall that separated a dining room and a kitchen that were both rather compartmentalized and we’ve put in a great big Island with cooktop stove. Cooktop stoves do not have range hoods to suck out the hot steamy air that would rise up off conventional stovetops. Instead it has a fan built into the center of the cooktop stove that draws the steam and smoke down into the cooktop itself and out through events that go up through the floorboards of the House.

This technology fights the natural progression that hot air would like to make as it attempts to rise, however it does do a good job of minimalizing the impact on the space above the cooktop.

The laptop analogy to cooktop stoves

Now as I look at the fans used on cooktop stoves, I come back to the fundamental question and problem that I always face with my laptop. How to keep it cool and running efficiently and strange conditions especially when I’m working outside life and this evening. I have to wonder if the would be possible to create a desk similar to a hockey table where you play air hockey that has holes in it that move air. Those holes could instead of pushing air of suck air down pulling the hot air surrounding the laptop service down into the desk and out through events. Instead of blowing cool air on the laptop you could take the hot air away essentially.

Similar to a aerosol can that contains compressed air, the air leaving the can could even serve to cool the of the desk. There’s got to be a better way it’s a simple thing…

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To finish out a diatribe, I thought I’d add something to my wish list of computer applications.  I would like a diet pill of an application to help slim down the processes that are continually running.  Something like ionamin to trim some memory fat producing memory hogs.

Something to automatically shut down processes that aren’t really being used.  There are applications that help clean up desktop icons why not task bar programs and processes?

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I have 1 gig of memory in my Toshiba Satellite laptop.  That is definitely not enough.

I am running Windows XP.  I don’t think I can even consider upgrading to Vista at this point until perform a computer memory upgrade Additional Notes: Extra assignment Please Complete by 4-20.

Truthfully, I don’t necessarily think its Microsoft’s fault entirely.  I seem to have 2 categories of problems

1. Firefox is a massive memory hog.  The program works great as a web browser, seems to be far better than Internet Explorer 7, but if you leave it open on your desktop with a few tabs for more than a few hours and you are just asking for memory trouble.  I also use Dreamweaver and MindManager and they do not help either and don’t even get me started on the video applications that I use from time to time.
2. There are far too many programs that want to run all the time on my computer taskbar.  I currently have over 80 processes running.  In part this is Microsoft’s fault.  They let and encourage this type of program hijacking of a computer.

I think I’m going to need to go up to about 4 gygabites of memory to keep things running smoothly and still make it to Vista someday. 

One of these days  . . .

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It’s springtime in, it’s the month of May and retailers have just rolled out their new product lines for the year.  I was scanning through some of the offers from some of the major electronics retailers in the United States and I noticed that laptop prices in general are running relatively cheap compared to where they were last fall.

Now for the most part the clearance sales and all the pre-Vista savings opportunities are gone, but the net price for laptops appear to be lower than where they were six or seven months ago.  Now given the fact that these are supposed to be the new models rolled out to the stores with their new setups product lines this breaks conventional wisdom a bit unless the price point for laptops and computers in general has fallen yet again.

This would be a positive for consumers but a large negative for computer manufacturers.  Given the hiccups in the economy and the lagging housing market its possible that home computer users are purchasing fewer computers presumably with all of that extra home-equity credit that they used to have.  For those people that still have financial liquidity and are looking to migrate over to Windows Vista this might actually be a decent time to pick up some decent deals on computer hardware.

I scanned some of the offers from several different retailers using the coupon cheap website which enabled me to take a look at some of the high-level discounts offered by each of the stores on the same pages.  I took a look at CompUSA, which is had yet another difficult year in retail, and Circuit City, which had a very difficult year in flat-panel TV sets.  I also looked at many others from Office Depot to Best Buy to Dell through the same site.  Across the board there were many offers for laptop and desktop hardware that were relatively cheap compared to the prices on the same hardware last fall.

It’s also possible that retailers such as Circuit City or cracking the whip on hardware manufacturers across the board after retailers learned some hard lessons about the pricing of flat-panel TVs last fall.  The retailers do not want to get hit with inventory that will not move in a shaky economy.  That puts the burden back on electronics manufacturers to heavily and sent buyers to buy and buy now.

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