Category: hardware

New Hard Drives from Maxtor

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

As mentioned on Slashdot, Maxtor is releasing new drives with 80 GB platters. With larger platters, that should mean for faster drives.

And, in an example of the I-just-washed-my-car-and-now-it’s-raining effect, I just bought a new hard drive last week (it arrived yesterday). But, I don’t feel so bad, especially as it looks that Maxtor is decreasing its warranty from the industry-standard three-years down to one.

Some people in the Slashdot comments were dissing Maxtor, but I disagree. Sure, Maxtor was a budget drive-maker 7 to 10 years ago. But, they turned themselves around in the late-90s. I bought their first 7200 rpm IDE drive (a whopping 10.2 GB at the time) in 1999, and it has worked flawlessly ever since.

So, yeah, I’d buy Maxtor again. But, in this case — at least at the time I made the purchase — Western Digital offered superior performance.

Plextor Drives

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

The other day, I was trying to figure out which Plextor CDR drive to get. One drive could do 40x writes, while the other could do 20x writes but also read DVDs as well.

I’ve ordered the latter, for reasons of longevity. Sure, 40x is nice, but it only works out to a 3-minute burn instead of a 4-minute burn. And, I expect that more and more software may be available in DVD versions.

I’ve also ordered a new hard drive. 120 GB should be enough room for Linux, eh? ;).

I’m glad I have a job that affords me the ability to buy new hardware from time to time.

Plextor CDR Drives

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

My 4x CDR drive has been broken for some time now (several months, at least). And, now that I have the means, I’d like to replace it.

I have my eye on Plextor drives, as they have an excellent reputation. Normally, I’d get SCSI for sure, but Plextor’s IDE drives are actually faster (12x for SCSI vs 40x for IDE). And, with the buffer-underrun prevention technologies today, IDE is not such a disadvantage that it used to be.

So, back to Plextor. They have a 40x CDR drive (IDE), but also a 20x CDR drive that can also read DVDs (IDE). I already have a DVD drive in my box, but DVD-read capability could still be handy for when I build my new box, as I would likely use a few of the parts from my current box. On the other hand, the “non-DVD” drive can write at 40x, which is twice as fast as the other drive (in due fairness, it only works out to a 3-minute burn vs a 4-minute burn).

At this point, I’m leaning a bit towards the 20x CDR / 12x DVD-read drive, if only for longevity :-/. Any suggestions on which I should get?

HP Backs AMD Athlon

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

From The Register, HP backs AMD’s Athlon in the business PC market:

Athon XP processors are well respected among home users, earning favourable reviews since their introduction in August 1999, but AMD has struggled to make its mark in the corporate sector. HP’s use of Athlon processors in the D315 is the first time one of the big three vendors (Dell, HP and IBM) has used the chip in a business targeted machine, though AMD has secured a number of design wins with smaller PC vendors. […]

I’m really pleased with this latest development. It's long been known that, clock-for-clock, AMD’s chips are faster (and cheaper) than Chipzilla’s, and I’m glad that they’re getting the business they deserve.