cpjackson.co.uk

I’ve been working on a new site for the last few weeks — I’ve been meaning to do it for like 2 years now… Mainly because *I* need a tool like this – and nobody else seems to have made one!

Anyway – it allows you to search the market for Hard Drives, Flash memory or RAM and find the best prices per gig… Perfect for that media PC you were going to buy!

Also – I’m hoping to put a few write-ups on there about certain storage related things that I’ve been up to – including NAS drives and how to use/install FreeNAS.

The site can be seen at www.mediaprices.co.uk.

Seems the SSD (sold state drive) is slowly coming of age – the prices are dropping slowly… You can guarantee that over the next few years we’ll all wonder why the hell we had little spinny things called “hard drives”… Especially in something so fragile as a mobile computer!

What, with 16GB for just over £113, that’s still £ 7.11 per gig (approx 70x more than hard drives (12p) – and 2x the cheapest Flash memory (£ 3.50)), but it’s creeping ever cheaper.

It’ll will be interesting what mass take-up of SSD’s will bring to the PC market really – in theory there should be far less ‘data-loss’, apart from mistakes by users such as deleting files etc. The SSD’s just stop working after a certain amount of writes: your data is supposed to still be readable from the memory… So when the SSD ‘fails’ you just buy a new one, install your OS, and then plug the old one up so you can copy the old data over.

Plus the major obvious benefit with SSD’s is they don’t have a motor – so they save loads of power — perfect for laptops etc… And their properties also tend to fit into things like servers – Very Fast (no seek time), MB/sec through the roof and much lower long-term cost due to the lower power usage.

At this rate I’m predicting the end of the hard drive over the next few years!

I’ve just been reading on eeeuser.com that the EEE PC is going to be available in Japan shortly – and interestingly it will be available with Windows XP as an option (unlike here and the USA for example).

This is interesting news – but I think it also coincides with what Asus announced at the recent CES 2008 show that the newer range would also come with XP. Seems to me the usual has happened with Microsoft: They’ve realised they’ve missed the boat with the EEE PC – and are probably begging Asus to install it on the EEE PC so they don’t lose market share. They’re probably offering it for pennies.

To be honest though – I do think the Asus just about got it spot on with Xandros – it’s fast, slick and just-works. The cool thing about Linux is it’s almost more like an embedded OS – you just turn it on and it works… It doesn’t get viruses and the hard drive doesn’t fragment (perfect for SSD).

I really do hope that future EEE PC’s continue to come pre-loaded with Xandros.

OK – So I’m probably going on a bit much about the EEE PC at the moment, but because of my stock checker it’s sort of constantly on my brain!
What I’ve been think about is how could ASUS improve the laptop they’ve made.. Now obviously, I’ve already posted a list below with ideas, and there are another thousand blogs out there screaming for the same things: 8/9/10″ TFT, more battery/storage etc… But they’re pretty obvious aren’t they?

What *I* think they should do is something a little unusual – to keep them different from the other UMPC makers… I think they should integrate a USB 3G module into the notebook – that would be a pretty *WOW* feature for a notebook like this — and it would set it apart from any other laptop… OK – so Dell already do this – but not on their UMPC’s (as far as I know!). It would mean the EEEPC was pushing the boundaries and blurring the lines between laptops and PDAs… And it would mean regular 3G/EEEPC users wouldn’t need to trail those damn USB modems around with us! (They could even get network subsidies from voda/3/orange etc).
ASUS recent announcements seem to suggest they are going to put wimax on the new range, but seriously — is anyone even providing wimax yet? Maybe I’m behind on that particular technology – but it seems 3.5G is way ahead (at least where I live!).
Anyway – what do you think?

I’ve just launched an Asus Eee PC stock checker – it should be pretty useful for anyone looking to buy an EEEPC considering the low stock levels! Anyway – here is the Asus EEE PC stock checker. It checks both 2G and 4G EEE PCs.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the EEEPC announcements of late – I gathered from eeeuser.com that there would be an important announcement today… Some good – some bad.

The Good:

• 7 inch, 8 inch and 8.9 inch screens == Good – the 7″ was just a little small for me, 8.9″ would make all the difference.

The Bad:

• … and the Microsoft Windows XP operating system… == NO!!! We don’t want XP!
• $999 (=£500) starting price for wimax enabled laptops == Bad – way too high – maybe because the EEEPC isn’t a laptop it may be cheaper, but they seem to be preparing us for a price hike.

It seems to me, as a lot of other people have commented, that ASUS seem to have forgotten why this laptop was popular:

You can browse the web, write documents, email, generally do i386 stuff on the move – but it was small enough to keep in your wife’s handbag.. Seems now that everyone is getting in on the act and pushing the price up.

What we want:

• Battery – More capacity needed: 6 or 10hours continuous use would be nice
• CPU fan – Get rid (this would help with battery life)
• Storage – 8GB flash instead of 4GB – that would give some more spare space.
• Mini PCI-E – Make sure *all* of the EEEPCs have mini pci-e.
• 8.9″ screen – Better for adult users and possibly older users who wear glasses.
• Keyboard – Maybe a bit of R&D for the keyboard buttons as they are a bit close.
• OS – LEAVE XANDROS regardless of how much Microsoft pay you to take their CRAP OS.