The Penguin Trail

There has been a lot of speculation that Intel was going to cut prices and release new processors on April 19. There has been no announcement thus far, but it looks like one lucky guy managed to find an unannounced Core 2 Quad Q8400 for $202 in Tokyo’s Akihabara district with the low power 65 watt Q8400S version coming soon at $275. Both have a clock rate of 2.66GHz, 4MB of L2 cache, and 1333MHz FSB using a 45nm process. The one for sale in Akihabara is the standard 95 watt version with an sSpec of SLGT6 produced in Malaysia on April 9th. The higher multiplier of 8x may make for excellent overclocking.

UPDATE: It is now available for purchase from Newegg.com for $185

In my recent article about power consumption and efficiency with Apple’s Mac Mini, an Atom dual core nettop, and an efficient desktop PC, I found that efficiency is in the eye of the beholder. While a nettop uses virtually no power at idle, its dismal speed means that in the long run it would take more energy to run than a desktop PC. Today I look at power optimization on motherboards, specifically Gigabyte’s Easy Energy Saver (EES), and find that it has no reason to exist other than as a marketing tool.

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If you need a computer to run 24/7, then you want the most efficient one you can find, right? Maybe not. Speed and efficiency are tradeoffs and sometimes speed will save you more money (and a lot of time) than the most power efficient option. Let’s look at how Apple’s Mac Mini, Dell’s tiny Atom-powered PC, and desktop PC fare in cost to operate.

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I’m a 5′11″ (180cm) guy. Back in 1997 I had enjoyed my college years to the point where I had gained a lot of weight. I topped out at over 230 pounds (104 kg), giving me a body mass index (BMI) of 32. Anything over 25 and you’re overweight - over 30 and you’re obese. Eventually I was able to drop down to about 160 lbs (74 kg) and keep it that way for many years. One of the keys to that was… walking. Yes, walking! A good walk will burn over 300 calories in an hour. A fast walk can burn 500 calories - almost as much as jogging!

Here’s what you need to get you going…

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Picture thanks to NathanFromDeVryEET

As with any technology, it will treat you as well as you treat it. Getting your system up and running is only the beginning. Over time you’ll be installing (and uninstalling) software, installing patches, saving those critical files with the cure for cancer, and bulking up on downloads of pirated publicly licensed media. Just using your system can slowly turn your wicked fast system into something as slow and annoying as sucking peanut butter through a straw. So here are the four areas that you need to pay attention to.

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I am in the process of moving from Wordpress.com to my own site at PenguinTrail.com. By making this change it will be easier for me to post more stuff, have better features (e.g. bookmarking, commentLuv, etc.), and expand the range of stuff I talk about. In other words, I’m going to make the website bigger, stronger, faster!

Among the changes, you’ll see a new look to the site. Don’t fret. It’s the same olde goodness of the existing site only with the new coolness. So far things the transition is going well, but if you notice a broken link, let me know.

Have a suggestion on how to improve things or want that extra hot new feature on this site? Leave a comment and I just might do it!

“You even have some of my DNA in you now, as I had been double dipping in that dish for a good 10 minutes”

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If you read other parts of my blog you’ll know (or discover) that I spend a lot of time in Vietnam. During my last visit there I was walking through the backpacker’s area in District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and wandered into a store selling bootleg DVDs, where I found these two gems that had be laughing pretty hard:

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A lot of people have found my previous blog post about restoring your master boot record (MBR) helpful.  I did assume, however, that you were using Windows XP.  But, what if you (gasp), have a dual boot configuration with Windows Vista?  Vista has a different boot loader that can be quite annoying, and the tools to restore your MBR have also changed, but not a lot.  So, here are the steps.

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Thanks to all of you that have been submitting comments.  I’ll try to research a few and update the entries.  I think there are a few tweaks needed for Hardy Haron too.  So, where have I been?  Well, it was the first year of my PhD program and I was buried in work and shuttling back and forth between France and Singapore.  It’s finally over and I will be enjoying some of the slower pace of the summer by moving to Hardy and trying out some new stuff: HD video, encryption, WEP cracking, bibliographic databases, etc.  If you have any requests for me to try to figure out, let me know!