AppleInsider on how Apple’s move to 64-bit in Snow Leopard exposes a “great PC swindle”:
One developer we consulted about the issue noted, “consumers are being scammed by [PC] OEMs on a large scale. OEMs will encourage customers to upgrade a 2GB machine to 4GB, even though the usable RAM might be limited to 2.3GB. This is especially a problem on high-end gaming machines that have huge graphics cards as well as lots of RAM.”
I’ve got a history with Toshiba laptops, my first laptop was a Toshiba Satellite 1800-100. Back then, laptops were rather depressing affairs, unless you remortaged your house for a nice IBM ThinkPad the alternatives were built like toys, had dodgy screens that made it look like you were on drugs if didn’t look at them straight on and keyboards that made mobile phones seem a joy to type on. Not a great experience, especially as you could get a desktop that was infinitely better for half the price.
The Satellite was the first affordable laptop I found with a good keyboard. In fact, it was more than good — I preferred it to a desktop keyboard and even the acclaimed IBM ThinkPad keyboard. Once I wiped Windows ME, upgraded the RAM to 256MB and installed Windows 2000, it was quite a useable little laptop and very capable of running Visual Basic 6 and Office.
My second Toshiba laptop was a Tecra M1, a fantastic machine that was intelligently designed and built well. I eventually gave up laptop computing when I really started gaming, and I’ve been using desktops ever since.
Until last year that is, when I got my MacBook – the first Mac I’ve had that really started to replace my desktop Windows machines. Since then I use my MacBook lots more than my desktop machine, which has been relegated to gaming.
So when TalkToshiba asked if I wanted to review one of their laptops, I jumped at the chance.
The Tecra A8 is the bottom of the line Tecra model in the range, but still possess a very good specification, including a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The review model sent to me is an old model which came with Windows XP. An up-to date model with Vista Business can be had for around £900.
Being a business orientated laptop, it has quite a smart appearance. Its gun metal grey lid gives the appearance of being metallic, but is just plastic. And its quite weak plastic too, as the screen visibly bends if I apply pressure to the back of it.
There are a generous three USB ports on the back side, and even a serial, PS/2 and modem port. I can’t help but think that the space would’ve been better utilised with FireWire and USB ports though, although the serial port is incredibly useful for people with legacy devices that don’t work with USB to serial adaptors.
My old Tecra M1 was a fantastic machine that was built well and looked great for its time. Unfortunately, the A8 doesn’t inherit the M1′s superior build, magnesium alloy casing or sharp looks.
Although the specifications claim its 2mm thinner, it feels thicker than the old Tecra because of its clunkier design. It also feels heavier than its 2.9KG state weight, which is a shame as the plastics used are quite thin. Overall I was expecting much better from Toshiba, although this is their bottom of the line Tecra, maybe the higher end models are better, but the build is on-par with a £500 laptop, not a £900 one.
The Tecra A8 keeps the tradition with a great keyboard. It has a resounding click that gives just the right amount of feedback. Being a 15.4 inch widescreen laptop, there is a lot of width for the keyboard, unfortunately not all of it is utilised and is rather cramped which makes touch typing on it more error-prone. Toshiba should take a lesson from Apple here and give its keys more breathing room.
Its good to see dedicated Page Up, Page Down, Home and End buttons, something I miss on my MacBook. The Function (Fn) key and Control are in the right order too, which is Control on the left and Function on the right, something else my MacBook muffed up.
Unfortunately, the track-pad leaves much to be desired. Its far too small which either makes it difficult to move the cursor across the screen if you set the speed slow, or makes it difficult to control the cursor accurately if the speed is set too fast. It also confuses tap-to-click with drag very often, which is frustrating. You can use the right and bottom area of the touch pad to scroll, which would’ve been far more useful if the touch pad was bigger. Such a big laptop and such a small touch pad, its just a waste of space.
The mouse buttons also give rather tacky feedback and feel horrible to press. There isn’t a physical difference between the left and right mouse button, which makes it easy to press the wrong one.
It would’ve been nice to have a touch point as well, although this is present on the more expensive Tecra A9 series.
I don’t have much to say here, other than the 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor is more than enough for most people and seemed very quick in use. It could do with another 1GB of RAM though, especially if you plan on using Vista with it.
I ran Super Pi and Prime95 simultaneously to saturate both cores, and the Tecra only got mildly warm on its bottom side. In this respect its much better than the MacBook or MacBook Pro.
When idling, its very loud in comparison to the majority of laptops I’ve used. There is a definite humming sound from the fan that doesn’t seem to stop. Under load, it manages to keep the noise levels fairly reasonable although the pitch of the fan is quite high.
The included software included with the Tecra is, sadly, a joke.
The wireless configuration utility is impossible to use, it visualises your computer as the nucleus of an atom and the wireless networks in rage as the electrons orbiting it. You have to hover over an “electron” to see the details about the network, all of which will fly over the head of those not familiar with WLAN terminology. Clicking on an electron doesn’t give the expected result of joining that network — it does nothing. There are other buttons with images that give no idea of what they do, so I gave up on this and used the perfectly good built-in Windows WLAN configuration tool.
I had a quick look over the other included configuration software, none of which seem to offer more than another interface over what Windows already has, and 99% of the time its harder to use.
So would I buy one for £900? No, there are far better laptops at that price point. Apple offers a better specified MacBook thats lighter, better looking and better built for less money, and there are even far better laptops in Toshiba’s consumer Satellite range.
To truly compete, the value of the laptop would have to drop to £500 or under, and even then I’d probably still buy a cheap Lenovo or HP that are a little slower, but much better built and better looking.
Better luck next time Toshiba.
Apple announced at their media event today a stunning new metal and glass iMac. I wanted a desktop right now and didn’t care much for games, this would be my choice.
Apple have announced upgraded MacBook Pros now using the Santa Rosa chipset and LED backlit displays.
Terratec releases beta audio drivers for it’s popular Aureon range of sound cards.
I’ve been recently using my Apple MacBook a lot more than my Dell desktop, even though the MacBook only has a 13-inch monitor while I have two 19-inch monitors for the Dell. Having lots of screen real estate is nice, especially when I’m working; I can have Visual Studio open on one screen and Enterprise Manager1 on the other. It increases my productivity and makes some tasks less of a chore and more enjoyable.
I got a stonking deal on my Dell. It came with a 19-inch flat-panel monitor based on a top-of-the-range Samsung panel and a dual-core processor all for £450. I complimented it with my other 19-inch flat-pane, put in a NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT for games and stuck in two 250GB hard drives2 .
However with a big computer comes big power consumption. I don’t have a watt-meter but I estimate that my computer uses about 250W at idle and 350W when under load, this is with both monitors on. As I only use this computer after work at night and at the weekends, I’d estimate it’s turned on about two hours a day on weekdays and four hours a day at weekends. Let’s be conservative and assume it’s only idling at those times, then let’s be conservative again and say for ever watt/hour of energy 0.5g of carbon is pumped into the atmosphere. Over the course of a year, 117kg of carbon is in the atmosphere because of my computer, a huge amount.
I bought my MacBook to use while travelling, although it doesn’t really see much use as a road-warrior anymore; it mainly sits on my lap when I’m at home and want to watch TV and write at the same time. It’s tiny power adaptor has a maximum output of 55W, which means that 55W is enough for the laptop to run at full load and still have enough to charge the battery a little too. Let’s be liberal here and assume the whole 55W is used all the time, even when idle. With the same usage pattern as the desktop, the MacBook only produces 26kg of carbon in a year, a saving of 91kg a year, a saving of 81%!
My desktop is now relegated to being turned on about one to two hours a week to archive data and perform backups, and my MacBook is now being used as my main home computer. I bought a XBOX which I’m using to play games now, it has a maximum power consumption of 100W, which when connection to one of my flat panels is 170W, half that of my desktop.
[tags]enviroment, Dell, Apple, MacBook, Intel, green, technology, computers, XBOX, games[/tags]
The president of the British Computer Society has warned that there is a major shortfall of Computer Science graduates in the U.K., and we face loosing jobs to developing countries such as China and India.
More jobs for me then.
After the iMac update, the Mac mini range have received a welcome update and both now sport Core Duo processors. The bottom range £399.01 Mac mini now has a 1.66GHz Core Duo processor, while the range topping £529 Mac mini now has a 1.83GHz processor and an 80GB hard drive.
This will probably now be the Mac of choice for newcomers to the Apple arena, while the bottom range mini makes a very tempting proposition for a media centre computer, now that it has enough processor grunt to decode full 1080p HD video.
Apple have very quietly released a new range of iMac computers, now with Intel Core 2 Duo processors and a new 24-inch model. Prices start at £679 for the base 1.83GHz 17-inch model (which excludes Front Row, the remote, Bluetooth and a DVD burner), leading up to £1349.01 for the top of the range 24-inch model with a 2.16Ghz processor and a 7300GT graphics card.
The QWERTY design was originally patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868, and until today remains the only keyboard layout design to have any kind of market penetration.
QWERTY’s was originally designed for typewriters. It seperated the most commonly found pairs of letters in an attempt to stop the typebars from becoming intertwined and stuck. Because of this layout, it means that the typists had to hunt around as much of the keyboard as possible to type most words in, which slowed them down and kept the machinery running.
That was the nineteenth century. Now, there is absolutely no reason to be using QWERTY as the design of keyboards in modern electronic keyboards, as they don’t get stuck (unless you spill something on them). The average typist on a QWERTY keyboard gets around 30 wpm, topping out at around 50 wpm for a good typist. If you’re exceptional, you can achieve upto 90 wpm bursts.
Now lets roll forward a few years to Dvorak’s Simplified Keyboard1 design, which was patented by Dr. August Dvorak in 1936. Dvorak’s layout was design to reduce the inefficiency and fatigue problems associated with QWERTY.
The speed and efficiency of this design is demostrated by Barbara Blackburn, who holds the world record as fastest typist. With a maintained 150 wpm over fifty minutes of typing, and over 200 wpm in bursts. All of this with a Dvorak layout, which would not have been possible with QWERTY.
So why are we still using QWERTY? Because of the amount of investment by companies and typists in the QWERTY layout, they are reluctant to change, so new typists and computers still use the QWERTY standard. Essentially, they’re locked into QWERTY.
Another reason, is that most typists don’t aspire to the level of speed that the Dvorak layout allows. They’re comfortable with their current speed. It’s ironic that the’re in an industry thats constantly changing, some things never change.
While I’d love to change to something more efficient than QWERTY, I’d probably be in the minority. The reduction in efficiency in the transition process would put off most, and if that doesn’t the yet unsolved compatability problems with keyboard shortcuts on computers probably would.
I’m whacking the PowerBook on eBay incase anyone want’s a great condition G4 TiBook. I don’t really need it anymore once I start my job so someone else should get some good use out of it! It’s also a good excuse to buy a new MacBook, but we’ll have to see about that! The eBay auction doesn’t start until Sunday so if anyone here gives me a decent offer then I’ll probably accept it.
Edit: sold!
I’ve finally moved out of the “dark ages” of single core computing and joined the modern world of dual core owners. It’s been a great ride my single core friends, but it’s time to roll on.
When was the last time someone tried to hack into your computer? Never? Yeah me too. And when was the last time that you got a virus infection? Months? Yeah again, me too. This kind of rhetorical questioning got me thinking, do I actually need a firewall or anti-virus software anymore?
You could go on about the dangers of browsing the internet without any protection, but I believe that if you remain savvy about your e-mail attachments, don’t accept holiday_pictures.jpg.vbs from chat messages and stay off Warez sites, the chance of an actual virus infection from daily use of a computer is very small indeed.
So as a brief experiment, I’m going to run my computer without a firewall or anti-virus software, but scan the computer every week for viruses or spyware. If I get a virus, then I know I am a fool for trusting myself too much, and I’ll bring the defences back up. But as long as I remain fully patched, there shouldn’t be a problem.
Maybe blogging about this is just asking to be hacked, but I’ll take that chance.
As I’m getting a brand spanking new Dell computer tomorrow, my old one is now up for sale. Usually, I’d keep old computers instead of selling them, but this one would get no use whatsoever and it’s still got some life left. So if you’re looking for a bargain then look no further!