Friday, July 31, 2009

Solid State Drives

Solid State Drives are now available at Bond Computers, the number one place for Boerne Computer Repair. Here is some more information about them from Crucial Technologies.

Say goodbye to your hard drive: computing just took a new turn.
Introducing Crucial SSD (Solid State Drive) technology—delivering the benefits of flash technology in a completely different way. More reliable, faster, and more durable than traditional magnetic hard drives, our SSDs are a forward-thinking solution for mobile users—users who want longer battery life, and can't afford to lose or corrupt the data stored on their notebooks. Likewise, SSDs are a great alternative for the PC enthusiast who is always looking for the very best in system performance.

The advantages reach beyond the notebook, too. Our innovative SK01external storage kit integrates an SSD into your standard desktop PC and allows it to act as a portable USB storage device. The possibilities are endless!

Crucial is the company that's been giving your outstanding DRAM memory upgrades backed by industry-leading warranties and outstanding service and support. And now, we're the company to go to find the best SSD products and information to meet your needs.



Why an SSD?
Put simply, SSDs are flash-based drives that offer greater reliability and faster performance than traditional magnetic hard drives. SSDs (solid state drives) are data storage devices that utilize non-volatile (do not lose data when power is removed) flash memory for computing applications that traditionally rely upon a mechanical hard disk drive. Crucial SSDs are designed as industry-standard drop-in replacements (via a SATA connection) for hard drives.

Consisting of just NAND, a controller, connectors, and a PCB, the SSD has no moving parts, creating greater stability by eliminating the mechanical delays and failures associated with a conventional magnetic hard disk drive.



What are the advantages of an SSD?
Superior reliability
The continuous motion generated by multiple moving parts creates heat, which is a leading factor in hard drive failure. In fact, hard drives are one of the notebook components most likely to fail. Because an SSD does not have moving parts, heat dissipation and noise are reduced or eliminated, resulting in a very rugged and reliable offering compared to a mechanical hard drive.

SSDs also have extreme shock and vibration tolerance, and their operating temperature ranges meet or exceed that of standard hard drives.

Increased power efficiency
Ever have your notebook battery die during a presentation? With no moving parts, SSDs require less power, improving battery operating time in notebook PCs and portable electronic devices.

Instant-load performance
Without the moving mechanical parts that cause latency issues, SSDs are not impeded by spin-up, seek time, or rotational latency. This equates to faster boot times, faster application loading, and greater overall system responsiveness. Via SATA, the Crucial 2.5-inch SSD offers a host data transfer rate of up to 3Gb/s, backward-compatible to SATA 1.5Gb/s.

Quiet acoustics
With no spinning parts, SSDs provide for silent operation, similar to that of a standard USB flash drive rather than the constant, noisy humming of a mechanical hard drive.

Reduced heat dissipation
Hard drives dissipate high levels of failure-inducing heat due to the parts necessary to operate the hard drive (such as the spinning platter). In contrast, SSDs produce little-to-no measurable heat because they have no moving parts, thus helping keep notebooks operating cooler.

Lightweight
Enjoy increased mobility with a lighter-weight SSD, which weighs less than a traditional mechanical drive.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Windows 7

If Microsoft wants Windows 7 to succeed, to do better than limp like Vista, it has to convince the majority of users to ditch their comfortable-as-an-old-shoe -- older than an old shoe, actually -- OS.

Microsoft has to beat itself by one-upping its most successful OS edition of all time: Windows XP.

In response, Microsoft actually extended the availability of XP until April 2011.

I recently installed Windows 7 on a testing pc in the office and everyone in the office has been very happy with it. We've had a couple things that we've had to work through, a few driver issues and getting the sata to usb devices to read but other than that it has been great. I am running it on a pentium 4 machine with 1 gig of ram and it is much faster than Vista is on my high end laptop. To make a long story short I've preordered a copy for my computers and I look forward to migrating people to it shortly.