Thanks goes to Dan for this one!

Thinking of buying a case for your BG45? Here is a review by Chris from http://www.steelskin.net/.

In this video I show you how to upgrade the ram on the Packard Bell BG45-U-300 it comes standard with 1GB of ram but that’s not enough for a happy (if there is such a thing) VISTA experience.

To make things easier I recommend having a philips (cross threaded) and a flat screw driver to hand.

Any questions just ask…

As I posted last week, I’m moving over to Be There from IDNet.  Well yesterday my free (loaned) router arrived from them.  I’m currently using a Linksys WAG54GX2 which has been pretty good and reliable, so I’ll probably want to use that eventually because it already has all my firewall exceptions and NAT forwarding details plugged in.  However, just to get up and running with Be, I’ll probably just drop the Thomson Speedtouch in first and see how we get on (speedtest results soon!)

Anyway, if you’re thinking of joining Be, this is the BeBox modem package you’ll receive:

I’ve got to say it’s been a nice package, and a really impressive switchover process so far.  Be’s online portal is good at keeping you informed of what’s going on, they respond to tickets on the nail, and they text you updates of how the process is progressing.  The documentation in the box is clear and comprehensive as well, and has my details on so it’s not just generic.

However, I’m not sure the reviews of the Speedtouch are great (apparently its setup is unintuitive and they aren’t the most reliable) and I don’t fancy setting up all my forwarding and MAC lockdowns on the wireless again, so I will probably revert to the Linksys as soon as I can get Be to give me the necessary connection details.

Dan

Here are very different products that would potentially be used for the same purpose. Working on the move. I’ve had these photos sitting around for a while so I though I would pop them up here so people could see a comparison between an ASUS EEEPC and one of DELLs Ultraportable offerings. Although the specs are very different the DELL comes in at around £1000 the EEE901 was £300.

Here they are side by side…

Here they are on top of each other!

Sorry that the pictures are slightly blurry I had a dumb moment with my camera!

Friends will know that I got an amazing deal on a server machine from Ebuyer - £149 for a Xeon-based Acer Altos G330 Mk2 – currently available from Memory Express for £445!!  I’m still not certain that the deal I got wasn’t a pricing error!

Getting a server PC is better for Windows Home Server because you want something expressly compatible with Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 on which WHS is based.  I have to tell you, my server – even with 1gb of RAM – EATS WHS alive.  It’s a wonderful experience.

Well, I got my Ebuyer email today, and there’s another special on a server at the moment which would also make a superb, if not rather overpowered, WHS box:

HP Proliant ML115 G5: £199.99

Team that with WHS: £99.99 (has become MORE expensive over time?!)

Then you would do well to shove in a couple of Western Digital GreenPower HDD’s to supplement the 160gb system drive:

2 x 640gb Western Digital GP: £105.88

That’s just £405.86 for a machine with a QUAD core Opteron, and ready to run WHS and the new WHS2 (‘Vail’ - when it becomes available) for many many years while breaking no sweat!  Compare that to the undeniably lovely HP Mediasmart, which tends to come in at around £350 with 512mb or RAM, 500mb storage and a 1.8ghz SEMPRON CPU, although newer models have been announced.  This self-build is therefore amazing value.  I suppose the one thing that the HP has is it’s size – it’s tiny!

Let me know if you’d like a Proliant WHS though, and I’ll build it for you for a very reasonable premium

Dan

Ok, so here’s the heart of my new HTPC system.  I realised that IGP (integrated graphics) are finally at the point where I can ditch my graphics card (and get good money on Ebay!) and still get top Media Centre performance – this thing will do HD MKV and Blu Ray decoding smoothly with its built-in ATI HD3200, and uses less electricity and generates less heat.  All good for the living room HTPC!

Dan

Again, does it count when I don’t actually get the thing out of the box?!  It’s a processor and a heatsink – what’s the point?!  This is going into my new HTPC build.  It’s the perfect CPU – 2.6ghz so plenty of horsepower for Vista HP for now, and Windows 7 once it’s stable enough for the living room.  The other benefit of course is that it’s 45nm, so runs very cool, sips lightly at the electricity, and requires very little cooling (therefore very quiet).

Dan

Sorry no posts recently – too much fun playing the SSD!  Lots of unboxing to come though…

It occurred to me the other day when I was testing the SSD that the most significant element of the boot up period was actually the Dell initialising it’s BIOS, and obviously that time is a constant on the boot whatever the hardware attached.  So I thought I’d time it, and it turns out that the BIOS takes a full 16 seconds to initialise!

That means the final scores on the doors are:

Vista 64 + Seagate Barracuda: boot up time (excluding BIOS) = 3 minutes 0 seconds

Windows 7 64 + Samsung SSD: boot up time (excluding BIOS) = 0 minutes 25 seconds

Does make me wonder if other motherboards get through this quicker – anyone have any other experiences they’d like to share?  Pop them in the comments.

Dan

Initial reactions are - it’s amazing…

My brand new Dell Studio XPS i7 is a beast, but I suspect it has a rather cheap and cheerful hard drive.  It’s never been that quick to do things, which is rather surprising given it’s a Core i7 with Vista 64bit (SP2RC) and 6gb RAM!  The drive is a Seagate Barracuda, but with Vista it just isn’t that quick:

Vista 64 cold boot: 3m16s

Of course, that’s with all my apps, Antivirus and MS Mesh installed.

I installed the Samsung 64GB SSD, and Windows 7 (build 7048) 64bit, and the result was:

Win7 64 cold boot: 41s

Wow! Of course that’s a clean install of a new OS, but the difference is significant.

It’s worth adding that the install takes up 18.4GB on the disk, and that the installation took 18m48s in total.

More to come I’m sure tomorrow, when more hardware arrives

Dan