Tag Archives: hardware

What the TechCrunch Tablet Should Really Look Like

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Michael Arrington is understandably pretty excited about how the TechCrunch Tablet is shaping up so far, but to use it seems they’re going about it the wrong way.

For a device that’s supposed to do Firefox, Skype and not much more, an underpowered PC with a touchscreen isn’t going to accomplish much. For one thing, Firefox is a huge performance drain and a memory hog to boot that underpowered hardware (even on-par with an Eee) simply won’t support and for another, there’s no way to get PC hardware down to the sub-$200 price range.

What TechCrunch wants – whether they know it or not – is an oversized PDA, not an underpowered PC. And it’s not just a question of semantics, it’s a question of foundations and principles – and it makes a huge difference in terms of end-user experience and the bottom line.

For the functionality that TechCrunch is trying to pack into this opensource, mass-market web gadget, there’s nothing that wouldn’t work better, faster, and cheaper on specialized hardware rather than on generic PC components.

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Asus: Linux, Whether You Need it Or Not

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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It looks like Asus is going to be shipping all its motherboards from here on out with Linux built right in, as part of their “Express Gate” initiative. Express Gate is a custom Linux distribution (Splashtop Linux) installed to a Flash ROM that’s a part of the motherboard. With Express Gate, Asus users have an option of booting from that built-in ROM chip to a Linux-based desktop, with an average boot time of around 5 seconds or so.

The problem with Express Gate isn’t that it’s Linux nor that it’s there – it’s the rather more-mysterious question of why it’s there in the first place. If ASUS had thought to make use of this Linux distribution to provide data recovery & diagnostics services, offer advanced BIOS configuration and updating options, or one of the infinite other creative ideas that one can manage with a light and fully-configurable OS that ships embedded with the motherboard, perhaps then we could see a use for it.

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Gigabyte’s Solid-Core Capacitors: A Gimmick?

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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All the hardware manufacturers currently on the market boast and brag about not using anything other than the latest solid-core capacitors on their high-end motherboards. Perhaps the most notable of these is Gigabyte, which has been touting its “Ultra-Durable” brand of capacitors more than any other manufacturer. According to Gigabyte, their capacitors will last up to 18 times longer than standard electrolytic capacitors, and 3 times longer than the solid-core capacitors used in other high-end motherboards:

Gigabyte Capacitor Ultra-Durable 2

The problem is, these capacitors are also susceptible to internal damage and malfunctions, even if not as often. And when these capacitors do fail, it’s not as easy to tell nor as easy to fix.

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Is the Gigabyte P35-DQ6 Being Discontinued?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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The Gigabyte P35-DQ6. Gigabyte’s most-popular motherboard in recent history and possibly the best-selling Intel [[INTC]] Core 2 Duo motherboard currently on the market. It overclocks well, it’s well within budget for a performance PC, it has tons of options, and it’s pretty damn stable. Is it also on the verge of a product recall?

In the past two weeks, the GA P35-DQ6 has been – quite literally – disappearing off shelves both online and offline. Popular online computer part retailers like Newegg, ZipZoomFly, TigerDirect, Fry’s, and Amazon — all of whom carried this highly-successful board a month ago — no longer have it in stock.

What’s even weirder (scarier, even) is that some stores like NewEgg and ZipZoomFly would keep some sort of record of out-of-stock items. The page would still be there, a backorder button would be present, and there would be some form of indication or the other that the product, at the very least, even existed at some point of time… but for some odd reason, they don’t.

We even had the DQ6 in a saved wishlist on NewEgg, and it just vanished from the wishlist without a warning or notification – only the 200-dollar less total alerted us to its absence – whereas an nVidia 8800 GTX model that was currently out of stock presented us with a colored warning in bold, red text at the top of the page.

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