I’ve had a domain sitting away doing not much for a while now (except letting me remote in to my home computers), and a server sitting at home twiddling it’s thumbs.

So I thought I’d put it to good use, and install WordPress on it (and I DID!)

So I’ve imported the blog into it, and fixed little bits up to bring it up to snuff.

Things shouldn’t change much for viewing it, hopefully google will fix up the links soon, but I’m not sure how because I can’t figure out a way to redirect everything to the new site. If anyone has any ideas on that, just swing me a comment/email. Same goes for if you have any problems with the new site.

There wasn’t any real reason to do it, just procrastination.

http://4zzdawg.com/

Aaron

EDIT: Google always wins! Figured out how to redirect, unfortunately it isn’t free, but what is these days?

As you know, yesterday I got my new drive, the Falcon, for my new PC.

At the moment, I haven’t got the rest of the pieces of the PC, so I have installed it in my current machine.

Anyway, lets get right into the unboxing.

When I first got the box, I thought it was pretty boring looking, and could’ve done with a bit more information on the box, but I think the design is starting to grow on me.

Specs and stuff

As you can see, it’s rated at 230MB read and 190MB write, and can operate at 40 degrees below 0!

Box opened up and pulled out

And you unfold that to get..

Drive and Manual

The drive comes in an anti-static bag, for safety, and the manual contains detailed specs, warranty information, and instructions for installing your drive for use.

Firmware jumper in a zip lock bag

The last thing the drive comes with is a jumper to use when upgrading the firmware on the drive, it’s fairly obvious where to put the jumper, but I have no idea how to upgrade it yet, when I figure it out, I’ll let you’s know, and post a How to.

Mmmm... Nice!

And finally, here’s the drive by itself. As soon as I lifted it out of the bag, I noticed it was light, really light, like less than half the weight of a standard 3.5″ HDD. The case is made of some type of metal.

As you can see, the same design from the front of the box was carried over directly over to a sticker on the drive.

I forgot to get a picture of the underside of the drive before installing it, but it’s mainly specs and serial numbers and stuff, nothing too interesting. Don’t be afraid to ask if you want a picture of it though.

Drive installed in my mess, after removing my old failing drive

And finally, I installed it, even though it wasn’t much of an installation, because I didn’t have an adapter to fit the drive into a normal hard drive space.

The Falcon, and all other SSDs are 2.5″ drives, the size of a Laptop hard drive, and Desktop HDDs are 3.5″, so SSDs don’t fit in a Desktop PC without adjustment or a holder.

So.. Instead, I put it on the floor of my case xD.

In this photo, you can see the size of the drive aswell, it’s almost smaller than my CPU fan, so it’s pretty tiny.

Once installed, I started installing Windows 7 RC, while this was installling, me and my brothers had a bit of fun out in the street.

Brother riding on an old chair

Aand.. He's off

Yeaaah. Well I didn’t get to have too much fun, because.. Win7 installed and booted for the first time in UNDER 15 minutes.

After using the drive for a day now, I’ve found that the computer boots and logs in in 15 seconds from power on, it’s SPEEDY!

While we’re on SPEED! Here’s my first run with CrystalDiskMark.

————————————————–

CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo

Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

————————————————–

Sequential Read :  238.390 MB/s

Sequential Write :  149.820 MB/s

Random Read 512KB :  179.021 MB/s

Random Write 512KB :  137.213 MB/s

Random Read 4KB :   30.746 MB/s

Random Write 4KB :   19.177 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB

Date : 2009/07/09 16:18:19

That is faster than the speed indicated in the specs for Reading, but for writing it is slightly slower, but still very fast.

This was a day after I installed the OS, and I haven’t done anything to try and optimize the OS for SSD use except for moving the pagefile to a different drive.

I’m going to run G Skill’s Wiper tool when they activate my account on their forum to download their firmware and tools, and that should get me some extra speed in the benchmark area.

Just as a comparison, my other hard drive (a cheap drive that you get when speed doesn’t matter, and that most computers come with), got about a 6th of these results.

So yeah… Speed, loving it!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for a howto for updating firmware, and optimizing Windows for SSDs.

-Aaron

PS. Don’t buy Western Digital hard drives. The old drive that failed was just over a year old, and was used under normal conditions, and cared for imensely, even though it was extremely noisy.

Failure, and ugly too now that I've seen the Falcon!

PPS. If you’ve got an idea for demolition of the old drive, swing me an email or tweet and I might have a go at it lol.

A few days ago I was confronted with a gut wrenching image:

Ahhh Crap..

Fortunately, it’s still worked since then, but I didn’t trust it at all, so after checking my bank, and stock at the local computer store, I headed down and picked up one of these:

G Skill Falcon 128GB SSD

That’s right, G Skills newest SSD, and by the looks of it, the fastest on the market with the exception of a few extremely expensive drives (which I can’t remember the names of, d’oh)

It cost me AU$425 from my local MSY store, I was lucky too, I got the last one in stock!

I was thinking of the OCZ Vertex, but from the reading I’ve been doing, it’s slower than the Falcon (slightly), but it’s over $150 bucks more expensive.. Screw that.

Just so you know, this drive IS for my new PC, but I can’t hold out for that long without a drive in my current PC, so I’m going to go ahead and use it as my main OS drive for my current machine.

I’m in the process of burning a new Windows 7 DVD, then I’ll chuck it in, I’ll take some pics of the unboxing and installation process and post up an Unboxing/Installation/First impressions thingy.

Wish me luck!

Thanks,

Aaron

Don’t know if you’ve been following, but the gadget community/database gdgt has just been launched.

Not exactly sure how to explain it, but basically it’s a database of a tonne of gadgets, with really detailed specs, where you can make a profile to discuss different gadgets, add your favourites, what you own, what you used to own, and give your opinions on them.

If there’s a gadget you’ve heard of or have that isn’t on the site, you can add it, and include specifications that you know about it.

Anyway, here’s my profile so you can add me, it is a community after all, although I’m not sure how the friends aspect is going to work, but we’ll find out I guess.

Have fun!

As you might know, I’m building a new PC soon, and I’ve been planning it for a while.

I thought I might reveal the different components as I get them, as well as giving a bit of a reason why I chose it, and a bit of a review/unboxing if I see fit.

The RAM’s going to be pretty bland.. because well.. what can you test with RAM unless you have a board to test it on.. Which I don’t yet.

I’ve chosen this because it was one of the nicer sets of DDR3 Tri-Channel memory in stock at my local Umart, and because Tri-Channel is great for an i7, which is what I’m going to build. I was also persuaded towards it because of the brand name, as I’ve heard it’s great and reliable, it also has a lifetime warranty.

OCZ 1600MHz DDR3 Triple-Channel, 6GB Kit

As you can see, it also looks great.

I’d show you an unboxing, but it isn’t even open yet, and I don’t plan to open it until I get the rest of my parts.

Mainly so, 1. I don’t lose it 2. It doesn’t get dusty, and 3. I don’t accidentally break it

Rest assured, I will let you know how it goes once installed in the system, and I will properly unbox it for you’s.

Don’t hold your breath though, It’s gonna be a while till I’ve got the cash for all of the other parts, this is the first, and only piece I’ve got so far.

I’m still undecided on what part I’ll get next, probably either the Case, or the Motherboard.

Thanks,

Aaron

I haven’t posted in what must be months, so I thought I’d update you all on what’s been going on since I last posted, and hopefully I should be posting a bit more in the future, or at least till the end of the holidays.

Speaking of holidays.. I just finished my first semester at TAFE doing a Diploma in IT (Network Engineering), blasting through it with Distinctions across the board.

Between TAFE, work, and being a Teenager (I’m 18 now aswell!) I’ve managed to..

• Get my first Smartphone, the Nokia E71 – Generally enjoying the power of the phone and the small-ish, but quality range of Apps for S60
• Adopt Windows 7 RC as my main OS – Loving the speed compared to Vista, and even XP in some places. New window management features are great.
• Get a nice server setup going – I’ve set up my old computer as an Ubuntu Linux server, currently serving all of my music, videos, pictures and documents over FTP, Samba, and NFS, as well as performing daily, weekly and monthly backups just in case.
• Get frequent warnings that my desktop’s Hard drive is failing – Pretty self explanatory except I still haven’t been bothered to get a new one.
• Get my Motorbike Learners, then graduate to a P2 license, as well as buying my first road bike.
• Buy a new HDTV, Samsung 32″ LCD – Upgrading from that crappy box which was (I’m told) one of the first ever colour TVs felt really good, and looks pretty darn nice too.
• Start using Twitter frequently – I started using it mainly because a few of my friends are using it, and it’s easy to keep up with personal news.
• Decided I’m building a new PC – Going to make an i7 PC, because 1. I need a new HDD anyway 2. The Motherboard/PSU/RAM I made my current PC with is CRAP and 3. An i7 will go great with Windows 7 (because I want it to) – The only problem is.. Money, but I’m slowly getting there.
• Found a great twitter client – Tweetdeck, it rules.
• Crashed my bike =\ – Didn’t manage to get pics of this one, although it would have been cool to look back on the damage I caused.
• Started using a good Twitter client for S60, Gravity – It’s not free, but it’s well worth the $~12 it costs, there is a free 10 day demo though.

I might write up some reviews/impressions about these different things some time in the future.

-Aaron

Honestly?..
Absolutely no idea, except that it’s a facebook application that is definately NOT made by Facebook.

If you want to get technical, it’s actually a self-replicating worm.
It automatically sends a notification to all of your friends saying that you have encountered errors in their profile, and to “Click here to view the errors”..

FYI – You’re profile DOESN’T have errors

These guys are just playing around with you, there’s actually nothing wrong with your profile, and are trying to play on peoples gullibility. There’s no reason to add it, and infact there may be a very good reason not to add it..

So what COULD it do?

Well.. I’m gonna take a guess here that it probably does nothing.
But it has the potential to gather information about you and your friends, including your phone number and email address depending on your settings
If it’s making use of an unknown exploit in facebook, it has the potential to do.. well, just about anything that you can do when you’re logged into facebook.

By the looks of it, it’s only quite new, and will most likely be removed within the week.

Hit that remove button!

If you know how to remove apps, great! Do it already and stop reading this.
If you don’t, it’s simple.
Click “Applications” in the bottom-left corner of your facebook window, then click “Edit” in the top-right corner of the box that pops up.
From there, just click the “x” next to “Error check system”, and then confirm you’d like to remove it.

Easy

Enjoy your night, and forward this link to your friends.

-Aaron

Will you guys be getting one? I know I will be, the good old SE is getting a bit old. Cant wait =]

Just thought I’d let you know (especially you guys who don’t use it yet) that I’ve just updated my Shutdown Utility, and it now plays an alarm sound 5 minutes before the computer shuts down/restarts, so that it doesn’t shut down when you aren’t ready.

Check it here.

It’s 100% safe, if you use it, comment so that people don’t have to take my word for it.

Try it, its really easy to use!

Thanks for reading,

~4zzdawg

You all have great christmas’s, and don’t drink too much.

Laaaaterz!
4zzdawg