Asus EEE PC S101 Netbook

Just had my hands on one of the sexy babe. The S101 is IMHO: SEXY! Simply EXpensive Yes but I still want one! We tested one of these in Parkway Harvey Norman. Check out these review links: –

http://www.itechnews.net/2008/10/07/asus-eee-pc-s101-live-shots/

http://www.itechnews.net/2008/10/20/asus-eee-pc-s101-unboxed/#more-14683

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-eee-pc-s101/4505-3121_7-33357387.html

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49299358-1,00.htm

 

Currently available in Singapore is the Dark Brown S101. Other than the price, we highly recommend this showoff piece with decent performance netbook to anyone who does blogging, typing, work on simple Excel worksheet, surf net, does emails etc.

Like:

• Nice screen, 10.2” WVGA(1024×600) – LED backlight. Some of you might concern about the 1024×600, well, it looks better than a 1600×1200 on a 12” screen. Comfortable to the eyes.
• Good keyboard! Much better than the EEEPC 701 we had.
• Thin, overall well balanced spec.

 

Dislike:

• The price: S$1,098??!?
• Battery, 4 cell only. Claimed 5 hrs… I am not too sure about it.
• 16GB with 11GB available ONLY!

 

Recommendation:

• Upgrade to 2GB RAM and throw away that 1GB RAM. Although some reviewer says upgrades does not work…weird!
• Clean up unnecessary XP Home Services to make it run faster.
• Add high speed SD card to store your files.

Using Robocopy

Robocopy or Robust File Copy is a command line replicated directory program. This program is recommended by a friend from US. 

This program good, easy to use and help me in saving a lot of time in writing script.  What I like the most is the log function and can give me the correct information that I required.

The best is that It can copy a single 100G sql database data over a network to a NAS as a backup without any problem.

 

Below are the script that I had written to run backup:

set folder1=%date:~0,3% <– This is to set the day Example: Mon, Tue…etc. As I don’t need to create a lot of batch to copy to different folder. 

robocopy “M:” “E:\%folder%” /R:1 /W:5 /XO /ETA /NP /LOG+:C:\Scripts\Log\data.txt

/R: Tells Robocopy to retry ‘n’ times before giving up in the event of error (default is 1 million).
      (Set it to repeat 1 time to prevent it from repeating it 1 million time)

/W: Wait time between retries (default is 30 seconds).
       (Usually I set it within 3 to 5 second)

/XO: Exclude older files
        (It will copy only the new files and not the old files. This should help you to save a lot of time during the backup process)

/NP: No Progress
       (If you don’t disable the option and the log files will record the copy percentage into the log file)

/ETA: To show the estimated  timing of arrival of copied files
          (This is very good as you can see how much you each files take to copy over to another media)

/LOG+:file:  Output status to LOG file (append to existing log).
                    (It will record the backup status so that you are able to trace which backup is not done properly)

 

 

 Figure 1 – The details of the log file created using Robocopy

 

I discover a way to copy selective files to other media as from most of the forum saying that it can only copy a whole from the folder.

Below is the script:

robocopy “M:” “E:\%folder%” DATA01.zip DATA02.zip  /R:1 /W:5 /XO /ETA /NP /LOG+:C:\Scripts\Log\data.txt

The script is about the same as the above. The only difference is that I put the files DATA01.zip and DATA02.zip which I want to from M drive to E drive. 

Of course, you have to make sure the drive is state correctly and the files you want to copy from this drive to other external drive.

 

I would highly recommended people to use robocopy for running backup of raw data and data migration.

Dell S2409W Full HD Monitor

If you are looking for a good monitor, go for the Dell S2409W. See http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/monitor-dell-s2409wfp?c=sg&cs=sgdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

Just arrived this morning, we quickly fixed to our programmer’s desk and viola! Amazing.

At S$489 promo price, it is the best buy monitor, giving you an ultra-wide native resolutions of 1920 x 1080! We were wondering that the words will become compressed because rightfully, the standard native resolution ratio should be either 1680 X 1050 or 1920 X 1200!

 

Comparing with his previous 1680 X 1050 @ 22”, the Dell S2409W new 1920 x 1080 @ 24” gives him another 2 more inches of horizontal view space at no lost of sharpness or actual screen size! Simply put: GREAT BUY!

 

Review Rating:      (4/5)

How long to transfer my file on my 1500kbps ADSL broadband?

First of all, you have an ADSL plan that is 1500kbps downstream and 384kbps upstream. SO if you are downloading a file from a high speed website, you should achieve 1500kbps, but if you are uploading the file to the same high speed site, you are going at 384kbps – assuming no one else is using the broadband.

 

So how fast this that? This is an estimate:

• Take 1500kbps (kilobits per sec.) divide by 8 = 187.5Kbps (kilobytes per sec.)
• Give and take 20% TCP/IP overheads on the bandwidth.
• So the actual throughput is around 150Kbps for download or 38.4Kbps for upload.
• If your file is 1MB or 1024Kb, you would need around 7 seconds to download or 30 seconds for upload.
• If your file is 1GB or 1024Mb, you would need around 7,000 seconds (116 mins or almost 2 hrs) to download or 30,000 seconds (500 mins or 8.3 hrs) for upload.

This is JUST an estimate, remember!

So see professional advise and do benchmark testing should you think of maximizing your bandwidth for file transfer or remote backups.

BTW, if you think you have a 8mbps, 10mbps, 25mbps or 100mbps broadband connection and enjoy that speed, you are in for a surprise!

neatnoi’s first blog entry: free marketing: free press release distribution

Dear all,

Discovered i could distribute free press release a few months ago… wanna share some thoughts.

If you just want some straight forward postings, go to the following links below to post. They are quite straightforward. 

http://express-press-release.com/submit-free-press-release.php
http://www.sanepr.com/login.cfm
http://www.prlog.org/submit-free-press-release.html
http://i-newswire.com/submit_free.php
http://www.1888pressrelease.com/register.php

These are the things i like about them:

1. Sincerely Free : Every step is smooth and does not ask you to subscribe to their paid service in every single administrative process; since you want to make them free, make them sincerely free and genuinely useful, like what we did with OurOfficePortal

2. User-Friendly : Most of the ones above are professional looking and most importantly very user-friendly

Buying desktop PC? Better go for laptop/notebook!

If you are thinking of buying desktops for office use, it is time to consider laptops/notebooks/netbooks! Reasons are: -

• Desktop PC uses more electricity!
• Laptops/notebooks/netbooks uses less power and the battery acts as a UPS/backup power!
• Laptops/notebooks/netbooks can be cheaper than desktops PC.
• Laptops/notebooks/netbooks is almost as fast as desktops PC, and more portable!

Lets look at electric power. I visited http://services.spservices.sg/cs_services_energy-audit.asp and did an estimation, see results returned for each item: -

Thank you for using the Home Electricity Audit.
Your estimated electricity consumption in a month is:
840 kWH or $210.59
(Based on the current tariff rate of 25.07 cents/kWH)
This is a breakdown of the electrical appliances which contributes to the electricity consumption in your home:
Description	Electricity consumed per month (kWH)	Electricity Cost per month ($)
Computer – 300W	720	$180.50
Notebook – 50W	120	$30.08

So for each item, 10 units of notebooks (8 hours per day)’s power usage only S$30.08/month, a wooping savings of S$150.42 X over a period of 36 months = Saved S$5,415.12!

Therefore 3 years later, you can own new additional 3-5 more notebooks with the savings if you switch to laptops/notebooks/netbooks today!

I only wish my hard disk is as fast my RAM

Don’t think your faster processor, expensive laptop/desktop is going to be really faster. Just remember this, 1000gms = 1kg, so 1000ns (nano-second) = 1ms (mini-second).

Your RAM is operating at 2ns.

Your Hard Disk (HDD) is operating at 2ms (which is 2,000ns).

So if your hard disk can operates at 200ns, it is already 10 times faster than 2000ns. That would meant booting up your Windows OS will be 10 times faster!!! What are you waiting then? Go buy a HDD that is 200ns lah!

So go ahead and dream on… if you can find a 1ms HDD,  I have been dreaming since my Intel 80486 days… 

In fact, how fast your HDD works (which is the slowest part of a computer today) depends on the following factors: -

1. HDD spin speed, (4200rpm, 5400rpm, 7200rpm, 10000rpm, 15000rpm)
2. Chipset+board used on the HDD
3. Interface (SCSI, IDE, SATA, SATA2 etc)
4. Bus-design (how big the highway interface connect itself all the way to the processor)

So it does not mean a 7200rpm is relatively faster than a 5400rpm HDD!

Most of the time we always look at marketing numbers and ignored the rest of the affecting factors. Let me shock you: -

SATA2 spec speed is 3.0 Gb/s = 375 MB/s, that is FAST!

Actually, based on http://www.hdtune.com/testresults.html, Atlas15K2_36WLS 36 GB SCSI HDD has the best transfer rates of 92.9 MB/s operating at 5.5 ms.

Can someone enlighten me what the hell are we doing with a SATA2 spec that promise 375 MB/s when a Atlas15K2_36WLS spinning at 15,000rpm can only do 92.9 MB/s??

Spin faster does not help, better interface does not help. When will we ever have a computer that is able to perform optimumly? For example: – 1GHz processor on a 1GHz bus motherboard with a 1GHz RAM interfacing a SATA2-SSD that is able to give me 375 MB/s!

BTW, my current HDD is spinning my OS at max 50 MB/s :p

And do you want to know if Solid State Disk (SSD) is really that fast? Stay tuned!