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!

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!