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!