The cost of adoption is still prohibitively high, but this will change – and soon. Because of this I can definitely see motherboards with onboard SS hard drives in our future.

Crazy? I don’t think so.

I can still remember the days when you had to purchase a separate I/O controller to hook up your floppy disk and giant 5.25″ hard disk that only held 125MB. It wasn’t too many years ago that video controllers weren’t standard issue either. With the price of flash memory steadily dropping, and more and more people funneling money into the manufacturers by purchasing the now ubiquitous flash drives for their portable storage; I honestly can’t see any good reason for the motherboard manufacturers not to eventually throw a 500GB solid-state chip next to the southbridge.

Think about it – from a performance standpoint it makes perfect sense. The mobo manufacturer could interface directly with the memory using whatever bus system they see fit, and could tune said system to squeeze as much speed out of it as possible. It also makes sense from a laptop manufacturer’s point of view as well – having no separate drive means that space is saved for other items, which means that more features could be packed into a small area where space is already at a premium. I shouldn’t even have to mention the obvious power savings – another boon for portable computing. Not only would their product have an inherently fast storage solution, but they can add more features all the while advertising an increase in battery life.

So keep an eye out – I will not be at all surprised if we see the first mobos with on-board solid state hard disks within the next four years.

*At ~$650.00 for a 256GB solid state disk purchasing one is certainly feasible, but the term “affordable” is still pretty subjective.

Nothing like taking a 13 MacBook or 15 /17 inch MacBook Pro and connecting to a 50” or 60” flat screen!!!  From experience, let me tell you how awesome it is!!!!

Are you one of those that has been trying to piece together cables so that your MacBook or MacBook Pro would work with your HDTV or other HDMI compatible device and doing so without much luck, only to find out, after lots of research that others are struggling too and there really isn’t a sound solution available?  Well, I’ve got some good news for you but first, lets me remind you that there are solutions available.  You can put together a solution that does work and that does allow you to use your laptop (MacBooks) on your flat screen TV’s.  Some may ask why – but, think about this……..sitting in your  favorite couch potato chair, in front of your Panasonic 50”  or 60” flat screen TV and deciding that you want to do some research on-line so you plug in your Mini-Display port to DVI cable that is connected to a mini-dvi to dvi adapter.  Then you have a DVI to HDMI cable connected to your flat screen TV and walla; there you have it – the Internet as big as life!  Check that configuration out if you have a flat screen in your bedroom – it is awesome to work or research while hanging out in bed or in your other favorite chair. 

So, where do you get the cables and which cables do you get?  Well, of course you can get them from Apple on-line and they are actually cheaper there than most places I’ve found – plus, the quality is pretty good:  www.store.apple.com/us

Now, let me explain something that may help.  There are three kinds of DVI cables. “DVI-I” stands for “DVI-Integrated” and supports both digital and analog transfers, so it works with both digital and analog Visual Display Units. “DVI-D” stands for “DVI-Digital” and supports digital transfers only. “DVI-A” stands for “DVI-Analog and supports analog transfers only.  One tidbit that may be useful is that DVI does NOT transfer audio, only video. 

One of the hardest problems users have is recognizing the DVI cables.  Here is a quick help as well as a reproduction from datapro on how to differentiate between the cables:

There are two variables in every DVI connector, and each represents one characteristic.

The flat pin on one side denotes whether the cable is digital or analog:

                  A flat pin with four surrounding pins is either DVI-I or DVI-A

                  A flat pin alone denotes DVI-D

The pinsets vary depending on whether the cable is single-link, dual-link, or analog:

                  Two separated 9-pin sets (rows of 6) for a single-link cable

                  A solid 24-pin set (rows of 8) for a dual-link cable

A separated 8-pin and 4-pin set is for DVI-A.

If you head to www.datapro.com they offer pictures of the cables that can help you determine what you need. 

The DVI stated signal distance is 16 feet but you can find places that carry 25 foot cables and then if you have extra cash, you may want to pick  up a a signal booster.  But, I haven’t talked with anyone that has ever needed a signal booster for their DVI cable system. But, on the other hand, I’ve never tried going over 12 feet and my research has shown that users going over 16 feet and using the 25 foot cables are not experiencing degradation.  So most likely you wouldn’t need a booster.

What we all need to do is get them to develop the wireless DVI to HDMI.  Imagine a Mini-display port wireless card about and inch long and a quarter of an inch wide coming from the side of your Mac and then a small HDMI wireless connector on your TV.  Now, that is what I want.  There is good news on the development front, not on the wireless front but on the HDMI topic,  Monoprice has developed Mini-DisplayPort to HDMI adapter and was to have it to market in January 2009.  Unfortunately, they are having problems finding vendors that can produce the product for them. Stay tuned for an update, as this is a pretty, darn hot topic and lots of users are waiting for this solution.

http://www.macyourself.com/2008/12/11/macbook-owners-rejoice-mini-displayport-to-hdmi-adapter-soon/

So, bottom line, what you need is a mini-display port to dvi cable that you can get for $29.99 from Apple (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB570Z/A).  Then,  you grab a dvi to HDMI cable / adapter from datapro that is anywhere from $16.95 to $45.oo depending on the length (http://www.datapro.net/products/dvi-to-hdmi-digital-video-cable.html).  At that point, you have a HDMI ready cable and you are set!  And, it is a beautiful thing when you get it all put together, which only takes about 5 minutes.

I have been shopping around for a new screen for a while now because my LCD monitor I have is going out (the backlight is going bad, I think). At first I was just going to go get the same screen I had before but it looks like these new widescreen monitors are becoming standard.

How big of a monitor should I get? Because the screen is wider does that mean that I can get the same size as before, but widescreen? They seem kinda short.

Thanks,

Larry

I’m hesitant to recommend any particular size of a wide aspect-ratio monitor as the DPI can vary. I will, however, recommend a minimum resolution that you should get.

In my opinion, you should get a monitor with nothing less that a 1680 x 1050 resolution. The reason for this is simple: Most regular aspect-ratio 17″ and 19″ LCD monitors have a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024. This means that you have 1,204 pixels to display with vertically. If you were to purchase a monitor with anything less than 1,024 vertical pixels then you’d notice the “shortness” you described.

Because of the height requirement, this means that you will more than likely have to get a widescreen display that is at least 20″. There are some 19″ models out there that sport the required res, but not all that many.

Currently, I own a Samsung 940BW, and while I am quite fond of this display its major shortcoming is the fact that it maxes out at 1440 X 900. There are little tricks that you can do (and that I would recommend regardless) such as putting your taskbar on the side of the screen, as opposed to the bottom. This frees up some vertical pixels and has the added benefit of efficiently using the extra horizontal space. Regardless, I’ve always felt a bit “squashed” by this display, and so I’m looking to upgrade to dual Samsung 2216BW monitors at some point.

A bit of advice for when you do go shopping for that new monitor: More inches does not necessarily mean more pixels. You’ll find that many of the screens that you see have the same resolution on them regardless of the fact that they have a couple more inches of size. For instance,  the Samsung 226BW (22 inches) and the 206BW (20 inches) both have the 1680 X 1050 resolution. In a nutshell, this means that the 22″ screen will simply display the same images larger, there won’t actually be any additional room.

These are just some things to keep in mind. You certainly don’t have to get a widescreen monitor if you don’t feel that you’ll benefit from it. There’s no reason to spend more money on something simply because it’s becoming popular. Many 4:3 displays are more than adequate for most people.

Hi, I have been considering getting a new printer for a while now and have heard about laser printers and that they are better. Is this true that they print lots more documents before they run out of ink? I am going to school and have to print things out all the time so I want what will be better.

Oh I have a Compaq V2000 laptop with Windows XP and I need a printer that will work with that. Should I get the inkjet or laser? 

Good question Mary, and while I’m sure this topic has been beaten like a dead horse all across the web; I’ll cover it anyway.

The type of printer that you should purchase totally depends on what you want to do with it. Yes, I know that none of you want the “get whatever the hell type of printer you feel like” answer, but it’s the most accurate.

Laser printers are, for the most part, monochrome. There are color laser printers on the market now and while they’ve massively come down in price they are still too expensive for most consumers.

This should be the first thing that you consider: Do I need to print a lot of things that are in color?

If you’re looking to just print off the occasional term paper, receipt, email, or random Word document then I’d say go with the laser. If you plan on doing a bunch of colorful presentations (I’ve no idea what type of classes you are taking), printing off a ton of photos, or simply like to reproduce artwork you find on the ‘net then an inkjet would be right for you.

Also, a lot of your decision should hinge on the volume of printing you plan on doing. Laser printers are far and away the better choice for large print jobs because they tend to be faster and in the long run toner costs quite a bit less than ink. I own a Samsung ML-1710 laser printer and use it for the vast vast majority of my printing needs. In the entire time I’ve owned it I have only had to replace the toner cartridge one time.

A typical toner cartridge will get you anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 pages depending on the model of printer. Conversely, the ink cartridges for my HP PSC-1315 inkjet printer will get me about 750 pages.

So while you’ll have to spend $70 on a toner cartridge it will last you four times as long as your $40 ink cartridge.

My suggestion? Get both. That’s what I’ve done personally and it was a solid decision. I use the HP PSC for the random things I need done in color and the Samsung ML-1710 for everything else. A decent laser printer can be picked up for around $150 and an all-in-one inkjet printer/scanner/copier can be had for less than $100.

Regarding the compatability issue:  Everything produced now and for the next few years will be compatible with Windows XP, so you’re golden there. If your Compaq laptop doesn’t have much RAM in it then you may want to consider upgrading that along with your printer purchase (assuming it’s an all-in-one). Many of the modern printer software suites eat up quite a bit of memory and are running in the background at all times. This is especially true with the all-in-one combos as they run utilities to manage faxing, copying, scanning, etc.

In the end only you can decide which is right for you, as you are the only person that really knows what your printing needs are. Hopefully, however, this little bit of information made the choice a hint easier.

I have been hearing about “Solid State Hard Drives” in some PC magazines and things that I read. What is a solid state drive, and why would I want one? Will it make my data more protected?

Hi Randoll, A solid state drive (SSD) is very simply a hard drive that has flash storage in it as opposed to spinning metal platters (Think of it as a bunch of USB thumb drives mashed all together into a hard drive’s casing). These have some major benefits over conventional magnetic hard drives including access time, power consumption, as well as general throughput (speed). Another significant advantage is the fact that they have no moving parts.

Standard hard drives fail for any number of reasons, almost all of which relate to their mechanical parts. Solid state drives have none of these, and as such are not subject to the same reasons for failure.

I’ll go over the advantages of a sold state drive in detail:

Advantages:

1. No moving parts – This one is fairly all-encompassing as the remaining advantages are directly related to it, but anyhow.. A standard hard drive writes its data magnetically to a spinning metal disk (or disks) inside of it. In order for this to work it takes several pieces: You have the platters themselves, the arms, the read/write heads, the motor, etc. If any one of these pieces fail you are hosed. The heads fly just microns above the surface of the disk and are susceptible to vibration. As soon as you have the head touch the disk then the platter is damaged – thus crashing the drive. Motors fail over time, and if the drive can’t spin the platters then the data cannot be accessed. The magnetic bits must be brought to the head, the head cannot go to them. A solid state drive uses flash chips for storage, so vibration is not a concern. Obviously if your drop-kick your SSD off of a rooftop it won’t work, but as a general rule they can take quite a bit more abuse than a standard hard disk.
2. Less power consumption – Because of #1 SSD drives are more simple. They have less to them parts-wise, which means that there are less pieces to feed power to. Currently in a laptop a hard disk will go into power saving mode by stopping the platters from spinning. This is a good idea, but the next time that you have to access your disk then you have to wait for the platters to spin back up which causes quite a bit of latency. With a solid state drive you don’t have to worry about any of this. If you’re not actively accessing the drive, then it’s not really using any power. (Obviously it uses some, but nowhere near what its magnetic counterpart would)
3. Faster access times – Once again, directly related to #1. Since the drive doesn’t have to wait for a read head to reach a certain portion of a magnetic disk, data can be accessed effectively instantaneously. Also because of this it can keep accessing the subsequent information much faster and transmit it. Effectively, the bottleneck is usually drive’s connection to the PC.

Disadvantages:

1. Cost – Currently these things are expensive. I am talking sell your child on the black market expensive. As of the time of this writing, a 128 GB SSD is $3,219.99. It’s OK. You can cry. The 64 GB model isn’t much better, coming in at a whopping $1,533.99.
2. Limited write cycles – Flash storage wears out after a certain amount of writes to it. The number that it can sustain completely depends on the exact type of flash storage used, and can vary from 100,000 writes to over a million. For a USB drive this isn’t an issue at all. For a hard drive, where data can theoretically be written and deleted constantly, it’s a problem.For most consumers it won’t be an issue, however, it could be in a server situation where logs, etc are written to almost constantly.
3. Cost – Did I mention that a 128 GB drive is over three thousand dollars? A comparable magnetic disk at 160 GB is roughly $50.

While I will whole-heartedly endorse the acquisition of a SSD in the future, currently I’d say hold off. Regarding making your data more secure (I assume against crashes) then yes, I suppose it will. However, you should be backing up your data regardless. SSD’s are just as susceptible to viruses and the like as they perform exactly the same functions; and I’ve absolutely no idea how or if data recovery on a solid state drive would work.

In closing, if you’ve not recently backed your data up then it’s time to bust out the ole stack of DVD-R’s.