ECS H55H-I – Mini-ITX at a Sensible Price...
So far we’ve looked at three different mini-ITX motherboards here at Anandtech over the past 6 months. While each of the products we’ve reviewed have ticked a certain number of boxes, when you look at the feature sets of similarly priced m-ATX boards one of the irksome common denominators (among other things) with the mini-ITX offerings is that you essentially pay more for less. Well, ECS may just have delivered the perfect cost to feature ratio with the H55H-I, a $79 mini-ITX motherboard based on the Intel H55 chipset:
Ordinarily you might sneer at the mention of ECS, but in this instance basic functionality and layout very much fits; especially when you consider what vendors like Intel and DFI are offering on their boards for a price premium – those boards cost over $120.
No PS/2, but everything else you need is there...
All ECS need to do with the H55H-I is provide a workable BIOS and good plug-in functionality to steal the show. Of course, those two things are often easier said than done...
Read More ...
Acer Aspire 1410: Single-Core CULV Takes on Atom
We’ve already looked at a number of systems with Intel’s CULV platform, but interestingly, all of them have been of the dual-core variety. We frequently champion the CULV platform as offering massive battery life and decent performance at a very reasonable price, and usually present the lower end, single-core CULV machines as an alternative to netbooks. So it’s only fair to the netbook class that we test an ultraportable based around the single-core CULV platform.
The laptop on our operating table today is the Acer Aspire 1410, and it may be the best reason to avoid netbooks. The AS1410 is similar to the Acer Timeline 1810T we looked at as part of our CULV roundup, only with a single-core SU3500 processor, 2GB RAM, a 250GB HDD, and a smaller battery. Instead of $600, the AS1410 costs just $400, so we're definitely in netbook territory. The two notebooks share the same 3.10lb chassis, 11.6” screen, and chiclet keyboard, so the AS1410 is essentially just a stripped down 1810T.
Read More ...
HP Unveils Latest Spring 2010 Laptops
HP has unveiled their latest notebooks. This large launch features many new entries into both their business and consumer notebook lines. Perhaps the most eye-catching are the Arrandale equipped ENVY lines, undoubtedly an attempt to rival the recently updated Apple MacBook Pro line.
However, something of greater significance is that this represents the broadest and largest single launch of AMD products for HP, utilizing the company’s VISION and VISION Pro technology. There are also many Intel Arrandale upgrades too.
Read More ...
OCZ Discovers Bug in Onyx SSD, Updated: We're in the Clear
A week ago I got a shipment of a bunch of new SSDs including OCZ's long awaited Onyx. This is based on the Indilinx Amigos controller, which is basically a cost reduced version of the Barefoot controller with only half the channels. A 32GB Onyx should sell for around $99.
The first drive I received showed CRC errors during a Windows install. I told OCZ to stop shipment two Fridays ago. OCZ responded by saying that they wouldn't stop shipments after only one bad drive. Their mistake.
In my experience, I never get a "bad drive", it's either DOA or has a firmware/controller bug. Three days later OCZ issued a recall on the drive and got in touch with its customers directly to make sure they were taken care of.
OCZ had the bug fixed within a week and sent me a new drive (as well as posted an updated firmware on their site). I've been testing the fixed Onyx and while it doesn't exhibit the same issues as the first drive, I am seeing an unexpected CRC error in one particular test that shouldn't be there. I just got off the phone with OCZ and they are going to be pulling back all drives until the problem is squashed.
Building SSDs is a challenging business. I stressed to OCZ that this could have been avoided if they just sent out samples a week before shipping to etailers. I have to at least hand it to OCZ for acting quickly to pull the drives, especially after today's warning.
Update: OCZ's earlier firmware update appears to have squashed the bug completely. Its engineers and I have been working to reproduce the more recent CRC error and it doesn't appear to be an issue with the drive itself, rather something limited to my test platform. I was concerned about the possibility of another data corruption bug given the issue I had with the first drive and arrived at the wrong conclusion. Using the latest firmware the OCZ Onyx has completed almost all of my tests thus far without issue. I will keep you all updated on my experiences with the drive.
Read More ...
Intel Alleges Windows Phone 7 Not Optimized for High Performance, Won't Support It
For those of you who haven't read today's Moorestown Architecture article I'd highly recommend it. This is quite possibly one of the biggest introductions we've seen in the past couple of years. I'd say that by the end of 2011 we could be looking at a dramatically different smartphone landscape.
One gem I snuck into the article was the fact that Intel has no current plans to support Windows Phone 7 or even Windows Phone 8 after it. The allegation is that Microsoft's roadmap isn't aggressive enough on the performance side. Intel needs OSes that can demand much higher performance in order to showcase Moorestown. If a 1.5GHz Moorestown performs no different than a 1GHz Snapdragon, Intel loses one of its major advantages.
This is potentially very telling about the sort of market Microsoft is going after with Windows Phone 7. If it's not the high end smartphone user, then perhaps MS is implementing more of a sweet spot strategy and targeting the informed mainstream consumer? There's also the flipside. Perhaps this is all political and there are other reasons at play for not supporting Windows Phone 7.
Based on what I've seen thus far, not having Moorestown support appears to be a bad thing.
Read More ...
No comments:
Post a Comment