Have Laptop Will Travel

Why Your Next Drive Should Be an SSD

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You have probably heard about solid-state drives, and you may be wondering why there is so much buzz about them. In one word, the answer is speed, but you were probably hoping for a little bit more.

What Is an SSD?

When it comes down to it, solid state drives are effectively a big USB pen with a different connector. Internally they are organised differently and are faster, but ultimately they are a lot of memory in a box. Almost universally, they are designed to fit into a standard laptop computer as a direct replacement for the existing drive. Adapters are also available to fit them into desktop systems. You can then install the operating system of your choice and away you go. [Read more…]

Wireless Laptop-TV Connection Via WiDi Device From D-Link

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D-Link Mainstage

It was only recently that I got exposed to having almost all devices in the house connected together. One laptop functions as a media server. We play music and videos via the laptop and use the HDTV as the monitor. It’s pretty handy, especially with other portable devices being used to access/control the laptop. It’s a pretty good setup, although not quite perfect: we still have kilometers and kilometers of wires.

While it probably won’t solve the entire problem of wires, the recently launched D-Link MainStageTM for Intel® Wireless Display (DHD-131) just might make things better in any household that has a heavy ‘media consumption”. This WiDi device is a tiny non-descript gadget that will fit in the palm of your hand. If you look at the photo above, it is easy to see just how simple it looks. Honestly, my first thought when I saw it was that it reminded me of a smooth-edged monolith. ((The kind that was described in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey))

This monolith-like gadget does not hold much in terms of mystery, though. What it does has pretty much been announced by D-Link and hyped up even. The MainStageTM connects to an HDTV via an HDMI cable or an A/V cable. The device then connects to a wireless router, which can then be used to stream media from any laptop. Think 1080p. Think 5.1 surround sound.

With this setup, you have more freedom as to where you place your laptop. This is more practical for those who don’t have much living space and who may not have a dedicated laptop for media purposes; and even if you do have a dedicated laptop, the removal of one set of wires might very well be worth it. One thing’s for sure – the device is worth considering.

This gadget will set you back around USD130. It is currently available in the US and will be released in Canada next month. For those in other parts of the world, you can visit D-Link’s online store.

Via The Digital LIfestyle

Not Enough Space? Get Samsung’s 1TB Laptop Hard Drive

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1TB hard drive

There was a time when I thought that 80 GB of hard drive space was more than enough to meet my needs. My good old netbook quickly ran out of space, though, and before I knew it, I found myself shopping around for a portable external drive. With every laptop change, the higher I went with regard to capacity. The need for more space is always there, though, and it seems that nothing but external hard drives will solve the issue. For sure, you have been in similar situations, and you’ll be thrilled to know that Samsung has recently launched a new hard drive for laptops with a whopping 1 terabyte capacity!

The new hard drive follows the industry standard for laptops – 9.5mm 2.5 in form factor, making it usable for practically any laptop. Dubbed Spinpoint M8, the hard drive not only boosts storage capacity, but it also lessens power consumption. Samsung says that it uses 8 percent less power – or thereabouts. More so, the performance of the hard drive is also 7 percent better than its counterparts.

If that is not enough to convince you (I don’t know, they got me at 1 TB), you might also want to know that Samsung makes use of the NoiseGuard technology, which will lessen that annoying sound that your hard drive may have when working hard. And in case you tend to drop your electronics, the Spinpoint M8’s chassis has been designed to improve shock protection.

Samsung is already producing the Spinpoint M8 and says that it will be available worldwide. In the US, the hard drive has been tagged at $129. Not bad at all!

Via

An ode To The Printer

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One of the best inventions of man would probably be the printer. Long before printers were invented, writing and copying were done by hand. In the past, monks spent a great amount of time manually creating copies of texts. However, thanks to the brilliant ideas of man, we are now able to conveniently produce massive amounts of text in a short span of time with the invention of the printer. The printer is able to produce hard copies of data that are inputted in the computer.
What is amazing about technology is that by being able to input data first in the computer before creating a hard copy of it, the probability of you making a mistake before printing it out is definitely lessened. With that in mind, you can also save a great amount of time since printing a one-page document is definitely a lot quicker than writing it on paper by hand. In fact, it would only take you seconds to print it out with Canon ink cartridges! One of the cons of having printers is that people rely on it so much – probably too much that people these days are so lazy to manually write on paper anymore. Also, discipline in writing and using paper has diminished greatly, as people can quickly print and easily discard it when there is a problem with it. Having said all that, the pros can definitely outweigh the cons. Convenience is what the modern man aims for and printers definitely have offered that to us.