In this
issue of Horse Sense:
--Beware of Vampires!
--How to Maintain Your Human
--Data Growth Rates
--Solid State Storage Update and Predictions
--The Address Just Changed
--Choosing the Best Computer Hardware
Beware of
Vampires!
Vampire power loads can bite you in the
night! You would be surprised how much power
your computing equipment draws when it is
idle or even "off." Idle PCs, especially
older ones, waiting for input may pull
nearly the same amount of power that they do
when they are working hard. Speakers can
easily draw a fair amount of watts even when
they are not in use. Even monitors,
printers, and computers that have powered
down may still be pulling a fair amount of
power so that when you want them, they turn
on quickly and do not have to go through
time consuming procedures like power on self
tests. This even happens in your home. When
you turn the lights off and you see little
indicators on your home electronics, they
are drawing some power. And sometimes that
power is more than you might think. The only
real way to tell how much your equipment is
drawing under different conditions is to
install a load meter. They are quite
inexpensive. If you want to save power and
enhance your security, power off devices
that are not in use. If you are doing so for
an organization, you may want to consider
software, hardware, and policies that will
power down hardware when it is not needed as
well as the use of more power efficient
hardware. The power savings could be
significant.
Do not neglect your non-computer items.
Newer lighting is much more energy
efficient. So are newer refrigerators, heat
pumps, and air conditioning units. Anything
with a compressor in it tends to gobble a
lot of power, so more efficient units pay
for themselves quickly in energy savings.
Please call on us if you would like to learn
how more power efficient hardware, specialty
software, and power saving devices can lower
your energy bills.
How to
Maintain Your Human
Computers are tools. But, it is
the operator that uses them. So, just like
any other tool, you must think about
properly caring for the tool and the
operator. Here are some suggestions for
getting more out of your computing
experience as an operator:
(1) When you are concentrating on a computer
screen, you tend to blink less, so contacts
are more of a problem than glasses because
they rely on you blinking frequently. You
can also buy glasses that are designed for
computer use and help decrease glare and
reflections and has a focal point at a
typical computer screen distance (book
distance is too near and others are too
far). Ask your optometrist about them.
(2) Change your air filters frequently to
your heating and cooling systems and in your
computers. Computers suck in all types of
dust, but so do your lungs. Good air filters
will keep pollen and dust from aggravating
allergy sufferers.
(3) Humidify the air in your office in the
winter time. Dehumidify in the summer time.
Air that is too dry in the winter can cause
static shocks that can knock out delicate
computer components and startle and annoy
people. Humidifiers will help. If you do not
have a humidifier for the heating system,
you can try pans of water or a stand alone
humidifier. You can also cut down on static
discharge by using grounded chair mats or
spraying anti-static fabric softener on your
carpets. You and your computers also will
not do well if the air is too humid. So, you
may need a dehumidifier to remove excess
moisture from the air because you and your
computer are both air cooled and too much
water ends up condensing on you or your
electronics. A good way to tell if you have
an excess humidity problem is if you have a
glass with ice in it and it easily sweats
enough to form a ring at the bottom.
(4) Make sure there is enough air flow for
you and your electronics. Both you and they
rely on air flow for cooling. A very small
and quiet fan can work wonders for cooling
your equipment or yourself.
(5) When you are cold, blood is drawn from
your extremities to keep your brain and the
core of your body at a proper temperature.
This can make typing difficult. You lose 50%
or more of your heat from your head and
neck. So, if you want to keep your hands
warm and supple enough to type, wear a
scarf, a turtle neck, or even a cap. On the
other hand, if you are too warm, you tend to
get sleepy and your brain does not operate
as well. You want your head cool, not cold.
A fan might help. So could exposing more
head and neck skin and wearing lighter
clothing that wicks away moisture. I have
even seen scarves you can place around your
neck with cool water that evaporates to help
cool you down.
(6) Dust is not only the enemy of
electronics because it can cause vents to
clog, overheating, and shorts, it can also
keep you from seeing your monitor and impede
your work. If you can, remove the dust with
a clean microfiber cloth, just as you would
clean your glasses. There are also some
specialty sponges that are used dry to clean
these surfaces. Glass cleaner can remove
anti-glare coatings on monitors, so do not
use glass cleaner. If you need to do a more
thorough cleaning with something wet, use a
product safe for monitors (it should also be
safe for glasses) or just plain old water
and a soft microfiber cloth (or toilet
tissue).
Data
Growth Rates
Upgrades in storage often are not
optional as the annual growth rate of date
is 60%. That means in 5 years, you will need
over 10 times the storage to do your day to
day work. In 10 years, you will need 100
times the storage. Keep these figures in
mind when planning on buying storage,
networking, or backup capacity. Think about
how you might expand and how you can wisely
use the storage you have. Ask us for help.
Solid
State Storage Update and Predictions
Solid state storage use is
exploding. You can now buy the smallest
solid state drives for less than you can the
smallest hard drives, though if you want a
lot of solid state storage, it will cost you
quite a bit more. Solid state drives are now
fairly common in servers where they can
produce faster boot up times and accelerate
database (including e mail) access by orders
of magnitude because they take virtually no
time to find the data they need before
reading it. High end laptops and servers
will see more and more solid state
technology because it helps decrease the
bottleneck to the slowest part of your
computer, the long term data storage. A
solid state drives also lowers power and
cooling requirements, is noiseless,
withstands vibration and shock much better
than traditional rotating hard disks, and
increases reliability.
Traditional hard drives have a low cost per
gigabyte. Solid state technology is faster.
Seagate recently released the Momentus XT
which provides a 4GB solid state read cache
with up to 500GB of storage on a 2.5" 7200
rpm laptop drive. The performance results
are excellent and the cost is just slightly
more than that of a similar drive without
the 4GB read cache. It is a great
price/performance product right now. As
solid state pricing continues to plummet,
though, I see pure solid state drives taking
over slots that used to contain rotating
memory.
Right now, the Seagate Momentus makes sense.
But, Intel and other manufacturers are
talking about high volume production of
solid state drives next year in the 512GB
size range with lower prices. Currently, you
can get small capacity solid state drives
cheaper than you can get hard drives. Large
rotating disk drives are now nearing 5 cents
per gigabyte while larger solid state drives
are $2.00 per gigabyte, so rotating memory
will not disappear immediately. But, as
solid state disk capacities increase and
prices drop, I would be worried about my
shares in disk drive companies.
Solid state drives are so fast that they
exceed the ability of traditional hard drive
connections. So, new technologies are coming
out to take advantage of this blazing speed.
Some solid state disks are using multiple
hard drive connections to deliver increased
throughput. Others are using completely
different connection technologies so that
they do not have to dumb themselves down to
slow SATA speeds. USB 3.0, with its 5GBps
transfer rate, is an exciting connection
technology for external hard drives and
solid state drives. I expect the adoption of
solid state drives to drive the construction
of entirely new ways to access long term
data. Solid state memory does not act like
hard disks, so why should we limit ourselves
to connections designed for rotating memory?
I took my own Toys for Tech <
www.ih-online.com/hs89.html>
advice and replaced my 120GB hard drive in
my laptop with a 128GB solid state disk.
Holy cow! I have not seen much change in
battery life. However, the machine boots
faster, loads faster, and deals with many
open windows much better than it ever did
before. I used to shut the machine down all
the time because letting it go into
hibernation mode or recovering from
suspension took too long. With the solid
state drive, it takes only seconds. Backup
and antivirus scan times have been cut
drastically. Searching or indexing my large
e mail database takes a fraction of the time
it did before. My disk is no longer a
bottleneck. I also see less "stuttering,"
where there is a lag when switching between
programs or when playing a video, especially
if something else is running in the
background. My machine also used to get hot
in the hard drive area. Now it is cool as a
cucumber. I can honestly say that this is
one of the best computer hardware
investments I have made in a long time.
Having seen the difference, I will have to
agree that if you want to get more oomph out
of your system, a solid state drive is a
great way to do it. If you are using the
newest processors on the market, you will
not be able to get close to their true
performance without using a solid state
drive.
While I do not expect traditional hard
drives to disappear overnight, the only real
disadvantages to solid state drives now are
capacity and cost, and both of those are
becoming less of an issue. In fact, the
productivity are such that it actually makes
sense to start incorporating solid state
drives into your purchasing decisions now.
The
Address Just Changed
Another change that is coming
this year is a larger sector size. For over
30 years, the sector size has been 512
bytes. Data is written to disk sector by
sector. Sectors are like bricks in the house
that is a hard disk. New drives are now
shipping that are 4096 bytes per sector. Now
that files are getting larger and more
information is being stored, this change
lowers the amount of information needed to
address where information is on large disks
and allows for more efficient usage of that
space while increasing reliability. Think of
it as building a large building with big
bricks versus small ones. It is a lot less
effort to assemble that building with larger
bricks rather than smaller ones. Most solid
state disks use 4096 byte sectors, so this
change matches how they work as well. The
more current operating systems are already
capable of using 4096 byte per sector
formatted hard drives. Moving from 512 byte
to 4096 byte sectors allows for higher
capacity drives that are capable of
delivering more information more reliably in
a shorter time.
Choosing
the Best Computer Hardware
Often the best thing a
consultant, technician, salesperson, or
other expert can do for you is to make you
look at something in a different light.
For example, people often worry over the
costs and features of a particular PC. They
spend an incredible amount of time looking
for bargains. But, they are looking in the
wrong direction. Sure, you can get a
bargain, but that is not what you want. What
you really want is a tool to help you do the
work you need to do. So, rather than
concentrating on the bargains and getting
buried in features and specifications, look
at it this way. What do you want to do? What
software will best help you do that? What
hardware do you need to take full advantage
of that software? How do you think things
will change going forward? I do not care if
it is a bargain, if it does not do what you
want it to you might as well throw your
money away. If you are thinking only of
today, what happens when tomorrow comes and
you cannot do what you want? That good buy
will not look so good. Think about how long
things should last and plan accordingly.
You might need some help deciding what to
do, so talk to a professional who wants to
work with you over the long run. Making good
decisions up front will cost you a lot less
over time. You want a high Return on
Grief(tm). Anything that costs you time,
money, effort, or heartburn lowers your
Return on Grief. In general, the lifetime
costs stack up something like this: hardware
(least costly), software, IT support, and
user costs (most expensive). User costs are
related to how productive the user can be.
If the hardware or software does not
function, if the user does not know how to
use it, or if they cannot get help when they
need it, then productivity will suffer. A
computer is primarily a tool to increase
productivity. It is the productivity you are
looking for, not the computer.
If you want to know how you can maximize
your Return on Grief, just call us!
©2011 Tony
Stirk, Iron Horse tstirk@ih-online.com