Frank M
01-24-2009, 11:20 AM
So, after waiting so long for laptop manufacturers to design a decent
netbook, I just got fed up and jumped on a deal for a used but great
condition Vaio TX3XP.
The little thing rocks, the 11.1" 1366*768 screen is very sharp and
although glare-type, it is still visible in direct sunlight with backlight
off; the Core Solo ULV 1.2GHz is good enough, but what really sticks
out is the battery life: at 90% charge, xp still predicted ~7.5hrs with
wifi on and backlight off, but when turning even the wifi and bluetooth
off, consumption shrank to ~5Ws and predicted battery life grew to
10.5hrs :eek::clap:
Unfortunately this rose has thorns, too: the biggest is the HDD.
It's a 1.8" 4200RPM 80GB IDE drive... you know, the type that is put
into ipods :rolleyes: didn't test it yet, but found a test online that shows
this drive in hdtach churning out a massive 25-12MBps bandwidth... :rolleyes:
Of course, within 24 hours of getting it, I took it apart :D
And then I saw that it's not even ZIF, but the Toshiba-style connector:
a small "bottleneck" with about 40-50 pins female ide socket...
As if 1.8" IDE SSDs weren't rare enough, 1.8" Toshiba LIF-IDE SSDs are
even rarer. So far I've only seen a Samsung (no info on their site, seems
to be discontinued), Ridata (discontinued), Mtron (discontinued, expensive)
and maybe Sandisk (discontinued)...
Anyone know or seen anything else?
Another option would be CF cards with an adapter.
I've seen CF adapters for this connector, and there are CF cards with
30MBps r/w. What holds me back for now is that I'm not sure how a CF
card would tolerate being an OS drive. They probably don't have wear-
leveling and sector allocation functions. There's not much about their
reliability or their access times, etc.
An SSD would be good for speed, consumption and shock resistance, but
it is as hard to find as unobtanium. CF with adaptor is easy to get, saves
a bit of weight and probably even more power, but what about reliability?
:shrug:
Any ideas, suggestions, links to bargains appreciated :)
netbook, I just got fed up and jumped on a deal for a used but great
condition Vaio TX3XP.
The little thing rocks, the 11.1" 1366*768 screen is very sharp and
although glare-type, it is still visible in direct sunlight with backlight
off; the Core Solo ULV 1.2GHz is good enough, but what really sticks
out is the battery life: at 90% charge, xp still predicted ~7.5hrs with
wifi on and backlight off, but when turning even the wifi and bluetooth
off, consumption shrank to ~5Ws and predicted battery life grew to
10.5hrs :eek::clap:
Unfortunately this rose has thorns, too: the biggest is the HDD.
It's a 1.8" 4200RPM 80GB IDE drive... you know, the type that is put
into ipods :rolleyes: didn't test it yet, but found a test online that shows
this drive in hdtach churning out a massive 25-12MBps bandwidth... :rolleyes:
Of course, within 24 hours of getting it, I took it apart :D
And then I saw that it's not even ZIF, but the Toshiba-style connector:
a small "bottleneck" with about 40-50 pins female ide socket...
As if 1.8" IDE SSDs weren't rare enough, 1.8" Toshiba LIF-IDE SSDs are
even rarer. So far I've only seen a Samsung (no info on their site, seems
to be discontinued), Ridata (discontinued), Mtron (discontinued, expensive)
and maybe Sandisk (discontinued)...
Anyone know or seen anything else?
Another option would be CF cards with an adapter.
I've seen CF adapters for this connector, and there are CF cards with
30MBps r/w. What holds me back for now is that I'm not sure how a CF
card would tolerate being an OS drive. They probably don't have wear-
leveling and sector allocation functions. There's not much about their
reliability or their access times, etc.
An SSD would be good for speed, consumption and shock resistance, but
it is as hard to find as unobtanium. CF with adaptor is easy to get, saves
a bit of weight and probably even more power, but what about reliability?
:shrug:
Any ideas, suggestions, links to bargains appreciated :)