All about laptops and netbook!
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ASUS U33jc – The Bamboo Notebook
May 17th
ASUS was rumored to be showing off a few new netbooks yesterday the 1215, 1015 & 1218 but there were none. Instead we came across the Bamboo Notebook the U33jc with no DVD drive. We show off the computer & talk about how the line between notebooks & netbooks blurs just a little bit more.
ASUS U33JC Specs
* Window 7/Ultimate/Profeshional/Home Premium 64bit (option)
* 13.3″ HD LED Backlight Display
* 1366 x 768 Pixel Resolutions
* Intel Core i3/i5 and i7 Processor
* Intel Mobile HM55 Chipset
* NVIDIA Geforce GT 310M option with Intel GMA HD Graphics
* 1 GB DDR3 VRAM Memory
* Up to 8GB DDR3 RAM Memory
* 250/320/500 and 640 GB Hard Disk (option)
* 2 Mega Pixel Camera
* USB 3.0 Port
* Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
* 6-Cell Battery
* Dimensions 328 x 232 x 14~31 mm
* Weight 1.8 kg
ASUS NX90Jq: Wow.
Jan 7th

This next laptop I’ll be featuring is by no means an Asus Eee PC – in fact it’s over at the extreme opposite of the spectrum – but this is so great I’d feature it anyway. Asus has been known for a while for making rock-solid motherboards, and recently their netbooks have given the Taiwanese manufacturer a name in notebooks. But as solid their notebooks are, they’re not exactly a household name yet. I’m guessing it’s because their notebooks are a bit lacking in the design department. But then those days are probably over.
Asus has been working with Bang & Olufsen to produce sleek, undeniably high-end notebooks, and the Asus NX90Jq is the result. Set to be unveiled at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, the Asus NX90Jq is one sleek laptop. This laptop is exactly how it looks like: it’s an aluminum-encased monster power horse. It’s got dual touchpads that can be used like a DJ’s turntable, and it has a monster 18.4-inch display. On the side we can find the B&O ICEpower speakers to give you audio way superior than most laptops.
Under the hood, you can find that the ASUS NX90Jq is just as pretty: it’s rocking a Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 334M graphics, and it can support up to 1280GB of storage – with dual drives- a slot-in Blu-ray drive and USB 3.0.
I’m guessing this laptop will be very, very costly. Heck, I can imagine Apple’s offerings will be coming out cheap compared to this. People are complaining that B&O products are overpriced. I say I don’t care, it’s sexy enough to warrant a huge price tag.
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HowTo: Measuring hard disk performance with linux and ‘hdparm’
Nov 5th
Measuring sequential disk performance with linux is easy – most distros (like ubuntu) come with a tool called hdparm , that is mainly used for tuning and optimizing hard disk parameters, but luckily it also includes simple benchmark functionality – for example the following command sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda gives me the following output: /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.01 seconds = 58.55 MB/sec Of course you need to substitute /dev/sda with the name of your raw disk device (for example, it might be /dev/hda for non-SATA disks) . Its impossible to get higher transfer rates that that from your disk. Hdparm reads at the very start of the disk for these tests (which is the fastest area of the whole harddisk) and using optimal access pattern
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HowTo: Measuring hard disk performance with linux and ‘hdparm’