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Posts Tagged ‘gene’

One pet-peeve I’ve found with Vista & Windows 7 is that hibernation feature tends to disappear… usually due to a disk cleanup.  Essentially, when the hibernation save file is deleted, Vista removes the hibernation ability. Luckily, turning it back on is very easy. Click the “Start” button, and type cmd… then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open in administrator mode. You can also right-click the item “Command Prompt” in the menu and choose Run as Administrator.  

From the command prompt, type in the following command:

powercfg /hibernate on

  You may have to restart your computer before it will take effect, however I’ve … [Read More...]

This morning, Western Digital officially announced (and started shipping) the next generation of its VelociRaptor hard drives, and we’ve got tasty benchmark numbers for you. 

The new VelociRaptor with its top off.

The new Velociraptors are SATA 6Gb/s-enabled and come in 450GB and 600GB flavors (a 300GB bump from the previous-gen’s 150GB and 300GB). Like their predecessors, the Velociraptors spin at 10,000rpm and desktop versions are mounted on IcePack heatsinks that let them fit in standard 3.5-inch SATA hard drive bays. IcePack-less 2.5-inch models are available for enterprise servers, but at 15mm high , they won’t fit in your laptop. 

The much-needed … [Read More...]

Built Fortress tough, with a Silverstone price tag

Going on name alone, one would expect the Silverstone Fortress FT02 to be an updated version of our Best of the Best mid-tower case, last year’s Fortress FT01. And while it shares a few of the FT01’s traits (like a unibody aluminum frame, acoustic padding, and some stylistic cues like black metal mesh), the vast majority of its DNA comes from the Raven RV02. In fact, it’s the homo sapiens to the RV02’s chimpanzee.

The rotated motherboard placement and right-panel window mean the Fortress FT02, like the Raven RV02, looks strange at … [Read More...]

BD write speeds reach the double digits

Once Blu-ray burners reached 8x writes, enabling them to fill a 25GB disc with data in less than 15 minutes, speed stopped being a major argument against the technology—now it’s just price and consumer need that stand in the way of widespread adoption. Still, for what it’s worth, Blu-ray write speeds continue to improve at a steady pace, and now, a mere six months after reviewing our first 8x drive, we’ve been presented with Plextor’s 12x B940SA.

But, you’ll probably wonder, what good is a 12x drive when today’s BD-R media has a … [Read More...]

Now with fins!

Evaluating successive generations of HP’s TouchSmart series reminds us of shopping for a new car. If you fall in love and buy this year’s model, you must never, ever visit the showroom to look at next year’s model or you’ll be hit with a bout of buyer’s remorse faster than you can say “planned obsolescence.”

We’re not suggesting that HP is intentionally designing these machines to have a shorter-than-normal useful life or that it’s been adding frivolous features to new models; it’s just that the company’s engineers keep making design improvements that are significant enough for us … [Read More...]