The Gadgets Page

At $99 street price at the time of this writing, the Corsair Flash Voyager is bulk flash storage on the cheap. With a read speed of 27MB/sec and a write speed of 11MB/sec, its performance is typical of mid-speed USB drives.

But with this much storage, performance becomes critical. You purchase large capacity drives because you have big files you need to move. I copied a 27GB virtual machine data file to the drive, which took 40 minutes. My A-data 32GB Expresscard drive (through a USB interface), on the other hand, copied the same file in 20 minutes, and a RAID-0 drive of 4 USB flash drives copied the data in 15 minutes (which is essentially the USB bus limit for data transfers).

It’s always disappointing when I plug a drive in and I’m reminded of the difference between what the package says and what the drive is. A 64GB drive really equals 60GB of data, which is the amount that will show up in your operating system when you mount it. Whether or not you’re being ripped off depends on the definition of a gigabyte: To everyone in the computing world except drive manufacturers, a Gigabyte is the binary 2 raised to the 30th power (1,073,741,824). To the drive industry, a gigabyte is the decimal 10 raised to the 9th power (1,000,000,000). In the days of megabyte hard drives, the difference was negligible but in the days of terabyte drives, the difference will hold an entire operating system installation. Drive manufacturer’s say they can’t change or they’ll look bad in comparison. I think it’s an issue the FTC should rule on so that all manufacturers have to change at once. But this is a review, and not a rant on ancient numerical injustices, so I’ll go on.

Like all flash drives, the Corsair Flash Voyager 64GB is highly reliable. However, out of the eight Corsair Flash Voyager drives I’ve owned, one failed suddenly. Despite the promise of a lifetime warranty, the warranty was basically impossible to execute, with the company sending forms back and forth and then basically doing nothing until I gave up on it because it wasn’t worth my time. I wound up returning it to Fry’s Electronics, who happily exchanged it even though it was beyond their return period.

I’ve always been skeptical of USB docking stations because USB technology is too slow for video. USB 2 is less than half the bandwidth of a gigabit network adapter, and its speed has to be shared amongst all connected devices. It’s more than fast enough for keyboards, mice, and even network adapters, but video is another matter entirely—video needs a lot of speed.

But I’ve also got a new netbook that desperately needs a docking station, and netbooks don’t come with or support docking stations. And most netbooks only have USB ports, so there’s no option: It’s either a USB docking station or none at all.

So with some trepidation I hooked up the StarTech USB 2 Graphic Docking Station and gave it a spin. Installation was simple after copying the drivers to a USB flash drive (because my netbook has no CD-ROM reader)—just run the setup program, tell it to continue three or four times for driver install, reboot as indicated, and plug the dock in. Each of the devices came up in turn: A USB 4-port hub, network adapter, audio adapter, and VGA adapter. My monitor woke up and displayed the blue background of my desktop, and a new tray icon appeared that allowed me to set the monitor to be the primary display. With no trouble at all, I was up on my external keyboard, mouse, display, and wired network connection.

Knowing that bandwidth would be an issue, I immediately set out to test the performance of the dock. I set the resolution to my monitor’s maximum of 1600x1200x32 bits, and started browsing the web. To my surprise, the video was quite usable—yes, dragging windows was choppy, and occassionally the mouse cursor would flicker, but overall there were no usability issues. Annoying motion banner ads were just as annoying as usual, and web flash video ran without any significant degradation. I was surprised by that. So far, so good.

So I hit it with a real test: Netflix streaming video. This would surey tax the USB port because the inbound network data and the outbound video and audio would be going over a single USB connection. Sure enough, it did. Full motion video ran at about two frames per second, which was completely unusable. I was able to get the framerate up by switching to the internal wireless adapter and disabling the dock’s wired network adapter and by moving audio back to the laptop’s internal sound card, but never to the point where it would be consdidered even remotely acceptable. But then, I knew that would be the case.

What really surprised me was how useful the dock was for everything but streaming video and gaming—any typical office task, web, and email will be just fine with this dock—that’s pretty much what Netbooks are good for anyway. If you’ve got a laptop that lacks a dock, and you’re not using it to watch movies or shoot aliens, the StarTech USB 2 Graphic Docking Station will do the job for you with no hassle whatsoever. When you do need to watch video or shoot aliens, just undock it and use the laptop’s own devices.

Disclosure: StarTech was nice enough to send us a docking station for this review.

I purchased the Kodak Easy Share Wireless Picture Frame with a specific purpose in mind: I wanted to immediately transfer motion sensor triggered photos from my Panasonic network camera at my front door onto a screen up stairs so we could see who was at the door before going downstairs to answer it. Advertised as “being able to receive emails with photo attachments and immediately display them”, it seemed that the Kodak picture frame might be just the ticket, since the camera can immediately send email photos when it senses motion.

I purchased the frame at Best Buy for $219–$50 lower than it’s MSRP of $269. Although its frame is made of plastic. The screen is okay but not great—it’s about middle of the road as LCD displays go. It has a wide angle viewability side to side, but is polarized vertically and so changes colors quickly when you angle it from top to bottom. That’s probably the right choice to make, and for the money I’m not going to dwell on the screen quality—it’s more than adequate. Unfortunately, the electronics protrude about ½” behind the frame, making it unsuitable for directly hanging on the wall. I’m not sure why digital photo frame makers think that it’s okay for the frame to protrude 1” away from the wall—you’d have to cut a large square hole in your wall in order for this frame to sit flush. It’s most appropriately used on a desk.

The frame was pretty easy to setup: Upon power-up, you use the touch-sensitive frame area below and to the right side of the display to move a cursor around and set the WiFi password. After restarting, it was up on my network and displaying default photographs.

Using the frame is trivially simple: Just pop in a photo card from your camera, and the photographs will instantly start showing using default settings. You control the frame using the touch sensors, using a swipe motion to scroll through photos and a touch motion to call up the menu. The menus are very easy to use, allowing you to select photo shows from the card, from online sources, and to set some of the frame’s defaults.

The frame is compatible with three different online services: Flickr, FrameChannel, and Kodak Easy Share online. FrameChannel and the Kodak site are so similar that it’s surprising that they both exist, much less are both supported. FrameChannel does provide an interesting additional service: Ambient information channels such as weather predictions, stock info, and news that appear automatically on the frame. You can’t change the settings for the online services on the frame directly, but you can point your computer’s web browser at the frame’s IP address to call up a website that will allow you to configure it completely.

In the frame’s configuration website, you can establish RSS Photo feed settings for the three directly supported services or for any generic RSS Photo feed site. The setup does require you to have accounts on these services, and it is a little bit of work to figure out exactly how everything should be setup, but I figured it out easily and without cracking the manual.

Of the three services, the Flickr integration is best: You can simply select Flickr on the menu and pretty much instantly your Flickr Photostream will appear as a slide show. You can setup tags to filter photos by as separate slide shows and choose between them, and you can even setup menu items to match tag channels on the main display.

The ability of the frame to map to an arbitrary Photo RSS feed means that you can use it as an ambient information display. For example, if you want to keep track of specific stocks, airline flight information, or network status information you could create a software application that generates those graphs and uses Photo RSS to feed them to the display.

A little hacking on my part showed that the frame complies with the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) standard for a media browser and a media renderer. This means that future home theater devices will be able to run slideshows directly on the frame, and that other frames can connect to it to display its content. The Kodak software uses UPnP features to control the frame, but UPnP itself is immature and there’s very little third party support for these features at this time.

Unfortunately, the love ended pretty early for this frame. Without fail, the wireless frame detached from my wifi-network after about two hours and stopped displaying anything, refusing to reconnect to the network until it was disconnected from power and restarted. It always reconnected immediately, which indicates that the problem is with the frame, not with the network (none of my other wireless devices have this problem). This problem makes it impossible for me to recommend this wireless frame until a firmware update that correctly addresses reconnecting to the network automatically is available.

The Kodak Easy Share software is utter garbage, doing little more than pointing you back to the frame’s own website in a window. The only reason to install it is to copy photos to the frame directly from your computer, but that’s more easily handled by copying them to a memory card in my opinion. There’s little to no point in installing it at all—the saving grace is that you don’t need it at all. I’m not sure why manufacturers go through all the effort of including poorly written software that is just going to annoy people when it isn’t even remotely necessary.

As for my use case—receiving photos from my network camera automatically and displaying them immediately—the frame is unfortunately not suitable. The first problem is that you can’t actually email photos into the frame. It does not check an email account for photos. Rather, you can configure FrameChannel or Flickr to receive email, and the frame will pull those photos down eventually. The best time I could get was about five minutes from the photos being sent until they arrived on the frame. Also, even if I could get photos onto the frame immediately, there’s no way to get the frame to instantly change to the latest newly arrived photo—rather, it gets to it eventually as it cycles through the slide show.

To make me happy, this frame would need to be configurable to check at email account using an email protocol for new photo mail when I touch the touch-sensor—not just RSS Photo feeds (none of which can be controlled closely enough to show what I want on the frame). It would also be nice if the frame supported common file transfer standards such as FTP, which would allow network cameras to transfer photos to it with no intervening servers and no need for the photos to go out on the Internet. It would also be nice if the frame could be configured to automatically display the most recently downloaded photos.

All of these would be forgivable if the wireless connectivity was reliable, but it isn’t. And given that, you’re better off just using its non-networked sibling, the Kodak M1020, which is half the price. A quick look on-line indicates that I’m not the only one having this problem, so I’ll be returning mine to Best Buy.

“Netbooks”—small, lower-powered, and inexpensive laptops with an emphasis on Internet connectivity rather than general purpose computing—are a big new category in computer sales. With entrants such as the Asus EeeePC, MSI Wind,/a>, HP Mini, and Lenovo IdeaPad, most of the major vendors (with the notable exceptions of Apple and Dell) are moving into this market. Netbooks are typically priced within $100 of the $400 mark.

It takes work to get down to $400: Smaller screens, no CD or DVD reader, lower capacity hard disks, and low-cost, slower, mature components. The processor is usually either the Intel Atom or the Via C7-mobile and they universally use low-end integrated graphics and network connectivity chipsets. This means that they can’t really handle 3D games or CAD work, and they’re not suited to high-speed data transfer on a wired network. They also include less memory than today’s typical laptop—either 512MB or 1GB. Having fewer ports—typically two USB ports, a wired network port, and an analog or digital video port, also reduces cost. All have Wireless G, but most do not have Bluetooth. A few have express-card slots that allow for expansion, however. They run Linux, Windows XP Home, or Windows Vista Basic, usually based on whether or not they have enough RAM for Vista. Many are available in editions that use a small amount of flash memory as a solid-state disk and can only run Linux.

The Lenovo IdeaPad has hit most of the compromises perfectly. It uses Windows XP Home (Vista Basic adds literally nothing of value with these older components) and has literally no unnecessary crapware to be removed.

It has a nice, bright screen, loud-enough speakers for one person to watch a movie, and the keyboard is small but not too small (although the placement of the right shift key is annoying), The screen is suitable for movie watching and the computer is capable of streaming Netflix Instant movies wirelessly at full resolution without pausing.

Most importantly in my opinion, the Lenovo has an ExpressCard slot, which makes it possible to add any port you need. This remedies a lot of the shortcomings of a Netbook and opens them up to use as a general-purpose computer. I use the ExpressCard slot to add a gigabit network port (to compensate for the fact that the built-in wired port is only 10/100) and to install flash memory for backups. Unfortunately, the ExpressCard slot is not full-length: About a half inch of the card will protrude when fully inserted which makes it difficult to leave an adapter in the machine routinely.

The ASUS Eeee PC and MSI Wind Netbooks get a lot of attention online, but only the original HP Mini compares favorably to the Lenovo in my opinion, and it cost nearly twice as much. For the money (and that’s the idea behind the NetBook category), the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 compromises less and delivers more than any other Netbook on the market right now.

The SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise is a new entry in the “Secure Flash Drive” market currently dominated by IronKey. Like IronKey, SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise provides on-board data encryption to ensure that nothing you store on the device will be compromised if you lose it. For individual users, this is all the security you’ll probably ever need.

Secure Flash Drives work by emulating two devices: A CD-ROM and a flash drive. The CD-ROM contains software that allows you to provide a secret key to decrypt the flash drive contents, and this allows the flash drive to appear as a removable device.

SanDisk Cruzer adds Enterprise management features that allow network administrators manage passwords for these USB drives centrally and remotely disable them in case they’re lost. IronKey on the other hand simply bricks the device if you mistake the password more than ten times. Both are effective at preventing data loss.

SanDisk markets this as an “Enterprise” product, meaning that they specifically target large businesses. Enterprises have two masters to serve: The individual user, and the security policy of the corporation. These devices serve the individual well, but they don’t measure up to Enterprise security requirements.

SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise flash drives cost about the same as IronKey devices, and provide a similar technical feature set. Unfortunately, SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise flash drives are not Macintosh or Linux compatible (the IronKey is Mac compatible) and unlike the IronKey, the SanDisk is made of plastic and can be easily disassembled. Performance is lack-luster with the SanDisk, reading at 11MB/sec and writing at 6. IronKey devices are substantially faster.

As for security flaws, there are two possible attacks that these devices are susceptible to: Firstly, if the device remains powered after being unlocked, it will continue to provide access to data even if it is removed to another running operating system. In practice, this is so difficult to achieve that the attack is esoteric, but you can confirm it by unlocking the device in a virtual machine and then disconnecting the device from the VM. The device will mount on the host with its encrypted drive available (even on a Mac or Linux).

The second possible flaw is that because the key exchange is provided via the computer’s keyboard, a hardware or software keylogger can intercept it. The ideal solution would be to have a biometric fingerprint reader on the USB device so that the key needn’t travel through the computer. This would also make the device universally compatible.

There are three major enterprise security problems with USB drives, and these devices only solve one of them. The three problems are:

• Accidental loss of data due to loss or theft of device.
• Intentional copying of data by employees or others with direct access to computers.
• Introduction of malware via documents or applications stored on the flash drive.

The first problem is eliminated by secure flash drives, but the second and third problems are both more likely to occur. The Department of Defense recently outlawed all USB flash drives due to a worm outbreak that was carried into the network on a secure flash drive—the worm came from a home computer and was encrypted just like everything else on the drive. The drive did its job—but it was the wrong job.

Both IronKey and SanDisk tout enterprise management features as though they completely eliminate all security problems, but nothing about these devices prevents documents that an employee can access from being removed from the facility without permission, nor do they provide any substantial facility to mitigate malware that might be contained on the device. Finally, they don’t prevent the employee from simply using a different non-secure flash device to circumvent the security measures that these devices do have.

Both SanDisk and IronKey are guilty of whitewashing enterprise security issues that their devices don’t solve. These devices provide “opt-in” security—users who allow themselves to be restricted by their features can be managed, but anyone can “opt-out” by simply using a different device.

The only way to securely manage removable media is for the computer to reject any media that has not been securely paired to the network, which is functionality that no device by itself can ever provide.

For individuals looking to protect secrets, these devices are fine, but the IronKey devices are better than the SanDisk devices in every respect. There is no flash drive that is ready for Enterprise data security in my opinion, so the additional network management features provided by the SanDisk Cruzer are basically meaningless—and could be considered harmful if IT has been convinced that they are secure in all respects or has overlooked the fundamental problems associated with all removable media.

If you’re looking for real enterprise data security, don’t allow removable media drives on your network at all.

If you have a need to figure out what a person is doing with their computer, for example to monitor what your teenagers do online, there is a class of devices called Keystroke loggers that security and HR professionals often employ to capture everything that is typed on a computer. This includes passwords, websites, outgoing email, and instant messages.

If you need a keystroke logger, you can’t do better than the Keelogger Flash USB, from www.keelog.com. This clever device records all the keystrokes that go through it to a text file stored in flash memory on the device. At any time, you can press a set of keys simultaneously (by default, “kbs”) to connect the device as flash memory. When you do this, another drive will show up in “my computer” automatically (or on your desktop in Mac OS X) and it will contain a simple text file of all keystrokes logged since the file was created. You can copy that file to your computer, and then simply eject the flash drive to re-enable the keyboard functionality. There is no software or drivers to install to read the data from the device.

It’s a huge boon to my security practice because we can read data directly on the computers we need to monitor without giving away the presence of the device to the people being monitored and without removing it.

There are caveats to the use of any keystroke logger however: It is physically obvious that something is connected between the keyboard and the computer. Should someone notice it, they could move the keyboard to a different USB port and them move it back when they’re finished—giving you the impression that you’ve captured all keystrokes when you haven’t. The only solution to this is to disassemble the keyboard and install a keystroke logger inside it, which is technically somewhat difficult. You also can’t use a keystroke logger to capture data from a laptop keyboard or from fingerprint sensors, so monitoring laptop users requires a software solution. Finally, keystroke loggers can’t pickup data from remote control software such as VNC, Macintosh Screen Sharing, or Microsoft Remote Desktop.

The Keelogger is considerably simpler to use than the keystroke loggers I’ve used in my IT security practice in the past. Without getting into the morality of spying or admonishing you to trust people before spying on them, the keeLogger is a simple, effective device that requires no software to perform it’s job.

I hate Bluetooth headsets. Being a geek, I liked the idea of them and tried to be an early adopter, but they all sucked. From the static introduced by poor Bluetooth connections to minor incompatibilities between phones and headsets to the problem of keeping them charged and the fact that they either hurt my ear or fell off, I never found one I could use. And that’s after purchasing the best that Logitech, Plantronics, and Motorola had to offer.

I looked at the Apple Bluetooth headset, but the reviews on it all stated that the range and connection quality was poor. I also have rather small ears, so headsets designed to be held in place by the ear canal have never worked for me.

I’ve got friends who use the original Jawbone headset, but it was clearly too large and too heavy to be comfortable, no matter how good the sound quality could be. But when Jawbone released their new and much smaller headset, Jawbone II with NoiseAssassin, I decided to give it a try.

In one word, it’s amazing. It’s the most comfortable headset I’ve ever worn, with multiple ear buds and ear clips to guarantee a good fit. It pairs easily and seems to be 100% compatible with my iPhone. The charger is easy to use and charges from USB, ensuring that a charger is always nearby and that I won’t be screwed for another $40 just to charge it in my car. Nobody I’ve spoken with complains about the noise quality, and I’ve had the kids run through the room screaming without bothering people I’m on the phone with. I can use it in my convertible at freeway speed without bothering people. It seems to be a better microphone than the built-in microphone on the iPhone.

The speaker sound quality is a bit tinny at higher volumes, which I require because I have significant hearing loss in the ear that I use it in) but quite acceptable. My friend with an original Jawbone says that it’s not nearly as good as the original, but the original is considerably larger and heavier. The battery life is exceptional—in excess of five hours in my testing. It’s more than enough time to be considered “all day”—I’ve not had it run out of juice on me during the day yet. Battery life is considerably better than my Plantronics or Motorola headset, both of which would die at about two hours of talk time.

It’s expensive at $140, but that’s actually far less expensive than the sum of all the headsets I’ve bought in the past that are just unusable. I bought mine at Best buy, but it’s available at Amazon.com here:

• Jawbone Bluetooth Headset with NoiseAssassin at Amazon.com

In the end, headsets can be a lifesaver when I’m driving and need to take a call, but they are useless if they don’t work with my phone, the sound is bad, or if the battery is dead. Fortunately, the Jawbone II excels on all of those levels and is a perfect addition to my workday armor.

I have an old Powerbook G4. It’s in great shape, but it’s on power adapter #4, battery #3, and hard disk #3 is failing as I write this article. It’s been deprecated to “Kid’s computer” but it serves its purpose well and there’s little point in replacing it. It would be nice if it could survive the weekly slide off the couch to the floor without loosing sectors, however. With this most recent hard disk replacement, I had the opportunity to consider going to a solid state flash drive. But would it make sense to put such an expensive drive into an old computer?

Solid State Disk

The newest small laptops, such as the Sony UX490 and the MacBook Air, come with Solid State Disk (SSD) technology. SSDs are flash memory with a hard disk drive interface and designed as a direct replacement for laptop hard disks. SSD has four primary advantages:

• There are no moving parts, so the drive lifetime is dramatically improved
• Much lower power consumption is reduced
• Seek time is eliminated to I/O operations like virtual memory are faster
• They are silent
• The next generation of SSD will be considerably faster than disk

The downsides is that SSDs cost 30 times as much per gigabyte as disk storage. At the time of this writing a 32GB SSD costs over $700 and a 64GB SSD costs over $1200 compared to $80 for a 120GB laptop hard drive. It made no sense to put a hard drive of that cost into a five year old computer.

CompactFlash to the Rescue

But there is another commonly available type of Flash memory that is much less expensive than a true SSD that can be used as a laptop hard disk replacement. Compact-Flash cards have an IDE interface exactly like a typical hard disk, but with a different pinout. Using an inexpensive passive adapter, a piece (or two) of Compact-Flash memory can make an effective laptop hard disk replacement, especially now that large sizes of CF are available off the shelf. A 32GB CF card costs just $170, compared to $600 in an SSD form factor–one quarter the price. The SSD may be faster, but a fast CF card works perfectly well as a primary hard disk.

Conversion Process

I converted my old Powerbook G4 to flash memory using an Addonics CF<>Mini-IDE adapter and a RiDATA 233X 32GB Compact-Flash card. A 16GB Compact-Flash card would have worked for half the price (OS X 10.5 Leopard takes 8GB of memory, so 16GB provides room for applications and virtual memory but no space for data). The cost for both the CF card and the adapter was $200. While I could have spent half as much on a larger disk, the extra space wasn’t a value because I didn’t need it, and the extra $100 was justified by eliminating disk-based failure.

The computer now uses reliable solid state memory, and has more than enough room for the operating system and all of its applications and data. It’s not enough disk space for my primary computer, but as a family computer its more than enough. Plus, with my kids using it, I no longer have to replace the hard disk when it slides off the couch. The computer is on its fourth (and last) hard disk now. Using the computer is almost exactly like it was before. Some operations take slightly longer to kick off, but others are faster. Overall, the usability is the same.

Compact Flash as a Boot Drive

A computer running from Compact-Flash will have slightly different performance characteristics than a hard disk drive based computer because the drive is slower for large operations but faster at random access because there is no head seek time. This means that long disk operations will take more time, but short disk operations will take less time. For example, virtual memory performance, which requires a lot of small operations, is dramatically better with CF than HDD, but file copies take about twice as long as with a real hard disk. Because small operations are fast, the computer is just as responsive to most user interaction, which is the most important factor.

To be honest, I was amazed how different the computer wasn’t. While there were the occasional moments where I noticed a half-second of delay, there were also operations that didn’t take longer, such as launching an application during a file copy–that didn’t take any longer than if a file copy hadn’t been going on, and it’s the sort of operation that normally lags quite a bit in that circumstance. Multitasking was easier and faster on CF even though bulk operations were about half the speed.

The process worked so well that I’m strongly considering a dual CF upgrade for my newer MacBook.

The Nitty Gritty Details

You need to be aware of how CF cards emulate hard disk drives. Older, slower CF cards emulate a simple “Programmed I/O” or PIO disk, which is very slow. Direct Memory Access (DMA) devices are much faster, with Ultra-DMA (UDMA) devices being the fastest. UDMA Flash cards will be listed as 120X or faster. You basically want the fastest memory you can afford, because it will affect all aspects of your computer’s operation. Also, some older non-UDMA cards cannot be reformatted to accept a boot loader, so be safe by sticking with UDMA CF cards only.

You also need a UDMA reader because the speed your disk runs at will be the lower of the speed of the drive and the adapter. I tested my Compact-Flash card in a typical PC Card to CF adapter in the PC Card slot and it was horribly slow because the PC Card I had was only a 16-bit card that forced the CF card into PIO mode. Putting the same card in a UDMA firewire adapter dramatically improved performance. Also, the Mac could not boot the PC Card adapter in 16-bit mode.

Addonics CF to PATA and SATA adapters

Addonics makes a completely line of single and dual flash adapter for both parallel (PATA) and Serial (SATA) hard disk drives. You can browse their complete line of flash readers at the following URL:

• DigiDrive/Flash Memory Reader from Addonics

All of their adapters are UDMA and will drive CF cards at their maximum performance ratings. Windows users will need this sort of adapter to work at all because Windows will not boot from removable media. If you own a Mac, you also have the option of booting Flash from a USB port (Intel Macs only), the CardBus or ExpressBus slot, or from a Firewire port. Keep in mind that if you boot from your slot, you can’t use it for anything else because the boot drive can never be unmounted.

There’s an important difference between the Addonics PATA and SATA dual CF adapters however; The PATA adapter mounts both cards as two separate drives (a master and a slave) so your computer sees both, whereas the SATA dual adapter bonds them together as either RAID-0 striped, RAID-1 mirrored, or combined. You will almost certainly want to use RAID-0 striped mode with this adapter because is splits all data across both devices, doubling the read and write performance.

Summary

With Addonics CF adapter, CardFlash is inexpensive enough to use now for any computer that doesn’t have to store bulk data. There’s more than enough room on a 16GB card for both your operating system and your applications. 32GB is enough for everything, presuming that you’re not working with virtual machines, storing your entire iTunes library, or editing video on the computer. For most people, CF based disks can be an effective upgrade for their next disk replacement even in existing laptops.

Why do laptop and cell phone batteries seem to just die suddenly, while other forms of rechargeable batteries wear out gradually? What’s the best type of rechargeable battery to replace Alkaline batteries in remotes and toys? Understanding a little about how batteries work will help you make good decisions about how to use them, which type of rechargeable battery to buy when you have a choice, how to dispose of them, and how to compare them to each other.

Battery is measured in “milliamp hours” or mAh, which is a measure of how many milliamps the battery can deliver in one hour. For example, if your device requires ¼ of the rated mAh on the battery, it should last about four hours.

There are three basic types of rechargeable batteries in use in consumer electronics today:Ni-Cd, NiMH, and Li-Ion

Nickel Cadmim (Ni-Cd, also called “Nicads”)

The first “consumer grade” rechargeable batteries that could replace disposables, Ni-Cd batteries hold a moderate charge (about 1200mAh for AA size—about 1/3 of an alkaline battery’s life in typical use) and are easy to recharge with a simple trickle charger. They have memory effect, however, so you should discharge them completely before you recharge them for the longest life and best performance. They also contain cadmium and must be disposed of responsibly—don’t throw them in the trash. You’ll find them in cordless phone handsets and on the shelf as replacements for alkaline batteries. Nicad cells have a natural 1.2v per cell voltage that is close enough to replace 1.5v alkaline batteries.

Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH)

An improvement to Nicads that more than doubles the energy density (about 2500mAh for AA size) and removes the toxic Cadmium, NiMH can be used wherever you use disposable Alkaline batteries or Nicad batteries. NiMH batteries suffer from memory effect, and should be used until they die before being recharged. While they can be trickle charged, they charge much faster when pulse charged by a “smart charger”—typical smart chargers can put a full charge on them in about an hour and can automatically perform deep-cycle charges to refresh batteries that have a memory effect. They’re safe to dispose of in the trash, and have about half the energy density as a disposable alkaline battery so they’re very good disposable replacements. You’ll find these batteries in older laptops and cell phones, and as rechargeable batteries in all the common sizes. Overall, they’re the most reliable and best price point per energy density of all common disposable batteries and should be your first choice when choosing a replacement for disposable alkalines.

Lithium Ion (Li-Ion)

A completely different and new battery chemistry, Li-Ion has the highest energy density of any battery chemistry (about 3600mAh at 3 times the voltage per cell). They’re common in high-end electronics such as cell phones, laptops, cameras, and camcorders. They have no memory effect, but they don’t like to be discharged completely—keep them on a charger as much as you can. They also don’t last for many charge cycles (discharge to recharge) as other chemistries so they’re relatively short lived. A typical Li-Ion cell will last 300 charge cycles, which is one to two years of common use. Li-Ion batteries are not as toxic as the mercury in alkaline batteries or the cadmium in Nicads, but they should be recycled.

Li-Ion batteries have to be charged by smart chargers that can prevent overcharging, which can cause a Li-Ion battery to explode violently and catch on fire. Lithium Ion batteries have a natural 3.3 volt charge per cell. If a Li-Ion battery is charged above 4.2 volts, it will explode, and if they are discharged below 2.2 volts, it will never take a charge again. For this reason, you’ll only find them used in electronic devices or smart battery packs that can act as chargers that monitor the battery constantly and power off before they drain too much power. A variation of this type of battery uses a polymer matrix to improve energy density and is sometimes called “Li-Poly” batteries. They are otherwise equivalent.

Charging Recommendations and Disposal

You don’t need to worry about Lead Acid batteries—you can’t hurt them. Nicad and NiMH batteries like to be completely discharged before you recharge them. Get a smart charger for them—in addition to being faster, it can refresh them to eliminate memory effect and make them last longer. Li-Ion batteries don’t like to be discharged so keep them plugged in whenever possible for longest life. Be careful how you dispose of batteries: NiCd and Li-Ion should not be thrown in the trash.

The bottom line

Whatever style of battery you find in your cell phone, laptop, or camera, make sure to follow these simple guidelines and your batteries will last far longer than you imagined.

Okay, perhaps smackdown is a bit of a stretch when comparing what are perhaps the most milquetoast and genteel electronic devices ever made, but there is a battle of the heavyweights going on for control of the eBook buying public (all fifteen of them). The Sony Reader, weighting in at slightly less than an actual paperback, is the reigning champ, and the Amazon Kindle—bigger, heavier (at almost 11oz), and stronger—is the contender. It’s actually pretty easy to tell whose going to win, but the fight isn’t as one-sided as the recent press around the Kindle might make it seem.

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