Detling Adventures

A long overdue link has been added to the sidebar – Detling Adventures, named for a Wisconsin Matron and looking-glass universe of a certain second floor of a certain dormitory at the University iof Wisconsin campus in Madison. The proprietor, going by the pseudonym Christian Neuhass, is known for flights of fancy and oft-macabre humor of a delicious sort, laden with irony, mysticism, and misdirection. Enter if you dare.

time to buy an SSD: 128GB C300 for $200

judge me by my size, do you? No! And well you should not! For my ally is SATA3, and a powerful ally it is! (Use the code CRUCIAL4455, Luke...)
The SSD market is providing a rare opportunity for anyone not intent on building at the bleeding edge. The newest generation of SSDs like Crucial’s RealSSD C400, OCZ Vertex 3, and Intel’s SSD 320 are out and have been reviewed, but offer incremental performance upgrades at best (mainly from refinements of the controllers’ firmware, and also some further power consumption efficiency from moving to a 25 nm die). This means that the prior generation’s performance leaders are a real bargain at reduced prices.

For example, if you use the code CRUCIAL4455 at NewEgg (valid until tomorrow) you can get a C300 for $200, and free 2-day shipping. That’s $40 cheaper than I paid for it just a few weeks ago (and you can see my benchmarks here on PREFECT). I expect that the Vertex 2 and Intel’s SSD 510, also previous generation, will see some major rebates or discounts soon, but the C300 is really the best SSD of the 34nm generation. .

UPDATE: The 120 GB Intel 510 Series is also on sale at NewEgg until 4/7.

The bottom line is that the upgrade to an SSD packs better punch than upgrading RAM and is a far cheaper alternative to upgrading a mobo and CPU (Sandy Bridge is still not compelling an upgrade IMHO, which I can elucidate on in thread if anyone cares). The advantage of the form factor is that its compatible with any SATA laptop or any desktop (unfortunately, my old T42 is just outside that generation, still using ULTRA-ATA. And it has a broken LCD backlight, but I digress…). These things even come with simple utilities to clone your current drive, OS, apps, etc without a hitch to the SSD. This is the best bang for your buck. I think that the $200 price point for 128 GB is a price floor, however – it won’t go lower, because all the inventory of the old generation drives like the C300 will sell out at that price. Once the old generation drives (which as I mentioned, offer largely comparable performance) sell out, then the only SSD options will be the new generation which are about $100 more expensive. After that, your best window to buy an SSD again will be 6 months to a year from now, when the current “next” generation is again replaced by a new crop and the cycle repeats.

Alienware M11x R3 crossing the Sandy Bridge in April, joined by M14x

Back in January, Anandtech previewed the entire Sandy Bridge lineup, including the mobile LV/ULV parts, and commented:

What’s interesting to note about the ULV parts is that even the slowest i5-2537M (yeah, those code names are going to be easy to remember!) comes clocked higher than the outgoing i7-640UM, with more aggressive Turbo modes and a 1W lower TDP. Perhaps we’ll see an M11x R3 with 400M (or 500M?) graphics and one of these ULV chips?

It’s amazing to think that Alienware’s M11x has achieved such mindshare among gaming laptops that the first thing people think about is the R3 when presented with a new chip! But this is also a commentary on how badly the M11x is due for a refresh. Well, looks like the wait is over – here are preliminary specifications for Dell’s new Alienware M11X R3, due out in April:

LCD: 11.6″, 1366×768, TrueLife glossy panel, White-LED backlight
RAM stick options: 1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB, 1333MHz, DDR3
CPU options:
i5-2537M, 1.4GHz up to 2.3GHz
i7-2617M, 1.5GHz up to 2.6GHz
i7-2657M, 1.6GHz up to 2.7GHz

Check out the comparative stats on those LV/ULV CPUs from Anand’s January post. No word on what discrete GPU will be used yet, but nvidia is a good bet for Optimus.

But the more interesting news is that Alienware is also releasing a M14x version – not an M13x as previously assumed and lusted after:

RAM options: 1GB-4GB, DDR3, 1333MHz or 2GB/4GB, 1600MHz
CPU options: i3-2310M all the way up to i7-2820QM
LCD options:
14″ Full-HD 1920×1080
14″ 1366×768

The downside is that battery will be the same 8-cell, 63 Whr used in the M11x R3 above, which is a real problem since the CPUs are the OEM/Retail ones not LV/ULV. The TDP is 35W-45W for these CPUs versus 17W for the CPUs in the M11x R3. Between the more thirsty CPUs and the larger screen, expect battery life to be the Suck for the M14x. It doesn’t make much sense to go for a M14x when you could wait a bit and get an M15x instead (also overdue for a Sandy Bridge refresh).

The M13x would have been far more reasonable, with LV/ULV and a 63 Whr battery, than the M14x. I think I’ll stick with the M11x – can’t wait until “early April” !

UPDATE: Eric at Dell-Lab blog responds to my critique of the M14x:

Currently, I have no information on an M15X refresh. It could be that the M14X is the successor to the M15X. Dell must have figured that going for a 14″ form factor would be better overall.

I agree, that would make more sense. But the current lineup of 11, 15 and 17 is well-spaced out, and has a natural opening for a 13. If Dell is instead going to have 11, 14 and 17 then that is also evenly spaced, but fewer options. Maybe that is deliberate, easier to have three models in the lineup than four. But the discrepancy between the midrange and high end will be greater. It remains to be seen how the pricing goes.

The aPad – Amazon’s imminent android tablet and iPad killer

Look, it’s basically obvious – Amazon’s new Android Appstore is the precursor to Amazon launching a full-fledged Android tablet of its own. And, true to the character of the kindle, it’s going to be cheaper than other tablets, won’t be packed with features like gyroscopes and cameras, and will probably use a Mirasol color display that is just as readable outdoors as e-Ink and can support video.

This inevitable Amazon tablet, which I am dubbing the “aPad”, will allow complete vertical content management just like Apple does with iTunes, since Amazon also sells movies, music and now apps – but Amazon has a bigger customer base, and also has that one-click patent everyone loved to hate. Also, the appstore even lets you test-drive apps from right in the web browser.

No wonder Apple is scared sh#$&less and is suing Amazon over the name and trying to boot Kindle from iOS.

I cannot wait.

UPDATE: On facebook, a dear friend (and Apple zealot, in a good way 🙂 comments:

…just like the android phones killed the iPhone! …wait..

Now, let me assert and concede that the iPhone is probably the finest phone in existence. And frankly I don’t think that there will ever be a iPhone killer. It should be noted however that the definition of “killer” is rather loose – Android is indeed eating the iPhone’s lunch with respect to market share, for example. But user experience? I’ve never used Android, so I can’t comment, but we are an iPod Touch 4, iPhone 4, and iPad 1 family. I personally use a blackberry because I am a keyboard guy, and the bberry approaches Thinkpad transcendence in that regard. At any rate, I know and use iOS and no one is going to beat iPhone on that field, not for a long time.

But a tablet is a different matter. iPad certainly opened the door, but the iPad is still a flawed device in a fundamental way: it’s not even remotely “post-PC” as Apple pretends it to be. Without a PC the iPad is unusable. Without iTunes the iPad is closed. Only a technology company with equal vertical integration of a content ecosystem, like Amazon, can match the iPad. Here’s your basic task: decide you want to watch a certain movie, get it on your tablet, and watch it on the train during your commute. How can you do that on Android right now? Only Amazon and Apple can make that happen.

But where Amazon has the advantage is that it sells un-DRMed MP3s for music, permits video downloads as separate files, and (this is where the Andoid advantage comes in, which is irrelevant on a phone platform) supports industry standards for content. So you have the best of all worlds.

Don’t get me wrong – the iPad won’t die after being killed. But for the average family, the aPad will simply be a better value – half the cost, half the weight, and none of the hassles. For surfing the web, parity; for watching TV and video, advantage.

I think Apple’s true genius device is the iPod Touch. No one has anything like it. and the iPhone is king. But the iPad is a niche product, like netbooks were – and Apple has left a huge opening for Amazon to exploit by making it such a closed ecosystem.

astounding Cassini video flyby of Saturn’s rings and moons

(UPDATE: credit due, via Mark. Who acounts for a disturbingly large number of my “neato lookit” posts of late.)

This is incredible – a digital compilation of images from the Cassini probe, no CGI or animation, assembled into incredible breathtaking flybys of the Saturn system. The best part os the third, final sequence where we flyby Titan, Mimas, pass thru the ring-plane, and swoop past Enceladus.

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

I’ve a photo of me from 1996 as a visitor to JPL (where my friend’s dad worked) in front of the Cassini heat shield. I really need to dig that up… Let’s also remember that the controversy about Cassini being nuclear powered was totally bogus, and use that as a data point for why nuclear power is not the ultimate bugaboo that people assume it to be after the still-unfolding tradegy and disaster in Japan.

Filco Majestouch tenkeyless with RED switches at Amazon

UPDATE – There are a number of other Filco Majestouch keyboards available on Amazon right now – supplied probably limited as these are no longer in production.

This is a real rarity – a Filco Majestouch keyboard, of the 87-key layout (tenkeyless), and with the linear Cherry MX Red switches, in stock at Amazon.com. In my earlier post on keyboards I noted that reds were pretty much impossible to find. And here they are, in stock and free shipping. The keyboard is a little pricey but I think it’s worth snapping this up.

Filco Majestouch 87-key (tenkeyless) mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Red switches - $165 at Amazon

Red switches are linear like blacks, but lighter force for actuation. The result should be an ideal hybrid between gaming and typing. My only complaint is that it isn’t a blank keyset, but that’s ok 🙂 There’s a thread at geekhack with some initial reviews of this board and I think I am going to enjoy it.

benchmarking the SSD vs striped drives

I’ve got the storage system all sorted out now. Here’s my disk manager:

Disk0 (E: – BACKUP) is the 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green, formatted as one large basic volume. Disk 1 and Disk 2 are the 1TB Samsung Spinpoints, where the first 128 GB of each have been striped together to create a single 256 GB striped volume (Y: – FASTDATA) and the latter 800 GB are mirrored (Z: – USERDATA). There’s also a strange unallocated block on one of the Spinpoints, which is relatively tiny (130 MB). Odd, that. Finally, Disk3 is the 128 GB Crucial RealSSD C300. I’ve moved all the user data directories to the mirrored partition and kept the Windows OS and application data on the SSD, with plenty of room to spare.

I was curious as to the performance of the striped volume versus the SSD. Note that I allocated the beginning of the spinpoints to the stripe, to “short-stroke” it (ie, the data is on the start of the disks, meaning the read heads have to travel less physical distance). Unfortunately, HD Tune does not seem to like partitions, only treats disks as single entities, so I used CrystalDiskMark 3.01 instead. The results were intriguing! Here are the runs for each partition – each run had 4 averages, 1000MB test data size:

2TB Western Digital Caviar Green

800GB mirrored partition, Samsung Spinpoint F3 (pair)

128 GB Crucial RealSSD C300

256GB striped partition (short-stroke), Samsung Spinpoint F3 (pair)

What is kind of amazing is that in sequential reads, the striped volume actually matches the SSD in read speed, and outperforms by a factor of 2 on write! However, when it comes to random 512K and 4K sectors, the SSD completely smokes the striped volume. This suggests that the striped volume would be just as good as an SSD for things like video other multimedia. In fact I might just rename my striped volume VIDEO and move the My Video folder to there instead of on USERDATA. Actually I should rename USERDATA just DATA as well 🙂

I’m not really sure why I created the striped volume, other than simply because I could. I didnt need a full terabyte for mirroring once the OS and apps are excluded. At some point in the future i can move to 2TB disks if necessary, but this setup shuold last me for a few years at minimum, if not longer – especially since I’m also segregating video. The only downside is that the striped volume not only lacks redundancy, it’s doubly vulnerable to disk failure. But that’s why I have my backup volume E, after all, and backblaze. (Though backblaze doesn’t backup data files over a certain size… need to check into that)

I’ve put a huge amount of overthought into this, but I think I am finally happy with how it all turned out. I need to do my final wrap up post on PREFECT now, with photos and cost estimate. Since the only game I run is WoW I think I am basically futureproof for a long time.

SSD me

ok, this thing is tiny.

stacked against a hard drive
the size of a credit card

For a few moments, I was confused enough to wonder if I’d accidentally ordered the 1.8″ drive size instead of the 2.5″. It’s not only small, it’s unbelievably lightweight. It comes with a nifty little SATA-to-USB adapter for cloning software to it prior to installation.

I’m really keen on doing a fresh install of Win 7 x64, but I also want to move my data off the boot drive, and make the data drive a mirrored volume (as I mentioned earlier, I bought two Spinpoint 1TB drives). So, here’s my order of operations:

1. install one 1TB spinpoint drive, formatting as two partitions, one 128 GB to match the SSD, the second as 872 GB for the data partition. I’m not exactly sure why I am creating the smaller partition, but it seemed logical, if you will pardon the pun. These will be Y: (SPARE) and Z: (USERDATA).

2. move the My Documents folder (and My Videos, My Music, etc) to USERDATA. This is a lot simpler than trying to move the system folders.

3. now, the original boot drive should only have about 30 GB left (just OS and apps). Clone this to the SSD using the included software and the cable that came with the SSD.

4. replace the boot drive (a 1 TB Seagate) with the SSD and boot up in full SSD glory. Re-run Windows Experience Index to bask in the glory of 7s. If all goes well, take the old boot drive back to Best Buy.

5. Add the second Spinpoint and mirror using Windows software RAID rather than the built-in motherboard variety (which is referred to disparagingly at various online forums as “fake RAID” because it still relies on the PC’s CPU to do most of the work.)

At this point I will have a BOOT partition in C: (128 GB SSD), a BACKUP partition in E: (2 TB Caviar Green), a USERDATA partition in Z: (870 GB mirrored Spinpoints) and a spare partition in Y: (128 GB which I might actually do short-stroke striping across the spinpoints just for fun, rather than a simple mirror. I might reserve that for video). There’s also the external 1 TB drive and Backblaze for redundancy.

I’ll update the post with my earlier hard drive benchmarks from HD Tune and the new one from the SSD for comparison once I’ve got it all in place…

UPDATE – here’s the benchmarks from the various drives using HDTune. The Samsung is actually the older one I had, which seemed to have issues and was returned to Amazon. I replaced it with the Seagate, and now have taken the Seagate back to Best Buy in favor of the SSD and the new pair of Spinpoints (the new spinpoints are not benchmarked yet but should be identical).

Also note the huge difference in the SSD performance between SATA 2 and 3 modes. The latter requires me to sacrifice the bandwidth to the PCI x16 slot however, so I need to test framerates in WoW in both configs (SATA 2, PCI-E x16 vs SATA 3, PCI-E x8) to see which is better overall. Even in SATA 2 mode, the SSD is a beast.

If you don’t feel like clicking through the thumbnails, here’s the data:

Drive | min / max / avg transfer rate | access time | burst rate
Samsung Spinpoint 1TB | 69.0 / 133.3 / 106.3 MB/sec | 14.6 msec | 95.0 MB/sec
Seagate Barracuda 1TB |60.2 / 103.8 / 91.2 MB/sec | 20.2 msec | 65.6 MB/sec
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB | 45.5 / 104.3 / 79.1 MB/sec | 17.5 msec | 95.0 MB/sec
Crucial RealSSD C300 (SATA2) | 105.7 / 154.7 / 143.6 MB/sec | 0.2 msec | 2410.3 MB/sec
Crucial RealSSD C300 (SATA3) | 227.4 / 274.2 / 243.0 MB/sec | 0.1 msec | 2050.8 MB/sec

Samsung Spinpoint 1TB

Seagate Barracuda 1TB

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB

Crucial RealSSD c300 128GB (SATA2, 3 Gbps mode)

Crucial RealSSD c300 128GB (SATA3, 6 Gbps mode)

and now, let’s talk about mechanical keyboards

UPDATE – There are a number of other Filco Majestouch keyboards available on Amazon right now – supplied probably limited as these are no longer in production.

Anyone following my hardware posts as I build my new workstation (named PREFECT, for reasons which are unlikely to become clear again at the moment), will notice a pattern: each and every single component was chosen after agonizing and masochistic research into trying to determine the optimal choice, balancing performance, cost, and my projected usage pattern – mainly WoW, MATLAB, and Office. (Though I also will be dabbling in programming and web apps development).

At any rate, the few components I have not had to research were monitors, mouse and keyboard. I actually did look into new monitors, but was flummoxed by the fact it’s nearly impossible to find 1920×1200 widescreens anymore – almost all new monitors are 1900×1080, to fit the HDTV aspect ratio of 16:9. I really want my 120 lines of vertical real estate, so i took my father’s old pair of Sceptre X24WG Naga 16:10 screens while he went out and bought himself a honking 32inch HDTV monitor. My wireless keyboard and mouse were also hand-me-downs, a Logitech media set which worked well enough but weren’t the greatest thing in the world to type on (especially in comparison to my Thinkpad T42).

However, I’ve been having intermittent issues with that aging keyboard – first of all, it runs on 2 AAA batteries, which it positively devours. Lately I’ve also been having issues where keys pressed don’t always register which makes my already-high typo rate even worse. And the keyboard is flat as a board, which is another obstacle to me finally learning how to type. Like most keyboards, it’s a rubber-dome mechanism which is essentially a throwaway technology. Given that 99% of my interaction with my computer is via the keyboard, I’ve decided to make the switch to a mechanical keyboard instead. Overclock.net has a great primer to mechanical keyboard technology which really makes the case. It turns out that one of the best switches made is by a German company called Cherry, whose MX-series key-switches are used in virtually all the mechanical keyboards on the market. But these switches come in different variants, which vary in their tactile response and audible sound. The main issue then boils down to what type of profile I want, and then find a vendor who makes that type.

There are other switch technologies like Alps and Topre but for simplicity I am sticking with Cherry-based keyboards (which are also a little cheaper generally, though not always). Let’s go through the various Cherry switches again (I am assuming the Reader is familiar with mechanical keyboard technology or has read the primer I linked earlier).

Cherry MX Blue – a tactile, “clicky” switch. The audible sound is a very loud click, which gives you auditory feedback but may not be the best thing for a quiet environment. The tactile and audible feedback let you move on to your next keypress quickly, which is optimal for typing. These have moderate actuation force (50g) meaning you can rest your fingers on the keys but still easy to initiate a keypress – this is the switch to get if you’re a high-speed typist. However it is not optimal for gaming since the release point is above the actuation point, which means if you are double-tapping a key or pressing the same key a number of times in quick succession, it may not register.

The Das Keyboard and the Razer BlackWidow series both use Cherry MX blues. The BlackWidow comes in a regular version for $70 or an Ultimate version for $120 with backlighting and a USB hub. The Das Keyboard is $130, for both a standard lettered version and also a blank, featureless version, both of which have USB hubs.

UPDATE – You can also get Filco Majestouch 104-key blues at Amazon for $149 – these are no longer manufactured so supplies are limited.

However, I’m pretty certain I’m not interested in a blue-based keyboard because I don’t want a loud “click”. Also, I’m not going to be using it exclusively for typing, so I do want a bit more linear response. So that rules out the Razer for me. Moving on…

Cherry MX Black – basically the opposite of the Blue, with no tactile feedback and no audible clicky sound. The black switches have a linear response where the point of activation is the same as the point of release, which makes it optimal for gaming where you might be pushing the same key a number of times in succession. These are reported to have a very smooth feel, but are supposedly not as great for extended typing. They also have a very high actuation force – 60g, which means a keypress must be very deliberate (minimizing accidental keypresses).

A lot of mechanical gaming keyboards out there use blacks, the most notable of these being the Steelseries 6GV2 for $100 and it’s big brother the Steelseries 7G which adds audio ports and a ginormous palmrest. These keyboards have superior NKRO and make the deliberate decision to exclude a Windows key. Deck Legend keyboards fetauring backlighting can also be found using blacks, in the Fire ($149), Toxic ($159) and Ice ($159) variants.

UPDATE – Amazon has tenkeyless Filco Majestouch keyboards with black MX switches available now for $139.

The silent non-clicky nature of the MX black appeals to me. However, since I am not exclusively a gamer, I’m not sure if a black-based keyboard would be ideal for me. Fortunately there are other options, such as…

Cherry MX Brown, Cherry MX Clear – These are hybrids of blacks and blues, both with a tactile response, but no clicky sound. The main difference between them is that browns have less actuation force than blues (45g) whereas clears have actuation force in between blues and blacks (55g). Thus browns are for warp-speed typists and clears are a good hybrid for gaming and typing. Neither have the linear response of blacks.

You can order Deck Legend keyboards with clears, in Frost ($176) and Ice ($169) variants.

Das Keyboard also comes in a “silent” variant using browns, again in lettered or non-lettered variants, both $135.

UPDATEFilco Majestouch 104-key Brown keyboards are also in stock for $149 at Amazon. As mentioned above, these are discontinued boards so supplies are limited.

Cherry MX Red – these have the same linear response as the blacks, but with lower actuation force of 45g akin to browns. No tactile response and no audible click.

I actually could not find any keyboards for sale at the usual retail outlets or online using these switches.

UPDATE87-key (tenkeyless) Filco Majestouch with red switches is available at Amazon for $165 and free shipping – extremely rare, worth snapping up if you have even passing interest. Possibly the ideal hybrid keyboard for typing and gaming.

UPDATE 2 – the tenkeyless Filco Reds are out of stock now but they have full-size 104-key Filco Reds instead for $179. Still worth snapping up!

All of the keyboards above with the exception of the Decks have sculpted keys, where different rows have different height, to accomodate the different distances fingers must travel from the home row. And all of them support n-key rollover, where multiple keypresses will register without the “beep” (also called anti-ghosting), to varying extent. You always get better NKRO using the PS/2 port than if you use USB, so you should use a USB to PS2 adapter (which is included with the Steelseries, unsure about the others).

SUMMARY – So, as usual, I need to make a decision. I don’t like the lack of sculpting and higher cost of the Decks. And I don’t want a blue, as I’m not a warp-speed typist and am not interested in clicky sound, ruling out the Razer. All things being equal I’d lean towards a clear-based board, but only Deck makes those. Brown might also work, if I can live with accidental keypresses, but Das Keyboard is expensive. The Steelseries seems to be the best balance of features and cost, but it’s only available with black switches. However as I am not a great typist so maybe that would be ok. I’m just not sure. Probably any of these boards (well, apart from the blue – just not a fan of loud click) would be a dramatic improvement for all my writing and gaming over my current membrane-based Logitech. There are some comparative reviews of mechanical keyboards from BenchmarkReviews and from Tom’s Guide, but these aren’t much help.

Sigh. Decisions, decisions. I think the Steelseries is probably my best bet. Any advice?