Author Archives: scottsoapbox

AMD A-Series Macbook Air? Refurbished Computers Worth It?

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As the ultraportable crowd impatiently awaits the latest Apple refresh of the svelt Macbook, an interesting new rumor has popped up. Could the next Air be powered by an AMD A-Series APU and not the expected Intel iCore? Are refurbished computers from gigarefurb worth it?

While it flies in the face of most of the industry scuttlebutt, it actually makes a lot of sense. Consider the following: Apple has been slow to move the Air away from the Core 2 Duo chips to the newer Intel chips when it often grabs the first of such silicon off the line. Cupertino also snubbed Nvidia for AMD in its latest graphic card refresh.

Assuming AMD’s A-Series APU claims are correct it would present the perfect balance of processing, graphics, and battery power for an ultralight laptop. The conventional wisdom has been that Apple is moving from the Core 2 Duo + GeForce 320M to an iCore chip with Intel’s graphics for better processing power and battery life. However that logic never sat right with me, since even the 11″ Air included discrete graphics. A move I feel proves that Apple wants above “adequate” graphics even in its tiniest laptop.

I think the iCore upgrade belief has been largely based largely on “what else would they do?” assumptions. While an iCore + GPU is the obvious solution for maximum computing power in a typical laptop, in a form factor like the Air the drain on battery life and physical size become much more important. Could the company that ripped the SSD out of its standard enclosure for form factor, really pass up the chance to offer true GPU performance without adding a second chip?

UPDATE: We have heard back from our source that Apple is considering a next generation APU (with lower TDP) for a future (significant) MBA revision not the pending one.  That will be the new iCore chips.

Why Twitter Suddenly Matters

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Yes I realize that Twitter has over 150 million users – I myself have been on it since 2009. However much of this mad rush to join has been spurred mostly by two groups: people addicted to status updates and businesses chasing after social marketing. The honest truth is that a few billion tweats later, most people have said very little with their 140 characters and most businesses couldn’t even tell you if their followers have impacted their bottom lines. Sure a small share of tech savy businesses have leverage twitter well but we’re not talking about the outliers here. No, up to this point the biggest winners have been the celebrities. Sadly, more people care about Colin Farrell’s lunch selection update than your new product launch tweet. But twitter is evolving. Rapidly.

Recently some significant things have happened with twitter that will make it matter to more than the attention starved and fan boys and girls of the world. Here’s what happened:

  1. Ubiquity Critical Mass – This was bound to happen with the size of the social bandwagon as lately every phone, tablet, TV, watch, and electric razer has integrated twitter, facebook and netflix into it. The ubiquity finally paid off after some people used it to report the news before the news crews. The shift from twitter as the endless echo chamber to first on the scene is significant to its long term success.
  2. Photo Sharing – The new twitter now includes photo sharing leaving it poised to become the top such service overnight. More importantly it gives twitter a second, independent reason to exist.
  3. Steve Jobs’ Blessing – The inclusion of twitter into the bowels of iOS 5 is less of a boon to its userbase than it is a protection of its future. As it essentially moves one the big players that could threaten it’s supremacy over to its side.
  4. Feature Integration – Much of twitter’s success is due to its simplicity of setup and use. Adding features such as automatic link shortening further simplifies tweeting for the masses.Alas, none of this solves the average business owner’s problem of leveraging twitter for their own use. However for those on the fence about twitter, it may have just gotten too powerful to ignore.

Breathe New Life Into Your Aging Laptop

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My brother’s four year old Dell laptop was really starting to show it’s age running (or attempting to run) today’s software.  Boot times had grown long enough to brew coffee and programs were becoming unbearable to launch. So we set out to see just how much of a difference a few affordable upgrades could make to real world performance.

Original System: Dell Latitude D620

  • 1.66GHz Centrino Duo
  • 1GB RAM
  • 40GB HD (5400RPM)
  • Windows XP

Upgrades ($165)

  • Increase RAM to 2GB RAM
  • Kingston SSDNow V Series 64 GB Solid State HD replacement

Our testing methodology was simple:  Use a stopwatch to time a few real world activities and see if the upgrades made a significant difference.  While a stopwatch can add a small amount of “user error” to the times, if an upgrade couldn’t overcome this +/- 1 second variability it isn’t worth the money anyway right?

For consistency, prior to testing the laptop was booted up and we made sure everything was updated, the virus scan had run, backup software was currently done, etc.  We didn’t want some rogue background process skewing our results.

The first three numbers in the chart are a continuous time.  The notebook was booted up and IE was clicked when the network popup confirmed connection – loading the Netflix web page.  Launching the browser as part of the test not only shows time to get online, but how long until windows was truly ready to do something (not simply displaying the desktop while loading stuff in the background).

Original 2GB RAM RAM & SSD
To Login Screen 0:43 0:44 0:21
Desktop Loaded 1:22 1:05 0:31
Web Page Loaded 3:45 3:11 0:53
Launch iTunes 3:15 1:50 0:12

The results speak for themselves.  Additional RAM is a worthwhile upgrade – especially because it is so cheap these days. But even for an older notebook, a SSD steals the show and can make a world of difference in your computing experience. In many cases, an older laptop is perfectly suited for a SSD upgrade as the user is already used to a relatively small HD capacity and won’t have to shell considerably more money out for the larger sized models.

My brother did note one side effect of the SSD:

One thing. When the cooling fan isn’t running, it’s kind of unnerving. I mean, I can see the light for the hard drive cranking, but there’s no noise. Black magic.

Words For A Father

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At my father’s recent Homecoming Celebration, my brothers and I got so say a few words about Dan “the man”.  Our notes for that is available at the link below.  We are working on getting the video of the full event online as soon as possible.