Author: Ng Chee Sian

This article was written by Guest Author Ng Chee Sian (Shingo). He is co-author on My Blog Review and has been the co-editor of Diy Computer Repairs for the past 12 months.

6 New Upcoming Tech Components

We have entered a new decade and what will you imagine for the future. Getting a computer with parts that are not outdated in terms of concept is one aspect that a tech geek must be aware of.  In this article, I will keep the readers informed of what is the latest technology that you must keep your eyes peeled in order to keep abreast of the times. Due to the limit in links set by the site owner, I will only bold the names and you will need to google search yourself.

Rise in Technology1. Sata 6G Motherboard

Look out for the new motherboards that come with Sata 6, also known as Sata III, which is 6 gig per second worth of data transfer.  This is more than twice the speed of what we have now, current motherboards only have Sata 2. These newer boards also have usb 3.0 ports for future devices that need ultra fast data transfer rates like terabyte drives which stands for 1000 gig per 1 tera.  One example would be ASUS P6X58D

2. Duo chip video cards

Video chips are also following the trend of CPUs and are also moving towards multiple chips in a single package. This not only save space in the motherboard as there is no need to waste space to put extra graphic card and generating excess heat. Although, if you are planning to power up and boost your whole system, it is going to generate more heat than you are used to. It’s good to get the best 140mm fan to help your system cool off. The latest technology in graphic card concept is not only 2 chips in one card, but a mix of 2 different chips in one card. One example is the EVGA GTX275 CO-OP PhysX, this card contains a GTS250 chip and a GTX275 on a single package.  The reason for having 2 different chips is because the stronger chip will render 3D whereas the slower chip will render physX.  This will help to cut down on power usage as there is really no need for 2 powerful chips in one single package.

Ati manufacturer came up with powerful cards that use real low power.  ATI Radeon™ HD 5450, this card is able to play high end games without exceeding 20 Watts worth of power. This is one big achievement taking into consideration that high end cards would require a PSU between 450W to 650W and draws around 200 Watts.  The most amazing part of this card is that it does not require any fans and the card only contains fixed non moveable fins that resemble the stegosaurs to dissipate heat. It was able to run at 43 C under a stress test which is totally amazing.

3. i7 Intel 2010 desktop cores

The i series processors may sound familiar to you, seems like you have seen them on sale before.  These processors now contain a graphics chip together in the CPU.  In other words, if you have a motherboard with integrated graphics, you have 2 spare graphic cards because the CPU itself is also a graphic card.  There is no doubt that these chips will be twice as fast as the core 2 duos that we see now, what is amazing about these CPUs is that it contains a HD graphic chips that allows the user to play games that require a good graphic card. Integrated video cards these days cannot even allow you to play smoothly but the CPU’s graphic alone is able to run new games like crysis at 40 fps constantly. Put it simply, a non gamer can save money without having the need to buy a graphic card to watch a Blu-Ray disc that outputs video in HD.

4. Solid State Drives

SSD will be the future in hard disk standard, these drives are demons from hell and huge obvious improvements in performance will be noticeable even if you did not upgrade the CPU. These SSD drives can read at speeds of 4 meg per sec to 48 meg per sec compared to 2.2 megs per sec for the average sata drives.

5. Faster Rams

Even though DDR 3 rams have already been in town for quite a while, this standard will stay for another 2 years before the arrival of DDR 4.  The advancement in ram technology would be low voltage rams. One example would be OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 6GB Low-Voltage kit.

6. iZ3D Gaming monitors

3D movies and television screens are changing the way we define entertainment. The future will be realistic 3 dimensional images right before your very eyes even in a small screen.  iZ3D gaming monitor is one such example that will take your gaming experience to a whole new level. The game itself does not have to be 3D, it is the projection of the wave lengths of light that makes the whole image 3D. We all know that a monitor makes use of 3 colors to form up the whole display. Red, Green, Blue. The rapid changing of the wavelengths actually blurs the image if you do not put on the special specs, but when you put on the specs, the image becomes clear and has depth because the special glasses will filter the light for you.

The future is now ladies and gentlemen, I foresee a raise in trend where people actually decide to stay at home and enjoy a great movie. It is so simple to rent a disc and watch over the weekend and the best part is, in the comfort of your own home. Cable TV companies are offering HD movies in their package and that means 3D movies as well, remember the fact that what makes a movie 3D is not the disc but the TV set. Lets sit back and imagine the possibilities of 3D TVs with touch screens and video conferencing.  The era of star trek is within reach.

The Best Browsers For Windows Mobile Phones

Smart phones are getting popular amongst the busy working class.  It is now the portable computer for people to send email on the fly or surf the net for the latest news.  Those who have already bought a Windows Mobile phone would have found out that the Internet Explorer in the phone really sucks big time.  The layout of a web site is no where near comparable to a desktop PC. Luckily there are a few alternatives for us to choose from that are able to load the whole web site in full and not in mobile view.  I have tested these on a HTC TYTN II and HTC HD 2 to see how these mobile browsers compare.

1. Opera Mobile 10 beta :

Opera has been the first to create a decent browser for mobile phones and has not been disappointing in every version of its release. Other Challengers like Thunderhawk, Minimo or Netfront pale in comparison when taking into account the flash and java support.  Until now, Opera beta 10 has improved by leaps and bounds since it’s predecessor beta 9.  When I tested it, I expected it to be slower, yet it started up faster than it previous versions & although it has more features bundled with this version, the loading time was acceptable.  This browser had the best graphical interface I have ever come across in mobile browsers.

 

Pros : Fast and responsive to touch screen contact; single touch to zoom in & double to zoom out. Sliding up and down was smooth and quite impressive; this could match up to iPhone’s safari browser.  The start page has a quick dial menu similar to many desktop browsers that allow you to add a shortcut to it so that you can open up your favourites real quick.

 

Cons : It does not support flash fully and is unable to manage flash applications like those in Facebook. Only simple ones can be played. Complex ones like Battle Stations can only display the game, but you can not really play it as some of the options are displayed in flash.

It only supports 1 x zoom in and zoom out.   This makes it limited to just reading the text to a certain zoom size.  It must be zoomed in before you can touch any links.  Even if the icon is large enough to be clicked, you will stick need to zoom in once.

 

HTC HD 2 [ 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor ]

Start up time : 2.5 secs

Loading time : 11.5 secs [ The time it took to load one full Facebook home page ]

 

HTC TYTN II [ 400 MHZ Qualcomm processor ]

Start up time : 5 secs

Loading time : 30 secs [ The time it took to load one full Facebook home page]

 

2. Skyfire browser :

Skyfire is new to the mobile browser world.  I must say that this browser totally blew me away in terms of speed and capabilities.  I would recommend this browser to every one out there. This browser supports flash in full animation.  You can play flash videos from Youtube website right off the mobile browser and even flash games in Facebook.  I can even hear the sound as the video is being played.  I could not believe my eyes as I played my favourite Facebook game right off my mobile phone.

 

HTC HD 2 [ 1 Ghz snapdragon processor ]

Start up time : 2.5 secs [ another few seconds for it to load the main page ]

Loading time : 5 secs [ The time it took to load one full Facebook home page ]

[ It took 5 secs to load one screen load of stuff in Facebook home page.  But if you scroll downwards, it would be a wallpaper of square boxes.  You will need to wait half a second to load the next load of page you wish to view.]

 

HTC TYTN II [ 400 MHZ Qualcomm processor ]

Start up time : 3 secs [ around 15 more seconds till it reached the main page ]

Loading time : 8 secs

 

[ To load a full page load of content but another 2 secs per scroll down before it starts loading more content ]

Pros : It is able to open up a link without the need to zoom in first unlike opera but provided you have ultra aim.  It has multi-zoom, means you can zoom in a bit at a time unlike opera which has only 1 zoom in and 1 zoom out.  If your phone has a directional pad, a mouse cursor will appear and you can use the mouse instead of your finger.  It supports full flash which even iPhone does not support at the moment.  The menu interface is not blocking any part of the web page and you can view the entire screen.

 

Cons : The support for java seems to be a little flawed especially for those drop down menu boxes.  It would freeze sometimes and I had to try repeatedly, in fact more than 10 times to eventually bring out the menu.  This browser refuses to load if there is totally no connection.  The loading of a page seems slightly longer as compared to opera; perhaps it has a lot more flash content to load then opera.

There is one more mobile browser out there developed by Firefox which is called Fennac browser.  But I don’t recommend using it now as it is not officially completed yet.  It is only a prototype.  The loading time for it on a HTC TYTN II took so long that I almost gave up on it.  Almost close to a minute.  The loading of a page is not fast either; it seems to be stressing the device a lot. Eventually the page was loaded, but you cannot really surf without feeling a sense of frustration.  I gave up after just a few minutes.

Using it on the HTC HD 2 was a disaster.  It could start up within 10 secs, but it could not even start surfing.  It crashed with a box asking you if you want to send an error report.  What’s even worse is that it seems to screw up your Opera 9 browser’s settings that were bundled with HD 2 and even opera crashed as well.  I had to uninstall Fennac and reboot before everything went back to normal.

The evolution for mobile computing is going extremely fast and people will soon be expecting a full scale computer right in the palm of their hands. With such powerful Windows mobile browsers already capable of displaying more than just a basic web page, we can expect people to depend on these handsets more than a desktop in the near future.  Just imagine, watching a news broadcast while commuting on a train and reading the latest news online.  It is a lot more convenient that trying to hold on to a newspaper on a moving train.