Technology Archives | Page 30 of 167

January 25, 2011

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB vs Western Digital Elements 1TB Comparison

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex : is of 1 TB (Tera Bytes) capacity with USB 2.0 as interface. The dimensions of the drive are 158 mm in height, 124 mm in width, 44 mm in length, its weight is 1080 g and 3.5 inches of form factor. The drive comes in both vertical and horizontal orientation.

The hard drive comes with quick start guide for easy learning for installation and usage. Once it is plugged in you can easily take a backup of your files from your pc, it also allows you to copy certain selected files from your system to the drive. The files get updated if any changes are made to the files in the system, it turns on and off along with the system.

The drive has pre-loaded backup software with encryption, where encryption is 192 bit Triple DES (Data Encryption Standard – block cipher which uses shared secret encryption) this software is provided to secure your back-up files and also protects privacy for your files with the encryption software.

The drive also provides dashboard management tool which allows you to easily manage backup schedules, file encryption and can view drive statistics. The USB 2.0 desktop adapter comes with capacity gauge display, the interface can be upgraded to USB 3.0 using desktop adapters. Its compatibility varies depending on the OS and hardware configuration, it works on both Windows and Mac OS platforms like Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and etc., the drive is also available in 2 TB and 3 TB capacities. The price of the harddrive is $89.

WD Elements External Hard drive : is of 1TB(Tera Bytes), USB 2.0 with data transfer rate of 480 Mbps. Its dimensions are 1.42 inches in height, 7.01 inches in depth, 4.59 inches in width, 1.02 kg in weight. The hard drive comes with Quick installation guide therefore easy to install and store all the data from your pc to the external drive, AC adapter for external power supply to the hard drive, USB cable for connecting to your computer.

Its operating temperature is 5 degrees C to 35 degrees C and non-operating temperature of -20 degree C to 65 degree C and it dissipates less heat than other hard drive during data transfer. The hard disk is compatible with Formatted NFTS for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X, and etc., It is noiseless and has a LED light placed at the rear side of the box. There are also other capacities available like 500 GB, 1.5 TB, 2 TB and etc. The price of the harddrive is $79.

While considering the above features of both the hard drive there is nothing much to choose, but Western Digital Elements is priced lower than Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex and also got much better user reviews. In our test we also found Western Digital Elements harddrive far superior than Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex

January 25, 2011January 25, 2011

Intel Atom N450 vs N455 vs N475 Comparison

Intel Atom N450 : is a single core processor with a CPU speed of 1.66 GHz, 512 KB Cache, number of threads 2, 64 – bit instruction set and instruction set extensions like SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, bus/core ratio 10, 45 nm of Lithography, 5.5 W of max TDP (Thermal Design Power/ Thermal Design Point – TDP – it is the maximum amount of power required by the cooling system to dissipate), 0.800 V – 1.175 V of VID voltage range, 2 GB max memory size, DDR2 – 667 memory type, one memory channel.

The other technologies of the processor include Embedded options, Integrated Graphics, Intel Hyper Threading Technology, Intel 64, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (technology which allows the processor to meet its required performance for its operation during minimal power draw and heat dissipation), Thermal Monitoring Technologies, Execute Disable Bit.

Intel Atom N455 : is a single core processor with CPU speed of 1.66 GHz, 512 KB Cache, number of threads 2, 64 – bit instruction set and instruction set extensions like SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, bus/ core retio 10, 45 nm Lithography, 6.5 W of max TDP, 2.5 GT/ s pf DMI, 2 GB of max memory size, DDR2/3 memory types and one memory channel.

The other technologies of the processor include Embedded options, Integrated Graphics with a Graphics Base Frequency of 200 MHz, Intel Hyper Threading Technology, Intel 64, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, Thermal Monitoring Technologies, and Execute Disable Bit.

Intel Atom N475 : is a single core processor with CPU speed of 1.83 GHz, 512 KB Cache, number of threads 2, 64 – bit intruction set and instruction set extensions like SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, bus/ core ratio 11, 45 nm Lithography, 6.5 W max TDP, 2.5 GT/s of DMI, 2 GB of max memory size, DDR2/3 memory types and one memory channel.

The other features of the processor include Integrated Graphics with Graphics Base Frequency of 200 MHz, Intel Hyper Threading Technology, Intel 64, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, Thermal Monitoring Technologies, Execute Disable Bit

Intel Atom N450 and N455 are exactly same except for support for DDR3 in N455. And since N455 was released after N450 (Previous quarter), the netbooks carrying the N455 are usually better. Whereas the N475 is a faster processor it also doesnt add much performance boost to be considered as an major upgrade and in terms of Price vs Performance N455 is better than N475 . And it is newer model than N450, it takes this battle easily.

Intel Atom N550 @ 1.50GHz 559
Intel Atom Z550 @ 2.00GHz – 386
Intel Atom N470 @ 1.83GHz 355
Intel Atom D410 @ 1.66GHz 346
Intel Atom Z540 @ 1.86GHz 341
Intel Atom N475 @ 1.83GHz 337
Intel Atom D425 @ 1.80GHz 327
Intel Atom N450 @ 1.66GHz 319
Intel Atom 230 @ 1.60GHz 315
Intel Atom N280 @ 1.66GHz 314
Intel Atom N455 @ 1.66GHz 309
Intel Atom N270 @ 1.60GHz 304
Intel Atom Z530 @ 1.60GHz 299

January 24, 2011

Intel Atom N450 vs N550 Comparison and Review

Intel Atom N550 : is a dual core processor with CPU speed of 1.5 GHz, 1 MB Cache, number of threads 4, 2.5 GT/s of DMI, 64 – bit instruction set and instruction set extensions like SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, 45 nm of Lithography, 8.5 W of max TDP, max memory size of 2 GB, DDR3 memory type, one memory channel.

The other features of the processor include Integrated Graphics, 200 MHz of Graphics Base Frequency, Intel Hyper Threading Technology, Intel 64, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, Thermal Monitoring Technologies, Execute Disable bit

The Intel Atom N550 is the newest member of Intel’s low power and high mobility devices, the N550 also increases the battery life by being more optimal in power usage. With the price difference not much and the newer Models of ASUS and ACER priced around $50- $75 above the models based on N450. It is worth spending the extra few bucks for buying a netbook with Atom N550.

On the Price vs Performance scale Intel Atom N550 beats the Atom N450 handsdown,

With a dual core processor in its Atom series, the Atom is catching up with the Laptop processors, for instance the Atom N550 fares better than many of the processors available on the 11.6 inch laptops. Making it one more reason to go with Netbooks.

Below is the CPU benchmarks for some of the popular Intel Atom Series Processors and low end mobile processors