NO MORE 7" laptops !

Well... it was about time. They stopped producing 7" laptops (known as NetBooks) as people prefer brands with a slight larger screen size. Most makers are coming out with 10" netbooks which are more convenient to use and with a more proper keyboard and screen size. The Netbooks market was evolutionary, but unfortunate for us - the retailers - was a disaster. Imagine selling a netbook with a profit of ~€15 (believe it or not). I registered some netbooks on my website when their profit was around €60 but when i saw Netbooks being sold at local kiosks (that's not a joke) for €20 on top of the wholesale price, i took them off and desided that i am not into that kind of miserable business. However, this trend happens to shift even to high end systems as shop chains sell "boxes" without any hassle about setting them up, installing additional software and delivery - so they reduce their margin to supermarket levels. I manage to survive in this crewel business as new laptops need to be "serviced" to be fully functionable - meaning that you have to remove all the bogus software which come in the form of adware on each new laptop and to be replaced by proper software. Each laptop/computer goes thru a 2 hour programming sequence before delivered. That's what keeps my old clients away from 'mass sales'. Even with strong competition, due to respect to towards my clients, i figured an extremely low percentage to keep my website prices way lower than chained shops - with all the consequences towards me. As sales price is very close to wholesale price, additional requests for software will not be covered for free as part of sale. I'll be charging something like €80 on top of laptop/computer price for setup+delivery reasons or if not needed, the client will get the laptop boxed for him/her to setup :)
I am just finding ways & motives to keep the quality of service to the desired levels :) Feed me back !

Read more about netbook sales at: http://www.internetnews.com/hardware/article.php/3824236

FeedBack !

I had several personal issues for several days and i've been actually kept off from my PCs (at least as i used to use them). I've seen some very interesting tech news that would be worth posting BUT !!! before posting them it came to my mind to ask YOU to take a minute & write anything as a feedback like:  "Roumors say that you can turn computers into speed demons" :p or "I called you a thousand times and i'm still waiting for your reply - since X-MAS!!!" :)
Space is yours, express yourself and let me see if this blog is beeing watched by people since i didn't do anything to spread the word. Posts can be anonymous , but if you write something evil i'll find you - and make your PC slower than a Turtle !!! :p I am kidding - there is no way to trace identity of posters if they wish to remain anonymous :)

PC SPEEDS !

Computers come in lot's of different flavors. Colors, design, features, and... Speeds! Computer speed is determined by several factors as there are several 'types' of speed:

1. CPU speed.
2. Hard Disk Drive (HDD) speed
3. RAM speed.
4. Chipset (motherboard) speed.
5. Graphics Card (chipset) speed.

The sum of the above give us the overall computer performance. BUT !... Not all of the above are IMPORTAND to everybody. I'll analyze the importance of each part so in future you'll understand as buyer what you need most out of your PC.

CPU: CPU prices vary from €50 to €500. For everyday use tasks like using office / internet / music & movies playback you'll notice NO DIFFERENCE in performance between the cheapest and the most expensive CPU! Expensive CPUs have more CORES, more CACHE and work with higher FSB (Front side bus speed) which leads to superior performance in tasks like Encoding/Decoding or Rendering ! Especialy in rendering, the difference in processing time is enormous.

Hard Disk Speed: All data of a PC is stored on it's Hard Disk Drive (HDD). That means that when you load windows (startup) or Programs, the data has to be read from HDD. A slow hard disk would take up to a minute more to load windows in comparison to a fast hard drive and the difference in their price is peanuts ! :) Usualy, higher capacity HDD's are faster than their lower capacity counterparts.

RAM Speed: RAM speed is also important in tasks like encoding/decoding/rendering but usualy there's little performance benefit on using VERY expensive RAMs. For instance DDR800 vs DDR667 will not give more than 2~5% performance benefit in all range of applications. Also, heat sinked RAMs don't do your computer TURBO since usualy it's a sort of eye-candy and nothing more. Note, that a system with super fast 1GB-1333MHz RAM using a modern Operating System, is much slower from a system using 4GB of a slower type of RAM (ex. DDR667). More RAM = faster overall performance :)

Chipset (motherboard chipset) speed: That's maybe the most important part – since the chipset of a system is the one that transfers the data across the different modules. For instance, when transfering data from HDD to CPU, or from CPU to RAM etc. A slow chipset will not be able to take benefit of your super fast HDD, RAM, CPU. It will pull their speed down.

Graphics Card (GPU) Speed (GraphicsProcessingUnit): Graphics Cards are dedicated devices to fulfill the gamers demands on Graphics Processing. Playing a game means RAPID drawing of a thousand graphic elements in a single moment ! Explosions, lights, shades, particles, movement physics – all done in a millionth of a second !!! That's where a decent card makes huge performance difference from a 'stock' card. A decent card is somewhere around €200 and an extreme performance card is somewhere around €350. There are much more expensive cards but there of no use if your screen resolution is lower than 1680x1050 (a typical 22”).

A good PC technician will always try to help you in choosing what's best for your needs. A bad PC technician will make you pay twice more for a system that you will never take benefit of. I refer to technicians and NOT to salespersons since technicians do know the facts between the numbers where most salespersons know the sales percentage and air-talk ;)

...And God gave MAC to 'Users'

And everybody talks about God made MAC's. Price of a MAC is well known to be something like double the price of a
PC with exactly the same specifications. And it's also well known that
MACs can't do games - None of the Gaming companies support MACs. But are MACs worth their money ?
Well, personally i find MACs to be a piece of Junk :p Same goes for their i-phone and i-pod device (i am not sure if they have any other i-devices or... like i-nose-picker or i-vibrat* or *come on - don't you have any better marketting ideas than i-bullsh* ?

They tout that MAC's don't have viruses. Well, Virus is an industry on it's own - a software industry - one of the many - like image manipulators, video editors etc. MAC's have ONE DIGIT market share (that is around 9% including i-phones and i-pod's and i-bull's). That's why nobody cares about creating a virus for MAC's. The idea of Virus is to infect computers worldwide - to do a massive infection. Infecting the 9%, i like infecting all the gays of the world. So, if it was just the viruses they are missing - would be nice for MAC victims. But , what if you are an achitect and you want to use AutoCAD ? Well... Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD refuse to make a version of AutoCAD for MAC's because nobody uses MAC (a way of saying - with that 9% in mind). You love MSN messanger ? Oh well... you have to use a simplistic version of it for your MAC. You love Yahoo messanger ? Same. You want Office ? Oh... you have to use a dated version - something like traveling back in time. And just name me a thing that runs on MAC and does not run on PC ? Photoshop ? Do you believe that Adobe pays attention to 9% of their clients or to the 87% ? There are like a thousand of software to do anything you can imagine on a PC and just a several for MAC's. It took me one whole night to find a good and fast free picture viewer for MAC that would automatically epxand or shrink a picture to the laptop's screen size. I could find an equivalent software for PC in a few minutes. As for their i-pod's. There's nothing more annoying than the fact that i have to use their i-Tunes (oh yes i found one more i-junk-name) software. With a typical non apple device - you would simply connect the device to a PC and just DRAG AND DROP music files etc on the device to transfer them. You can always add any additional files one by one - or a bunch without using any COMLEX interface. And i-phone ? A 2009 phone WITHOUT MMS, WITHOUT VIDEO RECORDING CAPABILITY, WITHOUT BLUETOOTH EXCHANGE (you can only use bluetooth for HandsFree, not for files), WITHOUT COPY/PASTE CAPABILITY and with a price tag of €800 !!! MAC my ASS !!! A Samsung phone priced €100 includes all of the above !
Oh, yes, i-phone has GPS !!! A non working GPS since nobody makes software for it ! Can you get me a navigation map for CYPRUS ??? I Can get you 3 software packages for my Windows Mobile Phone (HTC) that covers almost every inch of Cyprus streets with navigation - even the dirt roads.
Anyway - that's been posted as a reaction to all those 'i'm gay styled' guys i see in CAFE's with a bunch of notes around their MAC, dressed and feeling that they are sons of God, or like film stars - making you think that they work on a massive world-changing povetry-fighting project !!!
Last and not least, it's very worth to read this article : http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant

eSATA miracle !

Ok, almost everybody has an external HDD. And most of you tried moving data from external drive to PC and vice versa. Most of you wouldn't care about transfer speed - but some may do. Since 2004 a new interface appeared. Named e-SATA is the acronym for 'external SATA'. It's a relative new interface in industry - but what does it have to offer in addition to USB2 and firewire devices ? Well... Opposed to FireWire and USB/2 devices, eSATA talks STRAIGHT to the system where USB/2 and Firewire use a "bridge" to encode data of HDD to USB or Firewire format. That's introducing latency's and slower transfer speeds. eSATA is twice as fast as Firewire 400 and USB2, and is even faster than Firewire 800 !
So, if you want SPEED and PORTABILITY, you can use this external case in addition with any 2,5" SATA HDD. Use it combined with a large 2,5" HDD and will give you a BLAZING fast pocket sized storage of 500 GB !!!