Laptops Arena

IBM has announced its SAP performance on a POWER6-based server and the result of a study on its Power Systems that allows customers to save up to 33% on operating costs in an SAP solution-based environment. The IBM Power6-based Power 550 (a server with 4 processors/8 cores – 4 dual-core processor chips) has been proved to handle 3,752 users, a figure that eclipses the results of other vendors, HP, Sun, Hitachi, and Fujitsu, all of them using Intel’s chips. The IBM result displays a performance of SAP apps and DB2 V 9.5 database functioning on the AIX 6.1 OS in a Power 550 2-tier environment. The results also show IBM Power6 as the world’s fastest chip, beating the competition in this matter.

The ITG report outlines that the costs for use of Power servers in a period of three years, are ranged from 25 to 33% less than the x86 servers. These costs include the acquisition and maintenance of hardware, the SS support and licenses, OSs and virtualization tools. These facts offer a perfect alternative for the clients that are currently on Solaris or HP/UX and face chips delays or cancellations. The Power Systems software displays capabilities like micro-partitioning and active memory sharing, provides higher utilization in the data center, that lead to reducing costs in energy, space, maintenance and software licenses.

The IBM Power Systems are globally consolidated offering lower training demands and shared knowledge that can be utilized across all the operations, reducing by 10% the annual costs. Power Systems hardware, software and services next to an aggressive sales and marketing activities enabled IBM to consolidate its number one position in the UNIX market. As to mid-sized database servers, the Power 550 offers great performance capacity and continuous application availability, enabling these servers to access data at a faster pace, keep apps running, and at the same time concentrate on the business.

The Power 550 Express provides an option to operate environments in a deskside or 4U rack-mount form factor. This platform is conceived to deliver noticeable business value to the businesses that are medium-sized; the number one performance of POWER6 processors, the choice of OSs, together with the virtualization capabilities already proved to exist in PowerVM, and support for energy management technologies bring the benefits of a conserved energy, hence costs reducing. It is all that one can ask for from Power 550 Express whether one needs a scalable complete business system with incorporated database and app server or high performing system for database or app serving.

When MacBook Pro 17” was first released it came on the market with sealed batteries system; now this feature belongs to the smaller versions - new MacBook Pro 13” and 15”. And according to the tests performed by Walter Mossberg the battery seems to be good enough to count it among the best features of the recently released MacBook Pro – 15” and 13”.

Here is a summary of these tests.

It is a fact that most of the customers to own a laptop never use the possibility that removable batteries offers you, meaning to buy a fresh spare one to replace the old between charges. According to NPD estimations, barely a 5% of the users buy a spare battery, so as a result a new trend emerged in the industry: more electronic producers started to build their devices with the rechargeable batteries sealed inside. The company which adopted this trend is Apple, that it is known to adhere each time to new trends, maybe at a faster pace than any other companies in profile. As such, when the new MacBook Pros 15” and 13” were released they came with higher capacity, sealed-in batteries. Including the batteries in the device allows the producer to create bigger ones, with higher capacity (this one has grown between 33% and 46%) and at the same time they don’t present the risk of hefting the device. On top of it Apple declares that the software technology available on the device confers the battery a 5 years life-time.

The two laptops revealed the fact that the batteries meet Apple’s claims that they last seven hours between charges, almost a full time work without any plugging. In this case purchasing spare batteries seems futile. There are however some aspects left to measure; for one is the Apple’s claim that they last up to 1,000 charging times, meaning the 5 years life time duration of such battery. Secondly, the guarantee terms are not very clearly specified, for instance if the battery doesn’t prove to hold an adequate charge, what then? Apple says that the company allows you to replace it at a price that normally costs the rechargeable one, but this is not to be verified yet. And another aspect that needs to be considered is the case of the users that need the device mostly on their long travels by the planes, and a replaceable battery seems to be a must. And this option for the new MacBook Pros is unavailable, unfortunately.

At turned-off power-saving features, with Wi-Fi network on, a maximum screen brightness and continuous music play, the test revealed that the MacBook Pros both didn’t use the energy-saving, and a less consumed power due to the use of integrated graphics chips. But either way, the results lead to the same conclusion: Apple managed to produce MacBook Pros’ sealed batteries of larger size and life as well, without extra-weight of the device and we just need to let the time pass and see if these batteries last indeed up to 5 years. But who knows what other new laptops will meanwhile emerge on the market?

Even if the new 17” MacBook Pro is cheaper than its last updated version released in March, it doesn’t mean that is less good. The recent testing show some improvements, though is not too much differentiated than its predecessor. We are already used with the top design of MacBooks, the silver bodied case, solid having an incredible weight of 6.6 pounds that makes it easy to be used on the go. We meet the same left location for the Fire Wire 800 port that includes also an Ethernet jack, three USB 2.0 ports, a MiniDisplay connector that enables attaching to an external display, microphone and headphone ports. There are also present an ExpressCard/34 slot, indicator lights to reveal the power of the battery left.

The right side of the case incorporates a security-lock and a slot-loading optical drive that unfortunately does not support Blu-ray discs. The locking system of the case is provided by a magnetic latch, and once you lift the upper lid, a 17.4” glossy screen appears with a 1,920x1,200 resolution that allows high-definition video viewing. The keyboard presents backlit keys and because of its wide disposed keys it makes it easy to handle while typing. The deck of the keyboard is proportionally sized offering a buttonless touch pad that enables you to press anywhere in order to activate a function. The same pattern is used on Apple iPhones that the touch feature allows you to zoom, rotate and slide images around.

The new Apple MacBook incorporates a processor of 2.8GHz that can be upgraded to 3.06GHz at a price of $300.00. through a Cinebench testing, that measures processor capability, the above mentioned processor scored an improvement with almost 1,000 points, in this way outscoring most of its competitors. The media encoding test is also performed with 1 minute faster than any other laptop in its class. The graphics disposal is providing two graphics processors able to be switched between: Nvidia GeForec 9400M and the Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT. The 9400M chip reveals to be more special in that it performs better than an incorporated solution at the same time not taking too much space, meaning that even when the battery-saving mode is on, one can still get impressive graphics.

A 500GB Serial ATA hard drive is standard to this system spinning at 5,400 rpm and a 4GB of 1,066MHz DDR3 RAM; it is upgradeable to 128GB at a price of $200.00 and 256GB SSD for $650.00.

The battery life is also extended at 5 hrs and 16 min with the second graphics processor off, with 20 min longer than its previous model and hours longer than other desktop replacements. The OS for this MacBook Pro is Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard that includes iLife ’09 with its GarageBand, iDVD, iMOVIE, iPhoto and iWeb. Though the MacBook Pro new version lacks some performance in its processor, one can still claim that its high-resolution screen and its maneuverability make Apple MacBook Pro (17-Inch), the best for professional designers.

On the 25th of June HP announced a new generation of desktop PCs and a software suite updated for HP TouchSmart PC. The new looks that the PC’s stylish feature offers are a delight for the space it lays in providing at the same time a powerful computing experience and plenty of storing possibilities for digital content. The new redesigned desktop lines include: HP Slimline, HP Pavilion, HP Elite and Comapq Presario.

On the other hand, HP TouchSmart PC software offers an increased touch experience to access videos, photos, music and others in a pleasant way. John Cook, vicepresident ay Worldwide Consumer PC Marketing – HP, said that this new generation has the characteristics of fresh and modern design, a performance tough to be defeated and a great value. He also added that with monitors and accessories that match good, a customizing of a desktop is even easier and can be done in a combination of performance and style.

Creating the new line of desktop PCs, HP put an accent in that balancing of form and function, using refinement and detailing from the “head to toes” ’ of a PC device (buttons and ports to the glossy piano-black finish).

HP MediaSmart software suite is incorporated in the HP Slimline s5000, HP Pavilion p6000 and HP Elite e9000 lines of desktop PCs, providing funny and at handy digital content, starting form TV watching to sharing photos. HP also offers a 20” HP 2009m Monitor and 21.5” HP 2159m Monitor, matching keyboard and mouse.

An updates software suit for HP TouchSmart is offered having the features of Pandora Internet Radio service, editing and searching photo and video in an improved manner, possibility to burn CDs, and on top of these the possibility to stream any content from HP MediaSmart Server or any home server to Touch Smart. In the near future HP will introduce an external hard drive series to provide users simpler backups for videos, photos, music and data. A new calculator software for PCs, Apple iPhones and Apple iPod touch devices will be available. All are replicas of the original calculators and will perform similar functions.

The software is built with the same algorithms and calculation sequences and is created for business professionals and for students that rely upon these types of calculators. Most of it ia available from iTunes App Store at prices starting at $9.00. HP products are supported by HP Total Care services that include HP Customer Care site and consumer support forums that are offered free of charge.

The stylish and performances set with these releases is another proof that the new HP Consumer Desktop PCs do not fail, as always.

If you are seeking to make your downloads in an easier and faster way, then you might be looking for Metalink. Of course, some may say the BitTorrent is the only one available in the field, but if we consider deeper we notice that for casual downloads BitTorrent doesn’t lift up to the users’ expectations, especially in case of OpenOffice.org or Firefox downloading. The problem with direct downloads is that they put the server bandwidth into too much effort and finally you realize that maybe it would have been better if you had used from the beginning the FTP.

Metalink is a simple XML-based file format which chooses the best server in order to provide a safe download. Its way of choosing is based on knowing how to locate the server and to determine the preference for that download option. Both these features are set in Metalink file itself enabling sys admins to stimulate users to perform the download from a local and fastest server. Switching to Metalink won’t necessary mean that you loose BitTorrent’s features, since Metalink incorporates some of BitTorrent’s features (such as checksumming) though it is not using BitTorrent.

As to downloading large files, Metalink presents some advantages in the case of PGP key signing when you need to be sure that the downloading comes from that specific person, a segmented downloading is made allowing to download the file from various sources, all at the same time. With parts belonging to their source, you can fill up the bandwidth, slowing down not even one server, since Metalink divides the load across multiple options. At present there is a wide range of software working with Metalink, for instance a user can use Aria2, KGet and wxDownload Fast on Linux, as all of them support Metalink feature.

A DownThem All extension of cross-platform belonging to Firefox supports also Metalink and requests have been made to Mozilla to add Metalink support as a standard; it seems that in the future Metalink will be incorporated into the core browser. But whether some realize it or not, Metalink is present in more place that anyone could think because it is acting kind of “in the shadow of the highlights”. Users know when they are given a Metalink file when looking at the Metalink extension, which is “.metalink”, this one being tacked on the name of the file you needed to download. Clicking on it you might get a combination that depending on how you have configured the Metalink software.

Metalink can be found on lots of distros to distribute their ISO files such as: 64 Studio, Belenix, Fedora, OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Damn Small Linux, Sabayon Linux and Ubuntu. So whenever you are in a hurry and hate waiting for a downloading, Metalink is the path to faster downloads.