Archive for the 'hardware' Category

Battery that can go 30 years between re-charges?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 4/10/2007
in hardware
. 3 Comments

I read an interesting article the other day about a new type of laptop battery which should be able to go 30 years between re-charges!

The batteries

are constructed from semiconductors and use radioisotopes as the energy source. As the radioactive material decays it emits beta particles that transform into electric power capable of fueling an electrical device like a laptop for years.

Of course, the useful lifetime of a laptop is only 3 years or so before it becomes obsolete so if these batteries do come to market, you would need to be able to remove them and add them to your newest laptop.

The batteries

can be quite small and thin, a porous silicon material is used to collect the hydrogen isotope tritium which is generated in the process. The reaction is non-thermal which means laptops and other small devices like mobile phones will run much cooler than with traditional lithium-ion power batteries.

Fantastic, no more laptop burn then!

And

The best part about these cells are when they eventually run out of power they are totally inert and non-toxic

According to the article, the batteries are dur to be delivered to shops in the next 2-3 years. There is no mention of a price point though - never a good sign!

UPDATE - post edited to add title (d’oh!) - Thanks Simon

Buffalo TeraStation 2tb Home server review

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 31/8/2007
in hardware and review
. 7 Comments

I bought a Buffalo TeraStation 2TB NAS box the other day. It arrived today - Wohoo!

Buffalo TeraStation 2TB NAS up and running

The NAS box has 4 x 500mb drives in an external box (see above). The box has an ethernet port at the back allowing it to be plugged into the router and accessed across my entire home network.

The 4 x 500mb drives come pre-configured as RAID 5 (giving approx 3 x 500gb usable space) but it can also be configured as RAID 0 or RAID 1 through a simple web interface.

1.36 TB Available!

Check out the bottom of the window above - 1.36TB Available!

I’m now busily copying my music, video and photo collections onto it so I can free up that space on my laptop.

Copying iTunes onto TeraStation

The drive is refreshingly quiet, has a simple web-based configuration tool and took all of about 10 minutes from unpacking to mounted on my Mac desktop!

Thanks Branedy for the recommendation - hopefully this will work better than the Western Digital MyBook I bought a while back which was a DOA!

Recyclable, transparent ink cartridges

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/6/2007
in hardware
. 0 Comments

As a follow-on from yesterday’s post about hacking inkjet printer cartridges - in retrospect, a much better solution would be for printer manufacturers to make recyclable, transparent  ink cartridges which warn when your ink is running low but only stop printing when you actually run out of ink!

Now what are the chances of that happening?

Can inkjet printers be hacked?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 19/6/2007
in hardware
. 4 Comments

Ars Technica have an article about something I have long suspected, inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves!

The article quotes figures from an Epson sponsored study (!) which show that inkjt printers regularly report that they are out of ink when there can be as much as 60% of the ink left in the cartridge.

Not surprisingly Epson printers came out of the study best with figures of 20% of ink remaining when the cartridge reports empty.

The really annoying thing about this is that all the manufacturers are aware of it but they do nothing to fix it. If a cartridge reports as empty, the printer will cease to print, even if there is plenty of ink left.

Does anyone know, is there a way to get around this (apart from buying a laser printer)?

Philips Wireless Headset

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/4/2007
in hardware and review
. 7 Comments

Philips sent me a wireless headset to try out during the week.

It is a bluetooth headset with a few funky features:

  • The microphone is about 6mm long (as opposed to the boom mikes on many headsets which come right around to your mouth)
  • It has a separate audio jack/bluetooth dongle so you can plug it into your mp3 player and listen to your tunes wirelessly
  • You can use it with your phone and mp3 player simultaneously!
  • It is rechargeable and comes with a charger

It is also supposed to be able to connect to your computer but I couldn’t verify that - on my Mac, I couldn’t get it to maintain a connection and my Vaio couldn’t see it at all (having said that, that is more likely a Vista problem than a problem with this headset, as the Vaio can’t see any bluetooth device!).

With people concerned about the health and safety issues connected with heavy mobile phone usage - a bluetooth headset seems like an ideal device as it allows you to keep the mobile at a distance from your head.

See more here and here.

Philips tell me it retails for between €90 and €130.

Nokia N70 and E65 cameras compared

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/4/2007
in Technology, Telecoms, hardware and mobile
. 7 Comments

I took a couple of close-up photos of my bookcase to compare the quality of the cameras in the Nokia N70 and the Nokia E65

Here is a copy of the photo the N70 took:
Nokia N70 photo of bookcase

and here is the E65’s photo of the same bookcase (in high quality mode):
Nokia E65 photo of bookcase

As you can see from these images, the N70 photo is higher quality! The colours from the N70 are richer and there is a lot of noise in the image from the E65.

The fact that the N70 takes better photos than the E65 is strange given that the N70 was released well over a year ago and the E65 has just come out.

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!