Choto Cheeta Online » Hardware

Steve Jobs addressing iPhone 4 networking issue…

Choto Cheeta — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:01:56 +0000

Its been blown way out of proportion..

We are not perfect and every other smart phone has similar issue with their Network reception

Apple cares for every single customer, and we wont rest till every single one of them is happy.

Free bumper / case for all

Full (incl TAX) refund for those who bought it already

30 Day no question asked money back for any iPhone 4

This was Steve Jobs, today at Apple’s press conference, trying to address the issue in a lighter way. Earlier Apple went on to post some videos, explaining, other brand’s smart phones to have similar reception issue, if they were held in a certain way.

Matter of fact, he also explains the issue was present in earlier iPhone’s too, but statistically speaking, over 80% users walked out with a bumper along with iPhone 3G or 3GS compare to 20% with iPhone 4. Steve Jobs also claimed that, even with present situation, the call drop rate of iPhone 4 is less than 1% (Network carrier stats) and 0.05% of iPhone users actually registered a complain with Apple help line about any network reception related issue.

Mean while Apple showing off network reception issue of phone’s belonging to other brands didn’t go well with those respective companies as Nokia and RIM (makers of Black berry) came out with some strong reaction.

Nokia was quick to point that how many man hours they have put in to study real time human usage details and to design their products based on the result of those studies.

Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Where as RIM thinks that Apple is trying to defame RIM with their claims and by which Apple attempts to shift the focus from Apple’s difficult time..

Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.

ConsumerReports.org nails iPhone 4..

Choto Cheeta — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:22:55 +0000

One more blow for the Apple’s leading product, the iPhone 4. As one of the top review website, the ConsumerReports.org nails iPhone 4 with its signal reception issue.

ConsumerReports.org slams Apple for under mining the issue. Their tests indicate towards the flaw as being a hardware issue contradicting Apple’s claim of a software issue.

It also shows a simple duct tape can solve the reception issue compare to Apple’s USD 30 rubber band.

Mean while Mashable points towards few points on “What Apple Must Do to Stop the Bleeding“.

Acknowledge That the Antenna Problem Is Real

Go into the Technical Details

Roll Out the Software Update

Make the Bumpers Free

No Matter What, Don’t Issue an iPhone 4 Recall

Couple of up-coming technology to look forward / Project Natal and AMD Fusion

Choto Cheeta — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:10:39 +0000

Microsoft getting a step closer to bridge the gap between virtual world and physical world. The Project Natal is going to change the way we use remote controls. Microsoft has set October dead line for the public release of the much waited project natal.

What is project Natal ?

Its a remote control unit where the user doesn’t have to hold any controller rather his/her/their motions are tracked via a motion scening unit to accept command based on the physical movement of the user.

The one of the very first implementations of the technology is going to be on the gaming platform via Microsoft XBOX 360.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qlHoxPioM

Learn more at the official website of natal -> http://www.xbox.com/en-us/live/projectnatal/

AMD Fusion -- The future is here

Back in 2004 / 2005 range, AMD was booming and their solutions were out performing Intel by miles.
In 2005 AMD began to work in process to acquire the GPU giant ATI, which they were able to settle by 2006.

While Intel answered AMD’s advancement with their Core2 range products, AMD in 2006, right after purchase of ATI, gave us a dream called Fusion. It took AMD 5 years, but the dream is now about to be reality.

What is AMD Fusion ?

In basic, its an attempt to put CPU and GPU in same die.

There are certain work which CPU does good like serial processing where as certain tasks like parallel processing is done best by GPU so putting both the CPU and GPU on same die would mean a cheaper product with lot more processing power for multitasking.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmohnOtBY1g

AMD is expected to release the first wave of their Fusion based products by the end of this year.

Learn more -> http://fusion.amd.com/

How to install / How to create a bootable installation USB / flash drive of Windows 7

Choto Cheeta — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:32:10 +0000

Netbook computers are fast becoming mainstream products. To cut weight of the portable devices, its now becoming a common practice by vendors to ship portable computers (Laptop / Notebooks) with smaller screen and without any optical (CD / DVD) drive.

Ever since we have stepped in to the broadband edge, people are finding it easy to stream or download (purchase) movies / music / software online rather than buying physical copy of it. Hence lack of an optical drive is not causing any major issue for day to day computing.

However, there is one major section of computing, which requires an optical drive as must. That is, the phase of installation of an (OS) Operating System. Although, most of the time, any new netbook (ASUS EEEPC / Acer Aspire One / 7″ / 10inch / 11″ screen based products) / notebook / laptop would come with an pre-installed OS, but there are certain situation, where we may find you self in need of upgrading or installing the OS (let’s face it, Windows installations do get wrong sometime), where as, many Netbooks are coming without any OS or with Freedos or Linux, in which an user may feel to put his own OS.

So how can you install Windows on a Computer / Netbook / Notebook / Laptop which doesn’t have an optical (CD / DVD) drive ?

There are couple of options, like,

Using an external USB based optical (CD / DVD) drive
Network deployment installation
Installation via USB / flash / pen / thumb drive

Up-till now, Microsoft didn’t have any official method or way for supporting the USB installation method. If someone wanted to do so, had to do via many complicated guides on How to install Windows via USB drive or how to create bootable installation USB drive.

However things are about to change with Microsoft releasing a tool called Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.

What is Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool ?

It is a tool which can either create a bootable installation DVD or USB drive of Windows 7 from an ISO image of Windows 7.

How to use Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to create a bootable installation USB / pen drive and install Windows from it ?

The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool requires a PC running Windows XP / Vista or Windows 7. You can download the tool from here.

Installation

The installation is pretty straight forward, simple few clicks and you have the program installed and ready to be executed.

Using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Click the Windows Start button, and click Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool in the All Programs list to open the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool.

In the Source File box, type the name and path of your Windows 7 ISO file, or click Browse and select the file in the Open dialog box.

Select USB to create a copy on a USB flash drive or DVD to create a copy on a DVD disk, then click Next.

If you are copying the file to a USB flash drive, select your USB device in the dropdown list and click Begin copying. If you are copying the file up to a DVD, click Begin burning.

Hey its open source by the way..

Developers may find this very interesting as the product is open source and available under GPL.

How high can you go – Intel demonstrates a processor with 48 cores

Choto Cheeta — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:22:18 +0000

Intel is working hard to push their terascale computer platform research to new limits. Recently Intel researchers demonstrated an experimental single die multi core platform, which allows them to run 48 cores under a single processor.

Inspite of having so many cores, the new “Single chip cloud computing platform” is suppose to consume same amount of power as todays mainstream CPUs. Intel plans to share the information and results with their partners in near future to carry forward the research to bring this technology to mainstream.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Mobile (smart) phone to run Windows XP

Choto Cheeta — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:14:45 +0000

According to a report published at TomsHardware, ViewSonic is currently developing a phone, which is suppose to run Windows XP as its OS.

It is supposed to be powered by Intel Atom long with 512 MB of RAM and a 8 GB flash drive.

Difference between Intel Core 2 Extreme / Quad / Duo vs Core i7 / i5 processors

Choto Cheeta — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:21:09 +0000

Since its launch in late 2008, the Nehalem based Intel Core i7 processors are getting low on price and becoming mainstream processors. As a buyer, when you are searching for a PC or notebook, with Core2 range of products, now you may see Core i7 based systems are up for sale at a very competitive price.

They look very similar from their specifications, like both processors are Quad Core, operates at a similar frequency and shares almost same features like, both supports Intel VT, Intel 64, Execute Disable Bit, Speedstep Technology, Enhanced Halt State, 45mn technology and so on.

So what should you buy and why should you buy ?

Conroe (Core2) vs Nehalem (Core i7)

Core2 and Core i7 comes with a completely different processor architecture. All the available Core2 processors (Conroe, Allendale, Wolfdale) have evolved from the original Intel Core architecture Conroe where as Core i7 processors are based on a completely new architecture called Nehalem.

Processing speed and performance depends on couple of things. First the speed or rather the operating frequency second but most important the way by which it is processes a matter.

We already have seen, Intel Dual Core processor E2140 operating 1.6 GHz can out perform a Intel Pentium D 820 processors operating at 3.0 GHz while consuming less power, just because the Core architecture is much better than the age old Pentium brand.

Similar way, the Nehalem architecture is much faster and power efficient than older Core2 range.

Native Quad Core

Intel Core i7 processors have 4 native cores meaning there are 4 different cores given on a single physical die compare to Core 2 Quad where we have 2 die having 2 cores each merged together.

It allows the Core i7 processors to utilize the processor cache more efficiently than Core 2 Quad processors.

L3 Cache

Compare to Intel Core2 which comes with large L2 cache, Intel Core i7 processors include a large amount of L3 cache along with L2 also.

Core i7 processors having 256 KB of L2 for each core (256KBx4) where as a large 8 MB of L3 available as shared among all the 4 cores, is much faster than Core 2 Quad where we have a large L2 cache is been shared between 2 dies and 2×2 cores.

Hyper-Threading is back

Yeah.. That age old feature which we have first seen in case of Intel Pentium EE processors is back with Intel Core i7. Each and every core of Intel Core i7 processors can process 2 threads simultaneously, thus appearing as a 8 core processor to the Operating system.

All though the feature didn’t click with Pentium architecture but with Nehalem it seems to help a lot with todays new multi-core based applications.

Goodbye FSB and welcome QPI

QPI is something, which is not new in market, as AMD is using it for quite some time but its something new for Intel, as finally they are saying goodbye to the traditional method of connecting various part of the CPU.

We already have seen the benefit of QPI (Quick Path Interconnect) with AMD’s Hypertransport. However, Intel’s QPI under Nehalem seems to have beaten AMD in their own game as Core i7 with QPI is much faster than AMD HyperTransport 3.0.

Adopting QPI gives Intel another great option to access memory directly via their Memory on Die Controller. As you may see, under QPI, Core i7 processor can now directly access memory as they are equipped with a memory control given directly on the processor die.

The x58 and Socket 1366

Finally after so many years, Intel replaced the socket LGA775. Intel Core i7 processor comes under a new larger socket named LGA 1366 and LGA 1156 (core i5).

Intel Core 2 platform has option to chose from many available Intel or Nvidia or ATi chipsets where as till now, Core i7 supports only one chipset, the Intel x58 but x58 seems to out perform any and every available option of Core2 platform.

Earlier one had to chose between either ATi or Nivida as platform before selecting motherboard as with Core2 you can either run SLi or CrossFire. But with x58 that problem is solved. You can run any of these multi-GPU setup from x58 or rather single motherboard.

(But that doesn’t mean you can bridge 2 different company simultaneity)

Compare to Core2 which can support both DDR-III and DDR-II, Core i7 in combination with x58 is just DDR-III only. It may sound a downer, but as DDR3 is becoming mainstream, your PC should have the fastest option.

Few new features

Intel Demand Based Switching (DBS)

Its a new form of older version, that’s Intel SpeedStep. What it does is, it lowers the processor frequency and power consumption under idle state when system doesn’t require heavy processing. The processor returns to full power only when OS requires. It saves a lot of energy and noise also as lower frequency means less heat hence even the processor FAN can run at lower RPM generating less noise.

Intel® Turbo Boost Technology

Performance on demand, as what Intel calls it. It allows Core i7 CPUs to actually overclock it self to run higher than its original frequency. Just opposite of what (DBS) does. Turbo boost works in tandem with Intel VT / Intel HT. Turbo boost actually can overclock individual cores, when they are in need of extra juice under certainly muti-core applications like heavy duty CAD / CAM or editing or virtualizing.

Along with these new features and upgrades to existing technology, Intel Core i7 or Core i5 processors make them self an excellent purchase over their predecessor. Therefore, if you are looking for a new computer with Intel based setup, try and see if you can get your self a Core i7 or Core i5 based system.

Intel Core i7 processors are available from USD 280 to $1000 where as there are hundreds of choice for motherboards under LGA 1366 and LGA 1156

Turn (Hack / modify) your Triple core AMD Phenom-II (X3) processors to Quad core AMD Phenom-II (X4) with the help of MSI motherboards

Choto Cheeta — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Yearly this year AMD launched its triple core (X3) Phenom-II line up. It was not long before many overclockers around the globe discovered that Phenom-II tri-core processors were actually quad-core processors, in which the fourth core was just disabled.

It was not official till MSI came up with an official news bulletin this month.

MSI now allows X3 users to enable the fourth core with a (virtual) switch under its BIOS. All Phenom-II X3 users can upgrade their CPUs to X4 given they are using a supported board and BIOS. Below is the list of given motherboards, which supports the upgrade / hack.

Infact this mod / hack /upgrade / overclock works with most of the AMD 785 / 790 chipset based board. You just need to play with the option called “Advance Core Control” under BIOS option CPU features and control.

List of available motherboards for Intel Core i5 (Socket LGA-1156)

Choto Cheeta — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:27:18 +0000

Intel Core i5 is a step down version of Intel top of the line Core i7 processors. The Core i5 comes under socket LGA 1156. Below is the list of available motherboards of all price range, which supports Intel Core i5 processors.

Vendor : ASUS

Intel chipset P55 / DDR-III / Socket LGA 1156

Maximus III Formula / Maximus III GENE / P7P55 LX / P7P55 WS Supercomputer / P7P55D / P7P55D Deluxe / P7P55D EVO / P7P55D LE / P7P55D Premium / P7P55D PRO / P7P55D-E Deluxe / P7P55D-E EVO / P7P55D-E Premium / P7P55D-E PRO / P7P55-M (uATX Form Factor) / SABERTOOTH 55i

Vendor : ASRock

Intel chipset P55 / DDR3 / Socket LGA1156

P55 Deluxe / P55 Extreme / P55 Pro / P55DE Pro / P55DE3 / P55M Pro

Vendor : Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS)

Intel chipset P55 / DDR-3 / Socket LGA-1156

P55H-A / P55H-A Ultra / P55H-A2 / P55H-CM

Vendor : EVGA

Intel chipset P55 / DDRIII / Socket LGA 1156

EVGA P55 Classified 200 / EVGA P55 FTW 200 / EVGA P55 FTW / EVGA P55 / EVGA P55 Micro (microATX) / EVGA P55 LE

Vendor : GigaByte

P55 / DDR3 / 1156

GA-P55A-UD6 / GA-P55A-UD5 / GA-P55A-UD4P / GA-P55A-UD4 / GA-P55A-UD3P / GA-P55A-UD3R / GA-P55A-UD3 / GA-P55-UD6 / GA-P55-UD6-C / GA-P55-UD5 / GA-P55-UD4P / GA-P55-UD4 / GA-P55-UD3P / GA-P55-UD3R / GA-P55-UD3 / GA-P55-UD3L / GA-P55-UD3L-TPM / GA-P55-US3L / GA-P55M-UD2 / GA-P55M-UD4

Vendor : Intel

P55 / DDR-III / Package 1156

DP55KG / DP55SB / DP55WG / DP55WB

Vendor : MSI

P55 / DDR-3 / CPU1156

P55-CD53 / P55-GD55 / P55-GD65 / P55-GD80 / P55M-GD45 / Trinergy

Please feel free to let me know about any product which I have missed to include.

Microsoft ZUNE 4.0 (Software upgrade for your old ZUNE)

Choto Cheeta — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:46:02 +0000

Microsoft have released an upgrade to its ZUNE player management and PC sync software. The ZUNE 4.0 comes with new features to help you discover more entertainment to enjoy anytime, anywhere. Also is comes with a free 14-day Zune Pass to browse, stream, and download millions of songs.

So lets take a look as whats new about this upgrade.

The ZUNE 4.0 is available as free download from Zune.net. It supports both 32bit (x86) and 64bit (x64) version of Windows. Make sure you download the right version for you as there are different version for Zune on x86 and Zune on x64.

Installation

Its a 55MB download for me for my Windows 7 x64.

First run

On execution, it does warn users that the software navigation and features have changed significantly from last version hence proceed with caution.

The settings page seems the same apart from a new option pooping up as the SmartDJ.

The Interface

Player update ?

Yeah. As I connect the player, it does notify my that there is an optional update available for my player.

Updater comes with a clear warring, not to unplug while update is in progress.

Please wait.. As the Zune player displays on its screen..

Player Interface ?

At-least with my Zune 30, I could not find any change.