Horizon Flash Memory

Recently there has been a proliferation of ultra small, low cost notebooks, commonly known as netbooks.

These small sized, mini laptops also tend to be a little on the small side specification wise too, so at Horizon Flash Memory we’d thought that we’d take a look at them to see how they measure up and offer some advice on how to get the best for your money.

The humble laptop

Up until quite recently laptops were pretty expensive. You would normally pay about the same for a laptop as a typical desktop PC, except the laptop would be much less powerful.

Things have changed in the past year or so, the parts for laptops have come down in price and in turn the laptops themselves have dropped in price. Today £600 would get you a 2.4 GHz Quad Core processor with 3GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive in a desktop PC.

The same spent on a laptop would get a 2GHz Core Duo with 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. Although the desktop PC would be more powerful, to the average user there would be no discernible difference. But that has been the point regarding PC power for a few years now.

The Dell Mini 9 (pictured above) has a 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a 8GB or 16GB hard drive; paltry compared to the PC and laptop mentioned above, but to the average user, perfectly acceptable. Particularly at half the price of the other two examples.

Gamers

The price decrease and also the popularity of the new netbooks is in part due to the fact that PCs and Notebooks don’t need to be as powerful as they now are, and Joe Public is catching on to this. Most users simply require a PC/laptop to surf the internet, check their email and carry out a little word processing. For these tasks a powerful processor, lots of RAM, a powerful graphics card and a large hard drive just aren’t needed.

In fact, despite what PC vendors may claim, the only thing driving up computing power in home computers today, are games. The netbook that started off this new trend was anything but powerful, the Asus Eee PC had just a 900MHz, 256MB of RAM and a 2GB hard drive. A specification that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a PC running Windows 98 a decade ago.

While adequate for surfing the internet, checking email and word processing, it wasn’t ideal.

Who for?

The next generation of netbooks have improved greatly in overall computing power, the Dell mini being a good example, but netbooks do have their drawbacks. The low price of these devices may be enticing but are they suitable for everyone?

If you are looking for a laptop for just surfing the internet, chatting to friends, checking email, working on office documents, then a netbook is ideal. If you want to play games, play CD/DVDs, do serious photo or video editing then you should look elsewhere. Netbooks don’t have CD or DVD drives, they don’t have the type of graphics card or the overall computing power to cope with even very old games.

Another often overlooked drawback to netbooks is the fact that many of them use SSDs (Solid State Drives). Although SSDs have many advantages over traditional hard drives, such as being shock proof, they are expensive and only available in comparatively low capacities. Even a 32GB SSD would cost about the same as the netbook itself (around £250).

This is why many netbooks seem to have very small hard drives, around the 4GB-16GB capacity. So if you are planning on using your netbook for a DVD repository or for storing your entire music collection, you may want to think again.

Secure Digital (SD)

There are however other alternatives to a bigger capacity solid state drive. Most netbooks have a card reader slot, and if used with an 8GB SD memory card it could double or even quadruple the storage space of some netbooks. More importantly, you can buy SD cards for less than £12. With SD memory cards being so small, the average user could carry a few around, containing DVDs, music, documents etc, and just swap them round when needed.

The high speed of SD memory cards means that there isn’t much difference between using one of them for storing information, or using your SSD.

With all this in mind, which are the best netbooks available?

The options

There are plenty of netbooks around, so here is our pick of the bunch.

Maplin minibook – £119.99

• Screen: 7in
• OS: Linux
• Max Res: 800×480
• Processor: 400MHz
• RAM: 128MB
• Hard Drive: 2GB
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 3 hours

They are practically giving this netbook away, and on closer inspection it is clear why. The screen resolution is pretty low and won’t make comfortable viewing. The laptop has a version of Linux that can’t easily be added to, it has the Firefox 2 web browser installed but without flash, or the ability to update it, meaning that this is little better than a mobile phone for surfing the internet and about as powerful.

The MSI Wind – £299

• Screen: 10.2in
• OS: SUSE Linux/XP Home
• Max Res:1024×600
• Processor: 1.6MHz Atom
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Drive: 120GB
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 2.5 hours

A serious netbook, the 10inch screen has a pretty decent resolution, a fast processor for a netbook and a large amount of RAM, especially in comparison to the Maplin above, and a massive hard drive. Sadly the hard drive is SATA rather than solid state but not bad on a low cost notebook, let alone a netbook.

The card reader slot allows expansion of the inbuilt memory through an SD memory card, but with 120GB hard drive it isn’t really likely to be needed.

The ASUS Eee PC 901 – £275

• Screen: 8.9in
• OS: Linux/XP Home
• Max Res:1024×600
• Processor: 1.6MHz Atom
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Drive: 12GB(XP)/20GB(Linux)
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 8 hours

The Eee PC is the one that started the netbooks craze, and it is clearly one of the best. It matches the MSI wind, has a SSD hard drive and has much better battery life. The SD memory card slot also accepts SDHC cards, meaning up to 8GB SD memory cards can be used.

The Dell Mini 9 – £299

• Screen: 8.9in
• OS: Ubuntu Linux/XP Home
• Max Res:1024×600
• Processor: 1.6MHz Atom
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Drive: 16GB(XP)/8GB(Linux)
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 5 hours

Another good netbook and virtually the same specification as the MSI Wind and the Eee PC. Again the SD card slot is SDHC compatible meaning that even with the Linux option of just 8GB of hard disk space, a couple of cards can seriously increase storage space.

Highlights

There are some great options when it comes to netbooks, but with many of them having similar specifications, what are the most important features?

Battery power

This shouldn’t be understated, after all what is the use of an ultra mobile, ultra portable laptop that doesn’t last more than an hour away from the plug socket? Manufacturer’s claims about battery life should also be taken with a pinch of salt. A 3.5 hour battery may last 3.5 hours at first, after a few months 3.5 becomes 2.5 as battery capacity diminishes over time, at a rate of about 20% per year.

With new batteries costing almost as much as a netbook itself, you’ll want a netbook that has a bit of leeway with the capacity. The Maplin minibook has 3 hours, the MSI Wind just 2.5 hours, neither would be very useful for watching DVDs or on a long train journey.

Processing power and RAM

Even surfing the internet and checking email requires a slick processor occasionally, after all no one likes a lag when opening pages or email attachments. A 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM would be ample for everything other than games or photo/video editing. The Maplin minibook is shockingly low powered, even at that price and with just 3 hours battery, you just won’t have the time for the processor and RAM to chug along.

Hard drive

The hard drive is very important, after all this is where all of your music and movies will be stored when you are on the go. Sadly few of the netbooks offer the kind of capacity needed for storing even a couple of DVDs. But this is where the SD memory card slot comes in handy. If the netbook has a small hard drive, like the Eee PC and the Dell Mini 9, make sure that the card slot accepts SDHC memory cards to boost the hard drive. You’d need at least 8GB hard drive for most purposes, and then a couple of 8GB SD cards to cover any extra music and video files, which should be plenty for most people and at around £12 each, not likely to break the bank.

Although smaller capacity than the standard hard drives, SSDs give better performance and battery life, perhaps why the Eee PC has 8 hours, the Dell mini 9 has 5 hours but the MSI Wind just 2.5 hours. So whilst a 120GB hard drive has its advantages, you’d be much better served by a solid state drive.

Operating system

Most people tend to just go with an operating system that they are used to, which usually means Windows. As the netbooks don’t have powerful graphics cards or processors, they are unable to run Windows Vista, which just leaves Windows XP Home Edition. But with Linux laptops being cheaper, and ones such as Dell’s mini 9 having the user friendly Ubuntu installed, Linux netbooks may be worth a punt. There are drawbacks however, things will be laid out differently, favourite programs such as Internet Explorer and Outlook and many of your favourite programs just won’t be work on Linux.

However if you are ever going to move away from Windows and try something else, a low powered laptop that won’t play games anyway, just may be the time to do it. Linux doesn’t have spyware or adware, or viruses, or the need for an expensive anti-virus or firewall package. It doesn’t need activating, in fact copying the discs and giving them to friends is actively encouraged . It also looks better than the seven year old Windows XP, is free to upgrade, and all the software is free.

That said those who buy Linux netbooks are apparently three times more likely to return them than those running Windows, so perhaps you do get what you pay for.

With the Government, the NHS, the Prison Service, the Police and even the MoD making high profile bungles with sensitive information, we thought it was time for us to look at how to protect your sensitive data when carrying it around.

Follow that car

According to a recent survey, Black Cab passengers in London have left more than 60,000 devices ranging from mobile phones, MP3 players, USB memory sticks, and even laptops in cabs in the past six months.

Quite a shocking statistic, particularly as many of those devices carry personal information and it would be extremely easy for a identity thief to extract the information. But what can be done to guard against such losses when we are all forced to carry around a plethora of devices such as mobile phones, laptops and USB memory sticks and flash cards?

After each one of the data slip ups mentioned earlier, a word was bandied about quite frequently – encryption.

Ciphers

Encryption works by scrambling the information stored on a device so that it can only be decrypted using a specific password. These days encryption is so advanced that unless the thief/discoverer has a couple of supercomputers lying around their home, they aren’t going to be able to access your encrypted information.

Encryption isn’t just reserved for spies and military types there are plenty of free, military grade encryption utilities out there that are simple enough for anyone to use.

For those who use USB memory sticks or even SD memory cards or microSD memory cards, I would even go as far as saying encryption is a necessity.

Misplaced information

People often underestimate the dangers of carrying around USB memory sticks (also known as Pen Drives) and flash cards, as this expert points out:

“If it gets into the wrong hands of a criminal, hacker or opportunist, losing your mobile device can have serious implications, so our advice is always encrypt it and password protect it to stop it ever being accessed by anyone other than yourself.”
BBC News | Michael Callahan – Credant Technologies

One of the easiest ways of encrypting your information is to use a piece of software like TrueCrypt. This free and open source software allows you to encrypt an entire hard drive, USB memory sticks or flash cards.

Simply download and install the software, insert your USB flash memory stick or flash memory card and open the software. When presented with a choice of what drives to encrypt, just select your chosen USB memory stick or flash memory card and then the type of encryption, ranging from the standard US NSA quality encryption to even tougher encryption.

The software has a Traveller Mode, which, once set up, allows you to then use the device in another PC. It also works on-the-fly so you can use the USB stick or memory as normal, the software will encrypt/decrypt as necessary.

The software is amazingly easy to use, a step by step tutorial can be found here. All this of course begs the question, if it were that easy, why doesn’t (or didn’t) the Government use encryption?

Tip of the tongue

There are downsides to using encryption. With most applications if you forget the password you can simply click the ‘Forgot Password’ link or reset it. If you encrypt a USB memory drive or flash card and forget the password, well, then you have just lost all the information on that drive, permanently. There is no way to get the information back without the password.

It isn’t the end of the world though, you can also re-format the drive or delete the container, and start again, this time using a password that is memorable. Avoid using something that seems memorable at the time, but when needed you can’t for the life of you recall it.

This could be where a site such as Password Chart comes in handy, it allows the creation of completely random and seemingly meaningless passwords from memorable words. For instance using Horizon and Memory we are able to create the password – jD_6jD4c8@n^P

Apart from the inconvenience of losing access to your own information, and feeling like a bit of an idiot for forgetting your own password, there is another reason why you may not want to forget your encryption password.

The long arm of the law

Since 1st October 2007 it became an offence to fail to hand over encryption passwords to the police, if they request them. Being unable to remember the password is not classed as a plausible defence.

Of course the average person is unlikely to have their USB memory stick or Flash memory card confiscated by the police, but the two year prison sentence mean that it is worth bearing in mind.

Better safe…

Most people will probably assume that they do not need to use encryption, or even that it is too much hassle. But like using car alarms and house alarms, a minor inconvenience can quickly become part of an everyday routine.

Your information and privacy are extremely important, once they are out there in the hands of criminals and hackers, there is no way to get that information back again. The safest bet is to make sure that the information that falls into their hands is unusable, and the only way to do that is encryption.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there was only one real multimedia smartphone available in the shops at present, the Apple iPhone, but you’d be wrong. Apple’s iPhone has the glitz, the glamour and the PR machine but it has failed to make the kind of real impact in the smartphone market, that its marketing team would have you believe.

Nokia is King when it comes to mobile phones, accounting for a whopping 40% of the market worldwide. In the smartphone market Nokia are an even bigger player, with 52.9% of the market, and now being the sole owner of the Symbian Operating System means that 65% of smartphone owners worldwide use their OS

Apple iPhone accounts for just 6.5% of the smartphone market, meaning that they lag some way behind the likes of Nokia, and RIM (the makers of the Blackberry). Also surprising is that more smartphone users have Windows on their phones, than Apple’s software.

So what does all this mean?

Nokia’s N95

Well it means that Nokia know what they are doing, their N-Series of smartphones have been very popular. So popular in fact that their N95 was dubbed ‘iPhone Killer’, when it went up against the first iPhone.

A couple of months ago Apple launched their new iPhone and now Nokia is hitting back with the N96.

Nokia got it right with the N95 for many reasons, such as the GPS, 3G, and of course their microSD card expansion slot. The iPhone came with 4GB or the largest 5GB of storage space, and there was no way to expand that, a shocking omission in todays storage hungry world. The N95 was compatible with microSD cards up to 2GB, meaning that for less than £10 it was possible to even up and then better the iPhone’s storage.

Nokia’s N96

The N96 goes even further in this regard, as it had to in order to compete with the iPhone which has 16GB of internal storage. The N96 matches this, but of course has a microSD card slot and supports SDHC cards up to 16GB, giving a total storage capacity of 32GB! And that’s without swapping cards.

It’s amazing that Apple have missed this once again, the customers that this kind of phone is aimed at are going to need as much storage as possible for their MP3 and videos. Why buy a phone that stores 12,000 MP3s or 40 hours of video (iPhone) when you can have a phone that stores 24,000+ MP3s and 80+hours of video?

The iPhone, like most other Apple devices also has a built in battery, which was always going to be a problem and despite the complaints and criticism, the new iPhone has a built in battery too. Other complaints about the new iPhone are the 2 mega pixel camera, the same as the original iPhone – the N96 has a 5 mega pixel camera.

iPhone Style

The Apple of course has the edge when it comes to style, although the N96 doesn’t look half bad itself, and desirability, but this is all thanks to clever marketing. At the end of the day iPhone users are a niche market, Nokia are ahead of the game in almost all respects in the smartphone market.

Smartphone users want hot swappable expandable storage so that they can simply insert a flash memory card and access the documents, MP3s or videos on it on many different types of devices and unfortunately the Apple iPhone cannot deliver this.

Technorati Tags: Horizon Flash Memory, Memory, Storage, microSD, SDHC, Flash Card, Nokia, iPhone, N95, N96, Smartphone, Blackberry

When the MiniDisc came out in 1992 it was intended as a replacement for the Audio Cassette and a compliment to the Audio CD. At its launch it was hailed as the new music storage medium as it allowed tracks to be changed and edited on the disc in a similar way to Cassettes, something that CDs could not do.

MiniDiscs just didn’t take off, there were compatibility issues, the hardware was expensive, it wasn’t widely supported by the record labels and recordable CDs were launched around the same time.

SlotMusic

Despite this lesson from history, and the recent format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, Sandisk today launced their replacement for the CD, SlotMusic.

SlotMusic is in effect a microSD memory card loaded with an album of the buyers choice. These 1GB microSD cards will also include pictures and videos and the intro video on the SlotMusic website also implies  that owners will be able to add their own documents and information to the cards, just like any other microSD card.

Pricing

As usual with these new technologies, the price remains the same. Prices are expected to be about the same as a CD, about £8.99, when SlotMusic is launched in the UK later this year. Like the price of downloads, the logic behind this is unclear. MicroSD cards are pretty cheap, Horizon Flash Memory sell 1GB microSD memory cards for just £2.99.

With microSD cards this cheap, it is possible to buy two 2GB microSD memory cards for the price of one SlotMusic album, which means that even at MP3′s highest quality (320 kbps – what SlotMusic is stored at) an owner of a 2GB microSD memory card could fit almost 30 albums of their choice on their own card (and about 60 with their two cards).

Moreover they could fit six albums stored in the far superior FLAC format (equivalent to CD quality) on their card. This does seem to make the SlotMusic format appear to be something of a waste of space.

Recent events regarding DRM in downloaded music and its removal has shown that today’s music lovers do not wish to be tied to proprietary formats, they expect portability and choice. Having just one album per card means having to change the disc over when wanting to listen to another album or when all the tracks have been played; for those used to having thousands of tracks at their finger tips, this will be seen as a major inconvenience. No matter how small microSDs are, carrying around your entire music collection on these cards is just not an option.

So why on earth does SanDisk believe there are people willing to become tied to this new format?

Compatibility

If there is one thing that SlotMusic has going for it, it is compatibility. The music is encoded as MP3s with a 320 kbps bitrate. This ensures compatibility with almost all platforms, from PCs running Windows or Linux, through to Macs. Most mobile phones will also play MP3s and most also accept microSD cards. The USB cable that also comes with the SlotMusic card ensures it can be played on almost anything, with one notable exception. Apple’s iPod/iPhone.

Creating a new music format that isn’t compatible with the world’s No.1 selling portable music player was a bit of a gamble, and to be fair the problem is more of Apple’s making rather than that of SanDisk as Apple’s iPhone and iPod have neither card slots nor USB slots.

Whoever the blames lies with, SanDisk has lost a large chunk of its potential customer base because of it.

The lack of DRM in the music means that owners can transfer their songs to their PC and then to their iPod/iPhone’s internal storage, but then they can already do that using iTunes or CDs.

Over engineering

This is course is probably the biggest flaw in the SlotMusic format. The first thing most users are going to do is copy their music from the SlotMusic card onto their PC so that they have their music collection in one place, and either then use the 1GB microSD flash memory card as spare storage, or put it on a shelf somewhere, just like they would a CD.

As with CDs, sooner or later they are going to realise that they can save time, space and effort by just downloading the music directly to their computer at which point they will stop purchasing SlotMusic altogether.

While SanDisk’s new format is a noble idea, it is in many respects a step backward and has over complicated what is becoming a quick and straightforward process – getting music onto a portable device. 

MiniDisc or sliced bread

It’s unlikely that the SlotMusic format will be the next big thing and the reactions on the web seem to confirm this:

Engadget.com
“…we half-facetiously asked SanDisk’s reps if they expected us to carry around a stack of individual microSD albums, they didn’t laugh when they said yes, and even told us that slotMusic media binders would be available at launch…”

jupiterresearch.com
The success of the format depends upon consumers opting to walk into a participating store (which may well be an issue) chose from a probably limited catalogue (anyone remember the pitiful sight of MD album sections in music shops?) and then remove their existing memory card to slot the album in. Begs the question, why wouldn’t they just download it from an online store and sideload it?

In all likelihood the SlotMusic format will disappear in the same way that SanDisk’s last attempt did back in 2005, the Gruvi TrustedFlash, which was:

“…the first removable flash memory card of its type to be sold with premium music content…”

This format too died a quiet death.

Personally I keep far more on my mobile phone’s microSD card than just music and so taking it out to play an album, which annoyingly entails removing the battery, just isn’t an option. I’d be far more likely to copy the music to my PC and then copy the whole album to my phone’s 2GB microSD card, along with all my other albums.

Of course if I am going to do that, I’d rather stick with downloads or, if I have to have the physical disc, the better quality CDs.

Judging by the reactions to this launch, I am not alone and I wouldn’t be surprised if the launch is the last we hear of SlotMusic.

Technorati Tags: SlotMusic, SanDisk, Horizon Flash Memory, microSD, MicroSD Card, Music, MP3, Flash Memory, 1GB microSD, Music Storage, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner Music, Mobile Phone

Buying on-line can be a minefield at times, although it is thankfully fairly rare for consumers to fall for on-line scams these days, such as the infamous Nintendo Wii scam featured on Watchdog, there are unfortunately many other dangers and other ways of being ripped off.

Perhaps the most common ways that on-line shoppers are exploited is in regards to faulty or returned goods.

The Restocking Fee

One of the most common tactics by unscrupulous traders is the infamous restocking fee. This is where, when a customer decides to return an item for some reason other than it being faulty, as per the Distance Selling Regulations, they are charged a restocking fee or an administration charge, typically 10% of the item cost, some companies even charge as much 20-25%!

This can add up, as many companies also expect their customers to bear the costs of returning unwanted items. Take for example our 8GB SD card, priced at £11.49 (£13.50 incl VAT) plus £1.50 delivery means that it would cost £15 to have it delivered to your door.

Now if a customer were to decide to return this item to us it would cost them just £1.50 and they’d get back their full £15. If we were one of these unscrupulous traders, it would cost somewhere between £3-£5.

One of our major competitors charges a restocking fee of 10%. An 8GB card from them is about £21, plus £1.99 postage. Simply returning the item to them, as customers are entitled to do by law, would set a customer back almost £5.

Such fees are an easy way of making money for on-line retailers, a restocking fee either discourages customers from returning goods, as they would then be out of pocket and have nothing to show for it, or at worst for the retailer, it is money for old rope.

The Law

I have used the word unscrupulous here, but such actions are in fact illegal. This extract from the Distance Selling Regulations explains:

If you want the consumer to return the goods and to pay for that return, you must make it clear in the contract and as part of the required written information – see paragraph 3.10. If the consumer then fails to return the goods, or sends them at your expense, you can charge them the direct cost to you of the return, even if you have already refunded the consumer’s money. You are not allowed to make any further charges, such as a restocking charge or an administration charge.

The law is unambiguous on this, it is illegal for companies to charge consumers (it’s a different matter for businesses) a restocking or administration fee. The question then of course is why do they do it?

Unfortunately it is a simple answer of – because they can.

Terms and Conditions

Most companies place this sort of information in their terms and conditions, and unfortunately few consumers take the time to read them, and who can blame them? It is only after a customer has paid and when they want to return an item, that they find out about such things. By this time the restocking or administration charge will come straight out of any refund.

The only recourse a customer has at this point is Trading Standards and the Small Claims court. Naturally with the law on the side of the customer it is a sure fire certainty that the customer will win.

Unfortunately it is not as clear cut as that, most people won’t bother going through all the hassle of taking a company to court to claim money back and unfortunately the minimum amount that you can claim through the small claims court is £15. Few items will have a restocking fee that large, so this means that basically such companies can get away with it.

The only real option a consumer has is to avoid such companies in the first place. Always read the Returns information or FAQs before buying from a company on-line. At the first mention of any such fees, direct your browser elsewhere.

Faulty Goods

Another shady tactic used by on-line retailers is with faulty goods, where they ask the consumer to take the matter up with the manufacturer, usually after the customer has had the goods for a certain period, normally 28-30 days.

Unfortunately there is no way to avoid this pre-sale, other than to read reviews about the company before hand and see what others have had to say about their service. This is part of the reason that Horizon Flash Memory has joined the Comodo UserTrust scheme.

Once again this palming off of the customer onto the manufacturer contravenes the law, this time the Sale of Goods Act, which clearly states that your contract is with the company that you handed your money over to, not the manufacturer. This is true of any retailer, whether the item was purchased on-line or on the high street.

The reason that some companies use this tactic is once again money; this time they are trying to keep hold of the money taken from the customer. If a product is faulty, they will either have to repair it, replace it or give the customer a refund. By deflecting this onto the manufacturer, the retailer gets to keep all of the money. The manufacturer is under no obligation to give the customer his money back, and may even charge to repair the goods.

Again the only options are Trading Standards and the Courts, but as more money is likely to be involved than claiming back the restocking fee, the Small Claims court is probably the best option. The court would likely order the retailer to fulfil its obligations under the Sale of Goods Act and also refund the customer his court costs.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

The most important thing to remember in all of this is that once a retailer has ripped you off in this manner, never to shop there again. The internet offers an abundance of choice, which means that there are plenty of honest and trustworthy traders, such as Horizon Flash Memory and many others where a customer can spend his money.

Also take advantage of review sites, not just for when things go wrong but also when you are happy with a service, this will help show that good customer service can be rewarding.

Technorati Tags: SD cards, Online Shopping, Retailers, Horizon Flash Memory, 8GB SD, SD, DSR, Scam, Watchdog

Owning a computer can be a tricky business. There are so many different components some hardware, some software and when something goes wrong it is almost impossible to know what is wrong without taking it to an expert.

Sadly, these experts rarely come cheap and fixing hardware and software problems can cost an arm and a leg. There are some PC problems that are easily solved however, such as the inevitable slowdown every PC seems to go through at some point – usually after its owner has had it a few years.

There may be many reasons for such slowdowns, but invariably a sluggish PC is down to a lack of RAM. Of course it was slick and smooth running when it was first taken out of its box, and probably for some time afterwards, but the more memory hungry applications that are installed, the more RAM you are going to need just to keep it ticking over.

Fortunately these days RAM is cheap, so cheap in fact that it is possible to effectively double the performance speed of many laptops and notebooks, for less than £20.

But how do you know what type of RAM to buy without opening the case and taking out what you already have?

Peeking Inside

There are easier options than simply opening your tower and taking a look inside, besides, there is no guarantee that the RAM inside your PC will have a nice sticker on it detailing what type of RAM it is.

This is where software such as SIW (System Information for Windows) comes in handy. This is a free program, it contains no viruses or spyware, it doesn’t ask for your email address and it can tell you almost instantly what type of RAM is installed on the PC you are using, and therefore what sort of RAM you need to buy. You can download the program directly to your desktop (or wherever you want to) and just double click it to use, it doesn’t need to be installed.

SIW is very complex program able to gather information on almost all aspects of your PC. However we are only interested in one section, the RAM.

Click to Enlarge

When the screen opens scroll down to the hardware section and locate the section entitled memory. This will then display some information, but the first section we’re interested in is the bit under Memory Summary.

There are several bits of information here that are needed. Firstly there is the Maximum Capacity, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem with modern PCs and laptops, but this PC is quite old and has a maximum capacity of just 1536MB (or 1.5GB), coupled with the last line, Maximum Memory Module Size, this shows how much memory can be added, and what size memory sticks. In this case no single sticks of RAM higher than 1024MB (1GB) can be used.

Memory Slots tell us how many memory slots there are, in other words how many sticks of RAM can be fitted, in this case just 3. Lastly there is the Error Correction (EC) section, which says None, so for this PC we’d need NON-EC RAM not higher than 1GB per stick or 1.5GB in total.

All this is very useful as it would have meant digging out the motherboard manual, if there ever was one, or just ordering some RAM and hoping for the best.

Matching RAM

Next we need the information below that and although it looks complicated, there are only a few sections that we need be interested in.

As you can see, all three of the available slots in this computer have been filled. In Slot 1 under Capacity we have 256MB of RAM, the Memory Type is SDRAM DDR and the Speed is PC2700 (166MHz).

The two most important pieces of information are the Memory Type and the Speed, they show what RAM we need to purchase and what speed RAM is already in the machine. In this case we will need to purchase DDR RAM of about PC2700 in speed.

Another important point to note is the capacity of the RAM already there, Slots 1 and 2 have 256MB of RAM, but Slot 3 has 512MB, giving a total of 1024MB (1GB). As this PC only has a maximum capacity of 1.5GB there isn’t much room for expansion, it is probably easiest to buy one stick of 1024MB (1GB) and replace Slot 3′s 512MB, which I could then sell on eBay for about £10-£15.

Performance Boost

Armed with the knowledge that I need DDR RAM, NON-EC of about PC2700, I am able to shop around for a good deal, knowing precisely what I want. At Horizon Flash Memory I can get one 1GB of PC2700 DDR RAM for £21.49, which coupled with the fact that I will make some money back selling the old RAM on eBay is a remarklaby good deal.

I will have boosted the performance of this ailing PC by half as much again, all for about a tenner.

RAM is quick and easy to replace and more importantly it provides a noticeable difference. When you increase the RAM of your PC, you should immediately notice that programs start quicker, you are able to open more windows without slowing the PC down and you should also notice that the PC boots up faster.

Upgrading RAM is by far the simplest and and most cost effective way of improving performance and a program such as SIW makes it even easier.

Technorati Tags: Horizon Flash Memory, RAM, Notebook RAM, Laptops, Notebooks, PCs, PC RAM, DDR RAM, SIW, RAM Types, Windows, Slowdown

When Satoru Iwata announced the Nintendo Wii, or Revolution as it was then called, in September 2005 stating:

“We’re not thinking about fighting Sony, but about how many people we can get to play games. The thing we’re thinking about most is not portable systems, consoles, and so forth, but that we want to get new people playing games.”

I don’t think even he could have foreseen just how popular it would become and just what a difference the Nintendo Wii would make to the gaming world.

The machine is unbelievably popular, and as he noted, not just in the traditional market. We now see Nintendo Wii’s in the homes of the traditional gamers parents, their grandparents and even in nursing homes. Something that was inconceivable before the Wii came along.

Secure Digital Cards

The Wii isn’t much compared to the other next generation consoles, in fact it barely measures up specification wise to the XBox, let alone the XBox 360. It is also lacking in the storage department, only having 512MB of storage (the Xbox had about 10GB), but it does allow owners to add pictures and files from their own SD cards.

A smart move by Nintendo, the Xbox 360 uses it’s own propriety memory cards, but the SD card has become the de facto standard for flash memory cards in recent years, with most people having several cards from digital cameras, PDAs, mobile phones and now even sat-navs, lying around the home. Not to mention the fact that they can also use the newer miniSD and microSD cards as well with an adaptor. SD cards are a very cheap form of storage, allowing users to more than double the storage capacity of their Wii for less than £3.

Secure Digital High Capacity Cards

Sadly, despite coming to market several months after SDHC, the Nintendo Wii does not support SDHC cards and this has caused some issues for those looking to expand their Nintendo Wii’s storage capacity.

SDHC itself is something of a murky area, many manufacturers and retailers do not do enough to make customers aware of what SDHC is, why it is different from standard SD, or even that it is different.

SDHC is a completely different standard to standard SD and is not backwards compatible. There is more information on SDHC on the Horizon Web Blog – The Mystery Behind SDHC. But in a nutshell, unless your camera, mobile phone, sat-nav or PDA specifically says that it supports SDHC cards, it more than likely does not.

So although those new 4GB, 8GB and even 16GB and 32GB SD cards may seem like an excellent way of perhaps recording more video or taking thousands of photographs, rather than just hundreds, unfortunately for most people, particulary those with devices a year or two old, it just isn’t possible.

If you’re in any doubt as to whether your device is SDHC compatible, feel free to contact us at Horizon Flash Memory, or even comment here with the make and model of your device and we’d be happy to let you know.

Conflicting Advice

Nintendo Wii owners, like most people it seems, have difficulty finding out whether their device is SDHC compatible and then which cards to purchase. A simple search for ‘Nintendo Wii compatible SD cards‘, turns up all sorts of conflicting advice.

Even the Nintendo Wii website itself makes no mention of SDHC cards, simply stating that the Wii is only compatible with SD cards of 2GB or less.

At Horizon Flash Memory, we can give simple clear advice on this issue, SDHC cards are not compatible with the Nintendo Wii, no cards more than 2GB in capacity will work. Needless to say all of our SD cards of 2GB or less are 100% compatible with the Nintendo Wii – and this is guaranteed.

Cheap As Chips

There is an upside however to not being able to use the newer, higher capacity SD cards. As the capacities get higher and higher the prices at the bottom end of the capacity scale get cheaper and cheaper.

If you shop around you can find lower capacity SD cards at unbelievably low prices. Strangely, there are also places that sell 512MB SD cards for between £8-£10 each! So as always it is important to shop around to get the best deals.

And while our 1GB and 2GB SD cards are not quite as cheap as chips, at £2.99 and £4.49 respectively, they are both cheaper than cod and chips, and offer fantastic value.

Technorati Tags: Horizon Flash Memory, Nintendo, Wii, Nintendo Wii, SD cards, SDHC, Secure Digital Cards, microSD, Flash Memory, Memory Cards, Xbox

This is the weblog for Horizon Flash Memory. Here we will discuss information relating to our products and the wider industry in general and we will also offer discounts, and information relating to upcoming products and special offers.

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Technorati Tags: Horizon Flash Memory, SD Cards, Laptop RAM, Notebooks, Notebook RAM, Discounts