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Hulu’s success has surprised me somewhat and in today’s video, I tell you exactly why..

So which is it, Gizmodo? Indpendent, or… ?

In this case, I agree.

(Credit:
Gizmodo)

See also: Robert Scoble’s diatribe, Gizmodo on Integrity.

I have asked Mr. Lam for a comment. If I get one I will run it here.

It was independent, all right. Independent even from Gizmodo’s own scathing review of the TV-B-Gone. In 2004, the site published a piece saying that the inventor of the device was, “…an asshole. And not just any asshole, but one of those snotty holier-than-thou types who has nothing better to do…than to develop a device with the sole purpose of imposing his viewpoint on others.”

I’m tired of Gizmodogate. I’ve made my position known on the use of TV-B-Gones to play pranks on CES exhibitors. Not everyone agrees with me. I’m OK with that, and I’m ready to move on. But the story keeps getting weirder. The latest update is a blog post from Gizmodo editor Brian Lam that says, “Our prank pays homage to the notion of independence and independent reporting.”

Red Hat likes Linux on the desktop, but it also likes making money.

An explanation: as a public, for-profit company, Red Hat must create products and technologies with an eye on the bottom line, and with desktops, this is much harder to do than with servers. The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative.

A product called Red Hat Global Desktop that is targeted specifically at resellers, which focus on emerging markets, has been delayed for almost a year because of business issues. The company hopes to release it “soon,” according to its corporate blog.

The Linux Desktop team explained:

Instead, Red Hat is focusing on desktop software that works with its server products aimed at businesses and developers.

The company’s desktop software unit on Wednesday released an update on its plans, saying it will focus its efforts on specific markets but not face off against Microsoft in the consumer market.

“The controllers analyzed in the Tom’s Hardware review are early-generation, multi-chip and in some cases even use FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), which can be quite power hungry. As with many other first and second generation drives, these drives are not delivering on the full potential of the NAND and are not delivering properly on the performance promise.

Has the image of solid state drives as power misers been shattered? A recent review would seem to dispel the notion that these devices are more power efficient than the hard disk drives used in laptops.

Though Intel’s drives were not tested in the review, the chipmaker stated Wednesday that SSDs “can be architected to improve battery life.” Intel is expected to bring out drives ranging in capacity from 80GB to 160GB later this year.

Intel claims its upcoming SSDs will be power efficient

The review goes on to test four solid state drives (SSDs) from Crucial (Micron Technology), Memoright, Sandisk, and Mtron. For example, in evaluating the Crucial CT32GBFAB0 32GB drive, the review states, “Users who purchase this drive because of Crucial’s statements such as ‘low power consumption’ and the product being ideal for ‘users who want longer battery life’ will most likely be disappointed.”

(Credit:
Intel)

Update at 1:30 p.m. PDT July 3, with additional comments from Micron Technology (at bottom).

One of the key selling points of solid state drives has been that they use less power than hard disk drives. The claim has seemed plausible because solid state drives have no moving parts, while hard disk drives have a number of moving components.

STEC offers drives already with MLC technology.

Wilkison pointed out that the most competitive drives adopted by computer makers will have better power management. “Over time, these drives will need to have very intelligent power management systems. Some of these SSDs will have them, and those (that) do not have such power intelligence will not be used (by PC makers).”

However, high-performance solid state drive maker STEC provided some insight into what to expect. Data used in the Tom’s Hardware piece applies to the current first-generation mass-market SSDs but not necessarily to upcoming drives, said Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC. “They are using legacy drives, none of which will be used by any major PC OEM,” Wilkison said in an e-mail.

The Tom’s Hardware review, however, says: “While conventional hard drives may operate at relatively low power when little movement is required…flash based drives do not. They will draw their maximum power level constantly when in use, and as a consequence, simply spend more total time drawing maximum power than conventional drives.”

Update: Micron Technology chimes in:

In an article at Tom’s Hardware titled “The SSD Power Consumption Hoax”,
the authors state: “We have discovered that the power savings aren’t there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash (solid state drive).”

Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development for Micron, echoed Wilkison’s comments about using legacy drives in the review. He made the following statement:

Micron will launch its next-generation RealSSD products later this year. Intel and Micron are co-partners in the joint venture IM Flash Technologies. Both companies are expected to bring out similar SSDs though they will be marketed and branded separately by the two companies.

“Finally, consider that many of today’s applications and operating systems are not optimized for SSDs, but for rotating media.”

And the next crop of SSDs based on multilevel cell (MLC) technology will need to aggressively manage power. “In order to make MLC viable, the drive needs a much more powerful processor/controller, which implies more power draw because frequencies will be higher, number of channels will be higher, ECC (error correcting code) engine will be working harder,” he said.

(Note:
Tom’s Hardware has posted a correction to its original report here.)

Micron Technology, which is a manufacturer of one of the drives used by Tom’s Hardware in its review, made a statement on Thursday.

Intel Fellow and Director of Storage Architecture Knut Grimsrud earlier this year presented a paper titled “Not all SSDs are Created Equal” (PDF) that stated “power efficiency must account for the amount of work being performed during the power measurement.”

Whether this will actually translate into improved power efficiency when Intel brings out its drives remains to be seen.

“There is another factor to be aware of. If the CPU spends 25 million clock cycles waiting for random HDD data, but only part of that waiting for SSD data, the actual increase in notebook power consumption may be in the CPU. A useful metric is how much processing gets done per watt. If you are willing to scale back performance to that of an HDD-based system, an SSD-based system should deliver significantly longer battery life.

If you’re a Vista user without a Recycle Bin, the newsletter offers this advice: “A few weeks ago, we included a link to a KB article telling you several ways to restore a missing Recycle Bin, depending on how it came to be missing.” So, you have to know how you deleted it, in order to restore it? There must have been a sale on design mistakes.

If you are a tinkerer, then fine, play with new software. However, if your computer is used for serious, income-producing work, you want no part of new software. Like doctors and airline pilots, software needs time to mature.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

An item called “Don’t accidentally delete that Recycle Bin!” describes how a number of Vista users deleted their Recycle Bin by accident, most likely while trying to empty it. If you right click on the Recycle Bin icon on a Windows XP desktop, there is no “Delete” option. Perhaps there is a good reason to delete the Vista Recycle Bin, but even so, the option to delete it should not be somewhere that people can do so accidentally. And, deleting the Recycle Bin, since it’s such an oddball thing to do, should require an extra confirmation.

Last year, I wrote that, as a computer nerd, I hold this truth to be self-evident: All new software contains bugs and design flaws. As a programmer, I can understand the inevitability of bugs. Design flaws are another matter.

The May 1st issue of Sunbelt Software’s Vista News newsletter highlighted some mistakes in the design of
Windows Vista.

A few days ago, I suggested holding off on installing Windows XP Service Pack 3, not because of bugs or design mistakes, but instead to let any and all software incompatibilities be worked out.

And, if you do disable UAC, the newsletter reports, you may not be able to install the latest version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

User Account Control (UAC) is perhaps the poster boy for flawed design. While it may serve a useful purpose, it annoys an awful lot of people. So many, that the newsletter carried a piece called “How to Disable UAC Prompts in Vista”. But again, there seems to be a family of design mistakes.

If you’re running Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate, there is one set of instructions. People using the Home Basic or Premium versions of Vista, have a different procedure, one that involves zapping the registry. Of course, these are the people least qualified to understand what the registry is, let alone update it.

Gateway tells us it made the change for four reasons:

(Credit:
Gateway)

From now on, Gateway’s desktops are what you see is what you get.

We didn’t notice until a few days ago, but it seems that at the end of 2007, Gateway stopped offering hardware customization options in its desktops and laptops purchased online. Instead when you drill down to a specific system (as we did recently while researching the FX540XG for its upcoming review), we found that Gateway only lets you change add-on software and service plan options. You no longer get to make changes to the hard drives the memory or other hardware components.

Faster system building Simplified shopping experience
Reduced system complexity should lead to better tech support
Cost savings from reducing complex IT systems and supply chain

All of those make sense to us, especially when you configure a similar desktop at Dell and watch the price shoot past the Gateway’s $2,850 by about $2,000 (with a more expensive chassis and other features). Of course, that also means the Gateway saddles you with a set of 2.1 PC speakers when you might not want them.

Gateway’s eMachines brand, which has never offered buyer customization, has been a little hit-or-miss with this model, but mostly hit. Most quarters we’re surprised by how much PC you can get for under $500 (like the recent eMachines T3642), but occasionally you actually get less PC for your dollar than the previous quarter. If Gateway can avoid those fluctuations, we can certainly see its new online model benefiting shoppers by narrowing what can seem like a daunting set of choices. And if it can offer a better deal than its competitors in the process, even better.