Bits On Our Desk 13

IT's a sata cable, what did you expect? Hmmm....sad, Joe writing this article or me reading it?

I was at a Christmas party and opened a small gift from the wife of my boss and inside was a common rock, you know - the kind you pick up off the ground. A small note taped to it that said, " sex stone". Ok, she caught me off guard and I just looked at her with that dazed, confused look. Her reply was, " it's a f***ing rock, what did you expect?" Just a memory trigger or did Joe maybe came from the same twisted school of humor? LOL

 

Seconded. We need some random "Life At The Offices" pictures. Perhaps in it's own forum thread.

 

we need a staff bog IMO

 

E'on sent me one of those intelliplug things for free. Seems to work fine on the rents pc

 

do it!

 

Um, have I lost something in translation? I thought bog was UK slang for toilet. Surely you don't run next door for that.

 

I just go on Tim's desk. That's what he gets for wrapping my head in electrical tape.

MY BEARD IS REALLY SORE!

 

It needs trimming... and don't say you didn't enjoy the tape - you were smiling at the time!

 

he means blog

 

We need some sort of 'Behind the Scenes at Bit'.

 

Question on the hard drive dock.

Does this dock allow you to put the drives in while the dock/pc is powered up?

My shop doesnt have any docks, we use alot of disassembled external hard drive enclosures, and the usb speed is just killing me. We have stopped plugging straight into the mobo, as there are many occasions, dirty little virus from our client's pc's. Couple that with being blamed for killing a hard drive, we no longer plug any client drives directly to our machines mobo's.

 

a cable is a cable right?
not quite, many sata cables in the stores do not fit current Mo/Bo's because the sata ports are stacked close together
the connectors on this new cable have been re-designed so they fit the stacked ports.
this is the only slightly interesting thing about this cable Joe, important though if you are plugging a couple of drives.

 

aha! Our mighty Joe did not any sata cable research! Another important point is testing the lenght of the cable. Cause most of the times you get short 2 cm, pulling the sata cable to fit and you then it pulled out on the other side. Or the sata cable slip out of the hd or mobo socket on the slightest breese of a fan inside. I have hot glued them all to the sockets of both hd and mobo, and not to mention the flimpsy hd power cable.

Makes you wonder who the hell had such fantastic idea to fit the sata with such idiotic flimpsy connectors in the first place and get away with it. Did they actualy test it in a real world situation. Well Joe if you can find that out and get some industry responses, you will be my hero again

 

FFS! I can across the BlacX docking station literally a month ago, and I wanted one. Couldn't get hold of one for love nor money - only on sale in the US. Nor could I find any indication of if/when it would be avaliable across here.

So I ended up paying £25 (inc del) for a Flea-bay special (£20 inc for non e-Sata version). And now a month later I could get the real thing... B*mmer!

Yes, there is an eject button that lifts the drive up a little, disconnecting it - it's just like pulling the plug on a USB disk.

 

Unless unusually well-blessed with wall sockets you'll already be using a socket strip extension for peripherals so hardly a drawback. Or there's an Intelli-socket strip by the same company with seven controlled sockets. My Intelliplug also turns accessories off when the OS goes to sleep (and back on when it wakes), try that with wall switches.

"Saves an average 35 watts per hour depending on the number of connected peripherals. This product can pay for itself in less than a year of use."

Every home should have one. The price you show is a bit steep but I keep seeing better bargains.

 

I did a calculation a few months ago. Every 0.01 units (kw/h) (10w/h) saved translated to about £7 a year. In other-words a device which is usually drawing 10w 24/7 would cost £7 a year to run. It'll be more now since the power bills gone up a few times.

Your 35w would get you £25 if you never turned the items on (defeating the purpose of them of course).

 

Bulls**t, who told you that?. I looked up the specs of my lcd monitor (which I bought about 5 years ago) and it uses 1W on standby. If I leave it on for a long night - 12h that is 12 watt hours of energy it has used. A microwave meal takes let's say 20 minutes to cook in an 850W oven, so 6 meals = 850W * 0.3 hours * 6 = 1530 watt hours.

Even if I left it fully on with stuff being displayed it uses 45W which would mean 540WH spent overnight, which would just about do two meals.

After a brief look around it seems CRT monitors are only a little bit worse, using up to about 5W on standby.

 

Fact is that, if you turn off the monitor, it uses no power at all. Over a year this could save you some more money.

 

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http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2008/09/on-our-desk-13/b46.jpg

Is that a P-series Shuttle in the background? ;-)

 

SN25P