Parts is Parts

2001-06-13

Today I was in Akihabara or "Electric Town" as it's called here, buying a new hard drive for my notebook computer. I have a Sony SR−7K with a 12gig drive and I've filled it up. I love this notebook. I've got 256meg of ram and since I've had this notebook I haven't used my desktop computer for anything except burning CDs and that's only because I don't keep my portable burner connected to the notebook. I also have the 6hour battery and I carry the thing to Digtial Hollywood 3 days a week. It's great.

Anyway, I saw quite a few things while I was out. One, I can't believe the price of RAM!!! $25 for 128meg and that's for brand name memory not cheapo no−name memory.

I also saw an interesting case called the JAZZ Case by Windy or something like that. It's all brushed aluminum and looks like a stereo component almost.

Logitech has Optical Cordless mice now. In other words it's an optical mouse (no ball on the bottom) and it's cordless. That rules. I want one. I do wonder how long the batteries last as they have to shine the light but I bet they last pretty long. Like a month or more. I've got a cordless (not opitical though) for my notebook at home and I think I've changed the batteries once in 6 months.

I saw an interesting looking keyboard by a company called Diatec. Scroll down that page to see it. It's got a plexiglass (or was it glass) cover so you can see inside. I don't think I would buy one but I thought it was kind of neat. They also make brushed aluminum keyboards. I also saw about 5 or 6 different models of the ittybitty keyboards that Didier likes.

Next to that keyboard I saw this Dokodemo Toro cat character. They also had a Hello Kitty version. It plugs into your USB port, actually it's a 2 port hub. Anyway, as you type or click your mouse buttons the cat taps along.

I hadn't seen these before. It's a USB light. Seems kind of silly to me and I'd be worried about the power draw but there was something about it that was cool. Maybe because the light was slighty bluish.

I was surprised to see this Winux2000 IDE-Selector. It's a switch box for IDE devices. It seems overboard to me. Just partition your hard drive but I guess there can be problems with that.

Of course everbody is pushing the latest graphic cards with demos running everwhere. There's a new demo at MadOnion.com but although it was kind of cool it didn't impress me at all technically. I think the demo coders are losing their edge.

And finally there's the hard drives. I was surprised to see how many 2.5 inch drives there are already. They have 48gig 2.5 inch drives and they have mounts for mounting them in a 3.5 inch space if you want to put them in your desktop. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that. Maybe because you could fit 2 of them in the same space as one 3.5 inch drive bay since they are only 9.5mm tall. The 48gig drive was over priced, around $600 but the 30gig was down around $210 U.S. It's at the point where I rarely have to delete stuff from my drives. Once they get full I can just buy the newest larger size and keep on truckin. ;−D

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