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July, 2011

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2011-07-28 23:21

Java 7 Released

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by havard    in Java

Oracle (finally) released Java 7 today, 4 years and 7 months after the initial release of Java 6. The previous version updates used to be on a 18 months schedule, so that makes this release 37 months late. It’s getting a pretty good bashing on Slashdot, primarily for its current owner, Oracle.

New features includes syntactic sugar like Strings in switch statements; underscores in numeric literals; and type inference for generic instance creation. The Open JDK site lists the same features, so I’m guessing that means everything is open sourced already. However, it seems smaller items on my wish-list did not make it, like the Immutable annotation. (The JSR 305 has been inactive for ages, and still the only implementation is a Google Code hosted project.)

The new Java Doc is here, and latest download from Oracle here. The Open JDK binaries are also available in the repositories of major distributions.

yum install java-1.7.0-openjdk java-1.7.0-openjdk-devel

or
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre openjdk-7-jdk

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2011-07-15 21:54

Storage Prices

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by havard    in Storage

Some minor updates since last time. All the Corsair disks are new, and there are also many new OCZ drives, as discussed in details a few days ago. However, the biggest mover this time is not hardware, but rather the Swiss Franc / Euro exchange rate.

Media Type Product Capacity Price CHF Price Euros Euros / GB GBs / Euro
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 2000 GB 75.00 64.94 0.03 30.80
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 1500 GB 64.00 55.42 0.04 27.07
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 2.5TB 2500 GB 108.00 93.52 0.04 26.73
External 3.5 Western Digital Elements Desktop 2TB 2000 GB 90.00 77.93 0.04 25.66
External 3.5 Western Digital Elements Desktop 3TB 3000 GB 162.00 140.28 0.05 21.39
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3000 GB 165.00 142.88 0.05 21.00
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB 1000 GB 58.00 50.22 0.05 19.91
External 3.5 Western Digital Elements Desktop 1TB 1000 GB 69.00 59.75 0.06 16.74
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB 500 GB 47.00 40.70 0.08 12.29
External 2.5 Western Digital Elements SE 1TB 1000 GB 105.00 90.92 0.09 11.00
External 2.5 Western Digital Elements SE 500GB 500 GB 73.00 63.21 0.13 7.91
Blu-ray Verbatim BD-R SL 25 @ 50GB 1250 GB 248.00 214.75 0.17 5.82
DVD-R Verbatim 16x DVD-R 100 @ 4,7GB 470 GB 95.00 82.26 0.18 5.71
Blu-ray Verbatim BD-R 25 @ 25GB 625 GB 136.00 117.77 0.19 5.31
DVD+R DL Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL 25 @ 8,5GB 213 GB 57.00 49.36 0.23 4.31
CD-R Verbatim CD-R 100 @ 700MB 70 GB 34.00 29.44 0.42 2.38
SSD Kingston SSDnow V 100 Series 128GB (kit) 128 GB 192.00 166.26 1.30 0.77
SSD Kingston SSDnow V 100 Series 256GB 256 GB 384.00 332.52 1.30 0.77
SSD OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Cap. 120GB 120 GB 199.00 172.32 1.44 0.70
SSD Corsair Force3 120GB 120 GB 199.00 172.32 1.44 0.70
USB Flash Sandisk Cruzer Flash Drive 16GB 16 GB 29.00 25.11 1.57 0.64
USB Flash Sandisk Cruzer Flash Drive 32GB 32 GB 59.00 51.09 1.60 0.63
SSD OCZ Agility 3 120GB 120 GB 222.00 192.24 1.60 0.62
SSD OCZ Agility 3 240GB 240 GB 449.00 388.80 1.62 0.62
SSD Corsair Force3 60GB 60 GB 119.00 103.05 1.72 0.58
SSD Corsair Force3 240GB 240 GB 489.00 423.44 1.76 0.57
SSD Kingston SSDnow V+100 Series 64GB 64 GB 132.00 114.30 1.79 0.56
SSD OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 120 GB 249.00 215.62 1.80 0.56
SSD Intel 320 Series 80GB 80 GB 169.00 146.34 1.83 0.55
USB Flash Sandisk Cruzer Flash Drive 8GB 8 GB 17.00 14.72 1.84 0.54
SSD OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Cap. 60GB, 60 GB 129.00 111.71 1.86 0.54
SSD OCZ Agility 3 60GB 60 GB 129.00 111.71 1.86 0.54
SSD Corsair Force GT 240GB 240 GB 518.00 448.55 1.87 0.54
SSD OCZ Vertex 3 240GB 240 GB 529.00 458.08 1.91 0.52
SSD Intel 510 Series 120GB 120 GB 269.00 232.94 1.94 0.52
SSD Corsair Force GT 120GB 120 GB 279.00 241.59 2.01 0.50
SSD OCZ Vertex 3 60GB 60 GB 143.00 123.83 2.06 0.48
SSD OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB 240 GB 579.00 501.37 2.09 0.48
SSD Corsair Force GT 60GB 60 GB 149.00 129.02 2.15 0.47
SSD OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 120GB 120 GB 299.00 258.91 2.16 0.46
SSD Kingston SSDnow V Series 30GB 30 GB 81.00 70.14 2.34 0.43
SSD OCZ Vertex 3 480GB 480 GB 1489.00 1289.37 2.69 0.37
Compact Flash Sandisk CF Card 32GB Extreme 32 GB 174.00 150.67 4.71 0.21
Compact Flash Sandisk CF Card 16GB Extreme 16 GB 110.00 95.25 5.95 0.17
Compact Flash Sandisk CF Card 64GB Extreme Pro 64 GB 549.00 475.40 7.43 0.13

Exchange rate: 1 Euro = 1.154825 CHF.

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2011-07-14 08:50

More SSD options

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by havard    in Storage

HotHardware has a new round-up of six SSDs, including Corsair, OCZ, Crucial, and Patriot drives. Jumping right to the conclusion, three of the drives win “Editor’s Choice”: OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS, Corsair Force GT, Patriot Wildfire. They are matching in that all of them use the new SandForce SF-2281 controller, and synchronous NAND flash memory. Looking at price / GB, the Crucial drive wins, but only by a small margin.

These drives are available from Digitec, however, it is not always clear whether it is the same models, as some of them are listed with SF-2200 controllers. Prices are as follows:

Corsair Force GT 120GB : CHF 279.-
Corsair Force3 120GB : CHF 229.-

OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB : CHF 579.-
OCZ Agility 3 240GB : CHF 449.-

Crucial m4 SSD 256GB : CHF 429.-

Again, Corsair comes out amongst the top drives, which underlines an earlier conclusion by Anandtech from November 2010. My only problem with these drives, is that the 120 / 240 GB drives comes at a rather high price, and is perhaps more than you’d need for just a boot drive. Luckily, their younger brothers in 60 GB are also available at a more palatable price:

Corsair Force GT 60GB : CHF 149.-
Corsair Force3 60GB : CHF 119.-

OCZ Vertex 3 60GB : CHF 143.-
OCZ Agility 3 60GB : CHF 129.-

Again, it is unclear which specific SandForce controller sits in these drives, the SF-2281 or SF-2200. However, based on marketing and technical specifications from SandForce, it seems 2100/2200 is the general series, while 2281 etc. is the specific part number.

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