A Tech Update from DRZ

[Dr. Z]

Thought I would bring you guys "up to speed" as I have been out of the loop here for quite some time.

First of all, I cant remember if I mentioned that due to some epic "windfalls" from various places of employment, myself and my housemates have moved the core of our network to Fibre.

All network-attached storage runs from a fibre switch linked to a Cisco 3550 which then distributes copper gigabit to the rest of the house, in some cases via LACP-enabled aggregated links to avoid bottlenecks anywhere.

Its all housed in the living room in a 24U rack. I'll update this post with pics later on

Moving on...

When my 3 series was stolen, my laptop was in the boot and was also stolen. This was therefore in need of replacement via insurance and I struck lucky (remember I only paid £63 for it!) and they made me an offer which I was happy with: to replace it with:

My new Samsung NC10 Netbook

GORGEOUS little machine - 10.2" widescreen, Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1Gb RAM, 160Gb HDD, Bluetooth, 6-Cell battery.

Where to start? Comes with XP preloaded but obviously that went by the wayside immediately to make way for Ubuntu which I then applied the Netbook Remix modules to. On XP, it felt fast but on 'buntu it runs like greased lightning. An SSD version isn't available, but I would imagine that if there was it would be even faster again.

The screen is NOT one of those shimmery-shiny x-black/diamondbright style screens and it benefits massively for it. My laptop had a shiny screen and it bugged the hell out of me when using it anywhere other than in an averagely lit room. Outside on a bright day or under strip lights and it was awful - this is useful no matter what. Its very, very sharp too and the colours are just fantastic from it.

The touchpad is a multi-touch affair but it is small enough that you find your fingers slipping off the edge of it a lot, once you get used to it though, its not so bad to use. The keyboard is where it really shines though. The eeePC, MSI Wind, Acer Aspire One and the Toshiba NB100 all have really tiny keyboards set into them. This keyboard is 95% of the size of a normal laptop keyboard and goes right to the very edge of the chassis, making it very, very nice to use indeed.

Battery life is the real runaway selling point of this though. The 6-Cell battery gives a real-world runtime figure of 5-6 hours @60% screen brightness. Thats just phenominal considering what the competition offer - the Aspire manages a little under 3 hours with a much smaller screen and with an SSD instead of a traditional HDD.

Pics to follow, but its worth mentioning that it looks absolutely stunning in the flesh.

Note: For any hackers out there, it uses the single best wifi hacking chipset out there - the Atheros chipset! It means everything like kismet, aircrack-ptw etc etc just work straight out of the box with no messing about and with all features enabled. The Bluetooth hardware sadly does not support monitor mode, so no snooping in on keystrokes for people's wireless kbs and mice which is a shame