Power Consumption Tips for new Desktop PC

Power consumption: Look at Energy Star

Technology News : We'd all like to cut our power bills, and Energy Star-qualified computers could be part of that process. If you're upgrading computers and your new machine uses more energy than your old one, you're increasing your so-called carbon footprint; but a system that meets Energy Star guidelines at least increases your power use less than does a comparable system that hasn't been designed to meet the marks of this Environmental Protection Agency program.

With a laptop -- or a refrigerator, for that matter -- a specific model with more or less the same features can be tested and its usage estimated. But when you can upgrade a processor to double the baseline model's speed and stick in four hard drives instead of two, the baseline numbers help only a little in calculating the final energy bill.

Still, because Energy Star's rules for desktops and workstations -- tightened in 2007 -- require an efficient power supply and intelligent power reductions in standby and idle modes, you're still moving in the right direction.

Our verdict: Energy Star shouldn't be the deciding factor, but it's worth crunching numbers with your local electrical rates against other models you'd be considering.

Warranties: Check out the differences

Warranties are complicated beasts, and it's not ideal to recommend spending several hundred dollars extra for "24-hour business day" service when that can actually be interpreted in different ways by different companies.

For on-site repair, you'll typically see a service technician wearing a company tag just for that visit; they work for firms that contract out the local work. If you have a problem that's beyond their ability to repair on the spot, they may lack spare parts, and you may still be out of commission for a day or two or over a weekend.

Visit the official support forums on a manufacturer's site -- Apple and Dell seem to delete few, if any, of the complaints that aren't abusive or obscene. (If they're removing the worst stuff, I'd be scared to see it.) Find out what each warranty option means in practice, and ask around in your area to see whether the local service techs who might appear for any maker's model you buy are up to the task.

Our verdict: You almost certainly will want to spend the few hundred dollars to get improved warranty over the included offer, but research to find out what level is worthwhile.

Pre-installed programs: Remove the bloatware

Every computer maker should offer the option to provide a computer with no co-marketed, pre-installed software packages that generally serve more to slow down your new system's performance than to enhance your computing experience. Yes, antivirus and firewall software trials can make sure you're safe out of the box, but this is also a lock-in strategy with marketing dollars involved, not something that has your interests directly at heart.

It's surprising that PC makers haven't embraced such an option, despite the potential revenue loss from business partners supplying the trial apps. After all, Sony recently endured a public embarrassment when it briefly attempted to charge for removing all the trial software and Sony applications not needed for a system's operation on one of its ultramobile PCs. (The Sony people quickly changed their minds, and you can now get the "Fresh Start" option -- shades of "1984" doublespeak -- on applicable laptops at no cost.)

None of the major makers, including Sony, offers this option for desktops except Apple, which doesn't install trial software from other firms, and has just one inducement for a service -- its .Mac subscription hosting option -- during the setup process.

Our verdict: Manufacturers should offer this software-free option, and removing bloatware should be one of your first tasks after buying a computer.

Hard Disks for your Desktop PC

Hard drives: SATA vs. SAS

Technology News : Both SATA and SAS drives offer high performance, with transfer rates of 3 gigabits per second. But SAS is full duplex, providing this speed in both directions. That's why SAS drives have differentials of hundreds of dollars for higher capacities.

Some PC makers offer only SATA drives for most of their midrange business models, requiring the purchase of a higher-cost workstation to upgrade to SAS storage.

Our verdict: SATA is fast enough for most business purposes, but if you read and write massive amounts of data, only SAS will meet your needs.

Hard drives: Which flavor of RAID?

When the term RAID was originally coined, the phrase "redundant array of inexpensive disks" was a vision of the putative future. Now, with the price per megabyte in disks astoundingly low, RAID is a superb option for improving both speed and reliability in a desktop machine that has at least two hard-drive bays.

The idea behind RAID is that you pick two targets, one being some combination of redundancy, speed and reliability; the other being the total pool of storage you want to have available. Depending on the manufacturer, the drives you purchase may all have to be of the same capacity, although that's not a strict RAID requirement.

RAID 1, for instance, mirrors all data, writing the same data to each of two drives at the same time. If one drive goes south, the other is fully available. Your total storage capacity is half the total of drive space: two 500GB drives equals 500GB of storage.

RAID 0 stripes data, interleaving blocks to extract more speed out of the hard-drive data transfer system -- that is, you can use two 7,200-rpm drives, but effectively have a far higher speed. RAID 0 offers the full capacity of all drives: Two 500GB drives equals 1TB of capacity.

RAID 5 stripes data and error-correction information across three or more drives. If any one drive dies, the others can reconstruct the missing details, and you lose much less storage than with simple mirroring. With RAID 5 and drives of the same capacity, you lose just the equivalent of a single drive's worth of space in the set. With three 500GB drives, for instance, you have 1TB of storage; with four 500GB drives, you have 1.5TB.

You can combine RAID 0 and RAID 1 as 0+1, which provides both speed and backup, but RAID 5 is usually seen as a superior alternative, even though it can be more costly. It requires at least three drives, but can use many more, and you can expand sets later. If you think you'll want a larger set of storage drives down the road, you need to make sure that your desktop has enough drive bays.

Major desktop PC makers typically include hardware support for RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 even in their less-expensive systems, but for built-in RAID 5 support, you may need to select a higher-priced business workstation; this option typically also requires a hardware RAID card -- costing $650 to $800 -- as well.

That additional cost is partly offset for sets of four or more disks of large capacity compared to RAID 0+1, however, because you drop the cost of drives necessary for the same amount of total storage in RAID 5.

Our verdict: For best use, choosing either RAID 0+1 or RAID 5 makes sense, but RAID 5 clearly provides the best combination of speed and reliability, even at a higher cost.

Google envy is alive and well in Redmond

Google envy is alive and well in Redmond

Are you looking for some inside information on ? Here's an up-to-date report from experts who should know.

The weepy countdown to Bill Gates' last day on the job as a full-timer must be getting to Steve Ballmer. Always full of surprises, the big galoot is at it again.

In a revealing interview with The Financial Times, Ballmer distanced Microsoft from any criticism that it's lost a step over the years. In fact, he added, why not point fingers at some other software behemoth? (Any guesses who that might be?)

I haven't seen speed out of Google really. I mean, come on. They have one product. It's been the same for five years--and they have Gmail now, but they have one product that makes all their money, and it hasn't changed in five years.


Yes, but as his erstwhile comrade in arms is wont to say, doesn't that speak to the magic of software? Ballmer can try and call out Google for being a one-trick pony. Still that's one heckuva pony. Truth be told, if Microsoft enjoyed that sort of technology prowess in search, I very much doubt Ballmer would have wasted four months wooing a unenthusiastic Jerry Yang.

But what's with the nonstop trash talk from the CEO--especially in the countdown to Gates' upcoming "Going Away Day?" He ought to watch his words. Over the next week, Ballmer is going to be all over the media, reaffirming that Microsoft is finished with its Yahoo crush and as relevant as ever. Inevitably, reporters will pop the "What about Google?" question. And the more Ballmer insists on convincing interlocutors about chinks in Google's armor, the less people will believe him. In the same FT interview, for instance, Ballmer says the following:

The best time to learn about is before you're in the thick of things. Wise readers will keep reading to earn some valuable experience while it's still free.

I mean, (Google has) a gestalt, but gestalt is gestalt. Let's talk about the reality. The reality is one product makes 98 percent of all of their money, search. Oh, they have two products, AdWords and AdSense. They have two products, both search-based, that make all of their money, and it hasn't changed a lot in five years. I'm not giving them a hard time, but we've got to learn--if you say, what have you learned, we try to learn from people's successes, not from people's gestalt. The gestalt is yet to be proven.

Gestalt? If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to diagnose this as a severe case of Google envy (which may be the flip side of Microsoft's ongoing search for respect as a technology innovator.)

"We're trained in Silicon Valley to believe that Microsoft steals other peoples' innovations," says Microsoft's Stephen Elop, who replaced the retiring Jeff Raikes as president of the company's Business Division. "We just don't give Microsoft credit. I don't know whether that's because of arrogance or hubris."

I spoke with Elop a few weeks ago. As I reviewed my notes, his comments as a former outsider shed a different light on Ballmer's ongoing eruptions of "Google-itis."

"A lot probably has to do with the fact that Microsoft is in a different geography," said Elop, who did prior stints at Juniper Networks, Adobe Systems, and Macromedia, where he held down senior posts. "We've had a generation of leaders who have had to compete head to head with Microsoft over the years. What's happening now is that we're moving on. We've got 2,500 people in the Valley. Maybe I'm surprised that opinion hasn't evolved yet in the Valley, but it will. Too many things are going on."

Maybe so. I can't predict whether Microsoft will ever be received warmly by Silicon Valley. There's a long history and memories die hard. (Microsoft's emissary to the Valley, Dan'l Lewin, keeps plugging away.) Meanwhile, the best way to put the relationship on a more solid footing is to continue to open up and prove Microsoft can build great technology, not just because management is "persistent." (Note to the inner sanctum at Redmond: You can remain obsessed with Google. But try not to let on so much. It's just bad form.)

When word gets around about your command of facts, others who need to know about will start to actively seek you out.