What's new

3 February 2010

A letters column, and another letters column!

14 January 2010

USB 3 drive box. USB 3 controller card. Quite cheap. Any good?

5 November 2009

A new Ask Dan, all about drives.

5 November 2009

More letters!

22 October 2009

Letters!

21 October 2009

From aerial torpedoes to RoboCars.

14 October 2009

Another Photon-light sale!

The US dollar's in pretty lousy shape at the moment, so this could be a good time for people outside the USA to buy some stuff from the Photon factory outlet.

The current "October Pre-Holiday Sale" takes 15% off all Photon lights, Maha batteries and chargers, and Leatherman multi-tools, which they now also sell for some reason.

The 15% discount also applies to their expensive but good variable-brightness "Photon Pro" one-AA-cell light, which has been upgraded with a significantly brighter high-power white LED, in addition to its little red LED for when you don't want to lose your night vision.

And, as usual, I get a cut of the action if you click here and buy something!15 September 2009

Alternate history: Of railways, roadways, 3D cards and PC clones.

13 September 2009

Letters!

2 September 2009

Ask Dan: ExpressCard vs PCMCIA.

In which I figure out why it's possible to get adapters that plug ExpressCards into CardBus PCMCIA slots.

(It's more interesting than it sounds. Well, I think it is, anyway.)

5 August 2009

Letters!

21 July 2009

A couple of aspects of modern computing, and modern transport, that'll seem completely bizarre to people in the future.

22 June 2009

A bold new computer metaphor.

21 June 2009

Letters!

19 June 2009

I haven't begged for money for more than nine months...

...so I thought I'd have a really big beg this time.

Anybody wanna help me buy a new PC?

19 June 2009

Next stop, clay tablets: It's possible to back up computer data onto ordinary paper. And it's less silly than it sounds!

8 June 2009

I just wrote a blog post about a couple of Australian "economic stimulus" programs which Aussie readers might find interesting.

(My apologies to readers who already subscribe to my blog's feed.)

31 May 2009

Letters!

16 May 2009

Which kind of sci-fi super-battery should you ask the aliens for?

30 April 2009

Letters!

(Also, mail to dan@dansdata.com was bouncing for a bit. It's fixed now, though; please re-send anything that didn't get through.)

18 April 2009

Would you like to live forever?

31 March 2009

Ask Dan: A PC for the parents?

24 March 2009

Letters!

13 March 2009

In the unlikely case that you have not yet bought quite enough Photon lights, they've got another sale running now. The list prices for various of their products have been reduced a bit now, and there's a "March Madness" sale running on top of that, until the end of the month

As usual, I get a cut of the action if you click here and buy something.

26 February 2009

A "200Hz screen" can be any one of at least three different things.

23 February 2009

Letters!

21 February 2009

We're all prisoners of game theory.

25 January 2009

Letters!

24 January 2009

Are you going to believe me, or your lying eyes?

14 January 2009

I'm back from my holiday, and yesterday wrote what almost amounts to another flashlight review on my blog.

(If you'd like to be automatically notified of new posts on Dan's Data and How To Spot A Psychopath, I remind you that the Dan's Data feed is here, and the How To Spot A Psychopath one is here.)

2 January 2009

I done reviewed me a hard drive.

It's all environmentickal.

31 December 2008

More letters!

31 December 2008

GPGPU and the Law of New Features.

18 December 2008

More letters!

16 December 2008

Letters!

16 December 2008

Four SATA SSDs, compared.

(Plus one low-cost ring-in.)

10 December 2008

Photon sales mentioned too frequently here. This one reduced to point form:

* Many price reductions
* Free US/cheap international shipping continues
* I get a cut if you click this and buy something

Message ends.

10 December 2008

Letters!

4 December 2008

Letters!

29 November 2008

Whoops - I forgot to mention, even though I'm sure you were all hanging on my every word, that the Photon Light people have a 15%-off-all-lights Thanksgiving sale going at the moment. It ends on the third of December.

(They're also still doing the free/super-cheap shipping deal I mention below.)

26 November 2008

Internet washing machines, and magic rip-off boxes.

21 November 2008

Ask Dan: Box O' Drives wanted.

11 November 2008

Letters!

4 November 2008

Ask Dan: Intel or AMD?

4 November 2008

Ask Dan about RAM.

27 October 2008

Letters!

26 October 2008

On nontransitive relationships.

You know - like in Street Fighter.

16 October 2008

I wanted to love this thing. But the manufacturers just won't let me.

NEWS FLASH: Giant hard drives still stupidly cheap!

(updated February 6th, 2010)

This column has been devoted to pimping super-cheap terabyte-and-bigger hard drives for some months now. The prices shift around a bit - one of the drives that I recommended the last time I updated this column has now actually increased in price - but the take-home message remains the same:

You can get a "1.5Tb" drive, with a real formatted capacity of a hair under 1400 gigabytes (unless you're Apple) for less than $AU170, delivered.

That adds up to about 8,556 real formatted megabytes per dollar.

As I write this, the best-value SATA drive m'verygoodfriends at Aus PC Market sell is a 5400RPM Samsung EcoGreen (I review an EcoGreen drive here), which has dropped in price by a magnificent $AU1.10 since the last time I checked. It's now $AU167.20 including delivery to anywhere in Australia.

The best-value "one terabyte" drive is another EcoGreen which costs only $AU129.80, which is about 16% more per megabyte than the 1.5Tb one.

(There's a 7200RPM version of that drive too, which costs $6.60 more. The higher rotational speed will help system performance a bit if you're using it as a boot drive; if you aren't, get the cheaper, quieter, not-meaningfully-slower 5400RPM version.)

You have, of course, to pay a premium for a "two terabyte" drive. AusPC have a 2Tb Western Digital Caviar Green (another 5400RPM drive) for $AU276.10 delivered. That's about 24% more per megabyte than the 1.5Tb Samsung, which, spoiled as we all are by the ridiculously low cost of modern magnetic storage, you may or may not consider a good deal.

I use a few Samsung EcoGreens myself (one in a USB box), and am perfectly happy with them. I see no reason to pay extra for a drive with a more famous brand on it.

Australian shoppers who'd like to buy the 5400RPM Samsung EcoGreen "1.5Tb" drive for $AU167.20 including delivery anywhere in the country can click here to do so.

If you'd prefer the "2Tb" Western Digital for $276.10 delivered, click here!