Based on my experience the last time I upgraded my iPod Touch, I was a bit hesitant when it came to this release. I was pleasantly surprised to see that none of the 3rd party apps were broken after the upgrade this time around. So far the iPod Touch has been rock solid on this release. The 2.0 release was pretty solid too, so it’s nice to get some stability back. (one thing that was certainly missing in the previous release) The most noticeable new feature mirrors the Genius feature of the new iTunes 8. I’m interested to see how well it works. The Genius feature is supposed to suggest music you’d like based on other things you have. It can also create playlists that go together based on the same technology. I’ll have to give it a whirl the next time I’m on the bus…
Category Archives: Tech
Greening my home IT infrastructure
It’s been a while since my last post, in part because work has been crazy busy and in part because I’ve been working on migrating to a “new” server at home. I finally finished the migration earlier this afternoon. The primary reason behind doing this is to achieve a 70% reduction in power usage. My old machine was a 2nd generation Athlon at 1.2Ghz and used about 108 watts. The new machine is a legacy-free (no serial or parallel ports) Compaq Evo with an Intel P4 at 1.9Ghz and uses only 30 watts. While I was at it, I also upgraded my storage capacity and moved from Windows Server 2003 to 2008. So far everything seems to be running quite well. I considered switching to Ubuntu Server, but in the end decided to stick with Windows so I could preserve my Active Directory domain. Perhaps I’ll try that in the next migration phase. (maybe when/if I move to an even lower power platform.)
Intel finally wakes up, smells the lack of bandwidth
[H] Enthusiast – Intel Nehalem Technology Overview Webcast
One thing I’ve loved over the past few years is explaining to the Intel fanboys why my HPC at work is Opteron based. Intel fans love to talk about clock speed and how the latest Core2 processor beats AMD’s Phenom in gaming benchmarks and such. It always blows their mind when I explain how Opteron destroys anything with a FSB in the HPC space. It seems Intel’s state of denial over AMD’s superior Hypertransport technology was largely a front for envy kept in secret. Intel’s unveiling of their Nehalem platform reveals what is a near copycat design called QPI or QuickPath Interconnect. It will be interesting to see AMD’s response to this design. For now the Intel fanboys are predicting the swift death of AMD. Let’s not forget that AMD developed this system for their 64-bit x86 platform (before Intel even had a 64-bit x86 on the roadmap) and was way ahead of the game then. I seriously doubt they’ve been sitting on their laurels all this time.