Archive for the 'Hardware' Category

iOS 5.0.1 Poor Battery Performance

Published on December 2, 2011 in Apple, Hardware, Mobile and Tech Lessons. 0 Comments

I recently, like many purchased an iPhone 4S (kinda sad that there wasnt a 5, but i can deal with that). But iv been a little dissapointed with the battery performance my new new £499.00 phone. Given i had the iPhone 4 before, and was comfortably getting over a days ‘angry’ usage out of the device before going hunting for my docking station, the 4S seems to run out of steam pretty dam quick.

Well, this solution doesnt quite resolve the issue 100%, but does help a little. Go check out your settings, Location Services, System Services and see what your phone is saying about things like “Setting Time Zone”,  Location based iAds and Traffic.

If like mine, you have a little purple compass next to them, this kinda indicates that these services are searching constantly looking for GPS positions to help them out. Well, personally i dont care about iAds, nor helping Googles traffic service, and on the rare occasion i do leave the country, im sure i can figure out how to change the time…

So, do yourself a favour and knock these off. I did it and am now getting a few more hours out of my faithful friend.

Also, do yourself another favour, and stop asking SIRI to remind you of things when you get to places, you will notice that when you do this, the compass symbol doesn’t disappear until you reach your desired alert location. The reminders app is constantly polling your position to make sure it hasn’t missed an opportunity to remind you to “charge your phone when you get home”. If you do insist on using the reminders, try doing what im doing, make a good conservative guess when you think your going to be there, and set a time based reminder. e.g. I know I finish work at 5:30PM, it takes me roughly 25 mins to get home, so try this “Siri, remind me at 6PM to clean the house before my wife comes home and beats me up for not cleaning the house”, it works just as well and iv only been beat up once !

RAID Storage Server 2.0

Published on August 25, 2009 in Hardware, Personal and Tech World. 0 Comments

Back in my final year at uni I threw togeather a nice little RAID storage server using one of them Adaptec rebranded 2610SA Dell cards, 6 x 500GB SATA hard disks into a RAID 5 Array, which up untill now has proved fantastic for my home run media. That box is currently a multifunction server, provinding web hosting for internal websites, 3 Virtual Machines (running through VMWare Server), a VoIP Asterisk server running several internal and external extensions for myself and several family members and friends as well as being the primary storage for 3 Vista Media Center machines scattered around the house.

Well, the time has finally arrived where ill be leaving this nest, a new job has arrived and will involve me moving down to Exeter within the next few weeks or month, so it came time to re-asses a few architecture items, first of which was this server. Obviously it cant be in two places at once and both my new location and here need it, so their was only one choice (well, im lying there a little, but this is the one i wanted to do, cus its cool lol)…

Time for a new Server hehe !

Specifications;

  • Motherboard : Gigabyte MA790X-UD3P
  • CPU : AMD Phenom 9650 Quad Core 2.30 Ghz
  • Memory : 4GB DDR2
  • Graphics : ATI Radeon 9200 (PCI)
  • Power Supply : Chieftec 650W (80 Plus, modular power connectors)
  • RAID Card : Adaptec Unified Serial Card – 3805 (Internal 8 Port SSF-8087)
  • Primary Hard Disk : Samsung HD501LJ 500GB (Running off Motherboard SATA Controller)
  • RAID Hard Disks : 4 x Samsung HD103UI 1TB Green SATA
  • RAID Configuration : RAID5 Array 2.728TB (Over 4 Drives, card capable of running 4 more at later date
  • Operating System : Windows Small Business Server 2008

Suffice to say, its a little bit of an upgrade to the old machine, which has been lagging a little for some time now (mostly due to the weight of the virtual machines pulling it down). At the current time this machine has been built into an old cheap case I had sitting in the garage, but next month ill be ordering a 20 or 24 bay rackmount storage server (like this one) and transfering the bits across, look out for some good pics of the finished article soon…

For the immediate future this server is going to have another 4 1TB drives added, creating an addition 2.7TB array, which will either be used for addition storage, or most likely a mirror for the time being. But with the purchase of the new chassis ill be looking to get an additional Adaptec RAID card capable of running the additional 12 disk bays on the chassis, most likely one of the adaptec 51245 cards with Intelegant Power Manangement, this card has the capability to power the additional 12 bays within the machine and one external SSF-8087 connector to power the JBOB boxes such as this one which can be stand alone outside the main chassis.

CES – Viva Las Vegas – 2009

Published on January 6, 2009 in Expensive Stuff, Gadgets, Hardware and Tech World. 0 Comments

cesWell its that time about, CES 2009 is about to kick off….

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) represents one of the years largest tradeshows where some of the biggest badest Gadget producers all come togeather to show off what their R&D departments have been cooking up behind hidden doors…

Among this heavyweight collection is Apple, who are rumored to be releaseing all sorts of new goodies, including the long awaited new Mac Mini (whoo, thats my birthday presant sorted out hehe)… and a new 17″ Macbook Pro !

Engadget have been awarded the illustrious title of official blog site for the CES event and have set up a newsubdomain on their site to detail out the latest new and reviews as they happen, check it out at http://ces.engadget.com/

If your lucky enough to be in the vacinity of Las Vegas over the next few days and have some money, and time free… head over and check out some of the goodies, opening times below !

Sands Expo and Convention Center/The Venetian*
Thursday, January 8, 2009 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Friday, January 9, 2009 8 a.m. – 5 p .m.
Saturday, January 10, 2009 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Sunday, January 11, 2009 8 a.m. – 3 p.m.
*The Venetian Tower Suites open same hours as the LVCC and Hilton.

Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas Hilton
Venetian Tower Suites
Thursday, January 8, 2009 10 a.m.* – 6 p.m.
Friday, January 9, 2009 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Saturday, January 10, 2009 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Sunday, January 11, 2009 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
*South Hall opens at 9 a.m.

VuNow POD now avaliable for purchase !

Published on December 22, 2008 in Entertainment, Hardware, Media Center and Tech World. 0 Comments

After a little patience and VuNow POD is now avaliable for purchase !

VuNow has gone through extensive internal testing and testing by hundreds of beta users.

VuNow is now available for online purchase at www.vunow.com starting at $99

Verismo’s VuNow is the only solution that provides everything a consumer wants. Access to the broadest online

content, simple to use, easy to install, and compact in size — all at an affordable price.

Watch millions of Internet videos DIRECTLY to your TV instead of your PC

  • A Standard Definition and a High Definition model of the VuNow PoD that can connect to any TV
  • Support for wired or wireless connectivity
  • Navigation using a TV-friendly and intuitive User Interface
  • Watch YouTube™ videos on TV by categories
  • Search for videos with the powerful built-in Video Search Engine
  • Choose from a large selection of movies and download from CinemaNow™ (Coming soon)
  • Download videos using BitTorrent™ protocol
  • Watch videos directly from popular websites by categories
  • Watch Live TV Channels from around the world
  • Access to Personal Media such as video, music, and photos from the home network – stored on a PC, Networked Attached Storage device, or even on a connected USB storage device
  • No subscription fees

Buy your VuNow PoD, sit back and enjoy hours of online video entertainment

Repairs begin on undersea fibre cables

Published on December 22, 2008 in Hardware, Networking and Tech World. 0 Comments

HectorA French ship has begun repairing two undersea cables in the Mediterranean that were severed on Friday, disrupting internet and phone communications.

A robot submarine will locate the ends of the cables on the sea bed and bring them to the surface to be re-connected.

They were cut within 5 minutes of each other, possibly by a trawler net.

Egypt says it has been able to restore most of its communications by re-routing services, but other parts of the Middle East remain badly affected.

Experts have warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and that the knock-on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.

Lengthy process

Experts from France Telecom Marine arrived at the site of the damage to the SEA-ME-WE4 and SEA-ME-WE3 lines onboard the cable ship, Raymond Croze, at 1330 GMT on Sunday, spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said.

They then sent a remotely-operated submarine robot called “Hector” to the sea bed to begin the search for the two ends of each line.

It is unclear how long repairs will take, as a ship could have dragged the cables several kilometres from their normal positions.

Once located, the cable ends will be brought to the surface by the robot and repairs will be carried out in a special facility on the ship – a process that could take days.

“We have to fix the cable fibre by fibre, and it’s a very huge cable,” Mr Aymard told the Associated Press.

France Telecom said it expected to repair SEA-ME-WE4 by 25 December and SEA-ME-WE3 by the end of the year.

A third line, operated by FLAG Telecom, was also cut and will be repaired by another ship.

In January the same line was damaged off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, severely disrupting internet and phone communications for many in the Middle East for days, although only two lines were snapped then.

A few hours before the three lines were cut, a suspected sub-sea earthquake damaged a local GO cable to Malta, severely disrupting communications to the island.

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Welcome to Fluxbox, im afraid we have no affiliation with the Linux window manager, so if your looking for that, turn around now.

Fluxbox is now the combined effort of a group of former University of Plymouth students, who use this site to document their IT endeavours and general random rants, we invite you to join or world, where everything is in a state of flux !