Computer Expertise

♦♦♦♦♦The New Technology Solid State Drive Definition.....

We’ll make no assumptions here and keep this article on a level that anyone can understand. You might be shopping for a computer and simply wondering what the heck SSD actually means? To begin, SSD stands for Solid State Drive. You’re probably familiar with USB memory sticks - SSD can be thought of as an oversized and more sophisticated version of the humble USB memory stick. Like a memory stick, there are no moving parts to an SSD. Rather, information is stored in microchips. Conversely, a hard disk drive uses a mechanical arm with a read/write head to move around and read information from the right location on a storage platter. This difference is what makes SSD so much faster. As an analogy, what’s quicker? Having to walk across the room to retrieve a book to get information or simply magically having that book open in front of you when you need it? That’s how an HDD compares to an SSD; it simply requires more physical labor (mechanical movement) to get information.
A typical SSD uses what is called NAND-based flash memory. This is a non-volatile type of memory. What does non-volatile mean you ask? The simple answer is that you can turn off the disk and it won’t “forget” what was stored on it. This is of course an essential characteristic of any type of permanent memory. During the early days of SSD, rumors floated around saying stored data would wear off and be lost after only a few years. Regardless, that rumor is certainly not true with today’s technology, as you can read and write to an SSD all day long and the data storage integrity will be maintained for well over 200 years. In other words, the data storage life of an SSD can outlive you!
An SSD does not have a mechanical arm to read and write data, it instead relies on an embedded processor (or “brain”) called a controller to perform a bunch of operations related to reading and writing data. The controller is a very important factor in determining the speed of the SSD. Decisions it makes related to how to store, retrieve, cache and clean up data can determine the overall speed of the drive. We won’t get into the nitty-gritty details for the various tasks it performs such as error correction, read and write caching, encryption, and garbage collection to name a few. Yet, suffice to say, good controller technology is often what separates an excellent SSD from a good one. An example of a fast controller today is the Sand Force SATA 3.0 (6GB/s) SSD controller that supports burst speeds up to 550MB/s read and write speeds. The next gen Sand Force 3700 family of controllers was announced in late 2013, and is quoted to reach a blistering 1,800MB/s read/write sequential speeds as well as 150K/80K random IOPS.
Finally, you may be wondering what an SSD looks like and how easy it is to replace a hard drive with an after-market device. If you look at the images below, you’ll see the top and undersides of a typically-sized 2.5” SSD. The technology is encased inside either a plastic or metal case and looks like nothing more than what a battery might: The form factor of the SSD is actually the same as a regular hard drive. It comes in a standard 1.8”, 2.5”, or 3.5” size that can fit into the housing and connectors for the same-sized hard drives. The connector used for these standard sizes is SATA. There are smaller SSDs available that use what’s called mini-SATA (mSATA) and fit into the mini-PCI Express slot of a laptop.

: Speed up Chrome and save bandwidth with Google’s new Data Saver extension.....

Next time you’re saddled with a data cap or have to suffer through poor Wi-Fi, connecting to the Internet might not be as much of a chore if you browse with Chrome and the proper add-on. Earlier this week, Google quietly released Data Saver (Beta), an extension that routes traffic through the cloud to improve connectivity.
As on Android, Data Saver for Chrome reduces bandwidth usage by compressing the pages you visit. Google servers act as traffic intermediaries, intercepting and optimizing websites before they reach your browser. Similar services are found in many popular mobile browsers, which makes sense; cellular connectivity is hardly consistent, and many smartphone users are stuck on restrictive data plans. Use cases for laptops and PCs are harder to envision, but users with poor connection speeds stand to benefit slightly.
Related: Best Google Chrome extensions
Data Saver won’t help in all instances, though. To pacify security concerns, compression automatically disables on pages delivered with SSL (HTTPS) encryption. Incognito traffic is exempted, too.
For everyday browsing, though, Data Saver will work. It’s an easy install from the Chrome Web Store, and toggling requires no more than the click of the squiggly icon in Chrome’s taskbar. Clicking that icon will also reveal the amount of bandwidth you’ve saved with Data Saver enabled, with a more detailed view accessible by typing chrome:net-internals into Chrome’s address bar and hitting Enter.
In my limited tests, Data Saver didn’t seem to make a huge difference in page loading times. To be fair, I’m usually connected to pretty solid Wi-Fi, but your mileage will definitely vary. Data Saver requires Chrome version 41 and up.
Chrome isn’t the first to bring bandwidth-saving cloud processing to computer browsers. Opera introduced Turbo in 2009, promising at the time bandwidth savings up up to 80 percent through text and image size reduction.

•••••Sandy Bridge – 32 nm process technology
•••••4 physical cores/8 threads
•••••32+32 Kb (per core) L1 cache
•••••256 Kb (per core) L2 cache
•••••8 MB L3 cache
•••••995 million transistors
•••••Introduced January, 2011
•••••Socket 1155 LGA
•••••2-channel DDR3-1333
Variants ending in 'S' have a peak TDP of 65 W, others – 95 W
Variants ending in 'K' have unlocked multipliers; others cannot be overclocked
Integrated GPU
All variants have base GPU frequencies of 850 MHz and peak GPU turbo frequencies of 1.35 GHz
Variants ending in 'K' have Intel HD Graphics 3000 (12 ex*****on units); others have Intel HD Graphics 2000 (6 ex*****on units)
Variants
•••••i7-2600S – 2.8 GHz/3.8 GHz Turbo Boost
•••••i7-2600 – 3.4 GHz/3.8 GHz Turbo Boost
•••••i7-2600K – 3.4 GHz/3.8 GHz Turbo Boost
•••••i7-2700K – 3.5 GHz/3.9 GHz Turbo Boost