Details are beginning to emerge about the construction of a new high-capacity submarine telecommunications cable to serve the African continent. Named the Wasace cable, it will be connecting Africa with South America, North America and Europe and will be project managed by the David Ross Group from the United States.

Ramon Gil-Roldan, CEO of the Wasace Cable Company Worldwide, a multinational development company, says that the new cable will be one of the largest in the world and the largest ever mounted in the Atlantic Ocean, that’s purpose is to link all the major markets of the four continents. While it is unknown when the cable will be ready for service, Wasace claims the system will be the first to employ next-generation 100Gbit/s fibre-optic technology, offering “ten times the capacity of previous systems”.

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In my previous post I described my hardware choices when building my new Home Server, something that I am handling as a weekend project. For the purposes of this article I am using a HP Proliant Microserver – a great compact little server with ample expandibility for home use. As a start I am using the built in 250GB Seagate drive as the boot drive, and then three Western Digital AV Green Power 2 Terabyte drives. You can choose whatever size drives you want, but look at things like power usage and reliability. This is a server after all.

There is a number of operating systems to choose from for home storage. We need an OS that is stable, has the ability to backup PC’s on your network, and also has drive redundancy to keep your data safe in case of drive failure (and yes, drives do fail). After looking at all the options, Windows Home Server version 1 is still your best bet. It is rock solid, and has a great community of add on developers. You can find it at most specialist computer shops for around $99.

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I have always been a great fan of Network Attached Storage in the home. With consumer’s ever increasing storage needs and the switchover to laptops, the need for a centralised storage area on your home network is becoming more relevant than ever. Sure, we can shift some of that storage to the cloud, but SA’s tragic state of broadband has made this more difficult than it should be.

Certain media just works better when stored locally. In the US you might have a great little AppleTV device that just streams you a HD movie quickly and easily, in SA we have to make do with other methods to get our media kicks on. If you store it locally, you also have a lot more freedom on what device you want to access your media from. Want to watch a movie that is stored on your home server on your iPad? Not a problem. But you first need the right hardware.

Luckily it is cheaper and easier than ever to build centralized storage on your home network. Sure, you can go buy dedicated NAS devices if you do not want the hassle of building something. And you can just connect a big external harddrive, but that loses most of the functionality of having a network attached device. There are some of us who like the thrill of DIY. And when it comes to WHS, your own efforts will in most cases lead to better results.

What hardware to get: (more…)

Looks like the tablet wars is about to get another combatant. However – this one will come from a company who actually understands user experience better than most. Amazon.

Right now the tablet market is a little one sided. It is pretty much iPad versus the rest. Those of us who follow tech news everyday have grown a little tired of “JAAT” (Just Another Android Tablet). Every day we read about another company jumping into the tablet game with no clear differentiation in their products. All of them share similiar form factors and run the same OS, so we just do not care anymore. But Amazon’s latest Kindle might be different. The rumour mill has now kicked off with an article by MG Siegler -Techcrunch apparently has some sources which told them a lot about the device.

The Kindle has always been a pretty simple device – a e-book reader with some small additional features. But its success relied on its content back-end. It had Amazon’s giant e-book library at its disposal. Now with the Kindle “Fire”, Amazon is going to sell a tablet class device firstly as e-book reader, but this time it gains a lot of multimedia power. (more…)

Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors and scissors beats paper. But  Thunderbolt beats USB 3.0 everytime! Not in the way that USB 3.0 would soon become obsolete because I believe that the “universality” of the Universal Serial Bus would remain for many years to come but one has to admit that the new buzz surrounding this latest quantum leap in serial I/O port seems to be growing.

I suppose I should start with a disclaimer in an effort to reduce the number of comments that would reduce this post to merely a “Mac vs PC” debate, which is pretty much what one would find on most posts that discuss this technology. The reality is that all new Mac notebooks and computers (except the Mac Pro) are equipped with Thunderbolt, as Apple have opted to be an early adopter with this technology, which is incidentally, owned completely by the Intel Corporation. Since Thunderbolt uses the same Mini DisplayPort connector that was already present on most Apple Computers the only thing to tell the ports apart would be the Thunderbolt symbol above the port, as opposed to the DisplayPort symbol. Intel however have plans to roll out Thunderbolt I/O technology on Windows laptops as early as the first half of 2012, as announced last week by the Vice President of Intel, Mooly Eden, making this less and less a debate of proprietary.

Thunderbolt essentially combines the PCI Express bus and the DisplayPort into a new serial data cable that is capable of transferring data at a data speeds of 10 Gb/sec. In simpler terms, it is a data cable that is capable of extremely fast data speeds with compatible devices. Although more than double the data transfer speed of USB 3.0, I believe that it’s true brilliance lies not merely in the high transfer rate that is achievable but in it’s ability to daisy-chain up to 5 devices, one (or even two) of which includes a high definition monitor.

Is this for everyone? Should we all rush out and buy Thunderbolt compatible devices? Luckily manufacturers have made that decision much simpler as the number of Thunderbolt compatible devices remain in short supply. Lacie have led the pack with the announcement of the Thunderbolt enabled “Little Big Disk” which is essentially a 320GB Solid State drive. The fact that it is a solid state drive is significant since it is the only external storage that would be able to utilise the speed of Thunderbolt since most hard drives are comparatively limited in speed. Many more Thunderbolt enabled products were on display at this years Intel Developer’s Forum but the award for most striking (and possibly most expensive at $999) Thunderbolt enabled device would have to go to the new 27 inch Apple LED Cinema Display.

The best part of Thunderbolt is that it is essentially daisy chained version of PCI Express (with massive bandwidth) – so one Thunderbolt connector can branch out into many different connectors. Apple’s Thunderbolt display is a good example of this. Using one Thunderbolt connector, it hosts a massive resolution display which then also hosts USB ports, a Firewire 800 port and Gigabit ethernet port. And of course the obligatory Thunderbolt passthrough port to add even more goodies to that diasy chain. This is great for users of notebooks like the Macbook Air – which have extremely limited connectivity options. Now with one plug a Macbook Air user is instantly connected to all their external devices and gigabit networking. Apple has basically taken the idea of a dock, and put into their display.

The emergence of Thunderbolt is still in it’s infancy but the technological gains are too significant to be ignored. Who would have thought that there would have been a market for Blu-ray considering the storage potential of Dual Layer DVD? Thunderbolt enabled devices would currently cater for a niche market and hence be quite expensive but as with all things in this industry, the prices will come down. When it does, you would want to have a motherboard that is Thunderbolt enabled and USB 3.0 compatible.

Nobody nowadays would want to be seen at a computer with a stiffy drive, it just archaic – Thunderbolt may spell a similar fate for its predecessors.

I thought of writing this article last week and the main theme was going to be around whether now was the right time to start purchasing USB 3 devices in favour of devices that were limited to USB 2 speeds. It appears that it may no longer be valid since Makro last week had a 2,5” 1 TB portable HDD which supported USB 3 at the same price as Game’s special for the same device that was limited to USB 2. “Early Adopters” may be forgiven for thinking that they are reading an archived article because their purchasing algorithm is similar to this:

For the rest of us it is either a purchase made after careful consideration of various factors which include price and availability vs functionality gains or, a purchase based on the advice of an “Early Adopter”.

Most of the readers of this blog need no introduction to the improvements made with USB 3, also known as Super Speed USB. They range from faster data transfer rates (realistic transfer rates of 3.2 Gbits/sec although the theoretical maximum is 4.8 Gbits/sec), full duplex data transfer and device polling is replaced by interrupt driven protocol which results in a considerable reduction to the power drain often associated with leaving idle devices connected to your notebook. I was most excited about the feature that allowed up to an 80% improvement in USB power delivery which essentially meant that it would take a shorter time to charge my iPad, that was if Apple supported USB 3, which they currently do not. Apple have done another ‘Firewire’ and shipped the new line of MacBook Pro’s with Thunderbolt, a new I/O peripheral protocol developed by both Intel and Apple. Although Thunderbolt is capable of much faster data speeds than USB 3 (10 Gbits/sec) and has the ability to daisychain devices, I suspect that it will only be utilised by a niche market. I suspect however that Apple will eventually support USB 3 on it’s newer devices much the same way in which the older Mac’s were equipped with both a Firewire and USB 2 port. In any event I plan to do a review of Thunderbolt in an upcoming post as there are already devices on the market that support this protocol.

Returning to the discussion on USB 3, I strongly doubt that the prices of USB 3 and USB 2 devices will remain similar for much longer. With companies advertising USB 3 drives as being ten times faster than USB 2 devices, neglecting to inform the customer that those comparisons are only relevant if you have a Motherboard or PCI card that supports USB 3, I expect more and more consumers opting to purchase USB 3 devices. Furthermore, due to the backward compatibility of USB 3 to USB 2, I predict that manufacturers will shortly only manufacture devices that are USB 3 compatible. This would result in USB 2 devices, especially storage devices, being sold at a considerable discount. I am certain there would be a market for these devices amongst those who are happy with the current data transfer rate of USB 2 and see these prices as great value for money.

If you are the type of person that has one or two peripheral devices,  you should consider getting future devices that are compatible with USB 3 provided you are not paying too much of a premium for it. If you are an early adopter and have already purchased your USB 3 docking station and PCI Card then you may want to consider getting the discounted USB 2 drives because the discs contained within may be a very cost effective way to augment your storage capacity. Because you can never have too many, Right?

OK, so Apple released its new version of the iMac yesterday, finally heading to quad core processors accross the range and much better graphics cards as well. Thunderbolt was the major reason people might have hessitated to get the iMac, but now its finally part of the deal. The 27 inch model even gets two Thunderbolt ports.

In terms of physical design it is unchanged, with the same great all-screen design. The 21 inch keeps the same 1920 x 1080 IPS LED display, and the 27 inch keeps the same huge 2560 x 1440 pixels display. Under the hood all the iMacs get quad core Core i5 or Core i7 processors, and much faster AMD Radeon HD 6750M GPU with 512MB of GDDR5 memory, with high end models getting AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. Brisk.

Apple is also pushing its Magic Trackpad, which makes sense with its upcoming Mac OS X Lion release, which will gain a lot of iOS like finger swiping functionality. So what do the South African prices look like? (more…)

Update: Since this review post went live, Core has announced that iPad 2 will reach SA on 29 April. And the pricing is not half bad! Yeah, we are happy as well.

In March we were lucky enough to show you of what it was like to wait in line at the Apple store in Austin, Texas and get hold of the iPad 2. While we focussed on the entire purchasing experience, we wanted to spend some more time with the device before we gave our full opinion. For the past few weeks we have been dealing with the iPad 2 enough to get a much more informed account if it really deserves our hard earned cash, or if it maybe warrants an update from the iPad 1. So lets dive in…

Physical Features

If you have handled the original iPad, and liked it, you will like the iPad 2. Apple did not steer too much away from it, instead only refining elements of the design. A typical example of evolution, not revolution, the iPad 2 is slightly thinner. While you do not necessarily notice the thinner chassis, you definately notice the new flat back, instead of the rounded back of the original iPad. The iPad 2 also now has tapered edges, instead of the corners previously used. This, combined with the flat back really does make the device more comfortable to hold. The rear sports a new speaker design that had me worried if the sound will be muffled if placed flat on a table, but that is luckily not the case. The only other difference on the back of the device is the new camera – but we will get there.

One of the criticisms of the previous iPad was that the device was too heavy. While it was still very light compared to laptops, it was rather uncomfortable to read with for extended periods of time. The iPad 2 is a little bit lighter, and a person can really feel the difference. It is still not as comfortable to read as with the Amazon Kindle though. (more…)