4 reasons why you should get Solid-state drives

It's been about 2 weeks since I got my new laptop with an SSD. The initial impression was not too great, but it's keep improving. I realized many advantages that I didn't expect. I list some here although I might post 4 reasons why should not in a few months.

1. It's quiet. No noise. I've never seen any laptop this quiet. The most quiet one I had was the Sony Vaio laptop (about 7 years ago). But this one is a different level.

2. It's cool. No heat. Again, I don't think any laptops without SSDs can compete with this one. I once got surprised touching my old laptop, so hot! Once you taste SSDs, I say there is no turning back.

3. It's free from any concerns about disk damage. No moving disk part. I was installing MS Visual Studio while walking and driving. I also close the lid without waiting for the computer to go off. Just put it in my backpack as soon as I hit the power button.

4. It's fast. My feeling is it's about 30% ~ 100% faster. It doesn't give you an instant booting or hibernation, but it's satisfactory. But honestly, I'm not sure wheter it's fast because it's new or it has a SSD. Probably a combination of both.

New laptop

I finally got my new laptop. IBM Lenovo T400, 4G, 128G SSD. WXGXA+.
It's 14 inch but bigger and heavier than my 15 inch HP laptop. Together with its looks, it feels like some metal box. SSD feels faster, but not blazingly faster. Screen resolution is satisfactory. I feel a big difference between 800 and 900.

The Prestige

This is why no one can detect his method.

Total devotion to his art.

A lot of self sacrifice.

It's the only way to escape. I can barely lift this thing and it's not even filled with water. Or fish, look.

...

Any time he's in public, any time he goes out. It's unthinkable.

Week Two

Time flies. It's been already a week since I got here. I'm in a better status than last week, but still don't know what exactly I'll be doing this summer. At least, I was given some papers to start off and read them and am catching up the studies. I'm still in tense as nothing really happened so far. Feels like walking on thin ice? A calm before the storm?

A good thing is I'm a beginner's status of mind without mannerism or something. Changing working environment and meeting new smart people is very stimulating. I meet other students whose interests are not far from mine, and see their footprints and sometimes get impressed. Yesterday, I met a girl Rimma. She said it's her third visit to MSR. I went to her website to read her name correctly, and found that she have four publications this year. What a productive year! One of the papers was written by herself, which was even more impressive. Hope to have such a productive year :)

Day Three

Wherever I move to a new site, I collect the memory of its first sight. Two days ago, I was walking into the DMX group section following my mentor and a glassy, modern interior of Microsoft Research building 99 was collected. It wasn't flamboyant or splendor yet was stylish. Possibly, that's because I knew world class researches are performed in the building. I wish I could post pictures, but after a long orientation, I figure that could be a bad idea with all the legal and confidentiality issues.

Today, I had my first lunch in the cafeteria of building 117 (I think) with fei, arnob and eckel (?). While chatting, arnob and I realized that we were in the same session at the VLDB 2007. Meeting new friends is always pleasant especially when you can share your interests.

Damage control

Wasn't able to do much for two days.

Friday
My supervisor didn't show up on the weekly meeting scheduled for the morning. What happened? He sometimes postpones it, but cancellation without any notice is the first time. Anyways, I find it hard to work effectively on Fridays. I had a social gathering in the evening, which ended almost at the midnight. There is a movie called 'Girls night out'. That evening might have been called 'Unmarried, desperate bachelor's night out'. Only I, out of 5, was married, and the others are at their early or mid thirty. The main topic was how to get married in this dire situation of lack of elligible "Miss" in Vancouver.

Saturday,
Morning was gone with the shopping excursion to the Costco. Afternoon was gone with the two consecutive piano lessons of my wife and me at the gorgious house of David's teacher's. The multi million dollar house is located in Dunbar ans it took 20 ~ 30 minutes by bike. Somehow, we got exhausted from the biking and we fell asleep soon after dinner.

Sunday,
Now, I'm sitting in a small table in the Beanery cafe realizing that nothing has been done for two days. I find it hard to start work right away in this case. In generally, I have to spend as much time as I spent doing nothing to regain the inertia needed. The pressure of having to catch up on the work frustrates me. A good damage control ability is badly needed.

Russia

One of my favorite pastimes while in class was reading a geography textbook. These days I often waste time reading such articles in new sites or wikipedia for a not-so-short break from papers. The culture, new people, countries and history always make me marvel and realize my ignorance. Here are some facts on Russia I found while reading some news.

"Russia has the largest known natural gas reserves in the world and is the world's second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia. Oil and gas accounted for about 60% of Russia's exports in 2005."

"Alcoholism is a major problem. Recent research published in the British medical magazine The Lancet reported half of all deaths in working-age men in Russia are caused by excessive drinking."

"Russia has what the World Health Organization describes as the biggest Aids epidemic in Europe, mainly from a rise in injected drug use that followed the social and economic upheavals of the 1990s."





source: BBC