On A Friday: Go Figure

After reading a test of AMD and Intel processors in the most recent Australian Personal Computer magazine, I was “inspired” (this seems to be the fancy way of saying “copied”) to create this table.

The article mentioned that the newest AMD Sempron processors cost “$0.00000011” (AUD) per transistor, but only mentions this statistic for that processor.

Being a picky buyer, I’d like to know the value for money that I’m getting for each part of my system to the most minute detail. So below is a continuation of the work that APC has started, enjoy!

(IMPORTANT!!!: THIS TABLE IS NOT ACTUALLY OF ANY USE as any kind of indication of value for money. It is entirely for entertainment value. It doesn’t take into account the number of cores, the FSB speed, socket, any cache or the inclusion of HyperTransport/Hyper Threading and as such is no indication of processor value!)

Processor Make and Model	$RRP/bulk (IN USD)	# of transistors	$ per transistor
AMD Sempron LE-1300	$39.99 (Best price on AMD website)	114 million	$0.00000035 (3.50789473 6842105263 1578947368 421e-7)
AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core 7750 (Black Edition)	$79*	450 million	$0.00000018 (1.75555555 5555555555 5555555555 556e-7)
AMD Phenom II X4 945	$165*	758 million	$0.00000022 (2.17678100 2638522427 4406332453 826e-7)
AMD Six-Core Opteron 8435	$2759.99(Best price on AMD website)	904 million	$0.00000948 (9.48450171 8213058419 2439862542 955e-6)
Intel Celeron Dual-Core E1600	$53**	105 million	$0.00000050 (5.04761904 7619047619 0476190476 19e-7)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8190	$163**	410 million	$0.000000398 (3.97560975 6097560975 6097560975 61e-7)
Intel Core i5-750	$196**	774 million	$0.00000025 (2.5322997 4160206718 3462532299 7416e-7)
Intel Core i7-940	$562**	731 million	$0.000000769 (7.68809849 5212038303 6935704514 364e-7)

*These may be bulk prices, I am unsure.
**These ARE bulk prices for quantities of 1k.

(All prices are in US Dollars as these companies are based in America. This also ensures that these statistics remain as accurate as possible for as long as possible despite exchange rates.)

And the winner is:
In this sample, the winner is the AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core 7750 (Black Edition) at 0.000018 cents per transistor.

(All logos and names are © AMD or Intel)

I hope this table amuses you! More useless stats coming in another On A Friday soon!

How To: Make Your Drive Stand Out

Ever had to look twice to find the drive you are looking for in the ‘My Computer’ screen? With an icon file (*.ico) and some simple code this is made easy!

Where’s my Drive!? Sometimes it can be hard to find your drive in the “My Computer” window.

First you have to choose an icon; you can use one you have already, make your own or extract one from the Windows shell32.dll (c:/WINDOWS/System 32/shell32.dll) or other program. A great free program to create or extract icons for both Windows and Mac is IcoFX, available from http://www.icofx.ro. To create a new icon in IcoFX, click File>New, select your icon size (there is an automated process in IcoFX that can convert an icon into all sizes and colour depths that can be applied afterwards, but it is best to choose 48x48 or larger for resolution purposes) and start drawing!

Save your icon as a “Windows Icon ('*.ico)” and open Notepad or other such text editor.

Type the following code (where “icon.ico” is the full name of your icon):

[autorun]

icon=icon.ico

Save this file as “autorun.inf” to the root directory (eg: f:\) of the drive you wish to apply the icon to (It is a good idea to make this file hidden), and do the same for the icon itself. The icon may not show up until an eject or restart.

This can be applied to any Windows flash drive, CD ROM/DVD/HDDVD/BD (include all files on the disk), hard disk drive or SSD. It will not work on a network drive or floppy disk.

If you wish to place your icon in a folder other than the root directory of your drive, type the following (where “documents\icon.ico” is the path from the root folder of your icon):

[autorun]

icon=documents\icon.ico

Windows 7 ‘Fixes’ card reader eject issues.

In Windows 7, users of in-built card readers for cameras, mobile phones etc., can expect less logging off to re-gain access to their reader after ‘Safely Removing’ their portable media.

In older versions of Windows, when you ‘Safely Removed’ an SD card (for example) from your computer, you lost access to all ports in your card reader until you logged out and back in again. This was not only disruptive and inconvenient but also frustrating.

Now, with Windows 7, not only are the ports immediately accessible again but you can eject a single card and leave another of another type still fully functional.

Avoiding confusion, Windows Explorer also now only registers ports with a card actually present in the ‘My Computer’ drives listing. Gone are the days of opening every drive and being told there is no disk until you eventually find the card’s directory.

This is a prime example of how Microsoft is desperately trying to make Windows more user-friendly so as to compete with the ‘humanised’ approach of Linux. If Microsoft keeps on like this, Windows will stop losing small amounts of its market share to Ubuntu and will actually find current Windows users happy and willing to upgrade their systems to the upcoming OS.