You must try Ubuntu 9.04

[Zombie]

Throw away your winshit.

http://news.cnet.com/ubuntu-9.04-as-slick-as-windows-7-mac-os-x/

April 24, 2009 6:22 AM PDT
Ubuntu 9.04 as slick as Windows 7, Mac OS X
by Renai LeMay

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Here's what the official press release won't tell you about Ubuntu 9.04, which formally hit the streets overnight: its designers have polished the hell out of its user interface since the last release in October.

So much so, in fact, that I am starting to prefer using my Ubuntu "Jaunty Jackalope" desktop over the similarly slick Windows 7 beta (which I am currently running full-time on one desktop) and Mac OS X Leopard operating systems, which I also use regularly.

I left Windows Vista, XP, and even Debian lying bruised and battered by the roadside some time ago.

You won't be able to notice the vast improvement in Ubuntu's desktop experience over the past six months by browsing screenshot galleries of 9.04 or looking at new feature lists. What I'm talking about is that elusive slick-and-speedy feel you get from applications launching fast, windows moving around without jerkiness, and everything simply being where it should be in the user interface.

Launching and using Firefox on Ubuntu 8.10 on my 2GHz Core 2 Duo-based machine with 2GB of RAM, a 7200rpm hard disk, and an Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS always seemed to feel like I was going back a few years, to a time when Web browsers were not considered something you always had open to service Web applications like Gmail and Bloglines.

It was the same with Windows Vista.
In short, Ubuntu is now as slick and beautiful as Mac OS X or Windows 7.

Now, just like Microsoft has taken the blowtorch to Vista to produce the lightning-quick Windows 7, which so far runs well, even on older hardware, Ubuntu has picked up its own game.

I particularly noticed the Ubuntu difference when I put the operating system to the test by simultaneously launching and using multiple applications, listening to music and more while using my spare CPU cycles in the background to encode high-definition video with Mencoder. Ubuntu still felt very fast--even with traditionally sluggy pieces of software like OpenOffice.org.

It's not just the speed changes, however, that has got me excited about Ubuntu 9.04. It's also the subtle additions to the interface; the logical move of shutdown and reboot options to the far right of the menu; the slick new notifications system; the seamless (finally!) integration of the Nvidia accelerated drivers, and the cleaned-up options and package install systems.

Want Adobe Flash or other proprietary software like multimedia codecs on Ubuntu? Just search for them in the one location, under their own names. No downloading anything from any Web sites. No package management or dependencies. No apt-get. Point and click.

I'm not a Linux novice (in fact, I'm a former Linux and FreeBSD systems administrator), and I've been using Linux on the desktop since the late 1990s. I usually run a combination of Ubuntu and Windows on my PC, and the latest Mac OS X on my laptop.

So I'm in a position to notice step changes in user interface behavior like the one that Ubuntu has brought to the table with 9.04. In short, Ubuntu is now as slick and beautiful as Mac OS X or Windows 7.

As we've noted in earlier articles, Microsoft has also brought its best to the table with Windows 7. However, it's a pity that Apple didn't seem to do so with Leopard. Like some reviewers, I felt that Steve Jobs' latest operating-system opus added a lot of new features, but also some unfortunate erratic behavior that muddied Mac OS X's position as a user interface leader.

As the magazine Macworld has noted, the new Stacks feature in Leopard's Dock is a "mess" and replaced the formerly utilitarian approach to keeping folders in the Dock with a "snazzy but generally less useful pop-up window."

The new "Spaces" feature in Leopard is nothing new; it provides multiple virtual-desktop workspaces, which Unix has had for decades; but I found Apple's implementation erratic.

Then, too, there was the speed price some users paid in Leopard for all the upgrade, though that could just be the older-hardware penalty. On my 1.5GHz G4 laptop with 1280MB of RAM, Leopard runs sluggishly, whereas Tiger runs like a dream. As I don't use any of the new features, the upgrade seemed worthless.

When you consider Microsoft's remarkable rebirth with Windows 7 and the fact that Ubuntu is free, open source, and runs on anything, you would have to wonder what sort of rabbit Steve Jobs will have to pull out of his hat with Snow Leopard to keep growing Mac OS X's share. Sure, there are some apps missing on Linux (say, Photoshop). But the same can be said of Mac OS X in certain areas, and VMware and CrossOver solve a lot of problems.

Looking back to the genesis of Ubuntu 9.04 six months ago, I suspect that its subtle but powerful changes are due to the new user interface team that Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said at the time he would put in place. If so, that team has already earned its paychecks and even more, and we're looking forward to seeing what another six months of development will produce.

In the meantime, kudos to Ubuntu 9.04: you got game.

Renai LeMay of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

 

[uncleyap]

Throw away your winshit.

http://news.cnet.com/ubuntu-9.04-as-slick-as-windows-7-mac-os-x/

Absolutely!

I actually developed a bootable USB thumbdrive very tiny using this:

Smaller than SG 20cent coin! Must be less than 10 grams!

1. It will boot up from USB with either 32 or 64 bit Kubuntu or Ubuntu 9.04.
2. It is still a full featured thumb drive FAT32. about 3GB of user space.
3. It has virtual machine (un-corruptable MS [crap] XP) in 3.2GB image.

The MS [crap] XP is for the suckers of MS only.

Basically very handy, all round, all purpose, powerful tool, for IT person. It is a like bringing around a laptop without all that bulky heavy hardware, just stick it into any computer you got everything.

[x]ubuntu 9.04 is very powerful in terms of driver and plug & play, beats XP & vista upside down, beats most Linux distribution that I know. Particularly the CUPS, scans network automatically and install so far most network printers within few clicks. It is really an upper-hand platform as it is.

It's LAN card and sound & display & wifi drivers are very smart, and I plug my USB around on all sorts of hardware, it boots up like live-CD, but with USB storage to retain my $HOME etc. I am very reluctant to even think about carrying any laptop any more.

 

[JavaMocca]

Absolutely!

I actually developed a bootable USB thumbdrive very tiny using this:

Smaller than SG 20cent coin! Must be less than 10 grams!

1. It will boot up from USB with either 32 or 64 bit Kubuntu or Ubuntu 9.04.
2. It is still a full featured thumb drive FAT32. about 3GB of user space.
3. It has virtual machine (un-corruptable MS [crap] XP) in 3.2GB image.

The MS [crap] XP is for the suckers of MS only.

Basically very handy, all round, all purpose, powerful tool, for IT person. It is a like bringing around a laptop without all that bulky heavy hardware, just stick it into any computer you got everything.

[x]ubuntu 9.04 is very powerful in terms of driver and plug & play, beats XP & vista upside down, beats most Linux distribution that I know. Particularly the CUPS, scans network automatically and install so far most network printers within few clicks. It is really an upper-hand platform as it is.

It's LAN card and sound & display & wifi drivers are very smart, and I plug my USB around on all sorts of hardware, it boots up like live-CD, but with USB storage to retain my $HOME etc. I am very reluctant to even think about carrying any laptop any more.

What web browser it supports?

Can the thumb drive contains other applications or must it solely be for it?
Where does one safe the documents and other data files? In the same thumb drive possible?

 

[Eurekas]

Uncle Yap how much you will sell for this thumbdrive?

 

[uncleyap]

What web browser it supports?

Can the thumb drive contains other applications or must it solely be for it?
Where does one safe the documents and other data files? In the same thumb drive possible?

It is logically not any different from a USB Harddisk, faster since flash drive got ZERO access time & seek time compared with Winchester HDD.

You can change settings, add applications or remove. You can online update it also.

It is just physically smaller & very light.

You can just save data in the FAT32 partition and make your own folders, you can also safe in inside the Casper file system, which is a Linux mounted ISO image, with the difference that you can delete and add & modify.

Casper & the FAT32 are just mounted at different mount points, anything under /home is within Casper, anything under /media/disk/ is in the FAT32.

for Reading on casper:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/ubuntu-linux-live-cd-save-data-desktop-information-on-usb-device.html

 

[uncleyap]

Uncle Yap how much you will sell for this thumbdrive?

8GB like the picture can sell S$88 ?

But you must prepare your own windows HDD image, due to copy-wrong of MS. :p It will be ilLEEgal to copy and distribute.

I am actually hoping USB 3.0 to come to market faster, that SPEED is (max)5Gbps, faster than SATA. So solid state drive performance will be seen on tiny devices like these tiny pocket tools. Think Swiss Army Knife!

http://www.cnet.com.au/usb-3-0-to-offer-5gbps-transfer-speed-intel-339282231.htm

 

[angie II]

Yalor hard disks these days so cheeep, my new 1 year old SATA 80GB HD collecting cobwebs, i give or trade with u lah. Or exchange IDE with me Ya i am going backwards... :p If i were to meet u, then be prepared to see me in a Ho Jinx mask.

 

[uncleyap]

Yalor hard disks these days so cheeep, my new 1 year old SATA 80GB HD collecting cobwebs, i give or trade with u lah. Or exchange IDE with me Ya i am going backwards... :p If i were to meet u, then be prepared to see me in a Ho Jinx mask.

Lots of my retied IDE disks are sitting around here. Wasted.

Yesterday I found out that 2.5" laptop IDE are selling @ about double the prices of their SATA counter part @ same capacities. Madness!

Awful rip off!

There is a video clip on YouTube showing USB 3.0 at exhibition demo sustaining x'fer rate at around 210MB/s. Firewire (IEEE1390) & SCSI can be phased out, considering price - performance ratio.

 

[uncleyap]

Accordingly there is this video online by a stripping to nude university girl teaching you how to assemble a PC in 13 steps. But the professionals commented that to be BULL SHIT after viewing it.




http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/090517/8/1jn1y.html

裸女教電腦組裝　專家：瞎掰的

<label> </label> 更新日期:<q>2009/05/17 12:17</q>
<table class="left" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td><label> </label></td></tr> </tbody></table>網路上最近流傳一篇文章，是女大學生教學DIY電腦組裝，步驟僅僅13個，示範的模特兒卻一步步跟著脫個精光，圖文說明用字曖昧，組裝過程的示範，姿勢相當撩人，但電腦專家看了直說，這教學網頁根本是瞎掰的。

網路流傳的DIY電腦組裝教學，專家卻邊看邊笑。電腦專家：「真的是厲害。」
標題叫女大生脫衣，教你愛上電腦，用13張連續圖說明，先反覆檢查主機板，耗去兩個步驟，明眼人一看就知道，比較像在秀身材，中央處理器這麼關鍵的裝置，女模決定用嘴展示，圖文解說，引人遐想的字眼頻頻出現。

電腦組裝一步步下去，女模衣服卻一件件消失，光溜溜的女模，躲在小小的主機記憶體後面，主角電腦變配角，任誰都知道，這叫醉翁之意不在酒。電腦專家：「不可能裝的起來，因為連機殼都沒看到，POWER也沒講，什麼都沒講，裝的起來才有鬼，我懷疑是電腦病毒。」

姿 勢撩人的電腦教學，有人看了血脈噴張，有人明快下了注解，叫沒主題沒內容沒意義，但網頁也標明，這是KUSO文章，要大家輕鬆一下，這樣的文章到底有沒有 意義，或許這位老兄最誠實。電腦專家：「見仁見智，看要往哪個方面去想，組電腦那簡直是瞎掰。」記者：「從某個方面想的話？」電腦專家：「那就是意會。」

 

[angie II]

8GB like the picture can sell S$88 ?

A 8GB thumb drive now is cheeeper, about half of what it used cost a year ago. Its like that one so u wait & waaaaaait for it drop lower...

 

[uncleyap]

A 8GB thumb drive now is cheeeper, about half of what it used cost a year ago. Its like that one so u wait & waaaaaait for it drop lower...

The classic trend of computer products, it had been that way since day 1.



The bootable Linux within should justify to fetch a setup fee around S$15 not more than S$20, quantity dependent.

Can actually do it on any USB memory devices as long as sufficient capacity. Minimum 4GB. There are higher speed devices e.g. 16MB/s rate, cost more.



By comparison right now, I find SATA HDD surely faster than thumb USB. But the thumb USB are acceptable speed, and really a lot fater than live-CD.

 

[Zombie]

I actually developed a bootable USB thumbdrive very tiny using this:

Smaller than SG 20cent coin! Must be less than 10 grams!

This one is very good.

 

[uncleyap]

What web browser it supports?

Can the thumb drive contains other applications or must it solely be for it?
Where does one safe the documents and other data files? In the same thumb drive possible?

Firefox latest plus Konqueror. Can add any Linux browser e.g. Opera

 

[scoopdreams]

Firefox latest plus Konqueror. Can add any Linux browser e.g. Opera

I believe you mean Epiphany instead of Konqueror (Konqueror for KDE, and Epiphany for Gnome). And secondly, I don't think you 'developed' the idea of a bootable Linux on a thumbdrive - it's been around for almost a decade.

Thirdly, a setup fee of $15 is alright, but you should also advise that it is so easy with many built-in installers now able to directly install on to a bootable Linux drive.

Fourth, and lastly, it might not be faster than a LiveCD distro, because a lot of LiveCD distros cache everything in RAM, e.g Puppy, and DSL (DamnSmall Linux).

It's great you are spreading some Linux love around, but the Linux community prides itself on accurate and exacting info, and we should try to keep to that tradition. This is not because of some anal-retentive disorder, but more because support can only be gotten by trawling the forums and Web, and it is important to know the correct terms (imagine someone trying to find plug-in installation support for Epiphany, only to be finding info on plug-in installation for Konqueror. Danger! Will Robinson!)

 

[angie II]

How to boot from a thumbdrive


Create a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy Way

<!-- google_ad_section_start --> We've already covered how to use an Ubuntu Live CD to backup files from your dead Windows computer, but using the boot cd can sometimes be a little slow. We can speed up the booting process by installing Ubuntu to a bootable USB flash drive instead.
To accomplish this, we'll use a tiny software package called UNetbootin, which is designed to make the installation process simple and easy.
Create the Bootable Flash Drive
You'll first need to download the UNetbootin software and save it somewhere useful, since there's no installation required, just double-click to run.
I chose to use an already downloaded ISO image of the Ubuntu installation cd, and then chose my flash drive, and clicked the OK button. Yes, this step is as simple as that.

The process will extract the files from the ISO image (or download them), copy them to the flash drive and then install the bootloader. Depending on what you are installing, this really doesn't take very long.

Once the process is completed, you'll be prompted to reboot… which you don't necessarily have to do unless you want to test booting the flash drive on the same machine you are using.




.

 

[scoopdreams]

Lots of my retied IDE disks are sitting around here. Wasted.

Yesterday I found out that 2.5" laptop IDE are selling @ about double the prices of their SATA counter part @ same capacities. Madness!

Awful rip off!

There is a video clip on YouTube showing USB 3.0 at exhibition demo sustaining x'fer rate at around 210MB/s. Firewire (IEEE1390) & SCSI can be phased out, considering price - performance ratio.

It's not a rip-off, the prices just mirror the demand & supply curve. Less supply, higher costs.

Firewire (IEEE1394a and IEEE1394b) is still a favorite amongst audio enthusiasts and video editors, because unlike USB, it can sustain a transfer rate without dips and spikes, that is so crucial to video and audio (dropped audio and video frames).

SCSI with it's monstrous cables is already phased out. SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI) is leading the trend now in server storage, and even then, just barely, as performance differences between enterprise and consumer harddisks continue to shrink.

 

[angie II]

Estimated space required for Ubuntu 9.04 data files in your thumbdrive = 7XXMB.

Price of

• 2GB flashdrive @ SL = around $15++
• 8GB flashdrive @ SL = around $3X++
• 16GB flashdrive @ SL = around $5X-6X++
• 32GB flashdrive @ SL = around $13X++

.

 

[uncleyap]

I believe you mean Epiphany instead of Konqueror (Konqueror for KDE, and Epiphany for Gnome). And secondly, I don't think you 'developed' the idea of a bootable Linux on a thumbdrive - it's been around for almost a decade.

Thirdly, a setup fee of $15 is alright, but you should also advise that it is so easy with many built-in installers now able to directly install on to a bootable Linux drive.

Fourth, and lastly, it might not be faster than a LiveCD distro, because a lot of LiveCD distros cache everything in RAM, e.g Puppy, and DSL (DamnSmall Linux).

It's great you are spreading some Linux love around, but the Linux community prides itself on accurate and exacting info, and we should try to keep to that tradition. This is not because of some anal-retentive disorder, but more because support can only be gotten by trawling the forums and Web, and it is important to know the correct terms (imagine someone trying to find plug-in installation support for Epiphany, only to be finding info on plug-in installation for Konqueror. Danger! Will Robinson!)

If you read carefully and not miss the details I was doing a Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu. I have both, but I only spend more time with KDE version aka Kubuntu. I don't quite use Gnome. The browser is thus Konqueror by default. I added Firefox.

I customed the image inside Casper, loaded extra packages, like network utils e.g. whois, pearl language, keyring etc.

Most importantly I installed VMWare Player a FOC vitutual machine platform, from which other virtual machines can be run after booting thumb drive. Including MS XP / VISTA or other Linux or Solaris or BSD systems. As long as the thumb drive have enough space, you can put as many virutual PCs inside. You want more space, you can get a 32MB thumb drive.

These customization works are what I called development, I spent my time to get these things done.

If you just use the USB-creator utility from Ubuntu etc you will not get these wonderful features, these additional stuffs are what I had selected and tested.

To run VMWare Player it is FOC license, your RAM must not be too tiny. My own VMs use like 512MB each. If you have 4GB you can simulaneously run several VMs. Your LCD screen better be large enough if you want to see many PC's screens simultanously.

Why VMs? They can not die. They always work. They will not be randered useless by virus or spyware. I SNAPSHOT them. They neednot be booted up nor shut-down. Just like a suspend-resume situation of laptops, except that they will always resume to my SNAPSHOT persistantly. They need no anti-virus no anti-spyware they run FAST! They are not pain in the ass like normal MS craps.

In that one tiny 10g USB drive, of usually 8GB microSD, you have Kubuntu Linux, and typically MS-XP. It is faster compared to Live-CD version of Kubuntu 9.04. It is silent, the CD spins very loudly and read slowly.

The micro distributions' CD runs fast because they are very tiny foot-print, there is nothing much to read from the CDs. Linux booted up from USB thumb drive also cache in RAM, as long as you have lots fo RAM it is always fast. Faster than CD/DVD because (1) it need not spin the discs (2) it need not seek the optical head nor to track (focus) the media's vibration & wobbering.

The bottle neck of USB flash disk is usually at the USB2.0 + the standard flash chip's bus bandwidth. The SATA Solid State Disk are thus faster (much faster than standard Winchester HDD). When USB3.0 come out with 5Gbps speed, it will beat SATA. Then they can interally use wide-bus-parallel flash chip configuration inside USB3.0 thum drive + some cache RAM buffers. At that point USB3.0 will beat SATA. Because not only speed fast, the connector is smaller than SATA and that USB supply power for the device on the same connector rather than like SATA requiring a sperated, and rather large power connector.

USB 3.0 connector is competible with USB1.0 and USB2.0, but 5 more extra pins are inside.

SATA complete with power looks like above. Very large and troublesome compared with USB3.0, it speed also at max 3Gpbs (SATA2)

 

[scoopdreams]

If you read carefully and not miss the details I was doing a Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu. I have both, but I only spend more time with KDE version aka Kubuntu. I don't quite use Gnome. The browser is thus Konqueror by default. I added Firefox.

If that's the case, my bad. I only saw "[x]ubuntu", not too sure which one you were referring to where you said Kubuntu. When Linux enthusiasts see [x]ubuntu, it either means Ubuntu... or Xubuntu, which runs off the XFCE windows manager environment.

I customed the image inside Casper, loaded extra packages, like network utils e.g. whois, pearl language, keyring etc.

Casper is outdated, no one in the modern linux community uses Casper much anymore. However, if it works for you, that's great!

Most importantly I installed VMWare Player a FOC vitutual machine platform, from which other virtual machines can be run after booting thumb drive. Including MS XP / VISTA or other Linux or Solaris or BSD systems. As long as the thumb drive have enough space, you can put as many virutual PCs inside. You want more space, you can get a 32MB thumb drive.

These customization works are what I called development, I spent my time to get these things done.

Ah, that development. Sure, whatever rocks your boat, i'd personally prefer to call it just installing software and playing around.

If you just use the USB-creator utility from Ubuntu etc you will not get these wonderful features, these additional stuffs are what I had selected and tested.

To run VMWare Player it is FOC license, your RAM must not be too tiny. My own VMs use like 512MB each. If you have 4GB you can simulaneously run several VMs. Your LCD screen better be large enough if you want to see many PC's screens simultanously.

Why VMs? They can not die. They always work. They will not be randered useless by virus or spyware. I SNAPSHOT them. They neednot be booted up nor shut-down. Just like a suspend-resume situation of laptops, except that they will always resume to my SNAPSHOT persistantly. They need no anti-virus no anti-spyware they run FAST! They are not pain in the ass like normal MS craps.

I've deployed VMWare Infrastructure for upwards of 20-odd corporate thin clients, and personally use VMWare Workstation with multiple VMs for development and testbeds... and this is the first time I've heard of someone using a thumbdrive to do a VM. VMs snapshots and restore can get very I/O intensive, and the pathetic read/write speeds of consumer flash drives are just too painful. Maybe it's just the difference between our tolerance levels.

And VMs can still die. A substantial corruption in the .vmdk file itself is enough to render your VM useless. What it helps, is that you can easily backup a VM by just backing up the relevant files itself.

In that one tiny 10g USB drive, of usually 8GB microSD, you have Kubuntu Linux, and typically MS-XP. It is faster compared to Live-CD version of Kubuntu 9.04. It is silent, the CD spins very loudly and read slowly.

The micro distributions' CD runs fast because they are very tiny foot-print, there is nothing much to read from the CDs. Linux booted up from USB thumb drive also cache in RAM, as long as you have lots fo RAM it is always fast. Faster than CD/DVD because (1) it need not spin the discs (2) it need not seek the optical head nor to track (focus) the media's vibration & wobbering.

of course, definitely agree with you there on flash vs optical.

The bottle neck of USB flash disk is usually at the USB2.0 + the standard flash chip's bus bandwidth. The SATA Solid State Disk are thus faster (much faster than standard Winchester HDD). When USB3.0 come out with 5Gbps speed, it will beat SATA. Then they can interally use wide-bus-parallel flash chip configuration inside USB3.0 thum drive + some cache RAM buffers. At that point USB3.0 will beat SATA. Because not only speed fast, the connector is smaller than SATA and that USB supply power for the device on the same connector rather than like SATA requiring a sperated, and rather large power connector.

USB 3.0 connector is competible with USB1.0 and USB2.0, but 5 more extra pins are inside.

SATA complete with power looks like above. Very large and troublesome compared with USB3.0, it speed also at max 3Gpbs (SATA2)

USB 3.0 will not be able to power high-RPMs hard disks, as they only offer 50% improvement (compared to USB2) in power throughput across the bus to peripherals (5V for USB vs 30V for Firewire for example). Right now, the limitations is not in bandwidth provided by SATA, and or USB2/3, it is the media itself.

Really good 10k and 15k RPM mechanical hard drives can still hold their own vs SSDs, e.g the WD Velociraptor series. And there is a reason why cache-RAM buffers are not used on flash drives or SSDs - it is not needed any more. Access times for flash drives or SSD are sub 1ms, and write buffers are no longer needed precisely because the system does not need to initially queue data for writing while hard disks seeks the write (pun not intended) spots.

I currently run an SSD in my notebook - blazing fast read speeds, but still nowhere near the maximum 300MBps SATA-II is capable of. Write speeds is still deplorably slow, and OSes are not optimized for it yet. New storage tech seems to be pointing towards a direct connection to the PCIe bus, for a maximum of 1GBps throughput.

But, you could be right, in the near future, there could be a merging of standards. However, I would say, don't count on it. The reasons why there are deviating standards are because essentially, different specs for different implementations and purposes - SATA controllers are more expensive to manufacture than USB2 controllers. And there is also the niggling thing about CPU usage spike during USB I/O operations, as compared to say IEEE1394 and/or SATA.

P.S you got to be an old-school tech-head if you still use the term "Winchester" hard drive. No one EVER uses that term nowadays, we just call it a mechanical hard drive.

 

[uncleyap]

What I set out to do was to develop a bootable pocket USB thumb as my Swiss Army Knife for my works. I settled on Kubuntu now, after switching about 1st from Knoppix to Puppy to Madriva to PCLinuxOS.

VMWare is something I began to use in early 90's when their version was in 2.x, now is 6.5.2 already. I use VMplayer on desktop + laptop essentially. VMware Workstation for workstaions, and VMware Server for servers. Only the expensive ESX etc I don't touch. :p

USB can not power up Winchester disk, even the common 2.5" pocket drive strictly speaking is insufficient for 5400rpm. The more proper way they had adapted to use 2.5" is to tap power from 2 USB sockets instead of just 1. The single socket version should only be safely used for low RPM disks which is low current.

USB3.0 I am expecting to be able to power flash drives with performance near SSD which you are using. They can be made for efficient power conservation by switching unused ICs to stand-by mode. But still, when total capacity exceed a certain level, the USB can not supply enough current.

Apple's original firewire800 spec stated upto 45V, that is they are using voltage instead of current and that runs better for longer wire, the original (early) specs said cable using CAT5 class can reach length over 50M. But IEEE did not reached high popularity level. Some other high performance serial bus exist in the Post Production highend sotrage / SAN e.g. Stone Array. I used to work in that industry.

http://www.omegasystems.cl/nota_ver.asp?id=92

Yes the term Winchester most young computer user have no idea what they are. when I started in IT industry, our hardware look like these:


http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=stor

This image is closer to the type of harddisks I 1st installed and serviced.

or this one: The system was only 8-bit the capacity was 10MB, the diameter of disk is 11". The media disk pack is removed out like this picture above, and had any one dropped it, will lose their jobs.

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/127


These are all pre-winchester.

The following one is one of the Winchester in the 80s in original IBM PC AT (i286 16bit) this is before even i386, 20MB, 5.25" FULL HEIGHT. I installed 200-300 sets in those days.

My 1st computer is Mostek 6501 processor 8 bit, 1MHz CPU speed, 2KB RAM 2KB ROM, no disk, no floppy. NO Monitor! I used TV. It has only monitor program and I coded in HEX to learn programming. My programs are stored in audio cassette tapes, saved and recorded to cassette recorder, and loaded in the same way. That was 1979.

Today our CPU is about 3 million times faster, RAM is 4 million times larger. Flash replaced ROM. I witnessed all these progress hands on and through the full 30 years journey.

There is still an article online about my OSI-400 micro-computer with a photo:

http://www.pc-history.org/ohio.htm

http://technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele/OhioScientific.html

Here this is exactly what my 1st computer looked like in 1979:

You can see a TV as monitor, and cassette recorder as storage.

I had no computer casing - could not afford. I build every thing else myself including power supply and RF modulator for TV. It cost thousands in those days. The amount of money spent on this can buy a dual xeon workstation today with 32GB RAM.

Therefore, to have 8GB inside this today is a strong contrast that I experienced:

If you looked at the picture of my 1st computer, the top right-hand side is the memory bank area. The top right corner chip is a RAM chip @ S$80+ those days, it's capacity is 4bits X 512 so 4 of this chip made 2KB of RAM. Today's 16GB microSD card is 8million times of my RAM in 1979.