Intel Core i3-530

I was impressed by the performance of the new DELL Inspiron 580 desktop with Intel's Core i3-530 2.93GHz CPU and DDR3 memory. It seems to be a quantum step up from the Pentium-based version.

It benchmarks better too; PCmark Vantage 6178 versus 4224 for the older processor. It is just a pity that the price premium is too high. However, I can't wait to try the Intel Core i5-650 which has a faster clock speed with Turbo Boost as well taking it from 3.2GHz to 3.46GHz. So the writing is on the wall for me to upgrade my gaming PC with a new motherboard, CPU and DDR3 memory. Might as well get a new DX11 graphics card too!

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter

I just been delivered my first DELL PC with the new Microsoft Office 2010 Starter instead of Microsoft Works. I was a bit doubtful about a crippled, advertisement displaying version of Microsoft's premier application being any good at all but I was pleasantly surprised. It only has Word and Excel, so no Powerpoint or Outlook but this is hardly a restriction to most users as they typically only need the Powerpoint Viewer and Windows Live Mail can be downloaded and used as a simple email program.

The advertisement strip on the right-hand side is fairly unobtrusive, especially with a wide-screen monitor. And there are few restrictions in Word Starter and Excel Starter for most users. Reviewing changes of Word documents and pivot tables in Excel spreadsheets are the biggest omissions. It also has a neat Office-To-Go feature that allows you to load these applications onto a USB memory stick (about 400Mb) and then use them on another computer to create and edit documents without having to install them. Really neat.

It is a pity that Microsoft is not offering a free down load of Office 2010 Starter and that you can't even buy it in the shops. Also if you purchase the licence upgrade to the full Home and Student or Home and Business versions you only have a single license for that PC and it cannot be transferred. Buying the retail versions is a much better deal.

Old hard disks

A customer complained of a slow DELL Dimension 8400 which intermittently crashed. Performing the usual diagnostics, I determined that the WD 250Gb SATA hard disk drive appeared to be the problem, so I quickly cloned it to a modern Seagate 7200.12 SATA II 320Gb model.

What a difference in the overall system performance! The original disk drive benchmarked at 45Mb/s bandwidth with a 16ms access time whilst the new one gave over 100Mb/s and 6ms respectively. Admittedly the old one was failing and giving the occasional error but I was amazed at the overall performance improvement for just £35 cost. It just shows how much hard disk design, capacity and speed has improved in the last few years.