The ScooterBlog

The Acer Aspire One has some interesting features going for it. One of which is more of an accident of the WIndows XP installation side: the second SD card slot. In Linux, it was a way to expand the somewhat-small storage of the SSD. Windows has a 120GB drive, a few gigs isn’t going to help you, and XP doesn’t support it anyways. So, what’s a second SD slot to do?

Maybe accelerating my system is the thing to do. Enter eBoostr, what’s been commonly called “ReadyBoost” for XP. Just like that fated feature, there is a lot of discussion to see whether it really does anything, either by performance or by battery life standards. Even reports on other blogs seem to ask the same question, and it all depends on the quality of the system. Just like with Vista ReadyBoost, the better the system, the less performance boost you get.

The Aspire One falls squarely at the middle of this line. 1GB of RAM is excellent for XP, but it’s not excessive. The processor is dual-core, but low-end and low power. The battery life is short with a small battery, so even gaining 15 minutes with no performance gain is worth it, especially with the 2GB card I am using being worth about five bucks, tops!

My first impression? It does seem to help a little, just from the sense that I do not see the hard drive working quite as hard. The Aspire One doesn’t have a light to denote access to the SD slot, so I cannot tell quite how much the cache is being hit (and you can trust the stats maybe, but it’s good to see more results).

You used eBoostr? ReadyBoost? Post your thoughts on it in the comments, my follow up will be soon.

Bengals fans have understood what it’s like to have coaches who can’t count, leave points on the board, and seem to pull defeat from the jaws of victory at every possible moment. Of course, it’s easy to forget about these times too … when the final score is 38-10, a coaching decision won’t turn that outcome around!

The situation is this: The score’s 14-3, six minutes or so to go, 4th and Goal from the four yard line, and you’ve lost yards with every attempt at the end zone. If you kick the field goal, it’s a one-score game, you just need the 2-point conversion. If you go for it and don’t get it, you’re still down two scores. If you do score the touchdown, you are down just three (or five), you’ll need the two-point conversion either way.

The logical choice for me would be to take the points, get the game down to 8 and leave yourself a chance to drive for a score. The 20-yard field goal was a chip shot. This did not happen; they did go for it, did not get it, and most assuredly, they lost by three points, 14-11 in the end.

Welcome to our world, Browns fans!

Nintendo has the answer to their little internal storage issue … use SD cards! When the system first launched, most people would have looked at this and felt it was short sided, ridiculous, or somehow too pricey to do. Leave it to time to take care of all of those things!

SD cards have become a dime a dozen, and they’re more than small enough that an end user would not mind stashing a couple in a case for their WiiWare or Virtual Console games. A check of my local Micro Center reveals a 1GB card at $6, and a 2GB card at $8, and they’re more than capable enough for the needs of the games Nintendo wants to put out there right now. Heck, the 2GB one might be too capable, just ask the people hacking the system to run backups.

The only thing that Nintendo could do to enhance it would be to update their firmware to have this support SDHC cards as well, something that will make the storage capability of the Wii limitless (and even could open up other publishing platforms). Deft programmers have created SDHC access for other devices, so I have to think the Wii firmware could add support for these. The cost point is even better too; that Micro Center has 8GB SDHC cards for $22.