Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
February 4, 2007

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 2, Number 34 — Sunday, February 4, 2007

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Serial ATA Drives and PC Problems
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   Adware Popups Problems
   4.   Cell Phone Shopping - I Need Your Input
   5.   The SeaMonkey Internet Suite
   6.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   7.   Installing SeaMonkey - Getting Started with SeaMonkey
   8.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

My emailed newsletter is sent weekly to individuals who have subscribed to the newsletter.
Click here to subscribe. It's free!

1.  Serial ATA Drives and PC Problems

Reader Ian Holland wrote this week reading my latest Special Edition Newsletter that goes to email subscribers:

Hi Terry,

Just read your VERY absorbing newsletter, I have a ( moronic??) question about those SATA hard drives.

I recently ( 2006) built 5 pcs for the office ALL with SATA drives, and they are all the same spec as this one at home with regards to RAM ( 2gb) and processors ( all Pentium 4, 3.5GHz) . So, to all intents and purposes they should be more or less the same ( all ASUS mother boards the same make and type, all with the same version of XP Pro Corp) --except the ones at the office are all on a network to ADSL (yukk!) this one is on a small home network (4pc's) to cable broadband ( much better!).

The pcs at the office with minimal data installed are all far, far slower at moving files, searching, transferring data ( I ran a comparison with the same 36,588 images / 2.94 Gbytes) and also with downloading, than the one here on IDE at home.

I also get many more sudden "blue screens" ( "windows has shut down to prevent damage to the system....") at the office machines, usually when running, e.g. three video editing programs, Nero 7 DVD burning, + maybe four large downloads and some word processing all simultaneously-

-at home I NEVER managed to get these messages at all, however hard I work the processor / RAM.

My question ( as an ignoramus!) is this;-

What is the purpose and advantages ( if any!) of going to SATA drives when they are patently less reliable, and lower performance than the "old" IDE ones? It seems to be yet another marketing ploy for us to shell out more money again.

I seek real elucidation here....

Thanks for an ever-improving newsletter, Ian.

Ian,

SATA (Serial ATA) is actually capable of much faster communication than is the PATA (Parallel ATA) interface.

The fact that you're seeing significantly faster performance on one machine than on the other 4. Despite the 4 being on an office network, they should not be markedly slower than the home machine.

Here are some fo the things that come to mind:

1) different SATA driver on the home machine than on the office machines

2) different BIOS version on the home machine versus the office machines

3) programs and services running on the office machines that aren't running on the home machine. Depending upon the security setups by your IT personnel, you might have monitoring software installed.

4) If you don't have much in the office in the way of up-to-date security (antivirus, firewall software, antispyware/antiadware), you might have adware infections and/or virus infections on the office machines.

5) when you say "transferring files," if you mean from one place to another on the computer's hard drive, that could be any of the above issues

6) if you mean "transferring files across the network," then you may have more activity on the network

7) You might have some bad cabling in the network at the office.

The last comment is not facetious. I ran into a problem where I was getting a slow transfer speed between some computers but not between others. It turned out that one of the ethernet cable's connectors had a wire that had been damaged I bought a little $29.95 LAN Cable-Check Tester .

This turned out to be invaluable in testing the cables -- it found tthe problem immediately. It was also very helpful, when I ran some ethernet wiring in the house, because I could check the wall connections while I was doing the wiring.

Back to the SATA question, as we get to higher speeds, SATA is easier to implement for the hard drive manufacturers. Just as changing from parallel printer cables to USB, it's easier now to handle 9 data bits that are coming sequentially via one wire pair than it is to match bits on 9 wires at the same time. In both cases, the 9 bits are required to give 1 data byte (8 data bits plus 1 parity bit).

 

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
No updates last week. Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
Versions 2.0.0.1 and 1.5.0.9 were released on December 19th. These are security fixes.. Current version 2.0.0.1. Latest v1.5 version is 1.5.0.9 -- Mozilla.org urges all users to upgrade to Firefox 2.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
New version! Version 9.10 was released December 18th. This release of Opera introduces "Fraud Protection" as well as user-interface and stability changes. Read the details.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
No update this week. Version 8.1.2 was released during the week ending September 30.

US-CERT issued a press-release on November 8th that recommended that Netscape users turn off JavaScript. (Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird were subject to the same issues, but new versions were released on November 8th to solve the problem.) AOL has not updated Netscape to the new version of the underlying "Gecko" browser.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): Version 1.1 was released on January 18, 2007. What's new in SeaMonkey v1.1

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com, options: paid, sponsored or free/lite):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. This was announced as to be the last commercial version before Eudora becomes open-source in the first half of 2007.

If you're running "Sponsored Mode" in a version before 7.1.0.9, you should update now to the current version. Sponsored mode in the earlier versions will expire on March 31st.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
Thunderbird version 1.5.0.9 was released December 19th.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free):
Version 2.1 was released during the week ending December 24th.

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 34 — Sunday, February 4, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.