Week 1

I recently discovered that my laptop stinks. It works fine for day-to-day use such as internet browsing or word processing, but is insufficient to play some of the games I have have supported on Kickstarter. Thus, I am faced with the dilemma or whether to build a new computer or wait and purchase a Steam box when they come out. Both have their benefits and drawbacks, so I decided to price out the parts I would need to build a modest gaming PC to see what it would take and how much it would cost.
In doing so, I was introduced to the newest parts and components for computers. Many I have heard about in classes and in computer magazines, but others I somehow missed. It has been several years since I built my own computer and for my blog I want to discuss some of the technology that is on the market that I found interesting.
First, I would like to look at hard drives. All I have really dealt with are hard disk drives with their spinning platters and strange tendency to crash and die when most inconvenient. These have come a long way and are standard now, and relatively cheap compared to ten years ago. There are now two new drives available though for computers. There are solid state drives and hybrid hard drives.
Solid state drives use flash memory, similar to the more familiar usb drives, to save data. They are faster, tougher, smaller, way (way) more expensive that traditional hard drives. I had heard of these before and they started as primarily laptop hard drives, since they can be much smaller than hard disk drives.
Hybrid disk drives blend the two technologies to try and give the speed of the solid state but the ease of use, not to mention the ease to your wallet. Hybrids have traditional platters for long term storage but use a small amount of flash memory to speed things up that you do often.
After looking at all the points, I'm fairly certain that I would go with the hybrid hard drive if I build my own computer. With the benefits you gain from adding that small amount of flash memory and the price tied into the familiar platter hard drive it's hard to beat. Sure there are apparently some issues with the hard drive learning what programs or data to assign to the flash memory (Chiappetta, 2013), but that wouldn't take long to sort out and it seems to be the good compromise between the old and the new.

Sources

Chiappetta, M. (2013, January 17). SSDs vs. hard drives vs. hybrids: Which storage tech is right for you?. PCWorld. Retrieved from http://www.pcworld.com/article/2025402/ssds-vs-hard-drives-vs-hybrids-which-storage-tech-is-right-for-you-.html

Domingo, J. S. (2013, May 20). SSD vs HDD: What's the Difference?. PC Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404258,00.asp