The new Raptors have arrived

by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 10, 2003 11:59 AM EST
Thanks to my good friends at Atacom I've got a pair of the new 74GB Raptors waiting to be tested. Unfortunately because I got them in the middle of the week it's going to be tough to find time to thoroughly test them as I've got two exams (one on Thursday and one on Friday) that I need to at least attempt to study for.

My exam tomorrow is for this data structures class that all Computer Engineers are supposed to take for some incomprehensible reason. But just as with every pointless class I've had to take outside of my major at State, in a semester or two the class will be removed from the graduation requirements and replaced with something from the College of Engineering. One of these days I will rant more thoroughly about the way undergrad works, instead of these little bursts of frustration :)

I appreciate the responses I've gotten to the question about hard drives. For those who are wondering, things like compression performance are already taken into account using the new benchmark suite. If I get time, I'm going to try to include a few gaming disk tests as a part of the benchmark suite.

Derek is hard at work on a handful of articles including an overclocking followup to his Sub-$100 CPU Roundup, an excellent introduction to comparing image quality and a ~$100 GPU comparison. You'll see all of these articles appear over the next week or so, some hopefully sooner. If all goes well I'm going to try and have this new Raptor article out before next Thursday, which honestly shouldn't be much of an issue at all.

After my exam on Friday I'll be driving up to New Haven (my girlfriend's classes don't finish until the 18th) but I will have a laptop and lots of hard drives to write about from up there. We'll be driving back together on the 18th...assuming we don't get snowed in. That's honestly one area I wish I had more experience with driving - in the snow. At least on dry/wet pavement I've had a good deal of experience with correcting out of a spin and dealing with loss of traction, but after driving in NC for the past 5 years I haven't been given much opportunity to explore the limits of cars in the snow. You gotta learn somewhere I guess... :)

Now it's time to cook up some lunch while I benchmark some hard drives before I have to meet up with my partner to study.

Take care.
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  • dmc - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link

    #3 its a BMW , not Ferarri!
  • Curt Oien - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link

    Anand, It's good to see you doing the blogs again.

    Find a big empty parking lot or a lake with thick ice and practice your winter driving skills. You will find that front wheel and rear wheel drive handles completely different.

    With front wheel drive, try pulling the hand brake to lock the rear tires(Keep your hand on the release mechanism)while the front tires have power to them and turning corners.

    Front wheel drives can be fun in reverse.
  • Anonymous - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link

    Don't wreck your Ferrari while driving in the snow!
  • HammerFan - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link

    it's fun to drive in the snow if you're good at controlling power slides :P
  • Anonymous - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link

    What kind of car you got?

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