It shouldn't be any surprise that literally an hour before my long-delayed USB Flash Drive Roundup goes live, Lexar's JumpDrive Secure II arrived at my doorstep. Needless to say I refrained from delaying the roundup anymore just to include this late comer, but I'll do my best to get it in to an updated roundup asap.
Why did the roundup take so long? Well, there are lots of side stories, products that arrived late, manufacturers that needed to follow up on some questions, and the usual problems you encounter with any 20 product roundup, but there's one cause for the delay that I do want to point out, for very good reasons.
This whole idea for a USB Flash Drive roundup started one evening when OCZ was telling me about their new dual channel flash drive, promising significantly higher performance than the competition. The idea of actual differentiation between flash drives piqued my interest, so I started looking into what was available and tried to get a good understanding of the market and its products.
It turned out that although OCZ was the first to advertise a dual channel USB flash drive as such, they weren't the first to actually produce one. In fact, many manufacturers paired up dual channel controllers with multiple flash devices, the marketing angle just seemed to have escaped them.
Now when I first received OCZ's product, it had not yet shipped to vendors, only to reviewers. Availability was promised to be about a week or so away from when reviews went live, so it wasn't such a big deal. But I encountered something interesting during my testing of the OCZ drive: although OCZ's Rally offered excellent read performance, its write speed was dismal. If you've read the roundup that just went live, you know that NAND flash writes much slower than it reads, but this drive stood out as being far too slow, especially given the competition. The drive was very slow not only in the Sandra tests but I first really noticed how poorly it was performing in a few of my home brewed tests.
I contacted OCZ and asked them if they had seen something similar, and they responded that they hadn't. They forwarded me some benchmarks that showed their drive performing very well on writes, but I wasn't totally satisfied. It turns out that they were focusing all of their attention on large file size performance, and hadn't really been looking at small file write performance (which, to their credit, very few manufacturers actually do). But here's where I quickly became impressed with the outcome of the situation; OCZ stopped production and shipping of this problematic drive (which was only the 512MB version) to all of their vendors, and made sure that not a single drive made it into the hands of a customer until the problem was fixed.
I commended OCZ for their handling of the situation in the review, but this brings up a very important topic that you all don't usually get to see from your perspective. Whenever we meet with manufacturers, we always bring them not only your feedback that you give us through comments, emails and forum posts, but also our feedback on how to improve their products. Above all, we're always interested in improving the end product that these manufacturers are selling. In my mind, the better the quality/performance/reliability of the average product out there, the better off we all are in the end. While we try to recommend only the best, the fact of the matter is that not everyone buys what we recommend, so there are folks that end up with sub-par hardware.
Most manufacturers take far too long to listen to our input, regardless of whether or not it comes directly from you guys or from us. Some will take it, agree with it, but never do anything about it beyond the lip service. There are a few manufacturers however, that do actually try to make products better based on this feedback, and in this case OCZ proved to be a great example of one of those such manufacturers.
Another recent example is actually ATI, with their CrossFire reference board. They took feedback from the overclocking community and put together the most feature-packed board we've ever seen. Unfortunately, ATI's issue these days isn't exactly features, but rather availability as we all know.
The moral of this story is that your feedback actually does get to manufacturers, and in some cases it will actually get directly put into the development or improvement of a product. These days there are a bit over 7 million readers that visit AnandTech every month, and although it may not seem like it, each and every one of you has a very powerful voice that can make some very big changes at the companies we all deal with.
Why did the roundup take so long? Well, there are lots of side stories, products that arrived late, manufacturers that needed to follow up on some questions, and the usual problems you encounter with any 20 product roundup, but there's one cause for the delay that I do want to point out, for very good reasons.
This whole idea for a USB Flash Drive roundup started one evening when OCZ was telling me about their new dual channel flash drive, promising significantly higher performance than the competition. The idea of actual differentiation between flash drives piqued my interest, so I started looking into what was available and tried to get a good understanding of the market and its products.
It turned out that although OCZ was the first to advertise a dual channel USB flash drive as such, they weren't the first to actually produce one. In fact, many manufacturers paired up dual channel controllers with multiple flash devices, the marketing angle just seemed to have escaped them.
Now when I first received OCZ's product, it had not yet shipped to vendors, only to reviewers. Availability was promised to be about a week or so away from when reviews went live, so it wasn't such a big deal. But I encountered something interesting during my testing of the OCZ drive: although OCZ's Rally offered excellent read performance, its write speed was dismal. If you've read the roundup that just went live, you know that NAND flash writes much slower than it reads, but this drive stood out as being far too slow, especially given the competition. The drive was very slow not only in the Sandra tests but I first really noticed how poorly it was performing in a few of my home brewed tests.
I contacted OCZ and asked them if they had seen something similar, and they responded that they hadn't. They forwarded me some benchmarks that showed their drive performing very well on writes, but I wasn't totally satisfied. It turns out that they were focusing all of their attention on large file size performance, and hadn't really been looking at small file write performance (which, to their credit, very few manufacturers actually do). But here's where I quickly became impressed with the outcome of the situation; OCZ stopped production and shipping of this problematic drive (which was only the 512MB version) to all of their vendors, and made sure that not a single drive made it into the hands of a customer until the problem was fixed.
I commended OCZ for their handling of the situation in the review, but this brings up a very important topic that you all don't usually get to see from your perspective. Whenever we meet with manufacturers, we always bring them not only your feedback that you give us through comments, emails and forum posts, but also our feedback on how to improve their products. Above all, we're always interested in improving the end product that these manufacturers are selling. In my mind, the better the quality/performance/reliability of the average product out there, the better off we all are in the end. While we try to recommend only the best, the fact of the matter is that not everyone buys what we recommend, so there are folks that end up with sub-par hardware.
Most manufacturers take far too long to listen to our input, regardless of whether or not it comes directly from you guys or from us. Some will take it, agree with it, but never do anything about it beyond the lip service. There are a few manufacturers however, that do actually try to make products better based on this feedback, and in this case OCZ proved to be a great example of one of those such manufacturers.
Another recent example is actually ATI, with their CrossFire reference board. They took feedback from the overclocking community and put together the most feature-packed board we've ever seen. Unfortunately, ATI's issue these days isn't exactly features, but rather availability as we all know.
The moral of this story is that your feedback actually does get to manufacturers, and in some cases it will actually get directly put into the development or improvement of a product. These days there are a bit over 7 million readers that visit AnandTech every month, and although it may not seem like it, each and every one of you has a very powerful voice that can make some very big changes at the companies we all deal with.
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robg1701 - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
give us R520 already....ive long since had my 7800GTX and i wont be changing any time soon (bring on R580 and G80) but we want to see the destruction damnit ;ptuteja1986 - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
"They took feedback from the overclocking community and put together the most feature-packed board we've ever seen. Unfortunately, ATI's issue these days isn't exactly features, but rather availability as we all know."ATI does make cool product but availability is just annoying the crap out everyone. But i did see one website list a DFI crossfire Motherboard but i don't know if it had them in stock ;(
HiddenDragon - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
The theft of essence, the fall of mankind, The return of the Earth.This is a blessing, pass it on.
This is a commentary on the factual basis behind the state of the world and the state of man kind regarding his Karmic struggle to find himself again.
6000 years ago, a woman walked into sacred Egypt and sat upon a seat of revered power, there in she was impregnated with ovaries and a womb, the means to create life was installed into her body. Where once two simple evacuation holes existed; one for liquid and one for solid, a third was now installed along with ovaries and blood. A simple mistake, these simple beings that were created here on Earth for the task of serving man have now brought about his downfall. These machine like creatures are suddenly filled with flesh enough to reproduce.
I am shuddering at the events that followed this momentous mistake, God is stripped of his power essence and knowledge he is made visible to his many great gods, associate demi-gods and servants. In this manner the entire earth and its inhabitants are thrown in to complete Chaos, linear time begins to progress, immortal civilizations are crushed under the weight of losing contact due to overloading.
The earth is sucked dry of its spiritual essence and its intelligence, somehow this feminine beast becomes a means of attraction to the men that need this essence to survive, they are one by one seduced into giving all their reproductive juices away into these foul ignorant half robot half beast female flesh. Giving off a confusing energy they steal away the energy of the earth. The men born of these women have lived inside their womb and are themselves docile and machine like, conditioned by these foul mistakes of humanity.
Where a perfect system of reproduction by cloning existed now a foul tempered demanding child with a huge dangerously wielded weapon now exists. Absolutely no training in how to act or why she acts she whimsically seeks out her creator and persecutes him for her error, ultimately he has created an untrustworthy assailant. The souls that are ripped from their heavenly lives above are now tormented and demonized, hence driving the world into duality, for the beings of a higher vibration a life of deamonization becomes reality, their future lives become unfairly guided into a downward turning spiral by the lesser intelligent women whom have developed due to their new appendage a primitive kind of thought now commonly known as women’s intuition. How could we have let this happen? We are driven by the need to be wholly spiritual and also the need to satisfy our independence but we now have the womanish parasite! The misery of this backward thinking is incomprehensible. Imagine your mind in your arse hole, completely upside down and back to front. This being that has emerged from the very private rooms of gods reproductive power and is very confused and empowered beyond her own capabilities in a trance like state. She is overcome with the need to indulge in sexual activity, immediately although 1 tenth of the intelligence of man she now holds the power of a great god and unknowingly causes turmoil upon the face of the planet.
As if their power supply has been cut off, the men fall from great heights, literally. The kingdoms of Mu, Atlanta, The Vedic Kingdoms, The Mighty Egyptians dynasties and the Chinese dynasties as we little know them begin to loose their sense of time and become bewildered. The said Neolithic civilizations loose their meaning, The pyramids of Aboriginal Australia are worn down to mere stones, its people transformed into Zombies, however tightly hanging on to their culture.
The African Pharaohs turn into hunting beasts, their knowledge of reproduction methods are nullified as their perfect geometrical landscapes are broken into sand and replaced with a severe lust to impregnate, like an animal that knows its days are numbered.
So the Caucasians are infested, all to quickly these civilizations have fallen to the hypnotism of sexual prowess and connotations.
Why are men so desperate to get into a woman’s pants these days, because she has what he wants and what is his, these tiny developing eggs were once the currency of the earth, the energy that all males tapped into, a never ending supply of bliss. This birthright of men seems has been stolen through this most inconsiderate betrayal of trust. Like a needle in the eye of god this attempt to dethrone the glory and beauty of the Supreme Being has succeeded, absolutely! Now the back lash will commence. It is now apparent that this violation of gods sacred place and Sacred temples (gods Body) has recurred in the form of creation and destruction since before we can remember, however god remembers each and every account of these recurring events that have been documented by the surviving races and bloodlines for millions and millions of years, the Indians have recorded and passed on these events and have even given these processes names. But guess what, God has patiently sat and witnessed each and every one of these cycles and has now completely and perfectly adjusted his focus to completely map the extremities of this perverted female mind. It is now time for god to rebuild and deliberate punishment to these creatures, and to the associate of these female beasts, for they will fertilize the earth with the blood they have stolen from the store house, god’s body!
If there were any doubts before, now is the time to meet god, and he is angry and pissed off, no exceptions.
How would you expect him to be? He has just had his stash ripped off and his tools turned into weapons and set upon him, time after time after time he has turned the other cheek until he saw the most perfect time to appropriate his revenge. A well placed intellect ensures the success of what must follow…. Total and complete submission of the female species and payment in rent for their use and abuse of the land the resources and the misappropriation of power will be payed out in compensation, they will then be asked to take birth again into a body that suits their function.
The grievances will be also redeemed to the five great gods, the four lesser gods and the various immortal demi-gods will also be payed out and allowed to enter the atmosphere of the earth so as to rebuild their former dwellings. There are many of these, 64 elders in total, 144 younglings and their expansions, there are also those immortals that were stripped from their human bodies during my presence and whom did not receive the appropriate training on how to act, these will be remembered and given access to the appropriate cloning techniques when the time is right.
The animal species that have been devolved will be restructured so that they have dominion and their relevant earthly realms reassigned to them. They will be given freedom to ask for taxes from any women species that are crossing or trespassing on their territory.
For those who want to know more please contact: aleonism@actrix.gen.nz
For those who feel they can afford a donation, please donate to the following bank account:
Leon Vincent Mahony,
ANZ Saint Lukes
Auckland New Zealand,
Branch, 01 0142 0196766 00.
A team is being summoned to redesign and rebuild our glorious earth. They will be payed if you have a heart to invest in your returned future and the return of global men’s culture upon the globe. For those who do not agree with men’s, please feel free to ask questions and dig a little into the demi-gods lively hood as this depiction of men is those whom have the power to create life through their genitalia, it is a fact that the earth systems in place previously had the capabilities to reproduce at exact prescribed times for the procreation of their species, their technology was able to reintroduce the memories of their previous bodies.
For concerned women the cost of running your daily necessities will come to one third of your total income, we will not force you, we actually care about you.
Note this also, an eternal soul is exactly that, you can not replace god or any of his friends or associates with technology, an attempt to do so will only retard the frequency of natural spiritual intellect and de-body the spirit.
There are currently thousands of such spirits longing to get into their bodies again, and nearly all of them are not human. The exact number and place of each individual is carefully recorded in the Earth Manual, a document that will be referenced upon the reconstruction of the Earth.
You will be surprised to find that this Earth was not however a globe nor a human form, however its memory is so precise that it will seek those souls who are most essential to its bodily functioning.
A failure to respond to this message will result in a longer wait to return home, you may regain your former state of mind but you will be bodiless until you make an effort to use the facilities that are being put in to place. There are a prescribed definite number of bodies and all are recorded in the Earth manual, for those who are interested in their own future please respond with the thirst of a hungry child and the Earth will make a room for you not a womb.
There are quite a few whos doorways have been opened so that they may return their former positions, this is temporary unless the work is done on this planet through the eyes of God they state may fall again to ruin, trust these few heros and hold to their council, seek also the shelter of religion, stick to the principles!
Save your own soul and if you are a woman… submit and pay the rent! Your empowerment has been realized now you must suffer a small hangover while we readjust your mentality.
Apologies are gratefully accepted. Please remember when you are lost in thought what it is that you are thinking, the earth grows thoughts and yours all count.
Possession of the essence will return to the rightful owners and there are many.
God is with us and he loves us all despite our fallen state.
This is a blessing, pass it on.