When I wrote “Don’t believe the low bit-rate ‘HD’ lie” with a comparison, I had no idea that these compromises in quality would apply to the latest consumer HD camcorder format called AVCHD as well.  When I first read about the AVCHD format with its use of MPEG4-AVC (H.264) video compression at a maximum of 24 mbps versus HDV which uses the older MPEG-2 format at 25 mbps, I was very excited about the new format.  My enthusiasm dampened when I read the fine print that actual AVCHD implementation only uses 13 to 17 mbps MPEG4-AVC for compatibility with cheaper storage devices and it completely sunk when I read this excellent in-depth review from camcorderinfo.com.  Take a look at the screenshots below and it pains me to see how much detail is lost in the newer HD format.

Comparison of HDV versus AVCHD Image credit: camcorderinfo.com.  Lossless 1:1 crop.
Canon HG10 Bitrate: 13 to 15 mbps MPEG4-AVC aka H.264 AVCHD camcorder format 1920×1080 60i	Canon HV20 Bitrate: 24 mbps MPEG-2 aka H.262 HDV camcorder format 1440×1080 60i (anamorphic)

The reason this comparison is so significant is that that both cameras have the same 2,960,000 pixel 1/2.7 inch CMOS sensor.  The only difference is the video compression, the bitrate, and the storage medium.  This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says that MPEG4-AVC H.264 video compression can use 25% to 50% less bitrate to achieve the same quality level as MPEG-2 compression.  I’ve always suspected those numbers were inflated as an excuse to get people to believe that low-bitrate HD is the same as high-bitrate HD if better codecs where used, but even I didn’t think it was this bad.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve seen whitepapers from vendors that try to push the idea that 4 to 6 mbps using MPEG4-AVC H.264 is equivalent to 18 mbps broadcast MPEG-2 HD video.  The problem is that these loose definitions of “equivalent” only compares perceived level of artifacts and not the loss of detail.  Now I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that the above comparison may be partially attributed to a poor implementation of H.264 video compression, but the bitrate has to be a huge deciding factor.  The article from camcorderinfo.com also seems to suggest that they haven’t found a single AVCHD camcorder that doesn’t have low detail.

AVCHD is the second consumer HD camcorder format designed for DVD, Hard Drive, or SDHC flash memory recording designed as an alternative to the older HDV format which usually records to miniDV tape.  Because DVDs and flash drives are often capacity and write-throughput constrained, AVCHD camcorder makers have typically stuck with 13 to 15 mbps bitrates.  While Class 4 SDHC flash cards have write throughput of 32 mbps, cheaper Class 2 SDHC flash cards have a write throughput of 16 mbps and the camcorder makers don’t want to exclude Class 2 SDHC flash cards.  Longer recording times on 8 or 16 GB flash cards obviously played in to the decision process.

It would seem logical that camcorder companies like should offer a max quality mode but perhaps they’re gambling on the fact that most consumers will never know the difference.  This is really a shame since AVCHD random access storage is a much friendlier consumer format with drag-n-drop simplicity when transferring videos to the PC.  You simply put the SDHC in to your card reader on your computer or you hook up a USB 2.0 cable to the camcorder and you merely drag the files to your computer between 30 to 200 mbps.

With HDV, you have to deal with the hassles of something like Windows Vista Movie Maker which forces you to rewind the tape to the beginning and stream the video over in real-time at a fixed 30 mbps.  Buying an alternative video editing package will at least let you pick and choose what you want to record, but it doesn’t solve the speed problem.  The other problem with miniDV is that it’s very hard to preview what you’ve shot since you have to rewind the tape.  Sometimes if you don’t put the tape in the right position, you can accidentally wipe valuable footage.  It’s really a shame that AVCHD camcorder makers have botched the implementation because the format has real potential in the consumer market.

Note: JVC seems to at least be avoiding the low-bitrate pitfall with their hard drive based models like the GZ-HD7 which offers a high-bitrate MPEG-2 format.  This is essentially an HDV format for hard drive instead of a miniDV tape and the 60 GB hard drive provides approximately 4 hours of recording versus one hour on miniDV tapes.  This seems to be a good compromise since you get high-bitrate HDV format with the benefit of random access storage and fast drag-n-drop video transfers.  Camcorderinfo.com reviewed the GZ-HD7 here with quality lower than the best HDV camcorders but better quality than AVCHD camcorders.  While the recording format was better, the low light performance wasn’t great.

One saving grace that’s less applicable to the consumer space is the HDMI output on newer AVCHD camcorders.  For small independent filmmakers, they can hook up a computer with a $250 HDMI capture card with very fast RAID storage capable of 1.5 to 3 gigabits per second and capture raw uncompressed HD video.  In this application, the recording format in the camera is irrelevant since the PC records the video uncompressed.  But when you’re shooting at this level of quality, you’re probably going to use a much more expensive camcorder than a cheap $1000 consumer variety.  The kind of HD video quality you get these days with relatively cheap equipment is unparalleled in the history of the video industry.  High quality video equipment is no longer cost prohibitive to independent filmmakers and the only thing that limits quality is imagination and talent.

If things weren’t bad enough last night with the computer problems I had, things got worse when AT&T decided to do an unannounced maintenance.  This was sort of similar to the massive network outage last year where the network goes down but they don’t even bother to tell their own first level support.  You call in to tech support and they tell you jump through a bunch of hoops and crawl under the table to find your cable modem model numbers and detach your router and all the usual nonsense.  Then they tell you that they might have to send a tech over the next day and how they won’t charge you if the problem isn’t on your end.  Well I knew the problem wasn’t on my side so I demanded to be escalated to level 2 support where they confirmed my suspicions.

It turned out that AT&T was doing a 6-hour (12AM to 6AM) “maintenance” on a dozen of their California RBAC (Role Based Access Control) systems this morning which is their PPPoE authentication servers.  This is exactly what I suspected since my DSL light was still on indicating that the link to the DSLAM was operational.  The last place I lived two years ago my AT&T (SBC back then) DSLAM would die once a week so I know a DSLAM outage when I see one.  This kind of service is ludicrous to me because if you’re doing this kind of authentication system maintenance, there should be redundant systems in place or they should simply let everyone on the network even if they can’t authenticate.  It’s not like anyone can steal DSL access that easily anyways and we’re talking a short period of time.  I’ve run my authentication servers for many years without ever having an outage and it’s ludicrous that AT&T would put their users through this nonsense.

In light of past cases where AT&T doesn’t tell level 1 support about these maintenance and outage issues and putting their customers through tech support hell, this seems to be a systematic breakdown in AT&T’s support infrastructure.  I don’t know what it’s going to take to knock some sense in to AT&T’s customer support, but this just isn’t acceptable.  It not only frustrates the level 1 support team and makes for unnecessary work on to the maintenance department; it’s just plain bad customer service.

I spent a little time chatting with some folks at the Technology Liberation Front doing a podcast today “Network Management Redux“.  Sorry if I sounded a little groggy in the recording after the computer problems and AT&T DSL problems that kept me up all night.

I’ll be inviting some guests from some Washington Think Tanks for some of our own podcasts later on.

Update 3:55PM - Seems like a hardware issue with this specific IBM ThinkPad T60 since Microsoft tells me they have plenty of T60s that are running fine with SP1.  I was trying to recover some log files for Microsoft by booting the Windows Vista SP1 fresh-install DVD and it hung there and locked up the mouse too.  That would seem to at least rule out DivX and it was a mere coincidence on the exact timing of the lockup.  Heck the battery on it is dead too and the screen came with some scratches so it’s time this dog of a laptop goes back to the IT department.

I completed the first two installations of Vista SP1 RTM upgrade last night on to my primary desktop computer and my first Vista laptop meant to be my new work computer.  The result is a near death experience with my desktop computer, and then a real death experience with the laptop (caused by hardware and not Vista SP1).  I guess I should count myself lucky that it wasn’t my main computer that died since I haven’t migrated to the laptop for work yet.  I will try to get some help from Microsoft to see if we can resolve this issue.

Near death with desktop computer:
The desktop computer almost didn’t make the upgrade but finally managed to pull itself out of the gates of hell.  The SP1 upgrade on both computers took more than an hour to install along with multiple reboots.  When the desktop system finally allowed me to log in, it went in to non-aero mode and it refused to let me flip in to aero.  The sound was temporarily messed up but I managed to get it working after I enabled the sound.  5 minutes after I logged in the Windows SP1 upgrade finally told me it was finished which seems strange since you would think the user should be locked out until everything was done.  Since I couldn’t get aero running I figured I’d try rebooting but the next reboot just seemed to hang on a black screen with a working mouse pointer for 5 minutes so I tried rebooting again.  On that last reboot everything finally came up and I breathed a sigh of relief.  [UPDATE 3:55PM - Microsoft says they are working with the driver developers on this to smooth out the install process]

Death of a laptop:
The laptop computer on the other hand went a little smoother on the SP1 upgrade and worked fine for about two hours until I installed the latest DivX codec and the whole machine just locked up after Vista popped up the Windows experience feedback prompt.  Now this laptop locks up the entire computer within 15 seconds of logging in and there’s no way I even have time to run system restore to see if I can get it to the state right after I installed SP1.  All I see is a locked up Vista screen and the laptop is as useful as a bookend.  It is possible that this could be a hardware issue but the laptop was working fine up until this point.  [UPDATE 3:55PM - It appears to be most likely a hardware issue with this specific IBM ThinkPad T60 laptop]

I don’t know if Vista SP1 just doesn’t like DivX or if it was just a coincidence and something else is causing this problem.  I have the same DivX codec installed on my desktop computer this week but it was installed before last night when I installed Vista SP1.  It’s quite possible that installing this version of DivX after SP1 will kill the computer but if this is the true, Microsoft needs to issue a warning and block this codec from installing after SP1 has already installed.  If you’re planning on installing SP1 on your computer, DO NOT install DivX codec after you’ve installed SP1 until after I verify what’s going on and update this blog.  If you have DivX codec installed already, then it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Minute long login times for domain connected computers
The other problem I was told that Windows Vista SP1 would fix was the minute long login times for a Vista computer joined to an Active Directory.  This turned out to be false at least in my case since it still takes 55 seconds of looking at the “Welcome” message after I type in my password.  This doesn’t seem to be a problem coming out of suspend mode if you’re already logged in so it would only affect you if you reboot or log off the computer, but it’s annoying as hell and it really makes me think twice before using Vista in a business environment until these issues are solved. 

[UPDATE 4:05PM - Microsoft explained to me that until a laptop at least logs in once on the corporate LAN and cache the domain controllers correctly, it will exhibit a 20 second delay per each domain controller the laptop knows of.  That’s a neat solution and all, but I know quite a few mobile workers who never go in to the corporate LAN and they need a solution where they can simply VPN in and get all this nonsense sorted out automatically and painlessly without flying in to an office with a permanent LAN or WAN connection to the Domain Controller]

Some improvements after SP1
My desktop computer seems to be a lot healthier now after I installed Vista SP1.  The Vista install seemed to have gotten corrupted to the point that IE7 was locking up left and right while I kept getting these error messages from Windows Media Center Store Upgrade Manager shown in the figure below.  [UPDATE 4:15AM - Looks like I may have spoken a bit too soon and the talkback tool here still locks up IE7 pretty hard on this computer.  I’m not sure if it’s related to the talkback or something else on that page that’s causing it.  All I know is that IE7 has been locking up hard on my Windows XP laptop and Vista machine for the last month or more.]

So far that error message hasn’t popped up yet [UPDATE 3:55PM - The message popped up again and it appears I need to rebuild the database score in Windows Media Center] and IE7 seems to have stabilized now and it’s no longer locking up the CPU to 100% utilization on a single CPU core[UPDATE 3:55PM - I’m working with Microsoft to figure this issue out and will update since it’s still locking up in the talkback section]

The Windows networking indicator icon shown in the screenshot below seems to be a lot more responsive in discovering your network location.  It completes in a few seconds after you log in rather than sometimes wait up to a minute pre-SP1.  The laptop (before it died) also exhibited the same responsive network indicator icon. [UPDATE 3:55PM - Microsoft says quite a bit of work went in to the TCP/IP stack.  This seems to be a good thing.]

Windows Movie Maker for Vista still a stinker:
If you’re wondering why I even bother with the DivX codec and Dr. DivX video encoder, it’s because Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder 9.0 is old and doesn’t support high definition HDV formats yet and Windows Movie Maker for Vista is still garbage.  If you attempt to use Windows Movie Maker to encode HDV videos, it will only encode one corner of the video at standard resolution and leave out most of the rest of the video frame.  [UPDATE 3:55PM - Microsoft says they can encode HDV footage without problems so the problem may be caused by some codec conflicts.  They also say that Microsoft Expression Encoder ($300) will work much better, though that’s quite a bit more money than I want to spend since Dr. Divx is free.] The latest version of Dr. DivX (which requires the DivX codec) will handle High Definition .dvr-ms files and let you encode in to the desired video format for DVD set-top box playback or for YouTube optimized format.  I’d love to be able to encode in to the 1080p Windows Media Advanced Profile format that Windows Media Encoder 9 promises but the software simply doesn’t work.

Making things worse, I was hoping Windows Movie Maker which only comes with the Premium or Ultimate Edition would actually be a complete application by now but I would be disappointed again.  The old Windows Movie Maker in Windows XP was a free download and it allowed you to select the part of the tape you want to record off your DV camcorder but HDV format wasn’t supported at all.  The new Windows Movie Maker for Vista does support HDV format but it teases you by asking you if you want to “Import entire videotape or just parts?”.  Then it only gives you the option to “Import the entire videotape to my computer” as shown in the screenshot below.  If anyone knows of a cheap or free non-bloated HDV capture program for Windows, please tell me in the talkback.

Fortunately DivX codec and Dr. DivX works on my desktop computer since they were installed before SP1 so I will need to get verification of the problems on my new work laptop.

Now at this point it’s still to early to draw any conclusions about Vista SP1 and the problems I faced may be unique to my particular setup or hardware.  It certainly doesn’t make a good first impression for me and you need to be careful anytime you install a major upgrade like this.  Please check back here for updates and status reports on these problems.

Every time I build a new Windows computer, there are a dozen free and essential applications that I always install for other people. These applications all seem to fill essential functions and they all seem to be well-behaved installers and uninstallers, in other words it won’t crash your computer or drag it down with gunk. Since they’ve served me so well, I thought I’d compile the list here and share them with you. Without spending a dime of your hard earned money on software, you can now make the most of your computer.

uTorrent - This is the BitTorrent client that is a must have for anyone who wants an effective file sharing application that allows you to download large files. It was developed by a lone old-school programmer Ludvig Strigeus who wrote a BitTorrent client in a few hundred kilobytes (yes, that’s not a typo) which is a real pleasant surprise in this age of bloated Java applications with 100 MB memory footprints. It was bought out by BitTorrent Corporation which raised some concerns among the user base but the client has retained all of its functionality and the new owners have done a good job of maintaining it.

Skype - This is another killer-app for the modern personal computer. If you haven’t already heard of it and installed it, go get it. It’s the first and one of the few VoIP applications on the market that “just works”. Couple it with a good analog microphone or something like the Polycom Communicator and you will be able to send superb wideband audio which is amazing compared to the normal narrow band audio you get on a telephone. If you add Whiteboard Meeting which has a free limited version, you now have a mission critical business collaboration application.

Add a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, Quickcam Pro for Notebooks, or Quickcam Orbit AF for as little at $80 for the first two models and you have yourself a very high-quality 640×480 video conferencing solution. Skype’s HQ (High Quality) video conferencing is something you just have to see to believe. The only downside to the HQ mode is that Skype does not support IEEE 1394 camcorders so you have to buy those Logitech webcams if you want the HQ mode. The camcorder supporter would have allowed much longer zoom for use in the living room but unfortunately they don’t have that feature yet. Also note that you need a minimal of 384 kbps uploads to maintain HQ mode.

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Microsoft has reached a major milestone today for its Windows Server and Client products.  Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service pack 1 have been released to manufacturing today which means they will soon be available to IT customers and consumers.  Windows Server 2008 replaces the venerable Windows Server 2003 while Vista SP1 upgrades the somewhat controversial Windows Vista.  If this looks like a coincidence that Vista SP1 and Server 2008 launched at the same time, it’s not.  These two products share the same kernel and they were finished together and launched together by design.

Windows Server 2008 will have key enhancements in Virtualization both on the OS kernel side and the hosting side, but the hosting side of the equation won’t appear for another six months in the form of Windows Hypervisor.  The OS kernel side optimizations come in the form of “enlightened” (AKA paravirtualized) IO optimizations for video, storage, networking, and memory.  The Hypervisor will take advantage of these kernel enhancements to reduce the overhead associated with virtualization.  Other virtualization vendors will most likely license or negotiate rights to these kernel enhancements in virtualization if they wish to host Windows Server 2008 efficiently.  Older server operating systems like Windows 2000 and 2003 server will later be retrofitted with just the I/O optimizations but not the full kernel modifications that optimize Memory and CPU operations.

Windows Server 2008 will also have a stripped down headless operation mode called “Core installation” that increases reliability and security because it reduces the code foot print.  This in turn also reduces the need for reboots because components that would normally need to be updated simply won’t be installed in the first place.  Server 2008 will also have a fast kernel mode IIS web server as well as enhancements to Routing and Remote Access such as SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol).  SSTP puts a NAT- and proxy-friendly wrapper around the PPTP and L2TP protocol for trouble free VPN access.

Windows Vista will get some sorely needed enhancements on stability.  The size and scope of enhancements and changes to Windows Vista over previous generation Windows XP has resulted in some major growing pains both in OS and driver stability.  While many of these issues have already been hammered out, annoying problems like a minute long wait to login a Vista machine in to an Active Directory domain and slow network file copies are now fixed in Vista SP1.  Other controversial features like a Windows Vista kill switch have been removed.  On the usability front, the aforementioned SSTP feature in Windows Server 2008 can now be leveraged using the new SSTP client in Windows Vista SP1.  In the coming weeks, I will be eager to test both of these products.

At this year’s ISSCC 2008 (International Solid State Circuits Conference), details of Intel’s new 45nm Silverthorne will emerge.  Intel CTO Justin Rattner held a press briefing last Wednesday to preview some of the highlights of this week’s highly technical ISSCC conference in San Francisco.

Credit: Intel Corporation (from ISSCC preview presentation)

Intel Silverthorne is a brand new Intel x86 processor for the Menlow platform developed from the ground up for low-cost and ultra-low power applications.  This includes UMPC (Ultra Mobile PCs), MID (Mobile Internet Devices), set-top applications, some embedded applications, and eventually for smart phone applications though this initial generation may not be suitable yet.  Its small 25mm^2 die size on a 45nm process allows 2500 chips to fit on a single 300mm diameter wafer allows for extremely economic production.

From Rattner’s press conference last week, we know that Silverthorne will launches in the first half of 2008 but Rattner will not give a yes on a Q1 launch in response to one of the questions.  The first Silverthorne dies were publicly shown in April of 2007 in IDF China so it’s quite possible that we’re looking at a second quarter launch.  Rattner also explained that Silverthorne was a dual-issue in-order pipeline architecture with HT (Hyper-threading) and that this was better than hyper-threading in out-of-order architecture.  I later got verification via email that the HT type was SMT (Simultaneous multithreading) and not SoEMT (Switch-On-Event Multithreading).

The slides shown by Rattner indicated that Silverthorne had a power consumption below 1W and up to 2W and that it was “10x lower power than ULV Dothan”.  The Dothan was the second generation Pentium M product and ULV parts had a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 5W.  I later got clarification via email that Silverthorne processors can have TDPs as low as 0.6W with lower clock speeds and higher clocked parts will have a 2 watt TDP.  I spoke with analyst David Kanter of Real World Technologies and he explained that 0.6W which doesn’t factor in chipset power consumption might be too high for smart phone applications.  However, its immediate successor in the Moorestown platform which may launch late 2008 may solve that problem with its SoC (System on Chip) design.

Update 3:10PM - There are quite a few inaccurate reports out there on Silverthorne’s power consumption.  They have reported the power consumption of Silverthorne as 0.6W to 2W which is not correct.  0.6W is actually a TDP rating which describes PEAK power consumption.  Actual idle power consumption can dip down to 0.01W for some models and 0.1W for other models.  Intel is not saying too much more right now but it is reasonable to assume that this extremely low power state is designed to maximize battery life in Smart Phones.  Keeping a continuous Skype or SIP application presence in a UMPC or MID device to receive calls is now a possibility. 

The 2 GHz variant of the Silverthorne processor will operate at 1 volt and it will have performance equivalent to a first generation “Banias” Pentium M notebook processors circa 2003.  Rattner confirmed this was for single-threaded performance on a broad range of applications.  This would seem to imply that with multithreaded applications, the performance would be even higher than Banias which lacks Hyper-Threading.

Here are some additional quotes pulled from Rattner’s slides:

• Deep power down C6
• Optimized register-file and cache 6T bits cells
• CMOS mode on quad-pumped FSB IO
• Split IO power supply

Here are some additional email responses:

• 0.6W to 2W measured TDP power on real world applications – over the lifetime of the processor/architecture
• Can achieve 2GHz core frequencies at 1.0V
• Will support features such as Digital Media Boost (SSE3), Intel Virtualization technology, Intel 64 Architecture support, HT

The January 30th 2008 batch of test results are in for SPECpower_ssj2008 energy efficiency benchmark and it looks like Hewlett Packard has claimed the energy efficiency lead with their newest low-cost 2U HP Proliant DL180 G5 server.  The secret to their success appears to lie in the selection of the Intel 5100 series “San Clemente” chipset.  While the detailed SPECpower disclosure doesn’t actually mention the chipset anywhere, the power characteristics, the six memory DIMMs, and the ICH-9 storage is a dead giveaway.

To see where the modern servers stand on power consumption, I’ve plotted out some ESTIMATED charts to compare the results.  Since the AMD system from Colfax International has 8 registered DDR2-667 DIMMs and the HP San Clemente system has 6 registered DDR2-667 DIMMs, I’ve had to adjust them both down to 4 DIMMs to do a fair comparison with the other Intel systems which used 4 DIMMs.  To do this I had to use an approximation based on known measurements for memory power consumption and I subtracted 1.875 watts to 3.75 watts for each registered DDR2-667 DIMM on a linear sliding scale based on load percentage.  That means I subtracted 7.5 watts for the AMD system at idle and 15 watts for the AMD system at peak power.  For the HP San Clemente system I subtracted 3.75 watts at idle and 7.5 watts at peak loads.

Since it was shocking that a dual-processor eight-core 3 GHz Intel system was drawing lower power than a dual-processor four-core 2.4 GHz AMD system, I thought something might be a little off.  I realized that Colfax had used a pair of redundant 700 watt power supplies whereas the HP San Clemente system uses a single 750 watt power supply which means the power supply for the AMD system is relatively inefficient.  At this point I had to make a reasonable guess at PSU (Power Supply Unit) efficiency and I guessed that the HP single power supply had to be around 80% efficient whereas the Colfax dual-PSU would be around 70%.  Therefore I estimated the power consumption of the AMD system had it used an 80% efficiency power supply instead of a 70% efficient power supply.

Unfortunately this is a rough educated guess so the accuracy is dropping quickly but I wanted to take a reasonable shot at it to level the playing field on PSU efficiency.  Companies in the future when making SPECpower submissions should avoid using dual power supplies and stick with 4-DIMM configurations so that we can get apple to apple comparisons and measurements.  For now the following estimated power consumption graph is what I came up with.

The thing that really sticks out is the fact that the Intel 3 GHz 45nm E5450 processor system uses less power most of the time than the special low-voltage variant of the Intel 2 GHz 65nm L5335 processor.  This shows how drastic an improvement Intel made using HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) materials and a shrink to the 45nm process.

The DIMM and PSU adjusted power consumption for the AMD Opteron 2216HE 4-core 2.4 GHz system has dropped significantly by more than 32 watts at the peak but it’s still more power hungry than the Intel 8-core 3 GHz E5450 at less than 80% load.  Despite the fact that AMD takes a deeper clock speed dive down to 1.0 GHz at idle while Intel only dives down to 2 GHz, Intel’s C1E state seems to dominate the power savings.

This can also tell us something about the “Barcelona” quad-core “HE” (High Efficiency) 1.9 GHz system because it has a TDP of 79 watts which is 11 watts higher than the 2216HE under maximum load per CPU.  Realistically the difference will be smaller than 11 watts per CPU and probably more like an 8 or 9 watts difference so an AMD 2347HE 1.9 GHz dual-processor 8-core version would probably consume 16 more watts.  That would likely put the AMD 8-core 2347HE 1.9 GHz server at higher power consumption level than the 8-core 3 GHz E5450 Intel server running on a San Clemente chipset.  That seems counter intuitive since Intel’s TDP rating for its 45nm 3 GHz processor is 80 watt TDP and that doesn’t even count the memory controller on the motherboard.

When looking at the difference between the HP San Clemente chipset based server and the HP 5000 series chipset based server, there is roughly a 32 to 40 watt difference even though the two CPUs are identical.  Most of that difference is due to an extra 6 to 7 watts per FBDIMM and the remaining power delta is mostly due to the newer chipset on the motherboard.  Had both of these servers had 8 DIMMs, the power gap would have been approximately 26 watts wider because of the extra power consumed by the FBDIMMs on the Intel 5000 series chipset.

Next I plot out the power-adjusted ESTIMATED energy efficiency numbers.  I adjusted all the systems to four DIMMs and gave the AMD Opteron system a boost in power supply efficiency from an assumed 70% efficiency to 80% efficiency.  Again this is a rough guess but it’s reasonable considering the fact that Colfax used a dual 700W power supply instead of a single 750W power supply.  If Colfax International is reading this blog then I would suggest to them not to shortchange their own results in the future and use 4 DIMMs and a single PSU like everyone else.

Hopefully the next batch of results will give us some performance numbers on faster single-socket systems using the Bigby chipset and a 45nm processor so we can see how high on the efficiency scale those servers will go.

The Mongolians have had a painful lesson on mesh networking according to the OLPC current events webpage.  Broadcast storms in the overly dense mesh environment along with excessive mDNS broadcast traffic seem to have crippled the Gobi desert experiment.  Here’s an excerpt:

We have painfully discovered the limitations of the mesh and current collaborative software in Mongolia, where the convolution of the number of laptops with bugs #5335 (more mDNS traffic than expected) and #5007 (mesh repeats multicast too much) make the perfect storm, which prevents anybody from using the network. We will continue to improve the mesh performance, but clear guidelines are needed as to what network infrastructure to deploy under what conditions. Once a certain density of students is exceeded, a wired backbone and conventional access points will be required.

The limitations of mesh topology are well known in the wireless engineering community and I’ve raised the issue and pointed out the limitations last September.  Each mesh hop you add increases the propagation delay as well as multiply the radio traffic and congestion.  Performance on a mesh network is fundamentally many times slower than a non-mesh network and when the density gets high enough, the system simply breaks down.

When on a tight budget, I had always recommended the usage of a cheap $60 router running open source DD-WRT would have sufficed and you get a free router with it which you need for IP sharing anyways.  The addition of a high-powered antenna would allow the access point to hear distant signals from faint clients and it will amplify the broadcast signal.  A simple in-door $26 9 dBi antenna placed up high can easily cover a small school.  A $60 12 dBi outdoor antenna positioned on the roof would easily cover an entire campus.  If you put two centralized Access Points and large antennas on channel 1 and 11 (avoid adjacent channels because of channel bleeding) in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, you can load balance and have redundancy if one set of AP/antenna fails.

My fellow blogger and teacher Chris Dawson feels that the ability to do peer-to-peer collaboration with or without an Access Point has great potential.  But peer-to-peer wireless collaboration could have been done with regular ad hoc networking technology without the expense or problems of a full 802.11s mesh implementation.

The inclusion of full 802.11s stack has been challenging.  The need for a radio system that stays on and continues to forward packets even while the laptop is off added unnecessary expenditure to the OLPC XO and it unnecessarily drains the laptop batteries.  When you multiply this expense and complexity across all the clients and realize that the wireless access point comes free with the router, it becomes clear that this may not have been the best design decision.

That was then …

This is now?  Ok, maybe it was 6 years ago?

Alright, I’ll try to stop laughing now while I finish this post.  I saw the first video a few months ago and the second video I got from Fake Steve Ballmer.  I think the first video was true and it was obviously from the late 80s.  The second video could be a gag Microsoft posted for laughs or someone did a really good edit job. I don’t know who the man pushing him out of the way is. I don’t know who the CEO talking about fewer helpdesk calls is but he sure sounded like Mike Cox (our favorite talkback CIO).

Earlier this month I wrote “Build a Mac Pro equivalent workstation for 1/3 the cost” and the pricing didn’t look good for the Mac.  Now that the new Mac Pro with updated specifications and a much lower price has come out, I figured it’s time to do an updated comparison.  But during my research I came to a stunning conclusion: it’s the cheapest name brand dual-processor workstation on the market IF you know how to buy third party memory and storage.  It’s not only cheaper than the slower $3817 Dell workstation I looked at earlier this month, but I can’t even build a cheaper generic PC clone unless I switched to a lower-end CPU.  If you’re in the market for a high-performance Apple workstation, keep reading to learn how to get the best deal.

The new Mac Pro uses Intel’s latest 5400 series “Stoakley” platform with the “Seaburg” chipset.  For the CPU, it uses the 1600 MHz FSB version of the 5400 series CPUs which have clock speeds of 2.8, 3.0, and 3.2 GHz.  The graphics card has gone from AMD/ATI 1900XT to an NVIDIA 8800GT.  The memory was upgraded from Fully Buffered DDR2-667 to Fully Buffered DDR2-800.

As configured in the screen shot to the left, the stripped down system is $2999 with relatively few memory DIMMs and two minimum hard drives.  Since they’re only going to reduce the price by $500 if you only buy one processor and the fact that it would cost you $900 to replace that chip, it’s not worth buying one CPU from Apple.  The memory and hard drives were still too expensive so I left them on the default settings but you will most likely have to take them out and replace them.  The video card will also cost more to replace with a third party brand so it isn’t worth skipping either.  It’s also possible that a third party 8800GT might not work so I wouldn’t even bother trying.

Now once you buy this system, you’re going to need to buy some fully buffered DDR2-800 memory which is still very hard to find at this time.  I found some for $245 (vendor claims Mac Pro tested) which is way more money expensive than other generic memory but it’s way better than the $1500 Apple is asking for.  A few other people in talkback posted this link for two 2GB DDR2-800 at $220.  The price will probably drop $40 in coming months as these get more common but I think the price isn’t too bad at this point.  You will need to buy two of these for $440 if you want the system to run with the max four-channel memory but be sure to populate each DIMM in a separate channel to get the maximum benefit.  Note that CPU-Z for Windows will let you confirm how many channels you’re running though I’m not sure about a Mac equivalent applet but I’ll update if I find out.

The hard drives can be replaced with any 3.5″ SATA hard drive and you can usually buy two 500 GB Seagate hard drives for $240 and put them in a RAID-1 configuration.  This does mean that you’ll either need to leave your OS on the single 320 GB hard drive or you’ll need to manually move the OS to the 500 GB RAID-1 volume which makes the OS boot faster.

Now you have a 2.8 GHz Mac Pro for less than $3800 with all the trimmings which makes it the cheapest high-end workstation on the market.  It’s still possible to get a great PC 2.33 GHz dual-processor workstation for less than $2400 but the high-end belongs to Apple.  However, it’s not really practical to build a lower-end Mac Pro since I’ve got it stripped down to the bone so Apple still has plenty of profit to make even if you don’t buy their outrageous components.  The bottom line is that Mac users can get a much better deal on Mac Pros than at the beginning of this month.

Update 10:30AM
If you’re installing Boot Camp and Windows, do the installation after you set up the RAID-1 volume.  You will need these drivers from Intel’s website for Windows XP, Vista, and Server.  If you don’t want to spend $3700 and you can live with a perfectly good dual-processor 2.33 GHz workstation for $2370 which has the same 5400 series chipset.  Apple seems to have figured out the perfect strategy to keep a high margin yet keep you from building a cheaper clone with exact specifications.

I will be speaking at the Network Neutrality Summit this morning at the University of San Francisco.  They will be streaming this event LIVE at ustream.tv.  Fireworks start at 9:00AM which is the panel I will be on with:

• Richard Clarke - AT&T
• Lawrence Spiwak, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies
• George Ou - ZDNet
• Marham Erickson - Open Internet Coalition
• Timothy Wu - Columbia Law School

Hope to see you there or catch it live on the Internet.

After seeing the above video sent to me by Justin James, I only have one thing to say: Give Jonny his PhD!  Johnny Lee is a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University who took a standard Nintendo Wii remote and turned a monitor in to something special.  You can check out the video above and actually find a sample program here on his website.  You can find Wii Remotes for $40 at places like Amazon.com and you may also need a Bluetooth USB dongle for $10.

This is one of those things that you just have to see to believe, it is that amazing.  Forget those silly looking 3D glasses that mimic stereoscopic vision, this is way better and I want it on all my computers yesterday!

One thing that I’d like to see is a webcam version of this and I’m going to send a note to Mr. Lee.  My Logitech webcam already has software in it that can track bare eyeballs so it removes the need for funky eye glasses with infrared emitters and you can just sit in front of any monitor with a webcam and use it as a 3D portal.  I just salivate at the mere thought of playing any 3D game in front of this thing but I’d love to be able to do it without wearing anything on my face.

If you check out some of Mr. Lee’s other projects, he has some pretty cool stuff in there like turning any display in to a multi-touch display.  The man is now my new hero and he is a stud amongst geeks.

With the arrival of the latest standardized energy efficiency benchmark from SPEC, we have a good way to measure server efficiency.  In light of the recent controversy over rigged energy efficiency studies that have unfortunately been touted by so many in the press instead of SPEC, I thought I’d offer some more in-depth analysis on energy efficiency.

The new SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark gives us a standardized way of measuring energy efficiency for Server Side Java.  SPECpower_ssj2008 gives us efficiency data at varying workloads going from 0% to 100% at increments of 10%.  Then it provides us with a Performance to Power Ratio curve along with an average efficiency of those 11 workload measurements.  The two graphs below are compiled from the SPEC database.  It represents the fastest Intel quad-core system (below left) versus the only AMD CPU submitted to the SPECpower_ssj2008 database to date which is a special energy-efficient Opteron 2216HE (below right).

The two graphs above show more than a 3 to 1 advantage for the fastest Intel system when we look at it in terms of percent workload.  This is a perfectly valid way of analyzing the data, but the tradeoff is that you’re not seeing the efficiency of each processor at absolute workloads which might be valuable if you need a system with lighter workloads.  So to offer an alternative method of interpreting the efficiency data, I plotted out the following Efficiency versus CPU capacity graph with published data from SPEC (and some MS Excel help from analyst David Kanter).

• DP = Dual Processor
• UP = Single Processor (Uni-Processor)
• QC = Quad Core
• DC = Dual Core
• FB = Fully Buffered
• “Operations per joule” is identical to ssj_ops/watt unit used by SPEC.
• “Operations per second” refers to Server Side Java performance.

The blue curve represents the Intel E5450 server shown in the SPEC “Performance to Power” chart above left while the cyan curve represents the AMD 2216HE system.  You’ll notice that the curves are somewhat close together at the lower workloads which means the AMD system is almost as efficient as Intel at lighter workloads.  But at peak performance levels, Intel is three times faster than the AMD 2216HE system and more then three times the energy efficiency.  So if you had to buy three of the AMD 2216HE systems to get the same Server Side Java capacity as the Intel E5450, it would cost you three times the power.

You’ll also notice the pink curve spiking upwards in efficiency just shy of the absolute peak efficiency level of Intel’s latest 45nm E5450 3.0 GHz quad-core CPU.  This single-socket single-processor 2.4 GHz XEON X3220 Intel server is by far the most efficient system at lighter workloads.  Had a newer single-socket CPU like the 45nm QX9650 3.0 GHz 45nm quad-core processor been used, the efficiency curve would probably fly off this chart.  Intel’s 5100 series “San Clemente” chipset will  also get much better efficiency than anything on this graph because it uses lower power registered DDR2-667 memory like AMD.

<Next page - How to spot a flawed CPU energy efficient study>

The last time I built a wooden all-in-one 19″ LCD PC, my family wanted it in the kitchen and my mother wanted it in hers. To keep everyone happy, I built my mother another one (pictured above and below) out of 3/16th inch jet-black polycarbonate which makes the chassis look like the material from a grand piano. The result was something that was so glossy that I can probably shave in it, but I’m almost afraid to touch it and get finger prints all over it. Needless to say, she is very pleased with her new space saving computer. [See photo gallery.]

Cutting this material was fairly simple with wood-cutting and drilling tools. Just be careful to slow down on the table saw so you don’t chip the polycarbonate. I had initially avoided putting in vent holes in the back but the CPU fan and the PSU fan dynamically ramped up in RPM because of the increasing temperature and caused some noise. Once the 4 holes were put in the back, the CPU fan stayed at lower RPM and remained fairly silent even if I stress loaded the CPUs.

This time I mounted the on/off switch up top along with two USB ports which makes it easy to access and comes in handy for the webcam. I just wished I had a webcam that did away with the cable and just had a down-facing USB port so I can just plug it in right on top of the case. The other USB port is convenient for plugging other devices such as USB memory sticks or other devices I want sitting on top of the chassis.

As usual with these slim custom chassis, I used a slim 1.75″ 1U Sparkle SPI220LE 80 Plus 220 watt power supply. The idle power consumption on this computer is 43 watts and 63 watt under peak CPU loads generated by WPrime. The motherboard is an ECS 945GCT-M which came bundled with an Intel Celeron 430 CPU (Conroe-L 1.8 GHz single-core) I got at Fry’s for $70. I put in an Intel Core 2 Duo E2140 dual-core 1.6 instead and kept the lower-profile CPU fan which came with the Celeron 430. That lower profile fan came in real handy since it fit inside my 3″ thick chassis which is even less space inside because of the thickness of the walls. This chassis has plenty of room for additional devices such as a slim optical slot-loaded drive.

<next page>

After this morning’s piece “Don’t believe the low bit-rate ‘HD’ lie“, I thought I would follow up and show you want crappy HD looks like.  The following is a sample from AVSForum user Xylon who digitally ripped some images from DIRECTV and Dish Networks satellite service 1.5 years ago.  Note that both of these are delivering less than half the 19.2 bit-rate of ATSC over-the-air broadcast HD so neither example is all that great.  I linked to the forum and cropped out the image at 1:1 size and posted the samples for a side-by-side comparison below but you can click to see the full-size images.

DIRECTV HD @ 8.25 mbps	Dish “HD” @ 9.10 mbps

Source/credit: Xylon @ AVSForum

Apparently, DIRECTV switched from 1920×1080 resolution HD video to highly compressed 1280×1080 so they can shove a lot more channels on to their service which users not-so-lovingly named “HD Lite“.  As you can see above, the DIRECTV image to the left absolutely stinks compared to the not-so-great sample from Dish on the right.  This apparently angered a lot of DIRECTV customers and one such customer Peter Cohen actually filed a class action lawsuit.

Even the Dish example on the right above sucks compared to broadcast HDTV and that the hair is blurred and blended in.  But everyone’s rushing to announce their “100 channel HD” service when all they’re doing is squeezing twice as many channels down the same pipe.  Now imagine what happens when you try to cut the bit-rate down by a factor of 4 like Apple’s iTune HD rental service or you try to cut it down 10 times like some websites.  Granted the usage of higher-end codecs like H.264/MPEG4-AVC or VC-1 can lessen the losses in quality, but no compression technology in the world can handle fast changing video with low bit-rates without severe degradation.  People often hear MPEG-4 and the knee-jerk reaction is that it’s automatically better than MPEG-2 because they see a bigger number but that’s only true if it’s at or almost the same bit-rate.

In light of the fact that 8 mbps 1280×1080 video gets you sued, you have to wonder what Steve Jobs is thinking when he says Blu-ray and HD DVD will get killed by download services such as his newly launched 4 mbps 720p “HD” iTunes movie rental service.  I guess if consumers believe the lie that you can do HD with these low bit-rate downloads, then Steve might be right.  But with cheap 42 inch 1920×1080 full 1080p LCD and Plasma panels coming out spring this year at less than $1400, consumers are going to be in for a surprise when they see the difference between the free stuff coming over the airwaves versus the crap they actually pay for coming from Satellite and download services.

Video quality reference table from best to worst:
(Some data might be outdated, missing, or approximate but I will update)

* Can up-scale well up to 1080i or 1080p because of reasonable bit-rate.

Update 6:00PM - Here’s what fake HD video looks like.

Last week at CES, Comcast announced their “HD” video on demand download service over its future DOCSIS 3.0 that allows 4 minute downloads of entire HD movies.  Attendees at MacWorld this week were told that disk-based HD formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray are essentially obsolete because you can simply download “HD” movies from your Apple TV 2.0 box on demand.  Microsoft started offering HD downloads for the XBOX360 starting in late 2006.  You can even watch “HD” videos from ABC right from the web.  There are even YouTube competitors that offer user uploaded “HD” content.  There’s just one minor little problem, it’s not HD.

As I’ve tried to educate my readers last year with my blog “Why HD movie downloads are a big lie“, these so-called HD movies use very low bit-rates compared to even standard definition DVDs let alone something like HD DVD or Blu-ray DVD.  Raw uncompressed 1080p video at 60 frames per second is about 3000 mbps so even HD DVD’s 28 mbps needs to be compressed about 107 to 1 with the H.264 or VC-1 codec.  By all reasonable standards this needs to be the minimum bit-rate for acceptable loss in quality on 1080p video.

Updated 4:30PM - Standard definition 480i DVD movies are typically 5 to 8 mbps (megabits per second) MPEG-2 whereas these so-called HD wannabes weigh in at a pathetic 1.5 to 4 mbps of 720p H.264.  Apple’s new HD service is capable of 4 mbps which simply isn’t enough to be considered HD.  XBOX360 downloads are 6.8 mbps 720p VC-1 so they’re semi-decent borderline HD.  Marketing will push the nicer sounding “720p” aspect of the video but they don’t tell you it’s way too compressed to offer good video fidelity.  Blu-ray has a maximum bit-rate of 40 mbps while HD DVD offers a maximum of 28 mbps.  Over the air broadcasts can be up to 24 19.38 mbps.

Modern video compression codecs like H.264 or VC-1 can hide these compression artifact problems much better than MPEG-2 video compression but there’s only so much it can do.  At best you might get away 50% more compression over older compression technology but 1.5 to 4 mbps H.264 will not be better than 8 mbps MPEG-2 under most video complexity requirements.  The only time 4 mbps 720p will look better than 8 mbps 480i is when the video on the screen is almost entirely stationary or it’s a low-complexity video such as animation movies.  Under most normal circumstances, the low bit-rate 720p so-called “HD” video will be inferior though many companies are betting that consumers won’t know any better. 

So the bottom line is that so-called “HD” video from Microsoft’s XBOX360 HD download service and Apple’s new Apple TV service or any other web download service is simply not HD by any respectable definition.  These companies cannot and should not use the “HD” name with video that is lower fidelity than standard DVD.  As for Comcast, there’s not much detail on it but I highly doubt it’s more than 4 to 8 mbps even on DOCSIS 3.0 because its 160 mbps total capacity is divided between 50 to 400 customers.  Only FiOS technology with its massive 620 mbps per 32-user capacity and possibly U-Verse (but slower than real time) has sufficient last-mile capacity to deliver true HD movie downloads at the quality of HD DVD and Blu-ray technology.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t buy these services from Apple, or other services that offer low bit-rate 720p video downloads, but consumers must be aware of the fact that they’re slightly worse than a 1080p up-converted DVD.  Microsoft’s XBOX service is border-line HD that is slightly better than DVD but nowhere near 1080i over-the-air HD broadcast quality.

Intel launched their brand new 45nm mobile dual-core processors last week with 60% smaller packaging size.  Yesterday Apple announced their Über-sleek MacBook Air ultra-slim notebook which also uses a specially designed Intel dual-core CPU with 60% smaller packaging.  Naturally I assumed the new MacBook Air uses Intel’s latest Penryn-class 45nm technology with low leakage hafnium metal gates and I called Intel for confirmation of this “special” processor.  I thought to myself: What’s so special about it if every PC vendor can use the same shrunken CPU?

To my surprise, Apple didn’t use the newest 45nm mobile processor with 107mm^2 die size; they really did use a “one-off” “Merom” 65nm 143mm^2 die designed-just-for-Apple CPU from Intel.  Intel specially designed a larger 65nm core with a specially designed package that’s 60% smaller.  This means instead of using the latest 45nm processors that are faster and more energy efficient and are already that small without any special packaging, Apple got a “special” 65nm chip.

This begs the question why Intel doesn’t make its new 45nm packaging even smaller than the current 60% reduction in size if it can reduce its packaging by 60% on 65nm technology.  It also begs the question why Apple had to go to the trouble of a tailor made 65nm part when the 45nm part launched 3 weeks before the launch of the MacBook Air.  Several other PC makers were already showing off their 45nm based notebooks last week at CES.

I spoke to a few people about this and asked for some theories and we came to a somewhat reasonable guess so I’ll offer these up as some possible reasons.  For a product as specialized at exotic as the MacBook Air, the design would have needed to start some time ago.  When that design started, it may not have been a certainty if 45nm Mobile Penryn would be ready to ship with MacWorld and there may not have been working samples to start the design process.

Despite the fact that other PC makers have 45nm based notebooks ready to launch, none of them are this sleek.  So ultimately it doesn’t really change the appeal of the MacBook Air and it will be the thinnest notebook on the market.  In 20/20 hindsight perhaps it would have been better if the MacBook Air had shipped with a 45nm CPU and maybe we’ll see a quick refresh from Apple to the new processor since the size is obviously not a problem.  It’s just that “special” in this case is necessarily a flattering thing when referencing the CPU used in the MacBook Air, but the MacBook Air is still special in a flattering way.

What if we held a football game involving the Patriots and any other NFL team where we set up a Patriots handicap that prohibited Tom Brady and the rest of his starting lineup from playing?  What if the result was a loss for the Patriots and we splash the headline across the sports newswire that the Patriots just lost a football game?  Would you think this was ethical behavior?  Well that’s precisely what happened yesterday when the Neal Nelson report titled “AMD beats Intel in quad-core server power efficiency” spread across the newswire and got repeated as fact.

This is a classic case where the measurements are most likely accurate, but what’s being measured isn’tNeal Nelson and Associates is a consulting firm that has made it a habit to put out these handicapped reports on processor efficiency.  Last year they excluded Intel’s quad-core lineup when AMD didn’t have quad-core processors and declared AMD the winner and got lots of news coverage, now they’re comparing Intel chips released in Q4 2006 to AMD technology that may not be available to the general public until Q2-2008 and the press seems to be falling for it all over again.

Nelson compared AMD’s Opteron 2350 2.0 GHz quad-core processor (may not ship again until Q2-2008 when the TLB bug hopefully gets fixed) to Intel’s older 65nm “Clovertown” E5335 and E5345 processor which were released in Q4 2006.  These weren’t even the newest 65nm G Stepping Clovertown processors from mid-2007 with lower power consumption; these were the older stepping released in 2006.  But Intel launched their latest 45nm “Harpertown” processors in November of 2007 and these chips were excluded from this “study” on AMD versus Intel energy efficiency.  This is a classic case where the measurements are most likely accurate, but what’s being measured isn’t.  This is a critical omission because the 45nm chips from Intel made significant improvements in performance and energy efficiency which has a double impact on performance per watt.

Nelson basically took a product from AMD that hasn’t even sorted out the bugs yet and can’t be purchased yet, then compared it to Intel’s 2006 technology while excluding two newer generations of Intel technology that are available in quantity, and he declares AMD the “winner” on energy efficiency.  Then in an ultimate twist of irony, Nelson has the gall to question the methodology of the latest SPEC power efficiency standard SPECpower_ssj2008 when his own tests are outright deceptive.  But in reality, SPEC doesn’t go out and declare winners or losers for cheap headlines or overstate the importance of their data; they merely present data with full vendor disclosures and provide valuable data points to the public.

When I did my in-depth review of SPECpower_ssj2008, I tempered the results for AMD despite the fact that the early SPECpower_ssj2008 results showed complete domination by Intel over AMD.  I stated that the results would have been more competitive for AMD (at least at comparable clock speeds) if a web server version of SPECpower was used and when AMD quad-core Opteron gets its bugs sorted out.  I still stand by that assessment based on the fact that AMD does well on a clock-for-clock basis when looking at SPECweb_2005 performance.  However, Intel still commands the clock speed advantage which makes them the performance leader but at least AMD can be competitive on web serving duties at the lower clock speeds if they can fix their bug and launch their quad-core parts.

So who should the IT manager believe when it comes to performance per watt?  Ideally you run your own tests on your own applications and draw your own conclusions but that may not be an option for everyone.  If running your own tests isn’t feasible, I would recommend finding publicly acknowledged reputable benchmarks like those from SPEC or TPC and try to find the benchmark that most closely resembles your workload.  While that isn’t perfect, it’s the closest thing to commissioning your own tests.  But what you should not do is rely on consulting firms that have of a track record for fixing the game.

Unfortunately, one of the least used features on all-in-one multi-function printers and heavy duty copier/scanner/printer machines is the scan function because it’s simply too complicated.  If you’re lucky, IT will set up your email account as a preconfigured setting and they’ll teach you how to scan a document to your email inbox.  If you’re geeky enough to go and figure out how to key in your own email, then you might be one of the other two people in the building that uses the scan functionality.  But most people simply keep paper copies and do everything the way they’ve always done it by making more copies and storing them in a file cabinet if they’re organized enough.  Well Samsung might actually change this with their direct to USB multi-function printers.

One of the features I’ve searched long and hard for is a scan-to-USB feature.  I’ve asked representatives from Xerox and every other copier company that offers multi-function copiers with little luck.  I’ve asked HP for this feature and no luck there either.  But last week as I went through Samsung’s CES booth, I thought I’d check out their color multifunction printers and I notice a nice little USB port in the front of them.  The Samsung representative explained that the USB port can act as a print source or scan destination and I thought FINALLY we’ve made scanning easy.

The color multi-function printers in question are the Samsung CLX-3160 (pictured left) and the yet-to-be-released CLX-6200.  Both devices can print an assortment of document types such as PDF, JPEG, TXT, etc directly from USB memory.  Both devices can also scan documents and save them directly to the USB memory.  This means that instead of trying to figure out how to configure an email destination which is difficult without a qwerty keyboard or figure out how to dump to a scan to a network file share, you simply dump the scan to USB.  Now you just take those stacks of documents and shove it in the feeder and it will get digitized on to USB memory!

The difference between the Samsung CLX-6200 and CLX-3160 is that the 6200 can print all four colors at the same time whereas the 3160 does color one color at a time.  This means that the 6200 prints color more than four times faster than the 3160 and it also prints black and white a little faster.  The 6200 will also print full duplex two-sided output automatically which cuts down paper consumption in half if only people can be educated on using it.  The 3160 is available now online for roughly $450.  The 6200 will launch at the end of this quarter for $200 more than the 3160 and should be well worth the price as a workgroup all-in-one.  Personally I wouldn’t mind having one of these near my cubical.