Anyone with a green bone in their body should love rechargeable batteries, but it’s awfully difficult. Alkaline batteries provide always available power, last a long time, and are widely available and inexpensive, while rechargeables are expensive, unpredictable, and usually dead when you need them. As a fan of green technology, I was frustrated at the prospect of buying throwaway alkaline batteries, but could not find a better solution until now. The La Crosse BC-700 battery charger has reversed my impression of rechargeable batteries. It’s that good.
Terabyte home
The Best Network Card For VMware ESX Home Lab Machines
I’m building a home/lab server to run a variety of workloads, but VMware ESX is chief among these. Sadly, VMware ESX is especially picky about network interface cards (NICs): Although many are supported, most are intended for servers and thus very expensive and difficult to find at retail. So I set out browsing through the VMware ESX HCL, Newegg, and Amazon to find the best network card for my home lab machine. Here’s what I’ve found out so far.
Samsung SP-H03 Pico Projector Review
SP-H03 Pico Review: Keen touch control but dim lamp, auto-drain battery; tiny but with clunky accessories. A niche product.
Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, January 7, 2011
It’s been a slow week (the holidays) and a crazy one. I’ve started pouring out the thin provisioning series, with 10 posts so far, as well as launching a new video “talk show” about enterprise IT. And I’ve got a new post over at SearchStorage, too. Whew!
Is TRIM Useful For Thin Provisioning?
If WRITE_SAME can be a semaphore for thin un-provisioning, what about TRIM? It sounds like a perfect fit, and has wider implementation to boot! Let’s take a deeper look.


