Where's the upload speed?

I have an awesome internet connection compared to some people (or so I thought): I sometimes hit over 32Mbps in download tests. Downloading ISOs from Technet? Pfft, no problem. Torrents? Piece of cake. Just recently uploading an HD video to Youtube with my new Kodak Zi8? Slooowwww...

I have a measly 1Mbps upload speed. If I wanted 2Mbps, my monthly internet bill would over double. What's the deal with such puny upload speeds?

I'm all for "The Cloud." It's more convenient, and despite people receiving constant warnings, most STILL don't back up. The Cloud (mostly) solves that problem. The big hold up is that the cloud idea doesn't work if performance takes a nose dive compared to keeping the data local. Currently, upload speeds are the biggest behind-the-times factor.

Please, ISPs, if you're listening... for the love of all that is good... raise the upload speeds!

Ugh... Norton...

3 strikes, you’re out. Considering many consumers switch after one bad experience, I think I’m being rather generous. So, which company is the source of my angst today? Symantec. 2002 was their last decent year. 2003 their products started getting bloated, especially their Internet Security suite. 2004 turned into a nightmare: your network connection could just randomly stop working after an update, quazi installs and uninstalls that were half-there, but not protecting anything… and sometimes the half-uninstalled Norton would even still keep your network from functioning, so Norton had to release their own removal tool. I thought maybe it was just the firewall in the Internet Security suite that was causing the networking problems, but I found networking problems in the plain Antivirus product as well. Well, I thought, “Surely their basic, clean, corporate antivirus should be fine”, until I encountered a medium-sized business whose entire network lost internet connectivity. They spent hours on the phone with Symantec trying to fix it, and then they called me. All I did was replace the antivirus, and they were up and running. So, for a couple of years I swore off (at?) any Symantec product… until Norton Antivirus 2009 came along. It was apparently made to address all the old issues: it was basic and clean, it installed in under a minute, had lightning quick scans, etc etc. It was getting rave reviews. They also had a gaming edition that held popups and updates during gaming so you didn’t get interrupted. This was also getting rave reviews. So, I tried it. I was constantly being alerted that the program was out of date because the pulse update feature wasn’t working properly (at all?). I checked the forums, and sure enough, many users were having this problem, with no solution in sight. A couple of months in, most of my games stopped loading… until I removed this *cough* Norton Antivirus Gaming Edition. So, I’m done with Symantec, and I hope you are too. I do not exaggerate when I say that over 90% of the time, when a client has a networking problem, and a Symantec (Norton) security product is installed, removing the Symantec product solves the networking problem.

So, what do I suggest? Well, Norton Antivirus still scores well as an antivirus in comparisons, so clearly how these programs perform as a security measure is not enough to qualify them. The
popular AVG Free does reasonably well usability-wise, so it is one of the antiviruses I suggest for home users, but its performance is decidedly average, so those demanding better will be better served with the likes of Bitdefender, Kaspersky, or NOD32. Of those three, Bitdefender is my preferred right now – it’s easy to use AND it performs well. I’ve tried NOD32, and its performance is excellent, but currently you need separate logins and keys for the account on their website and the program itself, which is quite unintuitive. I’ve talked with them about this and hopefully they’ll change this in the next version.

Wipe your mouth AND your brain.

I should probably explain the existence of this blog. There's this classic idea of so many great business ideas being drawn up on napkins. Why not ideas for technology products and concepts? This blog is all about getting my ideas out on "paper". Please comment on them... it may generate more ideas. The goal is to gather enough attention that companies start taking suggestions seriously... to become a free think tank that gets both what we want (the products that don't exist but should), and what they want (the $).

Also, if you have a good eye, you'll be able to tell what restaurants I've been eating at. (Don't try too hard with this one: the restaurant used the cheap generic logo-less kind).

Legacy free motherboards

Hardware backwards compatibility is getting a little out of hand. The latest OS's are parting ways with a lot of old hardware and software, but motherboard manufacturers keep making all their boards with serial ports (or at least headers) and other out-of-date standards. Fear is probably the motivator, as the last well-known legacy-free board from Abit sold horribly. But that was years ago, and the situation is completely different now. Most households no longer have just one computer: if you really need to keep using your old Palm III organizer and its serial-port-based dock, keep it with the old computer - chances are it wouldn't play nice with the new OSs anyway. And even disregarding that advice, no one said that a motherboard manufacturer has to make their entire lineup legacy free.

Whats the big deal? Needless complexity and cost. Power consumption for all these extra controllers also suffers slightly. I suggest a completely legacy-free motherboard for the mid-range market, P55 chipset would be ideal, somewhere b/t $150-$200 (ASUS? Gigabyte? Are you listening?) No serial, no parallel, no PS/2, no IDE, no PCI, no floppy. Load up the backplate with USB, powered eSATA, firewire jacks, a cmos reset button, etc. Why no ethernet or audio? You'll see why below...


I racked my brain what would be the optimal legacy free (i.e. all PCI-E) layout for a 7 slot ATX design. The napkin is the result of that brain-racking. While I think 2-card SLI/Crossfire is WAY overstated (it's insisted on almost every enthusiast board, yet a relatively small percentage ever actually take advantage of the ability, and 3-way is practically unheard of in real life), a 2-card, 2-slot-each setup is something that should be carefully considered in the layout. Since most performance graphics cards are 2-slot designs, the slot immediately under each 16x slot can just remain blank (helps simplify the trace design too). Since you want room for airflow as well, the video cards should have a third slot relatively unobstructed. The top card will only have a 1x card to possibly "block" the airflow, but considering the position of most video card fans, and the length of most PCI-E 1x cards, this is, in most cases, a non-issue. The bottom video card still has a bit of room past the edge of the motherboard in most cases to breathe, so no problem there either.

Now it's just a matter of taking advantage of the 6 available PCI-E lanes in the P55 chipset. In retrospect it might be better to have the 4x slot to be in between the 1x slots, to give a card like the 9800GT room to breathe. Also, might as well just make the slot physically a 16x slot instead of a open-ended 4x, just to give a videocard better support. As for the two left over lanes, put small riser cards in them, one dedicated to sound, and one dedicated to network (wireless and wired in one riser card would be cool). You could then also disable the onboard sound or onboard network controller if you wanted to use your own. This is why I suggested not even bothering putting sound or ethernet on the backpanel. Enthusiasts often (at least more often then using a serial or parallel port device!) have their own sound or network cards they want to use, so why waste valuable backpanel space?

Post your thoughts. And motherboard makers: Are you listening?