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Optima EX 2.4 ($23,200) adds foglights, heated outside mirrors, exterior chrome/body-color door handles, glovebox illumination, Smart Key with push-button start, auto light control system, 17-inch alloy wheels with P215/55R17 tires.The EX Premium Package adds a panoramic sunroof, four-way front passenger seat, driver's seat memory, heated and cooled front seats, heated rear seats, heated steering wheel, wood trim.The EX Technology Package includes the Premium Package and adds the navigation system with rearview camera, Infinity premium audio.
Optima EX 2.0T ($25,100) features the 2.0-liter four-cylinder turbocharged engine, larger front brake discs, unique front grille.A Premium Package adds the panoramic sunroof, four-way front-passenger seat, heated/cooled front seats, heated rear seats, heated steering wheel.The Technology Package includes the Premium Package and adds the navigation system, rearview camera, Infinity premium audio.
Optima SX 2.0T ($26,500) upgrades further with a sport-tuned suspension, P225/45R18 tires, 18-inch black machined wheels, black front-brake calipers, HID headlights with auto leveling, LED rear lights, unique front/rear bumper design, sculpted side sills, spoiler, aero wiper blades.The Technology Package ($1400) and Premium Package ($2950) include the panoramic sunroof, four-way front-passenger seat, heated/cooled front seats, heated rear seats.
Optima Hybrid ($25,700) uses a 2.4-liter I4 Atkinson cycle gas engine that produces 166 horsepower and an electric motor with 40 horsepower.It comes with 16-inch alloy wheels, fog lamps, heated outside mirrors, front and rear lower bumpers and side sills, a rear spoiler, and LED taillamps.Inside, there's an eight-way power adjustable driver's seat, electric dual zone automatic temperature control with rear vents, push-button start with Smart Key, leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob, fixed rear seats with ski pass-through.Premium Technology Package ($5350) adds 17-inch alloy wheels with low-rolling-resistance tires, panoramic sunroof, a four-way power adjustable front passenger seat, driver's seat memory, heated and cooled front seats, heated rear seats and steering wheel, HID head lights with automatic leveling, leatherette-wrapped center fascia, auto-dimming rear-view mirror with Homelink and compass, a navigation system with back-up camera and SiriusXM Traffic, and the premium Infinity audio system.
Safety features include dual front advanced airbags, front side airbags, side curtain airbags, side-impact door beams, front/rear crumple zones, impact-absorbing steering column, three-point seatbelts, front seatbelt pretensioners, adjustable front seatbelt anchors, child safety locks, child seat anchors, emergency trunk release, four-wheel power anti-lock disc brakes (ABS), brake assist, traction control (TCS), electronic stability control (ESC), hill-start assist (HAC), and the mandated tire-pressure monitor.Optional is a rearview camera.
NewCarTestDrive.com correspondent Sam Moses contributed to this report from the Pacific Northwest.Ted West contributed to this report.
The Optima EX comes with the 200-hp 2.4-liter four cylinder engine, which we found flexible, very quiet, and reasonably powerful.As the engine most Optima buyers will choose, it is well suited to family duties both in daily traffic and at highway and commute speeds.
Even at middle throttle, accelerating from a stop, the engine is only distantly audible.Only under full acceleration does this engine remind you that it's a small four-cylinder, with an agonized yowl.At the more common task of accelerating away from an intersection, the Optima EX excels, smoothly and predictably gaining speed with no drama.In other words, throttle tip-in at slow speeds is linear and without surges; many cars nowadays jump off the line with overly sensitive throttles.
The Optima EX rides nicely, passing over rough surfaces with little effort, soaking up roughness while delivering necessary road information to the driver.Chassis dynamics are excellent for a family mid-size car.Steering is accurate, firm and provided good feedback over twisting terrain.Pushing harder, there is good front-wheel grip, and when we hit a long curve at high speed, the multi-link rear end hooked up nicely.The usual ride responses experienced in vigorous driving, such as body roll, dive and squat, are well controlled, thanks to the car's rigid chassis.
Handling-wise, everything the EX does well, the Optima SX Turbo does crisper.The SX includes a sport-tuned suspension.
The Optima 2.0T is a sweet performance star with a classy ride.The Turbo's performance, stability and agility are first rate.Silky smooth engine, amazing for a 2.0-liter four-cylinder, thanks to the Korean carmaker on the other side of town; the engine is shared with the Hyundai Sonata.It makes 274 horsepower, squirts the Optima from 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds, and through the quarter-mile in 14.8 seconds, muscle car times.What's more, if you get the EPA estimate of 22/34 mpg City/Highway, it'll be as good as we got in our real world with the Optima Hybrid.
The Optima Hybrid delivered unimpressive fuel mileage when we drove it with no babying.EPA rates the Optima Hybrid 35/40 miles per gallon City/Highway.But our combined average, after 240 around-town and fast freeway miles, was 25.5 mpg.Around town we got just 20.5 mpg.Highest we reached was 39.4 mpg, in Eco mode at 60 mph; that's how to match the claims or EPA estimate.At 78 mph, with the Eco button amusingly still pressed, the average was 25.0 mpg.
Both the Turbo and Hybrid use a 6-speed automatic transmission, but the Turbo's is smooth, while the Hybrid's is programmed to get better fuel mileage.We found the Optima Hybrid transmission awful.It would not respond to on-off throttle, for example on the freeway shooting for holes.When it's changing gears, sometimes it feels like it's slipping, other times like it's snatching.It felt like we were towing a big bag of boulders.
The Hybrid uses a 2.4-liter four-cylinder Atkinson cycle gas engine that produces 166 horsepower connected by a wet clutch to an Interior Permanent Magnet (IPM) synchronous electric motor producing 40 horsepower and 151 lb-ft of torque up to 1,400 rpm in electric mode.Hyundai says it can be driven in full-electric mode at speeds up to 62 miles per hour.Supposedly when the car comes to a stop and the electrical load is low, the engine shuts off to completely eliminate idle fuel consumption and emissions.Ours never did that.
The battery that powers the electric motor is state of the art, a 270V lithium-polymer (Li-PB) battery.Compared to a nickel metal hydride system, this 95-pound Li-PB system is 20-30 percent lighter, 40 percent smaller, holds a charge 25 percent longer, is 10 percent more efficient, and offers twice the power density.The warranty is good for up to 10 years or 150,000 miles.
Wintry conditions do not suit the Optima.When we drove the Hybrid in snow we found little traction.We'll remember this Optima as the one-wheel-drive car.On our sloping driveway with a couple inches of snow, left front tire on asphalt and right front on ice, the power went to the tire on the ice, which just spun, as the car went nowhere.If you live in the Snow Belt look elsewhere.
The instrument panel is clean, including four handsome horizontal climate vents.Instruments use a clear font.The lettering on the tach and speedometer is organic white with a red needle, although the tach is too small to be very useful.
The leather-wrapped four-spoke steering wheel is thick, feels good in the hands.It tilts and telescopes, and contains controls for audio, cruise control, phone and a big green button for Eco.Heating is optional.
The five-passenger seating is excellent, with a full range of adjustability available in the driver's seat.The seats are firm, well-bolstered, and deliver snug lateral support for more vigorous driving.However, the center-rear passenger must ride the camel's hump, and the rear legroom is on the low side of average, at 34.7 inches.Heated front and rear seating is available, as is front cooling and a cooled glovebox for drinks.
The front windows feature fully automatic one-touch up/down operation, a provision found in pricier European sedans.The panoramic sunroof is huge, airy and truly bright.When closing it, the sunscreen panel closes automatically.A separate function opens only the screen and tilt roof.Nice, as with the controls on the center console, angled slightly towards the driver.
The right side B pillar creates a blind spot over the driver's shoulder.
Starting the car turns on the screen.One thing we continue to hate, and gets us off on the wrong foot every time, is having to click I AGREE to something, before the car will even show you its clock.Adding insult to injury, on the Optima you have to reach way up there to AGREE.We have no idea what we're agreeing to.
The screen didn't get much better for us.There are a bewildering number of things to click: GPS, Daylight Savings Time, some icon that looks like a hairbrush, and so on.The Navigation is fairly easy to set, and you can operate it while the car is moving, though we recommend your co-driver perform this duty.We found the navigation in our car inaccurate.It was so wrong it was useless at worst, untrustworthy at best.It was totally confused by a freeway branch outside the city, and if we hadn't known our way and ignored it, it would have put us on the wrong freeway, wrong direction, for at least six miles.Another time, we were parked in front of our destination, and navigation told us to drive around the block: The map on the screen showed four right turns at the end of each block, to reach where we already were.
The display for the Hybrid is only slightly strange, for a hybrid: growing flowers in Eco mode, the bigger the bouquet the better you're doing.In the center of the speedo a display shows average and instant fuel mileage, with blue bars that move with the throttle position, duh.It also scores your efficiency.There's a big round instrument on the left that's an Eco guide, with white, green and red zones.You can see energy flow back and forth between the wheels, battery, and engine.Fun to watch for the first few minutes of the few years you might own the car.
The Hybrid offers a Microsoft voice-activated infotainment system with its audio system, incorporating Bluetooth and back-up camera.Infinity's deluxe 12-speaker audio system, with stylish speakers in the doors and dash, delivered superb sound.
A Virtual Engine Sound System (VESS) plays an engine sound during electric-only operation up to 12 miles per hour, to help notify people outside the vehicle that it is approaching.We would have liked to hear this mock buzz, but we couldn't get the Hybrid to run on electric only.It took the internal combustion engine just to back downhill out of our driveway.Nothing new with hybrids.And rather than a buzz, why not play music? Hi folks, we're coming through, now how about a little Led Zeppelin for you? Or perhaps exotic engine sounds, like a Formula 1 Ferrari or an old Can Am car.Or maybe it should woo woo like an old steam locomotive.Purposely making cars noisier.Is that progress?
The Hybrid's air conditioning system uses an electric compressor, reducing the losses in belt-driven systems and allowing cool air to flow, even with the engine off in Idle-Stop mode.We didn't test it because it was freezing outside.So far, we've found that when they say cool air, they mean exactly that, as in not hot.Don't expect air-conditioning cold, in summer.
Cargo space is vast in the Optima EX and SX (15.4 cubic feet), but not so vast with the Hybrid (9.9 cubic feet) because of battery placement.
The suit seems a bit tight in the front, though.The Optima grille, a sharp-angled chrome bezel surrounding a black mesh screen, arouses opposite opinions.One correspondent called it elegantly simple, comparing it to Jaguar and Bentley, but most of us think it looks like it came out of an aftermarket catalog.
The racy wraparound headlamps, and low wide stance, imply athleticism.The front air dam is low enough to scrape in surprising places for a so-called sedate sedan like this, and gives the nose an aggressive look while helping fuel mileage.Scraping can be annoying if your driveway or a nearby intersection you use is severe enough to cause the nose to drag.
The sides of the car are admirably clean, with three horizontal character lines giving them form and flow.Handsome flared fenders add muscularity to the Optima's flanks.
The wheels come in several patterns and sizes, and are cutting edge.The sporty Optima SX comes with wheels that make a strong styling statement, but because they're soft alloy and wider than the tires, it's very easy to scrape and scar them against a curb.
Wraparound red taillights complete the dynamic look, with dual chrome exhausts, one at each side, fulfilling the sporty image by gilding the rose, since dual exhausts on an inline four-cylinder are pure styling, like snowshoes on a duck.Still, the imagery is enticing.
The 2012 Optima lineup adds a Hybrid version using a 2.4-liter I4 Atkinson cycle gas engine that produces 166 horsepower with an electric motor with 40 horsepower.The 2012 Kia Optima Hybrid gets an EPA-estimated 35/40 miles per gallon City/Highway.
Optima is at the forefront of midsize design: sleek and muscular, with none of the odd feel that sometimes characterizes new Asian cars.It is a car of finesse, with distinguished aesthetics, except for that grille.
Inside, the interior appointments and materials are handsome, generous, and of high quality, overall.Beautiful leather adorns the dashboard and seating, comfortable with firm support, including the rear.The design and layout of the instrumentation reflect thought and employ the latest technology.Legible, jewel-like instruments signal that this is no bland commuter module, though the Optima does make a good commuter module.The expected conveniences are all there, plus bonuses such as a cooled glove compartment for keeping beverages cool.
Optima offers heated/cooled seating, navigation with rearview camera, paddle-shifter transmission, and an extra-large panoramic sunroof.Connectivity conveniences include satellite radio, USB audio input jacks and Bluetooth wireless, with steering wheel voice activation controls that deliver hands-free phone operation.
Optima uses front-wheel drive and a four-wheel independent suspension that is athletic and responsive.We found the ride quality compliant over rougher pavement, filtering out harshness, while the suspension accurately communicates smaller bumps and ripples.The chassis is good, and although Optima is no performance sedan, its handling has a sporty glimmer.
The Kia Optima EX, the base trim and most common model, uses a 2.4-liter four-cylinder making 200 horsepower.This engine is short on excitement, but it's fine for most drivers.Quiet at highway cruising speeds, it delivers enough power to keep up with fast traffic on the freeways, while delivering an EPA-estimated 24/35 mpg City/Highway.
The 274-hp Optima Turbo sweetly carries this sedan into another world.The Optima Turbo's performance, stability and agility are first rate, and its silky smooth engine is amazing for a 2.0-liter four-cylinder.It squirts from 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds, very quick indeed, and through the quarter-mile in 14.8 seconds.
The Optima Hybrid drags Optima back into a third world.Its EPA estimated mileage is 35/40 miles per gallon.However, we only got 25.5 mpg during our lead-footed stint.The 6-speed automatic transmission was rough, which we blame on its electronic programming.
Optima Hybrid uses a 2.4-liter four-cylinder Atkinson cycle gas engine that produces 166 horsepower connected by a wet clutch to an Interior Permanent Magnet (IPM) synchronous electric motor producing 40 horsepower.The battery that powers the electric motor is state of the art, a 270V lithium-polymer (Li-PB) battery.Compared to a nickel metal hydride system, this 95-pound Li-PB system is 20-30 percent lighter, 40 percent smaller, holds a charge 25 percent longer, is 10 percent more efficient, and offers twice the power density.The warranty is good for up to 10 years or 150,000 miles.It's a hybrid, so you don't need to plug it in.Just fill it with gas and go.


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Excellent accomodations. Everything and more that you would ever need. Owners were exceptional people, friendly and helpful. They make you feel right at home.
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- The Xanadu is a Hybrid B & B which means we gives you all the amenities to make your stay your way...At the Xanadu you get the choice to have an optional continental breakfast basket,make your own hot breakfast in your room,purchase individual breakfast items from our "Snack Shack",or go to one of our local places for breakfast.or just have a cup of coffee or tea on us,in the privacy of your own room or outside at one of our comfortable scenic seating areas,watch a DVD movie from our extensive video library (all rooms have satellite TV, DVD players and wireless Internet)***All rooms have refrigerators, microwaves, coffee pots& toasters.We are 1 1/2 miles from the Sonoita Crossroads, close to all the finest restaurants and Shops,in the heart of wine country...If your coming to do the winery's we would recommend stopping at charron's vineyards just off Rout 10- 6 miles on the left.Because once here you probably would not want To go back that far.Then come here and check in because on your Room key is a Wine club card for discounts,and take some of our wine glasses all this will save $. Also we can give you the latest updates and a wine vacation guide. ... more less
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Winner of ITV's Show Me The Funny, this half-Iranian, half-Middlesborough comic is a rising star on the comedy circuit. Full of an insatiable lust for life, his exuberant comedy greets the audience like a sex-starved spaniel would greet a trouser leg.
A natural-born performer, he exudes charisma from the stage (and often off it, when he scuttles into the crowd...!)
'Omid Djalili meets Dave Allen' (Daily Mail)..
See more info at patrickmonahan.co.uk
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I saw Patrick when he was working on the Paul O Grady Show crew. He kept us entertained during the breaks and before the show started - he's absolutely hilarious and he had us in stitches. Actually I'd say he was more entertaining than the show itself (which… (cont'd) Tanya from Dartford
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In the last three years, I've gone from carrying a 512 MB USB memory stick to a 16 GB USB memory stick. That's pretty amazing.
According to the storagereview.com archives, hard drives with 16 GB of storage were introduced sometime around the beginning of 1999. Barely 10 years later, we carry around that much on our keychains. Heck, my laptop only has a 32 GB solid state drive, and I manage to scrape by with that. These things are essentially miniature hard drives. I'm starting to wonder why we don't just take our entire computing environment, operating system and all, along with us and boot it up on whatever computer we happen to encounter in the wild.
There is one big problem with this approach, however. USB flash drive performance, even for the best models, is a small fraction of typical hard drive performance.
Modern 2.5" hard drive performance looks something like this:
HDD Sequential Read | 55 MB/sec |
HDD Sequential Write | 55 MB/sec |
Mind you, those aren't particularly fantastic numbers, just typical ones. You can get significantly faster hard drives, such as the Western Digital Velociraptor I just bought. Storage Review described the Velociraptor thusly:
single-user scores .. blow away those of every other [hard drive]
I was immediately sold once I read that. It's not cheap, but you get what you pay for, and I'm firmly in the "hard drive performance matters" camp. To quote Ferris Bueller, it is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.
But what about large USB flash drives? How do they compare to typical hard drive speeds, much less the awe-inspiring Velociraptor? X-Bit Labs recently reviewed three 32 GB USB flash drives:
Sequential Read | Seqential Write | |
32 GB Corsair Flash Voyager | 22 MB/sec | 10 MB/sec |
32 GB OCZ Rally 2 | 30 MB/sec | 22 MB/sec |
32 GB Patriot Xporter XT | 31 MB/sec | 17 MB/sec |
Not bad by any means, but punishing next to typical hard drive throughput. If you really were booting and running your operating system entirely from a USB flash drive, you'd feel like you had stepped back in time five full years.
Even if you're only planning to use your USB flash drive for the mundane task of storing files, you should care deeply about read and write speeds. Throughput wasn't much of an issue when USB drives were "only" a gigabyte or two. But when we're talking about 8 GB, 16 GB or 32 GB of data, being limited to 10 MB/sec write speeds means 13, 26, and 52 minutes respectively to fill that flash drive up with data. Do you have that kind of time?
The OCZ Rally 2 flash drive appears to be the winner in the Xbit labs roundup, but does the 32 GB size really offer the best bang for your buck? I did a quick spot check of OCZ Rally 2 flash drive prices on Amazon:
Surprisingly, yes. The 32 GB OCZ Rally2 flash drive offers the best price per gigabyte of storage. I actually didn't do the math before I purchased, thinking that the 16 GB one would be a better deal. Now I wish I had! I just noticed there's a $20 rebate on the 32 GB model, too, which makes it an even more outstanding deal.
I wasn't sure which 16 GB flash drive would be faster -- the Corsair Flash Voyager, or the OCZ Rally 2. So I ended up purchasing both.
I formatted both of the drives with the default NTFS filesystem and did a bit of ad-hoc testing in Vista. You can find the raw ReadyBoost benchmark results if you know where to look in the event viewer.
16 GB Corsair Flash Voyager | 16 GB OCZ Rally 2 | |
3GB ISO Copy, Read | 26 MB/sec | 26 MB/sec |
3GB ISO Copy, Write | 9 MB/sec | 10 MB/sec |
Readyboost Random Read | 6,426 KB/sec | 6,434 KB/sec |
Readyboost Random Write | 3,292 KB/sec | 4,695 KB/sec |
In practice, the Rally is noticeably faster at writing, and a smidge faster at reading (not exposed here, but the chddspeed results confirm this). Not the results I expected based on reading the Xbit Labs review, but apparently there's quite a bit of variance for USB flash drives depending on the vagaries of manufacturing and what particular flash memory chips the manufacturer happened to be using that month.
The results are close enough that you may want to pick on ergonomics rather than performance. The Corsair drive has a chunky rubberized coating, which works well on a keychain (less jangly, more durable) but becomes annoying in a pocket or next to a narrow USB slot. I think I prefer the Rally's narrower metallic casing. Since it is a slightly better performer overall, the OCZ Rally 2 series gets my recommendation, if you're in the market.
One caution: if you do plan to use your USB flash drive to run applications or even operating systems, pay close attention to the random read and write speeds. Sequential throughput is a good overall baseline, but it's not the entire performance story. While typical portable storage usage does correlate well with sequential throughput, applications running on a USB flash drive are largely bounded by random access throughput.
You can never have enough storage on your keychain. Now if I can just figure out what else to put on mine...
I'm waiting for the prices to drop a bit
Story of SSD drives in a nutshell. :)
Well, yeah, and you can buy $2 wine that will get you just as drunk as the $50 kind, too.
So a $50 wine is worth it, but a $100 wine isn't? :)
Here's a good review of some SSD benchmarking (Samsung, OCZ) versus the Velociraptor:
Looks like the SSD wins hands down in most cases.
"Like all flash memory devices, flash drives can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before failure[20]. Mid-range flash drives under normal conditions will support several hundred thousand cycles[20], although write operations will gradually slow as the device ages. This should be a consideration when using a flash drive to run application software or an operating system."
And this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive is also a good read.
Mihai on June 3, 2008 2:12 AMI noticed this behavior on a 16 gig USB that I just got. Woe to the person to tries to put a secure storage file on it and use it real-time.
I guess the downside of the USB "standard" is that there are so many layers of abstraction, interrupts and polling that the time left to do actual heavy lifting kind of falls by the wayside. If Firewire was the "standard" you would see much higher speeds. I don't get super speed out of USB hard drives either.
But it is criminal to me that a solid state device can't beat something with as many moving parts as a hard drive.
Chris Chubb on June 3, 2008 3:03 AMAs you point out, the random access speeds are a real killer that can dwarf the transfer rate problems for some applications.
Copy a large file from your hard drive to flash and you see the performance penalty that you suggest. Copy 10,000 small files and it gets really, really ugly.
To give a concrete example, my students are able to run Eclipse off of jump drives without any real issue (single, large executable). Ruby on Rails (30,000+ small files) from a jump drive will run, if you are willing to put up with speed roughly on par with glaciers.
coderprof on June 3, 2008 3:48 AM"I've been bringing my OS around with me for about a year now. Puppy Linux on flash, with a supplemental CD-ROM booter for comps that won't boot straight to USB."
Why didn't I think of that?! I've been suffering from having to burn new CDs for bootable OS's for a while now.
[ICR] on June 3, 2008 3:51 AMSo much information about sizes, speeds, and cost, but little explanation as to WHY you need one of these things. The Internet is available in most places you visit, isn't it?
Josh on June 3, 2008 4:09 AMI just can't see the benifit of buying a small velociraptor hd.
Can just as well buy a Samsung Spinpoint 1tb for less then halve that price who will write/read as fast but is a bit slower for finding data.
Carra on June 3, 2008 4:13 AMCan just as well buy a Samsung Spinpoint 1tb for less then halve that price who will write/read as fast but is a bit slower for finding data
Well, yeah, and you can buy $2 wine that will get you just as drunk as the $50 kind, too.
Furthermore, why pick one over the other? Why not have *both*? I prefer to have 1) a very fast boot drive, and 2) a large data drive. Two spindles confers other advantages as well.
I see my "very fast boot drive" migrating to SSD once they get speeds up and prices down a bit. I think even a modest 64 GB would be fine for me, as long as it's crazy fast and not too comically expensive.
Jeff Atwood on June 3, 2008 4:24 AMI have a 4GB Rally 2, and I'm really happy with it (though I might consider upgrading it to 16 or 32GB). However, I think you should have compared it with the Voyager GT instead of the Voyager.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think the Voyager GT is faster than Rally 2.
Can Berk Gder on June 3, 2008 4:26 AMYour write times are off. Writing a 32GB drive should take twice as long as writing a 16GB drive, which would put it around 52 minutes, assuming 13 and 26 were right.
Mark Tiefenbruck on June 3, 2008 4:35 AMFirst off, nice blog. I check into it every day. I find it entertaining and educational to read.
I wanted to point out something quite weird and frustrating that I have noticed, which would be nice if you checked out into, since you have just mentioned USBs.
I have noticed this quite some time ago, many many months ago. So, you copy a file X onto a USB, and it takes for example 5 minutes. Once it finishes, you copy file B, and it takes maybe 10 minutes. So altogether you get 15 minutes of transfers.
Now situation 2. You start copying file A onto a USB. It tells you 5 minutes left. So you try to copy file B at the same time... Suddenly it goes up to hours. Why is this? Why does USB handle parallel tasks so horribly?
Is it in the architecture?
Is it only me?
Is it only on Windows?
What is going on here?
I managed to replicate this behaviour on Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Ubuntu. I also tried various USB sticks. Is it just that all my sticks are cheap, or can ayone else confirm that this behavious is common to them too please?
With, all these ready boost flash drives, i wonder how fast my VS 2008 builds with non-boosted setup. Is there any tool where i can monitor the performace with my eyes ?
Mehfuz Hossain on June 3, 2008 4:42 AMBeware of cheap flash drives. I get them from vendors from time to time and I've seen a few die after only a few weeks of light-duty use.
Always always always back up anything stored on a flash drive to more durable media.
Dana on June 3, 2008 4:46 AMIf you have the money (or time to wait the price out), then nothing beats *quality* SSDs. 2nd generation is not slow anymore, you don't need to wait for the speed part. With ~100MB/s, it already beats 7200rpm disks and "seek" times are fantastic:
I'm waiting for the prices to drop a bit, then it's a pair of SSDs in RAID1 (for better read performance) for all performance-critical stuff (the system itself, VMware images, source code and build dirs), to get rid of these annoying slowdowns when large I/O buffers are sync()ed to disk. That and a pair of Spinpoints (I wouldn't believe Samsung can make good drivers, but they do, and I *can't hear them seeking*) in RAID1 for less-frequently needed data.
Peter on June 3, 2008 4:47 AMDid you get paid by the USB companies to review/push their products?
ilan on June 3, 2008 4:52 AM"I'm starting to wonder why we don't just take our entire computing environment, operating system and all, along with us and boot it up on whatever computer we happen to encounter in the wild."
I already do this ... with an small OS that loads into memory and does as little disk I/O as possible ...
Hard drives are slow this is why Virtual memory should be avoided and why adding more memory speeds up most PC's
My experience with USB sticks suggests that not all USB2 ports are equal either ...
Jaster on June 3, 2008 5:00 AMThe more you fit on your USB drive the more there is too loose when you loose your keys (if you fail to secure the content).
I herd of a case where someone had their CV on their USB pen drive attached to their keys. This meant who ever found the keys also had the persons address!
John on June 3, 2008 5:08 AMI'm waiting for the prices to drop a bit
Story of SSD drives in a nutshell. :) Yes, I expect SSD drives to dominate the laptop space over the next 2-3 years, and certainly the performance/enthusiast market that the WD Raptors currently occupy.
Writing a 32GB drive should take twice as long as writing a 16GB drive, which would put it around 52 minutes
You're absolutely right -- I corrected this error.
So you try to copy file B at the same time
This causes write collisions and contention for both copy processes, so it's not surprising (to me, at least) that the cumulative copy time would be much worse.
With, all these ready boost flash drives
ReadyBoost isn't worth the effort, honestly. Particularly with system memory being ridiculously dirt cheap now. It may help somewhat if you're on a slow system with 1 GB of memory and zero possibility of any memory upgrade, but it's fairly marginal. Upgrade your system memory.
Jeff Atwood on June 3, 2008 5:10 AMMemory sticks are one of the few areas of computer technology that rarely impress me. Most of my work and backups reside in folders containing thousands of files. Zipping/unzipping just to write/read to a memory stick is a real pain in the ass extra step I would think we could have gotten past by now.
PaulG. on June 3, 2008 5:24 AMI just bought a 16 gig corsair to use as dedicated mp3 storage for my car stereo - and you're right, it's noticeably slower then my 4 gig corsair gt (durability and speed have always sold me as far as corsair goes)
matt on June 3, 2008 5:24 AMwhile the speeds of pen drives are less than that of HDDs, why ppl say that pen drive ready boost is faster than hard disk cache?
On an unrelated note:
Your captcha is always orange(as far as i've seen. for about more than a month.) how is that spammers didn't break that yet?
Also it's very important to realize that some drives are better at reading/writing large files while others are better at reading/writing a lot of small files. Most of my files are code so they are small so I went with a drive that was better at small files (Super Talent 4GB).
Mitur Binesderty on June 3, 2008 5:28 AMThe "32 GB Corsair Flash Voyager" link is broken.
I'm not in the hard drive performance matters camp. Hard drive performance is close to irrelevant. I already started some of our products from USB sticks that we on a USB 1.1 hub, so maximum throughput is 12 MBit/s and still, it takes only a couple of seconds to bring them up. If an application depends extremly on HD perfomance to oprate at good speed - it's broken by design, like so often.
E.g. AdiumX, a chat client for MacOS X (supporting AIM, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, Google and many other) saves preferences frequently and this had a negative impact on performance if your prefs got very big. Now you can buy a faster HD to minizie this effect. But what the coders did was instead saving prefs asynchronously in an extra thread in the background and even with the slowest HD, you won't notice anymore that it saves at all.
Even big games can hardly load more texture data from HD than you have memory (RAM) or v-memory (video memory). And if you look at their mimimum memory requirements, you'll see that this is not a lot. Even if you have more memory, they won't load a lot more data than the minimum memory requirements. And if a slow HD means big loading time for games, the game is badly programmed. Instead of loading all at once e.g. it could load dynamically in the background, making the game start very soon and then keep loading while you are already playing. And it could cache more data. Between two levels, not all textures, modells, sounds and so on change. Instead of reloading everything for every level, it should better keep already loaded material in memory.
Saying you need a faster HD for a faster app is like programming an app with horrible performance and relying on a faster CPU to one day fix that. That's not the way to go. There are so little operations where throughput really matters. E.g. if you copy a 4 GB video file from driva A to drive B, that is a case where throughput really matters. However, if you access 10,000 small files (each just a couple of KB), throughput will be almost irrelevant compared to seek time. And here even good HDs only offer about 12 ms, while flash offers seek times in the ns range (milliseconds compared to nanoseconds), as they are usually below 1 ms. Actually, even with only 1/3 of the throughput, in some cases flash memory wins because of the little seek time.
It also depends a lot on OS. On Windows apps typically come with one or a couple of very large resource files (containing tons of data put together in one place). This is because the files are lying around visibly to the user and it just looks cleaner to have little files lying around. Unless the file is very fragmented, throughput might be important here. However, on Mac OS X, apps come in bundles. A bundle is a directory, but doesn't look like one to the user (without going over the context menu or using terminal, there is no way to look into that bundle, it just looks like a single file to the user). Inside the bundle, every piece of data is usually an own file. Some bundles consist of 30,000 files inside. The user won't see the mess anyway. Here seek time can be the important factor, not throughput. And I like the Apple way a lot more. Why? Well, if you just have very little huge files, you need to make sure you can seek within these files at reasonable speed. Finding data, jumping to it and loading it will become your task. On Mac OS X these are individual files. Finding them and jumping to them and loading them is task of the OS (and Apple can speed it up by improving the file system or offering better ATA drivers, and so on). So as developer you will gain performance from other people's work, while in the Windows case MS optizimations will buy you little, as they don't know how you seek within your proprietary archive.
Mecki on June 3, 2008 5:43 AMI do not understand how flash drives can suck when it comes to random access. I thought that this was part of their beauty. The fact that they are memories and not hard-disks, so they don't have to wait for disks to spin and heads to move. Maybe someone can clarify this for me.
Cristian on June 3, 2008 5:46 AMThinking aloud...how about partitioning in a few blocks that aligns with the USB drives flash memories? Then RAID the "disks" for Raid5?
Edward on June 3, 2008 5:47 AMDo not underestimate the special write-characteristics of flash memory - they indeed wear out, it's physically inevitable. With large SSDs it might not be a problem as long as there is a lot of free space left, so the controller can evenly distribute writes over the whole thing. But on fuller "disks" - especially with certain access patterns like write intensive databases - this may cause drop outs much earlier.
I recently learned that DB2e (IBMs database for embedded devices) is "flash-aware", i. e. it does not just flush to disk in the regular "fire-and-forget" way, but tries to accumulate write units that resemble the flash structure and also distributes write accesses inside its data files.
For storage and carrying around stuff, flash pens are really great, however I would not trust them for everyday work.
"I'm starting to wonder why we don't just take our entire computing environment, operating system and all, along with us and boot it up on whatever computer we happen to encounter in the wild"
In fact you can already buy USB sticks with Linux and various apps preinstalled (http://linos.dk/index.php?pid=6 - sorry in Danish, staring at 50€ for 2Gb up to ~85€ for the 8Gb model)
lars hundertwasser on June 3, 2008 5:50 AMGoogle translated in case anyone is interested: http://google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinos.dk%2Findex.php%3Fpid%3D6hl=enie=UTF8sl=datl=en
lars hundertwasser on June 3, 2008 5:53 AMakilan Said:
"Your captcha is always orange(as far as i've seen. for about more than a month.) how is that spammers didn't break that yet?"
It must be the computer your on, or a co-incidence. I'm on Coding Horror often here at the office, and i get a range of things from "apple" to "spammersNO".
Or not.... But I guess it just proves that some anti-spam utility is a lot better than nothing at all.
Shannon on June 3, 2008 5:56 AMI have had Ubuntu Linux installed on a WD Passport that I do plug into use on whatever computer I am using. I had a flash drive I used this way, but performance wasn't that great I had the passport, so why not? It works out pretty well for me.
Dennis on June 3, 2008 5:59 AM@akilan, Jeff has briefly mentioned this is a previous post about CAPTCHA. Basically, it's only used on this site. Go to the following article (CAPTCHA is Dead, Long Live CAPTCHA!), search for orange and you'll be looking at the relevant paragraph:
--- Your captcha is always orange(as far as i've seen. for about more than a month.) how is that spammers didn't break that yet?
akilan on June 3, 2008 04:26 AM
"CAPTCHA defeating tools are tailored to very specific inputs; if there's little to no monetary incentive, odds are nobody will bother to customize one for yours. My ridiculously simple "orange" comment form protection is ample evidence of that."
Mark on June 3, 2008 6:07 AMI think I'll start carrying a slimmed down version of Linux or something on a USB drive. It gives me a reason to buy one if nothing else. Definitely use encryption on all semi-private data you put on a flash drive though, and preferably include an application to decrypt it, for a few OSes. I can see why people don't bother to though. I wouldn't be too worried about someone getting hold of my CV though, as mentioned above. Lots of people make their CV available on a website about themselves, and if the CV doesn't contain the address, then the domain reigstration details sometimes does. The best way to prevent privacy problems is to not be overly private in my mind.
Grogs on June 3, 2008 6:14 AMBring on the phase change solid state disk could be 500 times faster than current drives.
pete on June 3, 2008 6:29 AM"Well, yeah, and you can buy $2 wine that will get you just as drunk as the $50 kind, too."
Wine prices may not be the best comparison in this case, as a study shows that perception of taste is influenced by knowledge of the price of the wine:
"On the other hand, when tasters did not know any price comparisons, they rated the $5 wine as better than any of the others sampled."
Matt Wigdahl on June 3, 2008 6:33 AMThe Corsair's body is rubber. The plastic ones break. For me, longevity is at least as important as xfer speeds.
Maro on June 3, 2008 6:33 AMIt is amusing consumers have been stuck with 10k rpm hard drives for so long and actually think they are fast. I bought a 15k rpm Seagate Cheetah hard drive years ago.
a on June 3, 2008 6:35 AMGrogs - I think the concern was that if the CV on the keychain had the owner's address, then the finder of a lost keychain would know which house and car the keys went with.
Jim on June 3, 2008 6:42 AMThere are already SSDs with a sustained write performance in the 50-100MB/s range, however these are significantly more expensive than comparable hard drives. Expect prices to come down dramatically within 25 months. Word of caution: In real-world tests, these SSDs do not (yet) conserve power compared to hard drives. So "all" you is get far better random seek performance, totally quiet operation and maximum shock resistance for a hefty price tag...
Alexander on June 3, 2008 6:50 AMCan someone explain to me, with these performance characteristics, why there was so much of a big deal with Vista's ability to use a USB flash drive as a cache?
The latency is lower, right? Or something? The numbers are consistent with my experience with flash drives, so even though I know the new tech will be capable of some good number.. .I'm really confused as to why that's a useful feature today.
Mike on June 3, 2008 6:55 AMBased on your data, I can compare sequential read/write.
But what is the typical random read/write for HDDs?
Jonas on June 3, 2008 7:06 AM@Mike, because most people don't know about the speeds of flash drives so Microsfoft were able to say. "Use your flash drive to add more cache". They didn't say "But it's very little difference"
Tony on June 3, 2008 7:07 AMI posted a link to this blog on Clarkhoward.com technology board:
If you've been shopping for a USB drive (aka, thumb drive, flash drive) check out Jeff Atwood's blog at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001127.html. "Coding Horror" is mostly a programming blog, but every now and then, Jeff Atwood's his passion for geekery intersects with "bang-for-the-buck"
I've actually heard somewhere that its not worth formatting your usb drive to NTFS and that you should keep it as FAT32 because it recovers better when you pull it from the usb slot. Also did you try your tests on a FAT32 system just to see if there's a difference?
Donny on June 3, 2008 7:26 AMMTRON is scheduled to release an even faster generation of SSDs on June 20. The MSP 7500 series features read speeds of 130MB/sec and write speeds of 120MB/sec, with a maximum capacity of 64gb for the 2.5" form factor and 128gb for the 3.5" form factor. That's a nice boost from the MSP 7000 that Jeremy linked above (rated at 120MB/sec read and 90MB/sec write, maxing out at 32gb in the 2.5" form factor).
I could just barely restrict myself to a 64gb mobile drive, but I'm not willing to cough up $1,872.00. When the 128gb drives are selling for about half that price, I'll finally succumb to the temptation :).
Mike Strobel on June 3, 2008 7:30 AM"I'm starting to wonder why we don't just take our entire computing environment, operating system and all, along with us and boot it up on whatever computer we happen to encounter in the wild."
Some people do:
a href="http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/sn-Live.html#sn-USB-Booting"http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/sn-Live.html#sn-USB-Booting/a
JML on June 3, 2008 7:37 AMIt seem that Windows 7 will be able to boot up from .vhd image - so that you could have all your applications and data in your pocket and boot from that on any windows 7 pc: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080523/windows-7-native-support-virtual-hard-disks/
And completely unrelated: a benchmark of various filesystems on same flash drive would be nice to have, as a performance of a high-end flash drive (A-data PD7, 25MB/s) when copying a lot of small files on FAT32 is downright abysmal (hundreds kb/s or even less).
I have an aluminium-case, (physically) bulletproof 16GB corsair. I prefer FAT32 filesystem, because then I can boot an operating system from it. Although it really is slow compared to containing a 200MB lightweight linux.
PalotsB. on June 3, 2008 8:00 AM@Reuben, the difference lies in how you're writing to disk.
In the first example, you're writing sequentially each file to disk.
In the second example, you're writing randomly to disk. It has nothing to do with parallel processing.
The comments about random access times on a flash drive seem a little bit off.
A flash drive should have exactly the same random access read time as sequential access. There's no spinning disk and no time difference no matter where you read. If you see any speed up with sequential access I expect it's from the operating system reading ahead and caching results, a common hard disk optimization.
Random writes on a flash drive will be terrible. Every time you change a byte the following happens:
The block of flash is read into a cache
The block of flash is erased
The block of flash is written, with your new byte
You can imagine that the above process is slow and most applications don't try to optimize around this. Flash devices also have limited life times dictated by the number of times a block can be erased.
Nearly all modern flash drives have a translation layer between the data on the disk and the FAT file system. These try and spread the write load across all the flash blocks. So your sequential reads aren't and the exact effect of writing becomes commercial black magic.
lod on June 3, 2008 8:30 AMInitially I always thought 10MB read speed was very good. Until I saw a review of Corsair, OCZ and Xporter 16GB drive, I straight away bought a Corsair 8GB.
I've tested my Corsair with SLAX, works pretty well. I can't get my hand on OCZ, so can't say anything about it. Compare that to Kingston 1GB that I used to like, Kingston booted into SLAX in 2:30min, while Corsair booted in 1:45min. That's booted into GUI. Not bad actually. I think SLAX's architecture also contribute to the faster bootup time compare to other live linux.
faulty on June 3, 2008 8:45 AMA word of caution about the corsair flash drives. I purchased an 8 gig (I think) drive about a year ago from them. I assumed that the rubber surround would provide some durability. In a matter of a week the usb end of the memory drive broke off. I RMA'd it to newegg and my new one proceeded to do the same thing! I gave up after that as I didn't want to pay shipping to get another defective drive.
They might have fixed the problem by now, but searching through the newegg product reviews for "broke" shows that it still plagues them.
Will Shaver on June 3, 2008 8:53 AMNow that I've dipped my toes into the world of embedded programming, I am struggling to deal with the special problems of flash storage. We have to be careful not to write to flash too often, since we get only a limited number of writes over the life of the device. And we don't dare write on the main application thread, since the write operation can block for tens of seconds.
I'm in no hurry to give up traditional hard drives.
Dave C. on June 3, 2008 9:09 AMI have looked over many numbers relating to flash drive speeds compared to hard drive speeds. On paper, the flash drives are obviously going to be slower, however, the numbers are now in the same ball park so it was time to see how well they actually performed.
All of our development environments (Windows / Visual Studio) run on local virtual machines using mapped drives for storage. The main reasons for this is that it's very easy to setup a new developer and you can "blow" the machine and revert to a fresh installation any time it starts to feel "sluggish".
The majority of developers run these virtual machines on either their primary hdd, or a second internal hdd. The performance differences here is very minimal, as long as you have the memory.
I have also had seen good results in using external USB hard drives. Whilst there is a very minor performance decrease the benefits of being able to pick up your own development enviroment and run it from anywhere far outweigh them.
With USB flash drives at 16 and 32GB now the next step was to try running the virtual hard drives directly from your keychain. The first tests were using the 16GB Corsair Flash Voyager, for performance, price and availability it seemed like a reasonable choice. Unfortunately the reality of it was far from acceptable. The virtual machines ran so badly they were far beyond usable, even just using the drives to transfer the virtual disks from one machine to another too slow to justify.
In conclusion, whilst having 16GB and 32GB flash drives lying around is fantastic for keeping data with you, the access times just aren't anywhere near close enough to run a virtual OS off. However, with the advancements in SSD technology and the promises of USB 3.0 maybe we're not too far away.
Robin Day on June 3, 2008 9:17 AMJeff,
how you seen this Patriot 150x speed 32GB USB drive? That sounds like a deal. I wonder if it holds up in speed tests.
Or the 64GB USB drive for four grand? (very funny price)
BugFree on June 3, 2008 9:19 AMBugFree: still slow. says right there on the Amazon page:
Data Transfer Rate: 20MBps Read Maximum USB 2.0 - Data Transfer Rate: 15MBps Write USB 2.0
JohnH on June 3, 2008 9:34 AMI'm confused. If flash drives are slower than hard drives, then why does ReadyBoost improve performance? Is it simply because you don't get all the seek latencies for random access?
Adrian on June 3, 2008 9:42 AMAbsolutely true.
Anyway, Windows users don't use to configure their USB storages for the quickest performance. By default, the USB properties sets the optimization for quick extraction.
Changing this parameter, the difference is astonishing.
Personally I've never needed more than 2GB on a flash drive, but that's because I don't use them except for short-term backups or moving things from one computer to another. I love that the 2GB ones are so cheap—they're practically disposable, you don't have to invest any love in the individual stick at all.
Shmork on June 3, 2008 10:14 AMSoftware is like porn, it is better when you have it on the palm of your hand.
Linus Torvalds on June 3, 2008 10:18 AMFor anyone considering running an operating system from a flash drive, there is this article in InformationWeek, "How To Run Linux From A USB Flash Drive"
To quote the article: "What's more, there are ways to run Linux from a flash drive that don't even require an OS reboot, especially if you're running Windows."
Charles on June 3, 2008 10:46 AMHow do people find the reliability of the larger capacity Flash drives? I've been considering either an 8GB or 16GB, but the number of stories I've read about them crapping out has me hesitant to spend that kind of money.
Evan M. on June 3, 2008 11:21 AMI've been bringing my OS around with me for about a year now. Puppy Linux on flash, with a supplemental CD-ROM booter for comps that won't boot straight to USB.
I even have an emulator in there so I can run it in Windows.
Zoasterboy on June 3, 2008 11:30 AMI'm very happy with my 4GB Kingston pendrive.
Feli on June 3, 2008 11:31 AMHi Jeff,
I've been using OCZ USB drives for a few years now, and there's definitely a large difference. Especially when you compare it to those cheap $10-20 variations!
We also looked at offering our software on a USB key, such as the OCZ, but the performance was noticeable with larger databases. It wasn't atrocious, but it was noticeable. Of course for the average consumer it's probably not that big an issue, we still have many customers using P2 and P3's with under 512MB Ram running XP with antivirus, etc. The OS alone is a crawl and they're willing to accept that.
Something else to note, most USB keys have limited read/writes before they fail, some pretty low. So for example if you're planning to run an application, especially one with a database that gets queried often, be careful and backup often. Biggest tip I can offer.
Stephane Grenier on June 3, 2008 12:25 PM"I'm not in the hard drive performance matters camp" - You got a page file?
The strength of the USB is in random seek/read/write which utterly KILLS your average HD. (well as long as you dont get the cheap flash drives)
Which is the whole Vista ReadyBoost feature. Ready boost will use the usb drive as a cache for your paging. A real geek doesnt need ReadyBoost as a real geek knows how to put the page file onto the USB drive... But it's good for general users.
If you got a 1 or 2 gig laptop with a standard 5k rpm HD, seriously try sticking a GOOD USB drive in and using ReadyBoost. You will notice a difference.
It's really noticable on low memory machines. 'cause Paging happens.
There is a huge hype about SSD drives, and for portable devices I can see the attraction. But for a desktop? Desktop doesn't have the same problem with power-consumption as laptops. SSD is not that fast, it can compete with normal 3.5" 7200 rmp drives, but if we stick them up against 15k rpm SAS drives they fade in comparison.
For running an os, assuming you run your swap/pagetable files on the same hd, it's not the transfer speed that counts, but the seek time. If you need to read 2 files are the same time, you will read 1 block(4k usually) of each file at a time, and you will have to seek in between them to get to the other file. This is specially funny when your drive is fragmented.
Thomas Winsnes on June 3, 2008 12:53 PMThis post came along pretty perfectly. I was just getting ready to look for a new flash drive.
Ryan on June 3, 2008 1:05 PMJeff,
I just thought I should point you to the current king of SSD's:
The MTRON Pro
This thing trumps the Raptors but are still pretty pricey...
They were able to get 860 MB/s in a 4X RAID array. Now that's extreme ;-]
Jeremy on June 3, 2008 1:14 PMOn Security Now #135 they discussed two different types of memory for USB flash drives in the Ironkey interview:
DAVID: Oh, yeah. Well, the difference is the single versus dual and the MLC versus SLC. Your main speed comes from MLC versus SLC. So you can get an MLC device with a single chip, it'll write 4 Mbps, maybe 3. And we can write up to 18 to 20 Mbps because it's much faster, more expensive memory, and because it's dual channel.
LEO: Is the read faster, as well?
DAVID: Yeah, it's like 30 Mbps or more on the bigger ones.
Are there any other USB drives using dual channel SLC memory?
Ryan Collins on June 3, 2008 1:26 PMJeff,
Do you know if the storage technology in USB drives is the same as in SSDs, such as those that ship in the Apple Air?
Craig Boland on June 3, 2008 1:27 PMThis is totally discounting el-cheapo USB drives, of course. I remember winning a free USB stick (I think it was a Microstore one?) from the University that has an absolutely _abysmal_ read/write speed.
Copying my textures over to the disk (roughly 500, each around 1MB) took well over an hour on the disk. And thats not even counting Vista's caching, which refused to let me eject the disk for another ten or so minutes.
Don't buy the $10 2GB USB drives. Bad, bad idea!
Scott MacDonald on June 3, 2008 1:36 PMI'm all for bigger, faster hard drives - but there is a tipping point looming out there.
How much data can I afford to have attached to a small device that I can drop in a puddle? or leave behind in my hotel room?
I'm sure there are lots of good practices to keep these devices attached to items you aren't likely to forget - but a USB drive is yet another small, expensive easy-to-lose item. Add in the ever-increasing capacity for storage and you have the makings of a device that will encourage you to store more and more stuff - and then it will fall down a sewer grate.
There's undeniable appeal to small and portable - but stand alone portable storage has risks that networked storage doesn't have.
murph on June 3, 2008 1:43 PMA while back, I came across an interview with Linus Torvalds, in which he said something like, "file systems on non-rotating media will be different". This led me to quote him on a thread on comp.databases.theory. I mused that such storage, combined with multi-core, multi-processor machines would lead to the resurrection of the relational (fully normalized) database. Since such a database is by definition without redundant data, its data footprint is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the xml flat file stuff now in vogue.
Anyway, Joe Celko chimed in, in agreement and said his soon to be published book ("Thinking in Sets", get it) discussed such.
Texas Memory Systems has been building SSD machines for a while. Industrial strength SSDs with MC/MP cpus. Oracle claims to be doing work with just such. It'll be interesting.
BuggyFunBunny on June 4, 2008 2:13 AMSanDisk's U3 is about taking your system everywhere on a USB memory
robi on June 4, 2008 2:36 AMSuperTalent DH series deserves kudos. Its probably as fast as our second place contender, yet costs less than any of these.
rektide on June 4, 2008 2:56 AMOn the subject of USB key speeds...
Anyone has any idea why Flash keys (in general) seems to have difficulty writing as fast as they can when downloading something off a HTTP(S) server?
i.e. why do, when I try to download a 500MB file directly to my USB key using HTTPS, it takes 25-30 minutes (300KB/s), but when I download the same file, from the same server, to my local HDD, it takes 2 minutes (4MB/s), and copying the same file from my local HDD to the USB key takes about 2 minutes too... It's as if there was something that throttled the download speed when downloading directly to a USB key...
Also, I tried downloading the same file to a USB HDD, and I get speed similar to downloading to a local HDD...
(Only tested on Windows; not sure if Linux / Mac has similar problems...)
Jeff: Good article, as usu, but a couple of observations to go w/ the rest:
1) Formatting a UFD w/ NTFS (or ext3, xfs, etc) is generally regarded as bad practice. Why ? The aforementioned are all journaling filesystems and write more than just your data to the drive (for fault tolerance.) Virtually every time I've read about this, these file systems are reported to significantly shorten the life of a UFD. What's your take on the subj ?
2) Get a UFD that has a retractable USB iface. While they're plastic, my SanDisk Cruisers have held up pretty well (knock on wood !) after six months of daily residence in my pocket. And I carry them EVERY time I leave the house. With a retractable iface, that's one less thing to lose (the iface cap) and pos shorten the life of the UFD.
Don't have much to add on the subj of speed as I don't expect much, given the nature of how UFDs are used. That is, we plan to plug these devices into many diff systems and has already been pointed out, not all USBs hubs are the same. Hell, it's not uncommon to plug in via a USB 1 root hub, esp if you're doing repairs and maintenance on other folks PCs.
But they're absolutely amazing for carrying around a bootable, useable OS, like BartPE, Knoppix, or Slax !
The Jetman on June 4, 2008 5:31 AMJust wanted to agree and emphasize Thomas Winsnes comments regarding SAS. Current PATA or SATA desktop hard drives at 7500 or even 10000 RPM are not comparable to SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives or even older U320 and U160 SCSI drives at 10000 RPM and especially at 15000 RPM.
Seek times on a good SCSI drive are a fraction of PATA or SATA drives and the SCSI architecture allows for concurrent read/write operations and other optimizations to maximize throughput and ensure data integrity.
If you really want optimal performance on your desktop, get a good SAS controller and drive. You won't believe the difference... seriously. Another benefit is that the SCSI drives are built to last as they're intended for servers in a commercial environment. Sure they cost more than the consumer drives but you get what you pay for... and are far less than the current SSD drive prices.
I've been running my web server on an Adaptec 29160 controller and a Fujitsu 7200RPM SCSI drive for over 8 years without a single issue. The server is running Windows Server 2003 Standard on dual Athlon MP 1.2GHz processors and it's still my fastest desktop system. Much more responsive than my Intel Core 2 Duo and Athlon X2 multi-core systems running on SATA 300 drives… even with 2-4 times the system memory and at much higher processor speeds.
But the article was still helpful as I'm looking for a fast USB thumbdrive to use for ReadyBoost in Vista. However, I'll definitely be going with an SAS controller/drive(s) in my next system build.
For geek factor alone, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the KingMax SuperStick. It's so small that I carry it around in an empty Compact Flash holder (where it rattles around). It's strong and works a treat and is guaranteed to fit in any USB slot (mostly because it's smaller than the USB slot in the first place).
I bought the 1 Gig one a few years back for 14 quid. For capacity, it doesn't matter; There's enough space in 1G to store normal files, and I have an IPod for anything beefy like transporting photos around.
The SuperStick is a wonderful device. I see all these chunky rubbish usb sticks and laugh. Why would anyone want to carry those behemoths around?
Flash speeds are painfully slow. I wasn't an early adopter, and I too expected better random access times. Flash maybe slow, but it should beat out spinning discs, even low power ones in ipods, etc. What gives?
It seems odd, Jeff, to say something like "think of how long it'll take to fill at that speed!" and then say, in closing, "Now if I can just figure out what else to put on mine..."
Some people might be filling and emptying their entire flash drive very often (they really ought to buy a tiny 1.6 or 2.5" drive enclosure, seriously) - but I don' think that's most of us.
Most of us, in my experience, will simply use a 16G flash drive exactly like a 2G one... except it'll take 8 times as long to get to the point of "what do I delete to make enough room for more stuff?". (Or even longer, if we need "X Megs free to put an image on it for work", since the X remains constant rather than proportional to the total.)
Bruce: Amazing how spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated controller makes something faster than a random motherboard controller, isn't it?
(Though your 8 year old drive is long past the end of its manufacturer's claims of its duty cycle. Fujitsu, like everyone else I've ever looked at, says their product life for a drive is five years. I'd start thinking real hard about pre-emptive replacement if uptime matters.)
Sigivald on June 4, 2008 12:24 PMSpace + os:
Qemu (try qemupuppy for example, bootable or virtual machine)
But event with fastest hdd (or ssd), VS2008 from time to time just stops responding. CPU is idle, hdd doing nothing, but VS has some kind of System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000) :) Even with all the patches.
I think they're releasing new sw versions with eye-candy stuff without harvesting all raw cpu/hdd power, just adding new stuff to old code base. And there is all kinds of developers.. bad ones too
hhrvoje on June 4, 2008 1:20 PM"USB flash drive performance, even for the best models, is a small fraction of typical hard drive performance."
Why was the above bolded, as though it were news, and not common knowledge?
George Jempty on June 4, 2008 1:38 PMHey, how much you get paid for this??
Shasts on June 5, 2008 2:32 AMWow...they have 32GB USB Drives now? I'm really lagging behind with only 2GB...
Leo on June 5, 2008 3:35 AMNice post Jeff,
Just wondering what partitioning tool you used to format the drive as NTFS. I'm only able to format as FAT32 in XP for whatever reason. I should keep the drive (OCZ ATV 32GB) compatible with Macs, though, right? Trying to decide which direction I want to go on that end.
Much appreciated!
Chris Stewart on June 5, 2008 7:07 AMThat flash voyager isn't very durable. It looks like it is because of that rubber casing, but the usb flange thing and connecter is just soldered onto a circuit board with no reinforcement besides the rubber housing. Rubber isn't rigid at all, so basically there is no reinforcement. My flash voyager broke within a month... but I use it a lot installing software at work. The Super Talent Pico-C is by far the best drive I've ever owned. It's simple compact design makes it really durable. I wouldn't attach it to my keys, i don't think it's that durable. But it's so small I could put it in my wallet, but I attach it to a clip on my work Id badge. Oh, and your blog is the best!
Ben on June 5, 2008 8:30 AMI have a dream, that by the end of next year, I will be able to buy bootable 128Gb USB 3.0 flash drives which give performance on a par with at least a laptop HDD. I can buy a single laptop with little or no onboard storage, and have multiple system installs: work environment; dev environment; gaming environment; CTPs and betas; probably some other things I haven't even thought of. I'll be able to hibernate one session, switch drives and resume another in a matter of seconds.
Mark on June 6, 2008 2:32 AMOne thing you didn't mention is the fact that USB Flash keys tend to die if you keep them in your pocket.
I am in the habit of keeping a USB key in my pocket at all times. They are sooo convenient. However, I never store anything of value on them without a backup because the USB keys only last about 6 months before failure. THAT is the reason that I only use the cheapest ones that I can find--preferably free.
Sometimes it is the case that falls apart and other times it is the memory itself that fails. I would hate to spend good money on a 16GB memory key that will be worth $0 before you know it.
Dominoes on June 6, 2008 2:43 AMWhy is it that whenever a blogger make a post about comparing different products, some snarky asshole always comments and asks how much said blogger is getting paid for it?
I mean, you're not allowed to have positive opinions about products you have used unless the manufacturer has given you money to do so, right?
Adam on June 6, 2008 10:46 AMPlease, someone give me at least one example of 32gb-64gb of data that you would _need_ to carry around with you.
I'd love a 64gb USB stick too, because I'm a huge geek, but I'd never use that much. It's all hand waving reasoning to have one after that.
Steve-O on June 9, 2008 8:24 AMMy thoughts on Multi-use:
After losing my one and only USB flash drive (which I used all of 2 or 3 times), I picked up a 16 GB SD card for my camera packaged with a USB card reader. No, it's not as convenient as a flash drive, it requires carrying around two things instead of just one, but for people who don't use flash drives very often but do want to have the ability to carry large amounts of data on something small (for those trips to Kinkos to have a 50 page document filled with uncompressed pictures printed), it works quite well. Of course, its nice to have capacity for 5000 pictures for those long laptop-free vacations.
ddiepo on June 9, 2008 1:48 PMThe Voyager GT is definitely faster than the standard Voyager. I have 2 x 8GB GT's for running virtual machines, and they do a nice job. I also have a 120GB Western Digital Passport portable drive (5400rpm) and I would say that the 2 compared to each other offer about the same performance when running VMware.
Stu on June 16, 2008 9:27 AMI remember the first time i noticed this. I had upgraded from 256mb flash drive to a 2gb drive. I did a lot of development right off that drive at school and at home. I noticed it took really long to merge my project directory even though it was USB 2.0. it turned out that the chip itself was significantly slower than my old chip. it was disappointing because i actually really liked that flash drive other wise. it ended up breaking a couple of years later, screwing me over on a couple of things i was storing there.
Tim on June 18, 2008 10:40 AMStrange, I would expect Flash memory to be insanely faster than hard drives for random access. No physical parts to move during seeking.
Nicolas on June 24, 2008 1:09 PMI have a newegg scraper that automatically calculates the GB/$ for hard drives, flash cards, and usb flash drives @ http://forre.st/storage
Forrest Voight on August 1, 2008 11:34 AMsoo perfect!
inna lopez on August 7, 2008 7:30 AMThe comments to this entry are closed.
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Reta Lila Weston Institute
The Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies
The Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies was founded in 1977 through a generous bequest from the Reta Lila Weston Trust for Medical Research, with the aim of furthering knowledge about stroke and neurodegenerative disorders.
We have an active programme of research into stroke and movement disorders, with particular emphasis on parkinsonian disorders, including idiopathic Parkinson's disease and progressive supranuclear palsy (Steele Richardson Olszewski Syndrome).
We are linked with the UCL Institute of Neurology, the Queen Square Brain Bank, the Sara Koe PSP Research Centre and the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery, and carry out collaborative and interdisciplinary research combining clinico-pathological, genetic and cell biological approaches.
Professor Tom Warner takes over as new Director
Following Professor Andrew Lees' retirement last year, Professor Tom Warner took over as the Director of the Reta Lila Weston Institute on 1st January 2013. Prior to 2013 Professor Warner worked in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, UCL Institute of Neurology and as a consultant neurologist at the Royal Free Hospital and National Hospital of Neurology in London and in 2011 was appointed Professor of Clinical Neurology at the UCL Institute of Neurology in London.
His major research interests are into the cellular pathogenesis of hereditary movement disorders including dystonia and parkinsonism as well as clinical studies in Huntington's disease and experimental therapeutic trials in Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders.
Page last modified on 18 mar 13 21:38


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» Wine & Beverage
» Wine Refrigerators
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» EdgeStar 26 Bottle Dual Zone Stainless Steel Built-In Wine Cooler
CWR262DZ - EdgeStar 26 Bottle Dual Zone Stainless Steel Built-In Wine Cooler - Black and Stainless Steel
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EdgeStar 26 Bottle Dual Zone Stainless Steel Built-In Wine Cooler - Black and Stainless Steel
Keep your red and white wines chilled to a perfect temperature with the EdgeStar 26 Bottle Dual Zone Stainless Steel Built-In Wine Cooler (CWR262DZ). Perfect for budding wine collections or selected favorites, you can store and display up to 26 standard 750 mL wine bottles.
Stylish Design:
A stainless steel-trimmed dual paned glass door with stainless steel venting grate make this wine cooler look fantastic in any setting, while the matching stainless trimmed shelving and soft LED interior lighting only adds to the cooler's eleganceSlim 15 Inch Width:
This cooler's slender 15" width fits perfectly into small undercounter areas, making it the ideal choice for placement in a space formerly filled by a trash compactorBuilt-In or Freestanding Capable:
Front ventilation allows for flush-with-cabinetry or undercounter installation while the fully finished black cabinet allows for freestanding use, as wellDual Zone Operation:
Two (2) temperature zones allow you chill both whites and reds at their optimal temperatures for better-tasting and longer-lasting winesTemperature Ranges:
The lower zone has a wide temperature range of 40 – 54°F, while the upper zone has a temperature range of 54 - 65°FEven Cooling:
You'll never have to worry about hot spots or uneven cooling with this unit due to its powerful circulation fans, which work with the compressor to evenly distribute cool air throughoutDigital Controls:
Soft touch electronic controls allow for easy temperature adjustment and monitoring through digital displayReversible Door:
Because this unit has a reversible door, you can choose whether it will swing to the right or the leftTinted Glass:
The tinted glass door ensures that while your wine bottles are visible, they are safe from the potential harm of harsh light and UV raysSafety Lock:
You can rest assured that your wine collection is safe due to this unit's safety lockCarbon Filter:
A built-in carbon filter protects your wine by acting as a natural barrier against harmful odors
Dimensions (without handle):
32" H x 15" W x 23 1/2" DDimensions (with handle):
32" H x 15" W x 25 1/2" D
You may download a product owner's manual below:
**Please note, Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view pdf files
Guaranteed Same Day Shipping
This item ships Ground or USPS. Delivery times related to these ship methods are usually between 2 and 7 business days once the product leaves the warehouse. We will email you tracking information once the product leaves our warehouse. Ground or USPS deliveries do not require a signature and may be left at the ship to location. All deliveries can occur Monday through Saturday depending on your local delivery carrier. Order must be fully processed by 12pm CST to be eligible for "Guaranteed Same Day Shipping." Orders processed after that time may ship out the following business day.Ground or USPS deliveries do not include a guaranteed delivery date. Should you require a specific delivery date or expedited shipping please add the item to the shopping cart and view the shipping options drop down box. If the product is eligible for expedited shipping the shipping options and pricing will be listed. Please contact our customer service department with any questions related to shipping. (800) 297-6076, M-F, 8am to 5pm CST.
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CWR262DZ - EdgeStar 26 Bottle Dual Zone Stainless Steel Built-In Wine Cooler
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node status
Many of your questions may have already been answered in earlier discussions or in the FAQ. The search results page will indicate current discussions as well as past list serves, articles, and papers.
Bob Campbell lindragoon at yahoo.comMon Oct 8 07:11:18 PDT 2001
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Okay, thanks for all the viewpoints on NIS, looks like rsync is the best way to go. There was mention of ways to help recognise and sync downed nodes. What I would like is a tool of some sort that would keep a live status of all the nodes, and what state they are in. These 'states' could be as simple as UP, DOWN, BOOTING, FAILED, etc. I would also like this to insert and remove the hosts from the list of available hosts. ..... Ok, I know Beowulf2 already has this. Beowulf2 looks to do all this with bproc though, and I need to stay in userspace. For various reasons I need to stay with vendor supplied kernels so I cant compile bproc in. any thoughts on this, or anyone know of any software with similar features? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? NEW from Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1
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The Poem (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
"She Walks in Beauty" is a short poem, consisting of three six-line stanzas. On the surface it is a fairly conventional description of a beautiful woman, evidently someone with whom Byron is acquainted. The poet does not identify her by name, indicate his relationship to her, or hint as to the occasion that brought them together. (Scholars have ferreted out these matters.) Even if such information is not essential to understanding the poem, it is surprising that Byron provides so little concrete detail about the actual appearance of the woman he is describing. He does not speak of her as tall or short, slender or statuesque; he does not tell his readers the color of her dress or the color of her eyes. In fact, at the end of the poem the only specific fact the reader knows is that she has black hair.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the lady has made a definite impression on the poet. To him, she is beautiful in the same way that "night" is beautiful, and, as he hastens to add, he means a particular kind of night, one of "cloudless climes and starry skies." There is no threat of a storm in this imagined landscape; there are no clouds to produce even a shower. Such a night is not really dark, for, as readers are told, the sky is filled with stars. Their light is soft and subdued; similarly, the dark lady has "tender" eyes, as unlike those of less subtle women as the light of a "starry" night is from that of "gaudy day."
...(The entire section is 502 words.)
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Forms and Devices (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
Though Byron may have rebelled against tradition in other ways, his poems are generally conventional in form. "She Walks in Beauty" is no exception. It is written in standard iambic tetrameter, with alternating rhymes, a new set in each stanza. Metrically, the poem is quite predictable; there are none of the lilting anapestic variations so familiar in Byron's other works, but stately measures are appropriate for a woman who is herself so decorous. The masculine line endings and the use of end-stopped lines, alternating with lines which necessitate a pause, recall the neoclassical heroic couplet, a form Byron much admired. However, here there is no satire nor epigrammatic wit; instead, the purpose of the form is to ensure the slow progress of the poem, thus emphasizing the lady's dignity, her steadiness, and her self-control.
The poem is also interesting in the degree to which it is dominated by a single simile. Although after the first stanza the poet abandons explicit references to the night, throughout the poem he emphasizes the idea of perfect balance, not only between dark and light but also between thought and action, mind and heart.
Nevertheless, though "She Walks in Beauty" praises harmony, it has other implications as well, reminding one that, for all his neoclassical dedication to form and balance, Byron was, after all, a Romantic. To a degree, the images work to deny the poet's explicit statements, for although the pace...
(The entire section is 336 words.)
Historical Context
Lord Byron is considered one of the most important and interesting poets of the romantic movement in England, and "She Walks in Beauty" is frequently considered one of his most powerful works. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, romanticism swept across the world, affecting the sensibilities of artists and philosophers in a number of countries. Like any social movement, it was not the result of any kind of structured effort on the parts of its adherents so much as it reflected a response to the times they lived in and the problems that they found with the work of artists that came before them.
The last half of the 1700s represented a time of great social unrest in Western society. In the United States, this era is best remembered for the American Revolution, which was fought from 1776 to 1783, leading to the adoption of the Constitution in 1789. Even more compelling to the people of Europe was the French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 to 1799. While the American Revolution freed a new colonial country from the country that ruled it, establishing a democratic government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the revolution in France overturned the government of a political structure that had existed for hundreds of years. Both revolutions reflected the same basic principles, supporting the rights of individuals to control their own fates and rejecting the previous order that gave the aristocratic ruling class the power...
(The entire section is 760 words.)
Literary Style
The three six-line stanzas of this poem all follow the same rhyme scheme and the same metrical pattern. There are only six rhyming sounds in this eighteen-line poem because the poem rhymes ababab, cdcdcd, efefef. The pairing of two rhyming sounds in each stanza works well because the poem concerns itself with the two forces—darkness and light—at work in the woman's beauty, and also the two areas of her beauty—the internal and the external. The rhyming words themselves, especially in the first stanza, have importance: notice how "night" rhymes with its opposites, "light" and "bright," in the same way that this woman contains the two opposing forces in her particular type of beauty. Oftentimes poets use their poetic structures to mirror what the poem's chief concerns are. Poetic form—stanzas and meter—and content—what the poem's subject is—are almost always related.
The meter is also very regular—iambic tetrameter. This means there are four—"tetra" is Greek for four—iambs per line. An iamb means that the line is divided into units, or feet, of two syllables, and each unit has an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. This can be clearly seen if you look closely at the construction of a particular line:
She walks / in beau / ty like / the night.
This poem was included in Byron's 1815 book, Hebrew Melodies, which included poems...
(The entire section is 262 words.)
Compare and Contrast
1815: The world's political powers are in a state of change. The French army of Napoleon Bonaparte is defeated by the British at Waterloo, ending his dominance of Europe, while the British army is defeated in the Battle of New Orleans, establishing America's control of the continent.
Today: The major military powers seldom come into direct conflict with each other, although they do take sides in the conflicts of smaller nations.
1815: A woman in mourning for a dead relative is expected to wear black for at least a year and to stay out of public social situations for at least that long.
Today: Social conventions for how a person should express her or his grief have less stringent rules.
1815: A London banker is able to get news of Napoleon's defeat days before the newspapers have the information because he has associates send the report by carrier pigeon.
Today: Cell phones and e-mail transmit information around the globe instantly.
1815: Sources of artificial light are gas lanterns (in the wealthier homes) and candles. Today: Most homes and streets are lit with electrical light.
(The entire section is 183 words.)
Topics for Further Study
Can a person's spiritual goodness make them physically beautiful? Give examples of qualities you feel would make a person beautiful and explain why.
Try to draw a picture of what you imagine the woman in this poem to be like, taking care to include what details Lord Byron gives about her, but also giving your own interpretation of her beauty.
This poem is written in a very common metric scheme, iambic tetrameter. Try to find a contemporary song that you like that fits this meter and sing this poem to that music.
Find pictures of a male and female from the early nineteenth century. How have standards of beauty changed from Byron's time to our own?
In his lifetime, Byron was notorious for his love affairs and for flaunting the conventions of society in the name of art. Read some biographical material about him, then write a paper comparing him to someone who is in the news today.
(The entire section is 160 words.)
Media Adaptations
Learning Corp. of America has a video, released in 1971, entitled Romanticism: The Revolt of Spirit. It is a part of their "Shaping of the Western World" series, and examines the breadth of romanticism in music, art, and literature.
A video called The Bad Lord Byron examines the poet's life through a mock trial. This 1949 feature film was released on videocassette in 1994 by Hollywood Select Video. It stars Dennis Price, Mai Zitterling, and Wilfred Hyde- White.
Byron: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know is a documentary based on the poet's correspondences with his publisher. It was released on videocassette in 1993 by Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Monterrey Home Video's 1993 title The Glorious Romantics: A Poetic Return to the Regency has actors playing Byron, Keats, Shelley, and others. It is part of the Public Broadcasting System's "Anyone for Tennyson?" series.
"She Walks in Beauty" is included with other love poems on a compact disc from Naxos Audiobooks called A Lover's Gift from Him to Her, released in 1999.
HarperCollins Audio Books released an unabridged selection of Lord Byron's Poetry on audiocassette in 1999, read by Linus Roache.
Frederick Davidson reads Byron's poetry on Lord Byron: Selected Poems, a two-cassette package released by Blackstone Audio Books in 1992.
"She Walks in Beauty" is...
(The entire section is 277 words.)
What Do I Read Next?
Oxford World's Classics has an affordable, scholarly paperback edition of Byron's poetry published under the title Lord Byron: The Major Works (2000).
Byron's friend Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote an essay that captured the artistic theory of that whole age of romantic poets. Entitled "A Defence of Poetry," the essay examines the various functions of reason and imagination in the poet's work. It was originally published in 1821 and is reprinted at http://www.library.utoronto.ca/ utel/rp/criticism/shell_il.html (last accessed August, 2001).
Harvard University Press has collected the poet's most important personal writings in the 1984 collection Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals, edited by Leslie A. Marchand.
One of the most influential recent books about romanticism is by influential critic Northrop Frye, whose short 1968 book A Study of English Romanticism gives an excellent quick background to the cultural movement that is almost always mentioned along with Keats's name.
Fact and fiction are mixed together in Tom Holland's imaginative 1998 novel Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron. Lord Byron is presented as a vampire.
(The entire section is 183 words.)
Bibliography and Further Reading
Arnold, Matthew, Preface to Poetry of Byron, Macmillan, 1881, reprinted as "Byron," in Essays in Criticism, Dutton, 1964, pp. 312–30.
Ashton, Thomas L., Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," University of Texas Press, 1972, p. 21.
Auden, W. H., "Don Juan," in The Dyer & Other Essays, Random House, 1962, pp. 386–406.
Dick, William A., Byron and His Poetry, Haskell House Publishers, 1977, p. 81.
Frye, Northrop, "George Gordon, Lord Byron," in Major British Writers, Vol. II, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959, pp. 152–53.
Jump, John D., Byron, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
Mankiewicz, Herman J., and Orson Welles, The Shooting Script: Citizen Kane, in The Citizen Kane Book, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1971, pp. 153–55.
Marchand, Leslie A., Byron: A Portrait, Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.
Martin, L. C., in Byron's Lyrics, University of Nottingham, 1948, p. 25.
Read, Herbert, Byron, The British Council, 1951, p. 24.
Review of "Hebrew Melodies," in Augustan Review, Volume 1, July, 1815, reprinted in The Romantics Reviewed, Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers: Byron and Regency Society Poets, edited by Donald H. Reiman, Garland Publishing, 1972, pp. 57–60.
Shilstone, Frederick W., Byron and the Myth...
(The entire section is 419 words.)
Source: Poetry for Students, ©2013 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
Source: Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition, ©2002 Salem Press, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.


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This is a good way of seeing hints for many different ancestors/family members at the same time.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Searching hints on Ancestry.com
This is a good way of seeing hints for many different ancestors/family members at the same time.
4 comments:
Hi Karen - Good topic! I found some very early photos of some distant ancestors by doing this on Ancestry, and made some good connections with some distant cousins researching those same people too. Have you made many connections through Ancestry's DNA program? I haven't yet, but I've been seeing more potential matches roll in lately.
ReplyDeleteKaren... I'm glad to know someone else is a little annoyed by the 'graphics' that people use as images for their ancestors. I didn't know why it was annoying until I read your words 'it adds to the volume of images'. That's exactly right. I really do wish the habit would stop. But who am I?
ReplyDeleteHi Ryan! Yes, I found a photo of a 3rd great-grandmother and great-great aunts and uncles on Ancestry.com, and connected with some distant-- and not so distant-- cousins.
Re DNA, I was actually able to find out the parents of a great-great grandmother of mine by connecting with a distant cousin through the DNA program, which was really neat.Hi Devon-- I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds that irritating. I really don't think there's any point in having a family crest or clip art of a ship or, worse, clip art indicating "direct ancestor." I wish people would save images for photos/portraits of the actual person, graves, documents, or objects connected with that person.
Thanks for you comments, guys!


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this is great!
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Navigating Your Experience
Credits 90–120
Below are some tips and suggestions for students who currently have completed between 91–120 credits toward their degree. You can click on the categories below to view the tips.
Degree Program Progress
Review the Graduation Checklist. Make sure you apply for graduation by the deadline.
If you plan on going to graduate school immediately after graduation, begin the application process for your chosen schools a year before you graduate.
Visit the MyUMUC student portal regularly to view your progress and any outstanding documentation.
Print out the Student Planner use it to plan your semester. You can find the Student Planner for the current semester in the Advisor Corner of the Connect@UMUC Web site.
Contact your Academic Advisor to discuss your progress in your program. Check which of your courses require prerequisites, so that you can schedule your courses properly. Ask if your program has a Capstone course and when you should take it.
Review your Degree Progress Report to ensure it includes all your courses and that you are on track for graduation.
Academic Resources
Visit Graduation Services to learn of graduation processes and activities.
Use the Effective Writing Center so that you can continue to improve your writing skills.
Make sure you are familiar with the Information and Library Services.
Research the Tutoring and Support Services to see if any could supplement your classes.
Contact other students in your classes to form study groups.
Career Preparation
If you plan to change jobs or careers in the next year, begin reviewing local job listings to find out what you skills you still need to qualify. Sign up for Career Quest.
Check Career Services to learn of upcoming events.
Consider whether graduate school is an option for you, or if it is a requirement in your chosen field. If so, learn the process and admission requirements. Consider UMUC's graduate programs.
Schedule a consultation with Career Services to receive guidance on your career strategy and career plan.
Communicate with your mentor(s). (Check out the Art of Mentoring article.)
Research your industry and learn about latest trends and practices: find local workshops, seminars, or conferences to attend.
Meet students in your classes and in the academic clubs who share the same or similar career aspirations and commit to staying in touch with them.
Put your education to work by applying what you learn in each course to something valuable in your desired career.
Develop an ongoing portfolio of lessons learned, assignments, experiences, and other items to ensure you are ready to demonstrate your preparation for your desired career.
Campus Community Involvement
Learn about the Alumni Association and join the online alumni community.
Volunteer to become a mentor in the Allies Mentoring Program.
Volunteer for UMUC 411, to meet other students, faculty, and to help prospective students.
See if you are eligible for any honor societies.
Review the list of online Academic Student Clubs and join one or more that meets your interests. Student Clubs enable students to meet other students with similar interests, provide student and leadership development opportunities, and help students to learn more about career fields.
Participate in the annual History Essay or the Social Sciences Essay competitions.
Join UMUC's social network by following UMUC on Facebook, Twitter, YouYube, LinkedIn, Flickr, and the Experience UMUC blog.