New Pentium MMX processors and economic printing mode
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Unwittingly, I left you with yet another puzzle last week. A friend from Surabaya, Doug Boyne, faxed me and reminded me that I had inadvertently failed to explain how I got the memory address 000CC000-000CCIFF that suddenly jump-started SNI's SCENIC Multimedia eXtension Board.
Actually, in my first report I did tell you that I spent hours trying to find the right memory address. I guess I must have nudged too much, or too little, to get the 64k free memory space.
I must have done it hundreds of times before I accidentally hit the right spot. Honestly speaking, I didn't have the technical knowledge to know exactly where the device driver should be mounted, so it was basically a trial and error process.
And, as our friend Doug said, sometimes the trial and error procedure works, sometimes it doesn't. But, at least you know now what may be causing the problem -- particularly with the Plug `n play feature standing in the way.
Just remember that, as Doug also admits, it will be a lot of fun once the thing starts to work.
Now that you already know a little bit about system resources and their conflict resolution in Windows 95, here's the latest news from Intel Corp. that you may also be interested in.
We all have read about the fastest notebook computers on planet earth. Some of us may have even played around with them.
Most likely, these so-called desktop replacements run on the Pentium 233 MHz processor with MMX Technology. Well, last week Intel announced the arrival of their two new babies: The 166 MHz and the 266 MHz Pentium with MMX for mobile computers.
Don't be surprised to see a 166 MHz MMX being announced as a "new" processor, because it is.
The old 166 MHz MMX processor that we saw in the Armada 7350T that I reviewed not very long ago was a different one. That one was still manufactured using Intel's .35 micron technology, while the new reincarnation is a .25 micron version.
The fresh 166 MHz MMX processor consumed less power than its .35 micron brother. Because of these characteristics, you can expect to find this chip in mini notebooks or palmtop computers. It operates at an internal core voltage of 1.8 volts.
Intel also targets it to those who need a low cost but powerful enough notebook.
For comparison, the 266 MHz MMX processor operates at an internal core voltage of 2.0 volts. You won't really see a breakneck speed difference between the new one and its 233 MHz predecessor.
However, the performance increase will certainly catch the attention of those who will never settle for less than the fastest -- and, of course, those who are not affected by the current monetary crisis.
Already Dell Computer Corp. has grabbed the newcomer and put it in its new Inspiron 3000 M266XT.
According to a news release that I received last week, Dell puts a 13.3" active matrix XGA display, 32 MB of SDRAM, a 3.2 GB hard disk, a 20X CD-ROM drive and a 56K modem.
Dell says that the performance improvement is between 7 percent to 10 percent over their 233 MHz based Inspiron notebook.
Save ink
While the lightning fast notebook may not for everybody at this point in time, here's a small tip to save you a little money.
First, let me tell you what happened to me last week. The black ink for my HP 1600C ran dry. I realized that this happened at a really inopportune time, but I still couldn't believe the price I had to pay for a new cartridge.
Istidata, the HP dealer where I always buy HP consumables, charged me Rp 258,300 for it based on their exchange rate of Rp 9,000 per US$. I was dumbfounded.
I was prepared to pay twice the Rp 80,000 or so that I used to pay for this cartridge, but when I learned I had to pay more than three times as much, I became so frustrated that I thought of just walking away.
But as I needed to print out some work, I had no choice. I paid the money with the Idul Fitri allowance that I had just received and grabbed the ink cartridge. In all fairness, it was not the store's fault that its price had skyrocketed.
But, as soon as I had inserted the new ink cartridge, I did what I thought all of us should do in times like this: Change the default print mode to EconoFast.
This mode will not give you razor-sharp printout, but it will give you more printed pages for your money as it uses less ink.
Here's what I did: I clicked on the Start button, Settings and then Printers.
When the Printers folder appears, I clicked on the HP DeskJet 1600C ColorSmart icon.
ColorSmart is the name of the printer driver that this printer uses. This will give me the ColorSmart dialog box.
I clicked again on Printer, and then Properties. When I got the dialog box, I clicked on Details tab.
I clicked on the Setup button found on the bottom, and this gave me the Setup HP DeskJet 1600C ColorSmart on LPT1 dialog box. I chose the EconoFast under Print Quality, and I clicked on the OK buttons.
From now on this will be the default quality. It may not save too much ink, but it will certainly postpone my next trip to the store.
Laser
Now, if you use an inkjet printer -- no matter what the brand is -- check whether you can set the default printing mode. Chances are that the procedure isn't much different if you happen to be using inkjet printers from Canon, Epson or HP. Look in the Properties dialog boxes.
The same savings can be done with laser printers, too. Use the draft mode to save on toner, as toner cartridges still have to be imported and their prices are in U.S. dollars. At any time you want to print out your resume or sales proposals, you can change the printing mode to a higher quality in order to get crisp characters and graphics on to the paper.
Before I ran out of ink, I had always enjoyed printing out interesting Web pages in full color with my 1600C. Thanks to our monetary woes, however, I have stopped doing it.
From now on I selectively use the Normal print quality, and it will be long before I'll ever use the Presentation quality of the 1600C. You, too, can save yourself or your office a lot of rupiah if you set each of the printers you use to its econo-mode.