born2c0de’s Blog

Last week I bought a Maxtor Basics 1 TB Hard Disk online as my 500 GB Western Digital MyBook Essential HDD was out of free space.

The Hard Disk was available for Rs. 5890 on Ebay and I had a 5% off voucher which reduced the final price to Rs. 5500 which is about 200-300 bucks cheaper than the street price in Mumbai, so it was a good steal which didn’t even require me to move from my chair.

Since I already have a WD MyBook Essential 500 GB hard disk, I couldn’t help but compare the two.

Box Contents:

The Box contains the Hard Disk, a USB Cable, Power Adapter, 3 detachable plugs, a Quick Start guide and a 3 year warranty card.

Size:

With size dimensions 203 mm x 44.5 mm x 127 mm, the Hard Disk is smaller than the MyBook Essential but is slightly heavier.

Performance:

The only way you can connect the Hard Disk to a computer is by using a mini-USB cable. It supports USB 2.0 and offers upto 480 MBps which is decent. The spindle spins at 7200 RPM and I was even able to play OpenArena straight from the hard disk without any lags.

Although many people complain the disk is very noisy, mine is very silent.

The Hard disk is already formatted in NTFS and the actual free space available is 931 GB. Even when the disk is empty, Windows reports that 93.5 MB is being used and that doesn’t disappear even after a complete format.

Build Quality:

Unlike the MyBook Essential which has surplus holes to dissipate heat, the maxtor disk just has a few gaps at the top-left and bottom-left edges and as a result, the disk tends to get hot very quickly.

Since there is no rubber layer at the bottom, there is no grip and the disk is very slippery and even a slight jerk can cause it to move so you might want to think twice before you put it near the edge of a table.

The disk has been crammed into a small cover which results in a very noticeable elliptical bulge at the bottom of the disk cover.

Bundled Software:

None.

Power Cables:

The best thing about the hard disk is that it allows you to use 3 different types of plugs with the power adapter. I find this very useful because even though I bought the WD MyBook Essential from a WD shop in India, it comes with a 110V adapter and I have to use it with a 110-220V converter every time to use it in India.

The Maxtor disk on the other hand has two 110V plugs and a 220V plug which means I don’t need a converter anymore.

Since it requires a mini-USB to USB cable which is easily available, you can even use your cell phone or mp3 player’s cable to use the hard disk.

Pros:

Very Cheap
Fairly silent
3 detachable plugs
Any mini-USB cable can be used
Fast Access Times
3 year Warranty

Cons:

Gets hot very quickly
Slippery surface
No bundled software

Final Word:

For its price, the Maxtor Basics 1TB is totally worth the price and doesn’t disappoint. It’s even smaller than most of the other 1TB hard disks. If you’re looking for a cheap solution to backup your music, photos and CDs, Maxtor Basics is your best bet.

Reviews 3.5" disk, External Hard Disk, External Hard Drive, maxtor, Maxtor Basics 1TB, MyBook Essential, western digital

When I first heard about Bolt Browser for J2ME mobile phones, I couldn’t wait to try it out and see how it compares to Opera Mini 4.2.

I’ve used WebKit based browsers such as TeaShark and the native Nokia S60 browser before and as far as rendering speed is concerned, these browsers take as much as 5 times the amount of time Opera Mini takes to render a page.

So it was interesting to test Bolt against Opera Mini and Webkit browsers.

Startup:

Bolt’s installation procedure is similar to Opera Mini’s but it takes a lot more time to start than Opera Mini.
Here’s how the startup screens look like:

Loading Screens

Start Screens

Both start-screens are alike, except that Opera Mini displays History, Bookmarks and Feeds vertically while Bolt displays it horizontally.

Rendering Performance:

Bolt’s Rendering accuracy is really good, however it does mess up a few images i.e. the colour of the images is a little different from the original.

Speed-wise, Bolt is a lot faster than Webkit based browsers but is slower than Opera Mini. Although Bitstream claims that it is faster than Opera Mini, I didn’t think so. It is fast, but not as fast as Opera Mini.

It’s interesting to note that Bolt works flawlessly with Bloglines while Opera Mini and Webkit browsers don’t work.

However, on many pages Bolt throws up errors almost every time.

Although errors like this can be resolved with a refresh, I encountered another error that announced that Bolt had an unrecoverable error and sent an error log to their server. I couldn’t take a screenshot as I couldn’t reproduce it again.

Data Reduction:

Although Bitstream claims that its data reduction ratio is 23:1, there’s really no way of verifying this as Bolt has no option to view web-page information. Opera Mini’s Page Information looks like this:

Features:

To be honest, Bolt’s features are basic at best. The only feature that is unique to Bolt and sets itself apart from other browsers (including Opera Mini) is the Split-Screen feature.

In Split-screen mode the screen is horizontally divided into half. The top half has the zoomed-out view of a page while the bottom-half shows a full-zoomed area of the page around the cursor and it looks like this:

Other than this, Bolt doesn’t have much to brag out. Bolt’s Bookmark and RSS Feed Managers are similar to other browsers.

If  the current webpage has a number somewhere, Bolt detects it and allows you to either call or send an SMS to that number. Opera Mini also detects numbers but only allows the user to call the number. Both browsers are terrible at recognizing phone numbers though, phone models (such as P230, N70, N95), addresses and version numbers are confused as telephone numbers.
Opera Mini on the other hand has Opera Link for bookmark synchronization, is skinnable, allows pages to be saved on phone or memory card, supports HTTP Authentication (bolt doesn’t) and supports multiple search-engines and even custom Search Strings like this:

fdsf 

Customization:

Again, a no show. There’s hardly any options to choose from.

That’s it. There are no more options in Bolt. Compare this with Opera Mini’s options:

Final Word:

For a browser in its beta stage, Bolt is pretty good and I expect the final version to be a little faster and more feature-rich. Even in its beta stage it’s better than most Webkit based browsers. However, it lacks many basic features (such as tabbed browsing, copy-pasting and page saves) and if the final version doesn’t include any new features, then there’s absolutely no way Bolt can be an Opera Mini killer. Bolt has the potential, but only time will tell.

Reviews bolt browser, bolt review, bolt screenshots, browser review, J2ME, opera mini 4.2, opera mini review, opera mini screenshots