Author: batteryforpc

Huawei has a new sporty smartwatch it’s announcing alongside its flagship P40 smartphone series. The Huawei Watch GT 2E includes 100 workout modes, like rock climbing, skateboarding, and parkour, and has storage for up to 500 songs, Huawei says. The red and green versions of the device feature a similar design to the Nike Editions of Apple’s smartwatches, with a rubber watchband covered in small holes.

The smartwatch features broadly similar specs to last year’s Watch GT 2. It’s got a 1.39-inch OLED touchscreen with a resolution of 454 x 454, 4GB of memory, it uses the company’s Kirin A1 chipset, and Huawei says it should last 14 days on a single charge. However, new for this version of the device is blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) monitoring via a dedicated IR sensor. The watch is water resistant up to 50m, supports GPS, and has two physical buttons on the right-hand side of its watchface. As well as the red and green, the watch is also available with black and white straps, while the watchface itself is available in silver or black.

Alongside the new Huawei Watch GT 2E, Huawei has also announced a new gold variant of its existing 42mm GT 2 smartwatch, which maintains the same overall design of the previous smartwatch but with a new gold finish on its steel casing.

The new Watch GT 2E will retail for €199 in Europe, while the gold edition of the Watch GT 2 will be priced starting at €229 for a version with a white strap or €249 for a red strap. Huawei says the watches will be available in April.

As time moves forward and we get farther and farther from the events of CES 2020 nearly three months ago now, it becomes easy to forget or simply mis-remember things that were so exciting at the time. For instance, just a month ago I could remember quite clearly how enamored I was in my time with the very excellent Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook. If I think about it hard enough, I can remember how excited I was about its announcement and how excited I was to know that it would be coming in just months from that show in Vegas.

Fast forward to today, and though I know it is on the way pretty soon (May is the release window), it is easy to forget about that and get wrapped up in the things going on right in front of my face. For a few weeks now, the upcoming devices of 2020 have begun to feel a bit like vaporware even though I know that isn’t the case. I know these devices are on the way, but I really needed a spark to get me excited about them again. That spark came for me in the form of the ASUS Flip C436 showing up on Tuesday, and with it all the memories of what we saw out at CES 2020 a few months ago.

You see, a few weeks ago I was tempted by the new pricing structure on the Pixel Slate. At $499 as a starting price for the very capable Core m3 version, there was part of me that considered getting one for myself. We have one here in the office, but I was really considering one for the house. With all the new and upcoming changes to tablet mode for Chrome OS, I’m very excited about a Chromebook I can really leverage as a tablet. I even took to the Slate in the office for a few days to see what I really thought of trying out a tablet again.

And, yet again, I found that a tablet of that size just isn’t right for me. I’ve been told by many readers, viewers, and listeners that I’m wrong to feel this way, but I still think the Slate is too large and heavy to be a good tablet. And, with the folio style keyboard, it is only a decent laptop. It feels like a compromised experience on both ends: not great at anything and, by extension, only mediocre at everything.

Yet, I still want a Chrome OS tablet. I want one for reading, for watching videos, for running down to the coffee shop (once I can again), for weekend getaways: I want a consumption device I can get some work done on when I need to. And that is why I’m holding off on buying a tablet for now. With the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet just weeks away, I’m continuing to just wait it out. I’ve learned I’m not against having a tablet in my daily workflow; I’m just against having a tablet around that isn’t good at being a tablet first.

I think the IdeaPad Duet will be good at being a tablet, and I think there’s a real chance it will be the first Chrome OS tablet that pulls it off, too. Tablets that have come before it were too cheap feeling, too slow, too clunky, or too expensive. The Duet nails size, weight, speed, screen, and build quality while giving you an insane value (keyboard included starting at $279 for the whole thing) and quite possibly the most versatile experience possible.

This tablet will be small enough to read with on the couch or in bed but fast enough to dock at the office with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse to do a full day’s work. That has simply never been the case with a tablet running Chrome OS up to this point. So, if you want a larger tablet with great speakers, fast internals, a great screen, go get a Pixel Slate. The price is honestly insane for that hardware. For me, I’m waiting on what I feel will be a better overall tablet experience at a fraction of the cost. While I could end up eating my words, I tend to feel like this tablet will start something new and important in the Chromebook world, and I’m ready to wait for it.

When you’re in the middle of a Zoom video meeting at home and your cat suddenly decides to start bawling for its dinner, you’ll want to mute your audio in a hurry. In that case, you have a choice: you can either reach for your mouse or touchpad and start searching for the “Mute” button or you can use a quick keyboard shortcut to cut off that noise immediately.

Zoom has a long list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use before or during a videoconference. By using these shortcuts, you can quickly join a meeting; mute and unmute the audio; start, pause, and stop recording; switch views from Speaker (a large image of the person speaking) to Gallery (several equally sized images, no matter who is speaking); and perform a variety of other tasks.

You can easily find a list of those tasks, and the shortcuts that you can use, in your Zoom app:

Go to Zoom’s settings by clicking on the gear in the upper right-hand corner

In the left-hand menu, select “Keyboard Shortcuts”

Of course, the keys you press on a Mac or a Windows PC will be different, but no matter which platform you use, those shortcuts can be really useful when you’re on a laptop Zoom call.

The workstation and server markets are big business for not only chip manufacturers such as Intel and AMD, but for motherboard vendors too. Since AMD’s introduction of its Zen-based EPYC processors, its prosumer market share has been slowly, but surely, creeping back. One example of a single socket solution available on the market is the GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0. With support for AMD’s EPYC family of processors, the MZ31-AR0 has some interesting components including its 2 x SFP+ 10 G Ethernet ports powered by a Broadcom BCM57810S controller, and four SlimSAS slots offering up to sixteen SATA ports. 

GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 Overview

As it stands, AMD has two versions of its EPYC range on the market: the first generation Zen series (called Naples), released in June 2017, and the Zen 2 based EPYC chips (called Rome). Each processor from AMD’s EPYC families has support for 128 PCIe lanes and up to 2 TB of system memory operating in eight-channel mode.

Despite the GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 being a server motherboard, it uses the regular E-ATX form factor, with with a single SP3 socket that, depending on the revision of the board, supports Naples (rev 1.x) or both Naples and EPYC (rev 2.x). This ranges from base 8 cores 16 thread model (EPYC 7251), all the way to a 64 core and 128 thread variant (EPYC 7742).

EPYC is focusing on both performance and IO, and so along with a lot of PCIe lanes on offer, the MZ31-AR0’s primary features includes a Broadcom BCM 57810S dual SPF+ 10 G Ethernet controller which adds two 10 G ports onto the rear panel. For maintenance, an Aspeed AST2500 powered remote management controller provides BMC functionality, with a D-sub 2D video output with a dedicated Ethernet port for direct access.

Both revisions of the board are limited to PCIe 3.0, even with Rome, but the board makes the most of the available PCIe 3.0 lanes. The GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 has four full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, one full-length PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, with a further two full-length PCIe 3.0 x8 slots given this board a total of seven full-length slots. This is an impressive array of PCIe support and is equipped to make the most of the 128 lanes available from the processor. Equally impressive is sixteen memory slots set up in two banks of eight slots either side of the SP3 socket which offers eight-channel support. These slots support both RDIMM and LRDIMM DDR4 modules up to a maximum capacity of 2 TB, with DDR4-2666, DDR4-2400, and DDR4-2133 all supported.

For storage, the GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 is well-equipped with four SlimSAS ports with each slot supporting four SATA drives, with a combined total of sixteen available for use. Interestingly, the MZ31-AR0 is equipped with a single PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot. Some users may have expected a second M.2 slot due to the board’s large E-ATX form factor, but alas that is not the case. Focusing on the design, the board layout implies it would be more than suitable for rackmount deployment in a 1U chassis, which it is, although it can also be used in a permitting chassis that features E-ATX support. The positioning of the single 24-pin motherboard and two 8-pin CPU 12 V ATX connectors fit in line with support for 1U chassis, with GIGABYTE offering its own 1U solutions for users to capitalize on. The SP3 socket is rotated with this in mind for better airflow in a server situation.

From a performance perspective, we compared the MZ31-AR0 against an ASRock server model as well as other 16-core Zen compatible boards. Everything is in line with the competition – POST times are higher than anticipated, but this can be put down to the BMC initialization process. The performance in relation to power consumption is also a little higher than the ASRock model we tested, but it is EATX (versus ATX) and is pretty stacked, to say the least.

The GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 currently retails for $565 at Amazon, and as a result of its current price point has a couple of competitive rivals on the market. One such example is the Supermicro MBD-H11SSL-NC which retails for $470 at Newegg, although with a much lesser networking configuration, and with fewer memory slots. Another example is the ASRock Rack EPYCD8 model with a current selling price of $460, which is in a similar with Intel dual 10 G Ethernet but has fewer memory slots.

Both of the Supermicro and ASRock examples are also ATX, whereas the GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 is E-ATX, and as a result has more space to include the better memory support and premium dual 10 G SPF+ networking which it includes. For the extra $100 over the ASRock and Supermicro models, the MZ31-AR0 looks like a solid choice based on value and specifications, which in this area given the pricing of AMD’s EPYC Zen-based processors, is a very worthy trade-off against the competition.

HPE has told customers that four kinds of solid-state drives (SSDs) in its servers and storage systems may experience failure and data loss at 40,000 hours, or 4.5 years, of operation.

The IT titan said in a bulletin this month the “issue is not unique to HPE and potentially affects all customers that purchased these drives.” HPE has not identified the SSD maker, though, and refused to do so, saying: “We’re not confirming manufacturers.”

Your humble vulture has seen evidence the faulty drives were made by Western-Digital-owned SanDisk. WD declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Dell-EMC issued an urgent firmware update last month that also mentioned SSDs failing after 40,000 operating hours, and specifically identified SanDisk SAS drives. The update included firmware version D417 as a fix to prevent future data loss.

If you’re getting deja-vu, you’re not alone. HPE separately warned of certain SAS SSDs dying after their 32,768th hour of operation in November last year.

Drawing a line between these two blunders, HPE noted this month: “While the failure mode is similar, this [latest] issue is unrelated to the SSD issue detailed in this customer bulletin released in November 2019, which describes an SSD failure at 32,768 hours of operation.”

To avoid this new data death bug, HPE customers should install SSD firmware version HPD7, described as a “critical” fix. From the March bulletin:

HPE was notified by a Solid State Drive (SSD) manufacturer of a firmware defect affecting certain SAS SSD models used in a number of HPE server and Storage products (ie: HPE ProLiant, Synergy, Apollo 4200, Synergy Storage Modules, D3000 Storage Enclosure, StoreEasy 1000 Storage). The issue affects SSDs with an HPE firmware version prior to HPD7 that results in SSD failure at 40,000 hours of operation (ie: 4 years, 206 days, 16 hours).