Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Tech News & Commentary
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Bob in Chicago, Illinois listens Online asked: “I was wondering what the Raspberry Pi can do and if it’s capable of running a Minecraft server or a web server.”
The Pi can do a lot… it’s not super powerful, but for the price you get a pretty capable machine. It’s been used to build ultra portable computers, to control home automation using Siri, to control small robots and quadcopters… it’s a pretty versatile little device.
As for running a Minecraft server or a web server, yes to both. The Pi can handle a web server without much trouble at all, it should work pretty well, you will obviously need a more powerful computer for a serious, high traffic website, but if it’s only getting a handful of visitors and you don’t mind the downtime when you restart it, or if the power or internet go out, then it should be able to handle the work easily.
The Minecraft server will stress it more, you will have to set it up in a way that will allow you to squeeze more power out of it, so be ready to overclock it and install the latest version of Java on it.
Once you’ve done that, though, it should be able to run a Minecraft server pretty well, again, it won’t be able to handle thousands of users, but it should work pretty well for you and your friends.
We should warn you that you will probably have to do a lot of shell configuration, it will be command line setup rather than windows based, so be prepared for that.
The issue with the Raspberry Pi is that, by itself, it does nothing. It’s a little single board computer that is CAPABLE of connecting with input and display devices, but it’s just the starting point. By the time you add in everything it takes to make a working computer out of the Raspberry Pi, you will have spent around $250 and that would be for a 700 MHz computer with 512MB of memory and 32GB of SD card storage. Frankly, there are better deals.
Which is not to say that a Raspberry Pi is useless. It’s an excellent device to use as a controller with your engineering projects, but you have to be an engineer to know how to use it that way. It’s just not a piece of consumer electronics.
And as for that Minecraft server? Yes, technically it could run one. But the amount of memory, disk storage, and processor power required to run Minecraft smoothly isn’t there with the Raspberry Pi. Our guess is you’d spend a lot of time hacking at it only to wind up with a server that lagged you to death in a pool of lava or under a pile of creepers.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Major Bess of the SC National Guard listening via the Internet asked: “Are the solid state hard drives going to come down and the capacity go up anytime soon?”
Solid State Drives have been steadily getting cheaper and cheaper and HDDs have been staying at around the same price, so eventually you may see SSD becoming more price competitive, but at the current pace, it may still take a few years.
There’s another way for you to go, there are hybrid drives that incorporate some fast access SSD memory and some roomy HDD (or, Hard Disk Drive) memory on a single volume.
Those hybrid drives tend to have better performance than an HDD, more storage than an SSD at an overall decent price.
You can buy a hybrid 1TB drive today for something around $115, for comparison a 500GB SSD might cost you $350, in terms of performance, you can expect hybrid drive to get you speeds as much as 4 times faster than a traditional HDD, which is not as a fast as an SSD, but it’s very respectable for the price.
That being said, there truly is nothing comparable to an SSD hard drive in your computer. Near-instant boot up and wake up times, blazing performance opening apps, etc. The cost might be high (or, perhaps, “not cheap” is the better term), but the performance gains are hard to overstate. If you can afford it, this is a move we think you will enjoy.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Anishiya Taneja, VP of Implementation – PlanetSoho
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
At the International Funkausstellung 1989, known worldwide as IFA, Thomson had a 10.000 square foot booth to demonstrate future technologies and presented there, the first prototype of a CD recorder named MOD, Magneto Optical Disc. With MOD, developed in Germany, for the first time it was possible to record on a CD, using phase shift technology. At the same IFA show, LaserVision video discs by Philips had their world premiere and were first introduced to the US soon after, as a test market.
Gary in Plymouth, Michigan and listening via 800AM CKLW The Information Station asked: “I want to back up my laptop. Do I use a disk like a DVR, or do I use a flash drive? How big and do I have to format it?”
A DVD or flash drive probably won’t be enough to back up all of your data.
How much data do you have to back up? That’s how much storage you need, if you want to make an image of your entire drive that you can recover should anything happen to it, then you’ll need a drive at least roughly the size of the one that’s in your computer, if you just want to back up a few business documents here and there, then a flash drive or DVD might do the trick.
Formatting depends on the medium, whatever you use to store your data will have to be formatted in one way or another, but most also come pre-formatted, so you won’t have to worry about it.
What you’re probably looking for is a large hard drive, that will make it easy to save your data and access it later as well and, with the right software, it could be set up to do incremental backups over time, so your data can stay up to date without you really having to worry about it.
We have used drives from Western Digital, Seagate, and HGST. We can tell you that they all worked fine and we can recommend them. A USB 3.0 drive with 1TB of storage, large enough to back up any laptop, sells for under $100.
Now if you’re looking for a cloud based backup solution, something like Carbonite’s Home backup service costs just $60 per year. The upgraded Home Plus, which includes a mirror image backup that can restore your operating system and apps in addition to your documents, pictures, music, and video, costs $100 per year.
Those are annual charges, as opposed to a one-time purchase, but you have the peace of mind of off-site backup. If the house burns down, your data is safe in the cloud.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
John in Milton, Delaware listening and calling in via Android App asked: “I have been looking for an app that uses the flash feature of my Galaxy S3 as a ringer instead of the buzz of the vibration, or the song ringer. Many times I’m in a situation where I need to keep the phone on silent, but I can keep it where I can see it. I’m just looking for an app that can do that; I’m looking for one that does its job without mining me for every bit of data I have.”
We should probably point out the obvious first, the S3 does have an LED at the front that will alert you of pending notifications, but if you want a brighter alert you have some options to chose from.
Flash Notification + is currently on sale of 99 cents, and it will let you select what specific apps should get to use your flash.
If you just want to be notified of calls and texts though, Beacon LED is simple to use, it has 7 different flash patterns for your notifications and it costs $1.29
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Covington Creations: Earbud yo-yos “A clever solution to tangled earbuds”.
Bits Limited: Mini Squids — Travel-Sized surge protected power strips
Dane-Elec: Mobile Junkie Media Streamer – Stream content from a flash drive or SD card to your Smartphone or tablet.
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!