Current Deals : Dec 28th

The entire Crucial M500 series drop slightly in price. At the moment, they stands at $139.99, $279.99 and $469 respectively for the 240GB, 480GB and 960GB respectively. For buyers from Singapore, the 960GB versions attracts GST. It does sounds like there's some downward pressure on SSD prices these days.

Cetaphil Cleansers & Moisturizers has an on-going $1 coupon for qualified products. 4 days left.

If you need large capacity optical discs, Optical Quantum OQBDR04LT-50 4X 25 GB BD-R Single Layer Blu-Ray Recordable Logo Top 50-Disc Spindle is now going for $20.99.

Shop Amazon - $15 Off $75 Athletic Shoes. Not a bad deal if you're shopping for a running shoe. It represents a 20% discount if you buy exactly $75. The problem with this type of offer is that the more you buy, the lesser the discount quantum will be, percentage wise. Note also that the discount only applies once per order.

Tutorial : Processing Returns

There will be times when you need to return the items for various reasons. Some of the common ones include -

• Items are defective or damaged
• Items do not matched what you've ordered
• You regretted

There might be others, but the process is exactly the same. The easiest method is for you to chat up with an CSO. Describe to them politely the problem. I know it can be very frustrating when you get damaged/wrong items but venting your anger at the CSO won't speed things up.

The CSO might offer you a return label from UPS. There is a problem with this approach. You have to send the item to UPS Singapore. The address given is within the security zone in the Airport Cargo area. I wouldn't want to go there.  So if they do, tell them it's very inconvenient to return the items at UPS. Note that not all offers this return method.

The next option will be likely for you to return it via the most economical method. With this method, the CSO will create the return label for you, which is essentially an 'RMA' number and the Amazon address where the returns will go. You'll receive an email from the CSO, giving you instructions on what to do next. Essentially, there'll be a link for you to click to print out the return labels. There are 2 parts to it. The first part is for you to include it INSIDE the package. It basically says what you are returning. The second part is the actual address for you to paste OUTSIDE the package, for the postman to deliver it.

Next, go to your nearest post office and get those bubble envelop or the shipping box. Ask for standard registered parcel. It cost about $10 to ship an SSD, about $12-$15 to ship back a boxed DVD/BD set. Get receipts for both items (the box and postage). Fill up the postal form which you're going to get back a copy of it, as well as an RA number. Scan both the receipt and RA number and email it back to the Amazon CSO. Just reply to the original return label email will also do. For me, Amazon took a total of 5 minutes to respond and start the reimbursement process.

What will happen next varies. In my case, the moment the return label is created by the CSO, he went ahead and ordered a replacement for me straight. According to Amazon's own SOP, they need to receive the returned items first before they ship out the replacement. So YMMV here. You can try to ask for priority shipping but I personally feel it's bad form to do this if you did not pay for priority shipping originally.

It take about 2 weeks for the parcel to go back home. When Amazon received it, you'll get an email telling you so. And that completes the returns procedure. The replacement order is treated like a new order.

A few thoughts -

• I don't really advocate harassing the CSO for a speedier replacement. Just let the process run its course.
• This applies only for items shipped directly to Singapore, and for items fulfilled by Amazon.
• If you're returning due to reason #3 (as in, You regretted), please man up and pay for the return shipping. I don't think it's fair for Amazon to foot the return postage because you bought the items on impulse.
• If the items are shipped to you via a forwarder, you'll likely need to pay the return postage as their return label is valid only in US for items shipped domestically. They have no other options.

I hope this is useful information to you and also hope that you don't really have to go through this. I also want to appeal to my readers to not kick up a rookus due to minor cosmetic defects or packaging defects which do not affect the product itself (which is very common). Amazon, as a company, takes your words for it most of the time, so don't abuse this trust.

Read my other articles and tutorials starting with Shopping at Amazon Starts Here!

On the Mac : Windows, VMs and Flash Drives

If you do not prefer the Bootcamp approach describe in my other article, obviously you can just run Fusion or Parallels and have a virtual Windows environment running alongside your Mac. But again, due to the precious disk space on some Airs, carving out this 20GB to run a VM might not be something you can afford. In reality, this article also applies to Windows laptop with a similarly sized SSD on board. If you have such a machine and just need another Windows VM for testing, continue reading.

Now, there are obvious workarounds to this problem. You can, for example, run it on an SD card or run it on a thumb drive or external portable disks. If you can use an external portable disk, it'll be the most economical way. Read my other article about them. There's one problem with running it off an external disk. It's not exactly very portable since you have to move around with the drive attached to your Air (or laptop). It works, but there's this caveat. If you're going to be sitting on your desk while running the VM, then I think this approach works well. It's not going to be very high performing, but it's reasonable. I do have a few test VMs running off 'Desktop' class external disks.

I've hunted for some time since getting the Air, for a thumb drive/SD card that is reasonably fast so that I can just stick it to the USB port (or SD slot) and carry it around with me. SD card never works, period. They are just too slow. I must admit that I haven't really tried many of them, but I don't really want to waste any more money. The seriously fast ones (as claimed by Sandisk) cost multiple dollars per GB. Unless Sandisk wants to send me one to play with, I'm not going to outright buy them and pray that it works. For the record, I tried a Sony Class 10 and an HP Class 10. Both are 32GB, and both never complete the Windows installation after 1 hour, as far as I can remember.

So I'm left with thumb drives. I had a SanDisk Ultra 64 GB USB Flash Drive SDCZ45-064G-U46 at that time and I decided to try it. It's ok, but still slow. I didn't wait for the Windows installation to complete. I ended up putting Diablo III client on that thumb drive. Yes, that works reasonably but you can get killed due to disk read latency. I know I did a few times. At this point, I realized what I need is something which performs well for small I/O read/write. And it just happens that SanDisk announced their latest thumb drive, the SanDisk Extreme 64 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive up to 190 MB/s SDCZ80-064G-X46. This is an interesting drive. It sports an USB3 connection and some insane claimed transfer speed. And the best part? It costs about SGD1.4/GB locally here.

I began trawling the web for benchmarks. I found exactly 1 (I can't remember the site, sorry, but it compares this drive with a ton of others). Remember this is more than a year back (probably towards the end of 2012) and USB3 drives with real performance isn't that common place. Most USB3 drives at that time are just their standard USB2 parts retrofitted with an USB3 port. I knew this drive is going to be the one when I saw the benchmarks. The CDM 4K readings are unheard of. They read close to 10MB/s write with the default 4K test. You just have to trust my word as I don't have the URL anymore. Just for comparison sake, almost all flash drive at that time managed barely 1MB/s read/write on the default 4K CDM test.

I took the leap of faith and buy the 64GB version. I popped it into the Air's USB2 ports, format it to HFS+ and straight away put a Fusion VM on it running Windows 7. The speed is incredible, even on an USB2 port. It feels faster than those VMs running off normal external disks. I've been running my primary Windows VM on this drive since. After a year of hard hammering, it's getting slower and slower. I've yet to research this. You can start to feel the momentarily freeze at times, Outlook is not as responsive opening a cached Inbox etc. I'm not exactly sure why this is happening at this point. However, that said, it's still plenty fast mind you.

Even though I'm extremely happy with the purchase, there's a few things I ought to mention.

• This drive is expensive! Price is relative when I said it cost SGD1.4/GB. The other 'normal' flash drives cost like SGD0.80/GB. Price is lower now compared to a year ago.
• If you need to just copy huge files back and forth, you might want to look elsewhere. This guy doesn't score number 1 in sequential transfer. Nor is it the most cost effective for bulk storage.
• This drive shines only if you have a workload which requires small random read/write IO. Running VMs off it is one example.

If you skip all the post and come straight here, I'll say just buy this guy to run VMs off it. You won't go wrong. 

Current Deals : Dec 21st

Here's a summary of items which you can consider buying, either because you have a use for it and it's cheaper or you can use them as cart fillers to hit $125. Over the past few months, I have bought quite a number of items from Amazon, ranging from electronics to shoes to baby toys so I'm afraid there won't be a fix themed for this column. However, I hope there will be something for everybody.

Since the deals on Amazon can be quite 'volatile', some lasting only a few days, I'll try my best to put up a summary at least once a week under the column 'Current Deals'. Moving forward, I'll also try to put 2 featured deals on right panel of this blog so you just need to hit this blog and you will see them.

For now, here goes the summary of the deals for this week -

Logitech K360 Wireless Keyboard - Coral Fan
This keyboard is pretty no-frills. However, the current price of $14.99 makes it a great cart filler. Note that the K360 comes in a variety of design. Only the Coral Fan is $14.99. Maybe it's not selling? I don't find the design appealing personally. But aesthetics aside, this is a great keyboard.

Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard K400 with Built-In Multi-Touch Touchpad
At $19.99, this is a steal and a much better value then the K360. It works perfectly for my 'HTPC' since it has both a keyboard and a touchpad on it. I can even surf the web on a 40" HDTV with it comfortably.

Seagate Backup Plus 1TB Thunderbolt Portable External Hard Drive for Mac + Cable & Adapter (STBW1000403)
This bundle is actually the Thunderbolt Adaptor plus a 1TB Backup Plus 1TB portable drive. The good thing is it came with a Thunderbolt cable! But the downside is that the Backup Plus drive does not come with the USB3 dongle, making this drive Thunderbolt only. The bundle is also cheaper than what it would cost if you buy the items separately. For some strange reason, this bundle does not ship to Singapore.

Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (HDTB220XK3CA)
The price of this 2TB portable disk has been consistently at $99. It went down to $84.99 I believe during one of the 'Lightning Deals'. However, it's still the cheapest among the name brands.

Toshiba 3TB Canvio Desk Desktop External Hard Drive (Black/Black) (HDWC130XK3J1)
The bigger brother to the portable version. $107.29 at the moment.

Bioshock Triple Pack [Online Game Code]
If you're a fan, this download-only code is $14.99. Consist of Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite.

Philips Norelco 1290x/40 SensoTouch 3d Electric Razor
There's a coupon for $50 off, effectively $169.95. Ships directly to Singapore (and India) for free, no need to pad shopping cart.

What to Buy on Amazon : External Disk Drives

Buying cheap external HDDs is always an evergreen topic on the local forums. Now that Amazon offer free shipping to Singapore, I think it'll be difficult for the local retailers to match the price you're going to see on Amazon.

As with the case of SSD, there are many vendors who sells external disk drives. There are basically 2 types, 'Desktop' or 'Portable'. What is the difference between them? 'Desktop' means it requires an external power source, will be more bulky and as a result, not exactly portable. The upside is, it's cheaper in terms of $/GB of storage since it uses 3.5" drives. 'Portable' means it'll be powered by your USB ports, is small and as a result, extremely portable. The downside is, it's more expensive.

I'll talked about 3 vendors, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba. Why these 3? Briefly

• Seagate's Backup Plus series offers a unique proposition and is a name-brand you can identify with.
• Western Digital is a name-brand you can identify with.
• Toshiba is cheaper. At least at time of writing.

I'll start with Toshiba as there's really nothing much to say about their Canvio Basics series. It currently offers the best bang for the bucks among the 3 vendors. Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (HDTB220XK3CA) is currently priced at $99. You really can't fault the price point. This also means you need to pad your cart to $125, another $26 at least, in order to qualify for free shipping back to Singapore (or India). One thing to note, Toshiba offers only 1 year warranty for this item and whether or not it's valid in Singapore is also another question.

Next, Western Digital Passport Ultra offers a very sleek looking package in multiple vibrant colours to boot. They don't cost that much more over the Toshiba offers. At the moment, WD My Passport Ultra 2TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto and Cloud Backup - Black (WDBMWV0020BBK-NESN) is going for $114.75. For that $16 premium, you get a nicer looking package, multiple colours options and a standard 3-year warranty. I've read that the warranty checks out locally in Singapore too. Personally, I'll go with this.

Lastly, Seagate. If you are looking at making full use of your Thunderbolt port on your Mac to connect external drives, then Seagate has a much better value proposition. The Seagate Backup Plus Series has a unique feature in that it can be 'upgraded' to fit into your Thunderbolt port or the Firewire 800 port.

How does it work? Basically, all the drives in this series (sans  the Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive - Black (STDR2000100)) has a detachable part that contains the USB3 connector. If you remove this, it will expose the native SATA connector of the drive itself. You can then plug this drive into the Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128) (for 'Portable' drives) or the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE129) (for 'Desktop drives). These adaptors then connects to the Thunderbolt port of your Mac, turning it into a Thunderbolt external disk! The Desktop Adapter comes with 2 Thunderbolt port for daisy-chaining another Thunderbolt device.

Another advantage of these adaptors is that they sport a standard SATA connector. As a result, you can stick just about any SATA drives to it. I plug the Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5 into the STAE128 and run Windows off it. Read about my experience here.

These drives come with a standard 2-year warranty and they are valid locally in Singapore. Prices at Amazon is always better then local. The only thing is you have to wait. And some drives are so cheap, you need a cart filler. Do check back this blog for ideas on what to fill the cart with to hit $125!

Be sure to read the tutorials on this site to get started!

On the Mac : Bootcamp, Thunderbolt and SSDs

I'm going to side track and talk a little bit about my experience trying to bootcamp my MacBook Air (mid-2011). Now, I'm sure everybody with a MBA that sports either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage will be able to attest that we are always doing some house keeping to prevent our apps from overwhelming the puny storage. I am no different, especially when I also need a Windows environment to get some of my work done.

In short, I'm ill equipped to run a VM using the internal disk. Fusion wants 20GB (which I think is reasonable for a Windows 7 Setup) and that will leave me with even less storage to deal with. The options I have is either run the VM off a USB stick (which I eventually did and will be a story for another day), or run the VM off the Thunderbolt port, which I did as well, but it's a little clumsy and not exactly very portable.

But what if I want to 'boot camp' and play some Windows-only games? The storage consideration alone will be daunting as there's really no way both partitions can fit into the internal 128GB SSD. Not for me at least. And so I have a thought, to simply put the Windows partition on its own disk and run it off the Thunderbolt port!

First, let's talk a little about the hardware I actually use. I opted for an SSD instead of a traditional spinning disk for obvious reason. In my case, I picked Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5.

Now, I need some kind of a disk enclosure or an adaptor which can convert the Thunderbolt port to a SATA port. Seagate has exactly this contraption, Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128). This adaptor is actually designed for the Seagate Backup Plus Portable series of external disk drives. This family of external drives (sans the newer 2TB versions) come with a detachable USB3 dongle, which you can remove and expose the naked SATA connector on the disk itself. You then plug this into the adaptor and it will then becomes a Thunderbolt portable external disk. Neat! And since the connector on the adaptor is a standard SATA connector, you can plug any standard SATA 2.5" disks to it and turn it into a Thunderbolt portable external disk.

There is one caveat. The adaptor itself does not provide 12V power and as a result, it is unable to power certain drives, notably the Seagate Constellation.2 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST91000640NS. This guy requires both 5V and 12V rails to be available and will not work with the adaptor.

So now I have these, how do I put Windows on it? We're going to make use of a lesser known technique in the consumer world to install Windows : Windows Automated Installation Kit. Windows AIK tool is a free download from Microsoft, you can get it here. In reality, you only need 'imagex.exe' from the whole bundle so you probably can find just the binary alone by searching the web. In addition to Windows AIK, you'll also need Apple's Bootcamp drivers. It's easy to get the drivers, all you need to do is just run Bootcamp Assistant and it will download the correct drivers for your Mac. Put these drivers onto a thumb drive or something. Lastly, you'll obviously need the Windows installer itself. It can be a physical disc or an ISO image.

Next, you'll need a Windows environment to prepare the drive. It can be a physical desktop/laptop or a simple Windows VM. I'm going to assume you have access to all the components on the same desktop/laptop/VM -

• Target disk drive you're putting Windows on
• imagex.exe
• Windows installer disc or ISO

Step #1. Wipe the drive and create a primary 350MB partition. Format it with FAT32 and make it Active. Assign a drive letter to it, let's call it 'B' (for Boot).

Step #2. Create a second partition consisting of the rest of the drive. Format it with NTFS. Assign a drive letter to it, let's call it 'W' (for Windows).

Step #3. Determine the INDEX number of the desired Windows edition you want on the Installer disc/ISO. You need to do this because your disc/ISO may contain multiple versions of Windows, like 'Professional' or 'Enterprise' etc. To do this, you need 'imagex.exe'. Assuming your disc/ISO is mounted on drive I:, the command to do this is

<PATH to IMAGEX.EXE>\imagex.exe /info I:\wim\install.wim

It will list out all the available editions you have on your current disc/ISO. The output is quite lengthy but otherwise very self-explanatory. Let's assume the edition you want is located at INDEX 0.

Step #4. Deploy Windows. The command to do this is

<PATH to IMAGEX.EXE>\imagex.exe /apply I:\wim\install.wim 0 W:

This will take some time so you have to wait patiently for it to complete.

Step #5. Install the boot sector.

W:\windows\system32\bcdboot W:\windows /f ALL /s B:

Once you reached here, you're done with the disk. Shutdown your Mac. Stick the disk onto the Seagate adaptor and plug the adaptor into the Thunderbolt port of your Mac. Remove ALL USB devices from your Mac now. USB connected drives will prevent your Mac from booting up from the Thunderbolt disk correctly. Check that you have nothing on your USB ports and also no SD cards in the SD slot (if you have one).

Boot your Mac and hold onto the 'Option' key. You know this will lead you to the Boot Drives selection screen. You should see a disk named 'Windows' along with your usual Mac boot disk and also the Recovery partition. Use your arrow keys to select 'Windows' and hit 'Return'. If you have done everything correctly as listed, your Windows partition will boot and installation starts. Just follow the on-screen instructions. It should be no different from a normal installation procedure.

At this point, Windows might reboot a few times during the course of installation. You have to remember to do the hold 'Option' key dance and select 'Windows' on the selection screen. After the installation completes, login and run 'setup.exe' from the Bootcamp Drivers thumb drive as Administrator. Follow instructions to complete the installation.

You should now have a fully bootable and working copy of Windows on the disk. Note that this procedure also works on a USB adaptor as well.

Something to take note -

• If your installer is 64-bit, then you need 64-bit versions of everything, including BCDBOOT, Bootcamp drivers etc.
• Make sure you don't have any USB devices attached when booting. Otherwise, it will not boot correctly.

Since this procedure works also for external USB disk, you can also use any of these types of disk. The BUFFALO MiniStation 1 TB Thunderbolt / USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive with Thunderbolt Cable - HD-PA1.0TU3works pretty well. It comes with both USB3 and Thunderbolt connector. However, it is a spinning disk inside. If you must have an SSD, then using the Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128)might still be the best bet.

What to Buy on Amazon : Solid State Drives (SSD)

One of the most popular items, at least in the Computer and Accessories category, are Solid State Drives, otherwise known as SSD. Now, for the layman, SSD are straight forward drop-in replacement for your existing Hard Disk Drive (HDD). SSD uses flash as the storage medium, as oppose to a spinning disc in a traditional HDD. As a result, it offers a much lower access latency which results in a huge boost in performance most of the time.

There are currently many SSD vendors, offering a myriad of combinations of controllers and capacity. However, in my opinion, there are only 4 which are worthy of consideration. They are

• Intel
• Crucial
• Samsung
• Kingston

The main reason is that Amazon offers AmazonGlobal Saver for SSDs from these manufacturers. One thing to take note that SSDs today are very much capable and you won't notice any performance difference between the different models in your everyday home and office type of workload. If you do a little bit of searching, you will see that all of them performs differently and have different controller and flash characteristics. In my opinion, these are academic in nature and I must re-iterate that you will most likely not see nor feel any difference between them. In short, just buy the cheapest, but do read on for some other pointers.

The best value for money capacity at the moment is the 240GB/250GB/256GB version. Let's take a brief look at the SSDs offered by these manufacturers.

Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5
This is a pretty recent model and it comes in 2 variants, the bare drive or the Reseller Kit (featured here). The bare drive, as the name implies, is just the drive alone and is not eligible for AmazonGlobal. The Reseller Kit version is another story. At the moment it qualifies for free shipping (unless the price drops below $125) so you don't have to 'pad' your cart to qualify. Intel offers a massive 5-year international warranty on these drives. According to their warranty statement, all you need to do is call the Intel Customer Service in your region to request an RMA. The Reseller Kit also comes with a 9.5mm spacer, a SATA cable and a 3.5" to 2.5" bracket.

I personally bought this and bootcamp off the Thunderbolt connector on my MacBook Air. I also have Intel's older model, the X25-M G2 80GB and the 320 series 160GB. My experience is very positive with Intel.

Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW
Samsung offers 3 versions of the 840-series SSDs. The standard 840, the 840 EVO and the 840 PRO. The 840 and 840 EVO are priced similarly but the 840 EVO out performs the 840 just about in every single benchmarks. The 840 PRO commands a higher price premium and for the extra performance it offers, I don't think it's value-for-money when used in an office or home environment.

Another thing to take note is that the 840 and 840 EVO uses a 'one of its kind' type of flash, known as TLC. It stands for Tri-Level Cell, as opposed to MLC (Multi-Level Cell) or SLC (Single-Level Cell). In theory, a TLC flash will wear out faster than an MLC flash, all things equal. I strongly believe that by the time the flash is worn out, you'll be looking at a better, faster and cheaper drive. In other words, whether it's TLC or MLC, it doesn't matter in reality.

Samsung does not provide international warranty unfortunately. If you need to RMA the drive, you'll have to send it all the way back to Samsung USA. It should cost you about $10-$15 SGD to send it back via registered post.

Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD1
I do not have any experience with Crucial drives. However, the M500 series has got good reviews, is very price competitive (it's the cheapest of the lot at the time of writing) and ships for free to Singapore. RMA requires you send the drive back to Taiwan and it cost lesser than sending it back to the US. It comes with a 9.5mm spacer as well.

Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 6.0 Gb/s Solid State Drive SH103S3/240G
Kingston is also a name brand which offers good performance SSDs at relatively competitive price. If you have a grudge against the other 3 manufacturers, then you can consider this model. I do not believe Kingston offers any international warranty and any RMA will have to go back to the US.

Now, if 240GB/250GB/256GB is not your cup of tea, let me introduce the massive 960GB version of the M500

 

In all honesty, the 960GB is way overkill. For your data, like your movies and music, it's more cost effective to store them on traditional HDD.