I've had a few days to get used to the new laptop now so I thought I'd write a short review that might be useful to others considering buying this model.

First off, I should point out that this is a no-frills functional laptop rather than a slick designer laptop (and that's definitely reflected in the price). This laptop isn't trying to be a Sony Vaio or a MacBook Pro. However, it doesn't look as dull as its business-class counterpart, the ThinkPad.

The basic machine specification is: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD (5,400 rpm), 1680 x 1050 resolution, DVD-RW, 4 x USB, 1 x Firewire, 10/100MB Ethernet, Modem, Media card reader, built in web cam and microphone.

The machine came pre-installed with a rather bewildering amount of software and most of it seemed to load at startup making the machine very slow to boot. Especially worrying was a "ThinkVantage registry monitor" process which took both CPU cores to 100% for several minutes after logging in. After uninstalling most of the pre-installed software, which seems to be aimed at non-technical users, the machine now boots fairly fast and the overall performance is satisfying.

The keyboard is excellent. One of the best I've used. In fact, this was one of the main reasons I decided to go for this model.

The screen is slightly disappointing. This is clearly an area where some money was saved. However, it is perfectly adequate. The only real issues are the viewing angle (you really need to look at the screen directly) and the brightness and contrast (the screen seems slightly dark and doesn't compare well to high end laptops I've used in the past).

The other slight disappointment is that there is no gigabit ethernet. That's not too big a deal since gigabit pcmia cards are inexpensive these days.

However, at £710+VAT this laptop offers great value for money. If screen quality is important to you then the Thinkpad T61p is the machine to go for in the Lenovo range but this costs around £1,400+VAT. Considering that I'll mostly have the laptop connected to an external LCD display the extra spend just wasn't justified in my case.

Labels: hardware

I've been busy building out a fairly realistic test application for the past couple of days so I can really get a handle on Hibernate's performance and scalability. The application is a book store e-commerce site very loosely based on Amazon. I'll make the code available once it's complete.

I've defined a stateless session bean interface with the business methods e.g. login, findBooks, createOrder, addBookToOrder, and so on. I currently have two implementations of the bean - one that uses JDBC DAOs and one that uses Hibernate. I'm considering implementing another version that uses Spring JDBC as well.

I've developed a tool that can populate the database with configurable amounts of random data so that the tests are representative of real-world data volumes.

I then have one standard multi-threaded test client that will work with any of these bean implementations. I'm hosting the beans in JBoss on a dedicated server so that each implementation will be using the same connection pool and transacation management to try and make the tests as fair as possible.

The initial results are showing poor scalability with Hibernate and I have a thread open on the Hibernate forum where I'm looking for guidance on my configuration and approach in case I'm not using Hibernate correctly. At this stage it's also possible I have bugs in my code so I'm not going to post any figures until I'm confident that my tests are correct.

I'm starting a new contract tomorrow so I'll have to put this work on hold for a couple of days but hopefully I'll be able to post some stats at the weekend.

Labels: java, persistence

Those of you who know me will be well aware of my bias towards the DAO approach to writing Java persistence code but I'm currently spending time getting to grips with Hibernate. As a freelance developer, Hibernate is now an essential skill to list on my resume due to it's widespread use. It's easy to see why Hibernate is so popular - it allows database driven applications to be developed using natural idiomatic Java code and doesn't require volumes of tedious code to be written to a low level API like JDBC.

My only real concern with Hibernate is the overhead it adds to an application compared to using JDBC directly but I don't have any empirical evidence to back this up. Also, Hibernate could potentially have better performance than JDBC because, as a runtime framework, there are opportunities for caching data. Ultimately, as with most technology comparisons, I expect that both Hibernate and plain JDBC code have particular use cases that they are best suited to.

I'm currently putting together a test application to try and understand the performance characteristics of Hibernate compared to low level JDBC code. I'm also using this as a means to learn Hibernate.

I'll post the results here as I get them.

Labels: java, persistence

I mentioned that I was thinking about buying a ThinkPad T61P for my next laptop but in the end I decided to order the ThinkPad 3000 N200 instead. This is a consumer model rather than a business model but features the same solid keyboard that I'm now used to. It has a slightly lower specification than the T61P but is literally half the price. I expect the main reason for the difference in price is that the 3000 has native resolution of 1680 x 1050 compared to 1920 x 1200 on the T61P.

It should be with me tomorrow and I'll blog again once I've had a chance to use it.

Labels: hardware

Phew! That's better... the dull blogger template is gone and has been replaced with a much cleaner, fresher design produced by my professional web designer nephew, James Burrage.

Could your blog do with a fresher look? Why not contact James for a quote.

Labels: blog

My PC is now back from PC Specialist with a new heatsink and fan and the processor is running at 36 degrees celcius (it was exceeding 70 degrees when I sent it back). They also fixed a couple of minor niggles free of charge. I'll definitely be ordering future kit from these guys. It seems to be a rare thing these days to find IT companies providing such good service.

The PC came back with PC Wizard 2007 installed. I haven't heard of this free utility before but it provides a detailed view of your system hardware, including fan speeds and temperature of various components. Very useful.

Labels: hardware