If you haven’t heard yet, Google is coming out with their own form of netbooks in June, called Chromebooks…

Based of their minimalistic web browser, Chrome, it will strictly be a web netbook.

No need for a BIOS, Hardware detection, Login, Splash screens, Anti-virus, anything that slows boot up and load times.

They say the Chromebooks boot up in 8 seconds and resume instantly.

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Higher temperatures exacerbate a problem known as Electromigration.  In the simplest of terms, electromigration is a result of the movement  of electrons over a rough surface.  IC’s or integrated circuits have small imperfections in the metal connections into the semiconductors.  These imperfections are similar to a pothole or a crack in a roadway.  The harder the car rides over the pothole, the more likely the car is to break a chunk of the road off and enlarge the pothole.  The worse this hole becomes, the more cars hit it harder even if their speed is lowered.

The worsening of the imperfection accelerates the destruction of the metal connector.  In a perfect conductor the road surface is perfect, with no bumps or imperfections.  In cheap electronics the road surface is already marked with many holes.  This is also why high quality electronics have a better chance of surviving massive power surges.  The higher quality the path the more likely it is to survive the equivalent of a tank battalion driving over it.  It might be damaged by the process, but it is much more likely to survive the encounter and still function for a while longer.

What heat does to this problem, is it makes the road brittle by stretching it out a bit.  The pieces of road are much more likely to break off when hit because they aren’t being hung onto as well as they used to be.  In silicon the thermal barrier is a specific temperature.  Up until a certain point the acceleration is very low.  Once that point is reached the problem expands rapidly.

For bulk silicon this thermal limit is about 80 Degrees Celsius, in Strained Silicon or SOI this is closer to 90 or 95 Degrees.  Proper cooling can help keep your electronics running better, for longer.  This is because the migration won’t occur all at one time and can be extremely difficult to diagnose as it progresses.  The main sign is an intermittent error or failure that can be temporarily remedied by lowering the temperature or the voltage to the part.

In my case I had an old Core 2 Duo e6300.  This was an old 1.86ghz dual core processor, when I needed more power I ramped it up to almost 3.3ghz which is a huge overclock even with the additional cooling I was using.  It lasted for about a year at this level before it killed the motherboard I was using, which was an Asus p5k-se.  The motherboard failure put more stress on the chip, which would now only clock up to about 2.7 ghz.  Any higher and the system would blue screen inside Windows.  Eventually it wound down to about 2.2 ghz max clock and I replaced and retired it.  This chip was headed to its eventual end, cpu’s are designed with about a 10 year operational limit in mind.  By increasing the load on the chip and increasing the heat it was generating I accelerated its eventual death.  It still lasted a good 4 years, but this was a first hand example for me the destructive side effects of electromigration.

So, just today I sent in my old iPhone 3G to a place that buys used iPhones, iPods, laptops, etc.  I got $95 for it, which isn’t bad, considering I got a lot of use out of it, and it’s just been sitting collecting dust.

New websites that will buy your used electronics are popping up on the web every day.  The majority of companies are buying iPhones in order to fix them up a bit (if needed), refurbish them, perhaps unlock them, and then turn around and sell them.

You could certainly try and sell your phone on eBay, but you should first check completed auctions to see how much you’d probably get.  And keep in mind, if you’re phone is broken, most people won’t want it on eBay.  These other websites will buy your broken iPhone because certain parts inside are salvageable and would aid in refurbishing a close-to-perfect phone.

So, if you’ve been wondering what to do with that old iPhone, below are some places to check out.  Keep in mind, I’ve only dealt with cashforiphones.com.

iPhone Recycling:

CashforiPhones.com – a simple, easy transaction, and offered more $ than most websites

BuyBackMac.com – I noticed that would have given me another $10 for my phone

There were a few others that I saw online but they only offered $60 to $80.

This past week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced three new iPods during Apple’s annual music focused event in San Francisco.

Apple went with a completely different look with the iPod Nano which boasts beautiful touch screen, but gave up the ability to play videos, and the Shuffle has gone back to a more classic design with buttons to more easily control the songs you want to play.  But probably the coolest feature of the new line of the iPods is on the new iPod Touch which is now thinner than ever and has a webcam identical to that of the iPhone 4 and allows users to Video Chat using FaceTime.  The only requirement to use FaceTime is that you must be connected to a WiFi network.  I currently have the iPhone 4 and have used FaceTime only a couple times due to the fact that not many of my friends have the iPhone 4 yet.  Hopefully with this new feature, FaceTime will become more of a relevant application and will be used much more often.

But not only did Apple release a new line of iPods, they also introduced iTunes 10 with Ping, a social music service that lets you see what your friends are listening to and you can make recommendations and comment on the music.  In its early stages, it seems as though Apple has some bugs to work out before Ping will really catch on.

How practical is streaming Netflix movies and TV shows to your iPhone?  Who cares.  I just downloaded the Netflix app on my iPhone 4, and Arrested Development is playing on 3G pretty well.  On Wi-Fi I had no issues.  On 3G, it only stopped to buffer a few times during the show, which is pretty good.  It’s very usable in 3G which makes the app worth it.

I used to be a Blockbuster guy until I switched to Netflix a few months ago.  Before Blockbuster shutdown a ridiculous amount of stores, I was having the time of my life.  I could rent 2 movies from Blockbuster online, they’d get to me in a few days, I’d watch them, return them to a local Blockbuster, they would ship them back and let me rent 2 free movies in the store for free while I was waiting for the next movies in queue to be delivered.  I’ll be honest, sometimes I’d get lazy and not send back movies for a few months (and my credit card would get dinged $14.95 each month), but in my prime I could get 2-4 movies per week, which was a good deal.  The 2 free in-store rentals is what kept me a Blockbuster fan.  Now I don’t even know where a Blockbuster is so…

I finally came around to Netflix because I wanted to stream movies through my Xbox 360.  I rarely rent online movies.  Again, I think I’ve had The Blind Side on Blu-ray for over a month, but I stream movies and TV shows a few times a week, which makes the $9/mo subscription worth it.

The best part is that the Netflix iPhone app is free, and they easily could have charged at least a few bucks for it.  Giving away this “added value” was smart on their part.

So, if you have an iPhone/iPod Touch and Netflix, what are you waiting for?

Here are some screenshots of Netflix on my iPhone:

1) Netflix home screen, 2) After loggin in, 3) Browse by Category, 4) Takes less than 5 seconds to load your instant queue, 5) Instant Queue, 6) Show description screen, 7) Loading movie or TV show, Watching Arrested Development

By the way, I didn’t get a screenshot of it, but after the Arrested Development Season 1 page fully loaded, it recognized that I had watched about 50% of episode 5 on my Xbox/TV and asked if I wanted to resume.  A simple, yet elegant and appreciated feature.