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memory module) chip the amount of memory per area on-chip is doubled. Hence, instead of the system maxing out at 4GB RAM, it
actually is able to give the system double which is the reason for the 8GB in total. The machine in front of me has 2GB of memory
which will be thoroughly tested later on, but standard configurations are 2GB or 3GB of memory. This should be more then enough
for the average user, the only times in question when one would need such high memory is when running multiple multimedia
applications or a programmer looking to build a large scale program or run multiple VM's to test the inter-compatibility of their source
code on different platforms.
Hard drive space is ample at 160GB, although a choice of 160 or 320GB SATA I based drives is available in standard off the-shelf
configurations for this model. This is especially handy as if not using a network based file share, such as NFS or SMB for Windows
users, one can store pretty much all their work related files on the drives with either space to spare in the long run over many years or
alternatively can keep multiple concurrent backups of each file/folder. Another point is that if dealing with rather large files such as
video files or VDI images, again there is plenty of room to store many of them and the host based operating system too. Alternatively
one can multi-boot the machine and have enough room for 2-3 host based operating systems with many further guest based operating
systems using a virtual desktop technology such as Citrix Xen, VMWARE's virtual desktop edition, or Sun Microsystems Virtual Box.
Or if using Sun's Solaris operating system then you can run multiple OS entries in different zones negating the use for a hypervisor or
desktop virtualization software.
Now that the features making up the core components has been mentioned, the non-essential hardware list is pretty impressive also
including a very clean sounding sound output which already I have tested on headphones and two LCD TV systems. In fact the sound
was very clear and vibrant coming out of a Sony X-series 40” TV display from the standard PC input section, meaning 25-pin VGA
connector and 3.5” stereo mini-jack for audio input.
Having an audio engineering background I can definitely say that this setup is pretty good for consumer based standards of course
being used to very expensive Pro line equipment myself I am quite picky with my A/V based systems. Where normally my Sun
Microsystems Ray 1 setup is connected to the data center downstairs over wireless bridge, unplugging and using the Sony display as a
secondary to the primary notebook internal display did wonders for full-scale cinematic viewing and effects when coupled with
compressed CSI Miami HD video files, full HD quality BattleStar Galactica video files, and non HD based Babylon 5 video files. An
example of this can be seen below with the 2230s connected to the 40” Sony display running the compressed version of CSI Miami
HD:
Img-1. Image taken on Nokia N95 cell phone and transferred over Bluetooth to Hp 2230s. Sys-config=Kubuntu 9.04 running NFS v4
to file server over WLAN.
2