Western Digital Elements SE

Now I have a Pogoplug, I really needed some hard drive storage to plug into it.

I’ve owned a couple of Western Digital Passport external USB drives before and have always found them to be small, quick and quiet – exactly what I was after in this case. So, I bought a 500GB Western Digital Elements SE.

The SE is a matt black (much better than the glossy black of the Passports which easily show the slightest scratch) slab of plastic. At one end is a micro USB connector (a change from the original mini USB of the Passport) and a white disk activity light. And that’s it.

All power is provided via the USB. With the Passport I found that I didn’t always get the necessary power and WD were very good in providing me with a replacement cable which splits into 2 USB connectors – one for data and power and the other for additional power. The WD website mentions that an “optional cable is available” for this purpose, but it doesn’t state how to get one or how much it costs.

The box packaging contains just the drive, a short USB cable and a small booklet (which is about the warranty rather than the drive itself). It works with Windows and Macs and is available in storage levels up to 1TB.

Now, back to that box a minute. WD refers to as “Earth friendly”, yet there’s no suggestion of the box being recycled, and they use plastic to hold the drive inside the box, rather than recyclable card. And the drive, inside the plastic is wrapped in plastic before being put in a plastic bag. And is it really that friendly to include a warranty leaflet that could have been placed on the drive itself? “Earth friendly” doesn’t cut it for me.

Plugged in, the drive is incredibly silent. Thankfully, WD haven’t felt the need to install any software, so it’s formatted and ready for use.

Performance

As per my recent USB memory stick review, I’m using CrystalDiskMark for benchmarking the drive.

I’ve used this software, and recorded the results, for a number of different disk types in the past – internal, external, flash drives (e.g. SD), USB memory sticks, etc.

In a direct comparison to a previous Western Digital USB external drive that I’ve owned (a 60GB passport drive), it has similar scores, although a little slower (to be expected because of the larger driver size).

The results were as follows:

Read Sequentially: 25.51 MB/s
Read 512k files: 18.12 MB/s
Read 4k files: 0.426 MB/s

Write Sequentially: 24.06 MB/s
Write 512k files: 23.67 MB/s
Write 4k files: 1.164 MB/s

Read performance lags behind internal SATA drives (although it’s quicker than the internal drive in my work laptop!), as you’d expect, as well as the WD Passport Drive. There are a few other quick exceptions (an SDHC card with a rather good small file read speed and a very quick 2GB USB memory stick) but, overall, the drive has the performance that I’d expect. When it comes to reading small files, the SE shows high speeds that are more consistent with SATA drives.

Write performance is only beaten by the SATA drives and the WD Passport. And, when I refer to the Passport being quicker, I should add that it is only marginally so. Small file writing is very fast, second only to my Passport drive – and that includes SATA internal drives. Other write speeds are up 5 times quicker than, say, a USB memory stick.

Summary

Quiet, small, a decent lick of speed and a good price. What else could you ask for? Ignoring the odd environmental claims and WD’s need to keep changing USB connection types, this is a smart option for anyone needing a small external USB drive.

I bought mine for a smidge under £60 from my local Tesco, and it’s the cheapest price that I can currently find.

Gallery

It was just asking for it. The front page for SlimPDF states

Get The World’s Smallest Desktop PDF Reader

and

10% of the size of Adobe Reader but views 100% of PDFs

Can this be true? Just as good as Adobe Reader but one tenth the size? They even show a comparison on their site, reporting SlimPDF as 1.43MB and Adobe Reader as 26.12MB¹?

The thing is, they’re measuring download size. Don’t most people download, install and then delete the installation program? Shouldn’t they be measuring the installed size? Ironically, if they did, it would be even better for them – 211MB for Adobe vs 4.69MB for them (2.22% the size of Adobe Reader!).

The thing is, though, SlimPDF lacks a lot of basic features. If you just want to read a short, simple PDF then it’s probably fine. However, SlimPDF doesn’t show page thumbnails, or shortcuts – so those long, indexed documents are going to be difficult to navigate.

The toolbar is also quite cluttered – sadly, if you reduce the window down in size then the toolbar simple starts disappearing from the right hand side. And as various button to launch their commercial offerings come to the left of the search, the latter disappears first. Adobe, in comparison, wraps the toolbar to a new line in this situation, so that all options are still accessible.

Small text is very hard to read in SlimPDF and scrolling is slow. Links, whether to other parts of the document or external URLs, don’t work.

So, let’s just go through the listed “Features and Benefits”

• “Eliminate Bloatware and help your computer run faster”. My favourite. No details of why they regard Adobe as “bloatware” as it seems to contain an awful lots of features that SlimPDF doesn’t have. A bigger download size doesn’t mean it’s bloated.
• “View any PDF File just like Adobe Reader”. No. Not like Adobe Reader. Adobe – got your lawyers ready?
• “100% Free”. It had better be.
• “The smallest desktop PDF Reader in the World”. With matching features. Although I suspect Cool PDF Reader, at 650KB download, may have something to say (and small fonts look better in it as well). Again, is that the rustle of lawyers and paperwork I hear?

Summary

All I can hope is that people see past the hype, which really doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, and realise that this is a feature-lacking PDF viewer which WON’T let you view a PDF like Adobe Reader does.

1. should I point out at this point that the current size of the Adobe Reader download is 52.55MB [↩]

Welcome to my first “Quick Review”. As well as recently purchasing a new desktop PC for myself, I’ve also bought a Laptop for my daughter and have also been looking for various accessories to go with recently reviewed products. As a consequence, I’ve bought a lot of small accessories which I now want to review.

And, first up, is the TeckNet M002 wireless mouse, which I bought from Amazon
for just £9.98. I bought the black version, but the box indicates that other colours may be available.

It has a rubber section on top, where your palm and fingers will rest and the remainder is in shiny piano black. Size wise (94x61x37mm) , it sits between a mini laptop mouse and a full size desktop equivalent – this is the size that my daughter was looking for, and this is for new laptop.

Slotted into the bottom of the mouse is a nano receiver – a tiny USB RF receiver which, once plugged into your PC, hardly sticks out and allows the mouse to operate up to 10 metres away. The mouse itself will automatically power off and has an Intelligent Power Saving facility. It doesn’t come with batteries and takes 2 x AAAs.

It feels well built and works well. It has compatibility with Windows ME onwards and doesn’t require any drivers to be installed.

For the money, this is excellent value.