Posted in Storage Gizmo's and Gadgets on Jan 17th, 2008
Samsung’s A1 drives, the 1.3-inch platter models that fit 30-40GB inside, are being shoved into these little LaCie portables, the new Little Disk and in the updated USB Key Max. With this kind of bit density and 2MB buffers, the drives should be somewhat quick despite the 3600rpm spindle speed, and 40GB is no joke, especially in these shock-resistant drives that look imminently pocketable.
Posted in Storage Gizmo's and Gadgets on Nov 29th, 2007
In addition to Micron’s traditional solid state drives announced today, they also showed off a concept for a SSD module that resembles RAM in physical design and would fit into a similarly designed port. It’s obvious but genius: while the SSD drives with SATA interfaces are terrific because they can be used in current laptops with no mods, the real performance of flash mem is only going to be unlocked when we cast aside the legacy of spinning disks and their cases and interfaces and mount SSDs on the mobo like we do RAM modules.
The design uses a SATA interface and is only 4 mm thick. Micron claims the advantages of such a design are the small size and the ability to line up multiple drives next to each other. In addition, this design requires no wires or attaching the motherboard with screws, reducing the risk of the SSD becoming disconnnected or loose inside a computer. While this product is nowhere near ready for market, Micron says they would need to work with an OEM or someone who can offer a compatible computer solution.
VIA [Micron]
Posted in Storage Gizmo's and Gadgets on Nov 14th, 2007
SanDisk revealed their newest solution for boosting your laptop’s performance. Their solution is a 8GB / 16GB flash drive attached to your laptop’s PCIe port. Without using the builtin SATA / IDE port this device was designed with only one thing in mind : raw performance for the laptop. Being recognized as a drive inside Windows, you can install your OS on it and thus using all of its performance for your own pleasure. A Mac version will be launched also pretty soon. The extra performance comes from “pre-controlling the distribution of storage data between itself and the hard drive” , the drive manufacturer announced. The only glitch is that this solution will be available to OEM partners only.
Posted in Storage Gizmo's and Gadgets on Oct 16th, 2007
Fabrik announced that they are going to launch a new line of hard drives that come with an online backup solution. The new drives come in 3 varieties : Simple, Pro and Pro Duo and include features like : stackable design, security locks, eSata ( only for Pro and Pro Duo Models ), Raid 0 connections ( Pro only ). The eSATA connection transfers at 445 Mb/sec while transferring with eSATA and Raid 0 bumps speeds up to 856 Mb/sec. All of this combined with the Fabrik Ultimate Backup, the online solution that will save the content of your drives to an online server. Fabrik Ultimate Backup runs in the background, sensing when CPU usage is low or idle, and using that time to upload data to their central server. Unfortunately this feature only works when the computer is running. Backed up files can be restored to a saved state up to 30 days prior, can be accessed from the web but only from one computer.Each drive model comes with a standard lifetime allocation of 2 GB of online backup. You can increase the space to unlimited but you will have to pay $4.95/month for it.The Pro line of hard drives range between 250GB-2TB of space and will cost between $100-$800.
Posted in Storage Gizmo's and Gadgets on Oct 15th, 2007
Sony teamed up with Centon Electronics in the “Save the Forest” Campaign and are releasing Webster’s New World College dictionary on an USB Stick. It will be available on a 2GB or 4GB flash drive. Even if the dictionary contains about 160,000 entries , the space required for it is only 140M, so the rest can be used at your very own discretion. The price tag for these gizmo’s are $42,99 and $64,99. That’s a small price if you consider what you will be saving.
Posted in Storage Gizmo's and Gadgets on Oct 11th, 2007
Both Sony and Samsung released updates for their Blu-Ray players in order to fix some compatibility problems that have been discovered in their producs : the BD-P1000 , BD-P1200 from Samsung and Sony’s BDP-S300. Updating the firmware will be done through the Ethernet port ( for Samsung’s BD-P1200 ) or using a burned CD for the others. Problems reported to be fixed by these updates include some incompatibility in some movies and BD-Java in some extras movies.
Posted in Computers, Storage Gizmo's and Gadgets on Oct 10th, 2007
Sony released informations about their new PC Blu-ray burner, named BWU-200S. It’s specifications include a 4x speed for Blu-Ray ( this will burn 50GB of data in aprox. 45 minutes ), 16x burning speed for DVD’s, a SATA connector and will use Cyberlink BD for playback, editing and burning. The drive will become available starting next month with an estimated price of 600 US Dollars.
