Personal Computing
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Panasonic improves Toughbook
Panasonic’s Toughbook has been given a substantial boost in capability. The desktop replacement CF-52 and field-use CF-74 have been given new Intel Centrino 2 processors, expanded graphics capabilities, 160GB of hard drive space, and 802.11 Draft N Wi-Fi connectivity. The rugged Toughbooks are resistant to shocks, spills, dust, and vibration. (read more...)
SanDisk WORM secure memory card
In order to bring both security and longevity to data storage, SanDisk has announced the SDTM WORM (Write Once Read Many) Card, a digital memory drive that preserves important data for up to 100 years, and prohibits alteration or deletion. 128-megabyte SD WORM cards are currently available, with the capacity expected to increase with time. (read more...)
Pioneer's 400 GB Blu-ray Disc
Pioneer has announced a 16-layer read-only optical disc with a capacity of 400 gigabytes which it will unveil at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 (ISOM/ODS2008) on July 13. The disk’s per-layer capacity is 25 gigabytes, which is the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc and this multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs. (read more...)
RazorBook 400 Mini Notebook fits in the palm of your hand
The RazorBook 400 Mini Notebook from 3K Computers may be tiny, but it’s packed with features. The hand held PC weighs less than two pounds and comes fully internet ready. (read more...)
Acer claims world’s first 50000:1 contrast ratio HD LCD monitor with the G24
July 6, 2008 Acer’s new G24 LCD monitor is the first in the world to claim a 50000:1 contrast ratio courtesy of Acer’s Adaptive Contrast Management (ACM), which Acer claims produces dramatic improvements in gradation and detail, especially for dimmer and brighter scenes as well as enabling the G24 to use less power. Designed to entice PC gamers, the G24 supports high-definition (HD) graphics in a high contrast orange-black colored package that matches the Aspire Predator desktop PC. (read more...)
Global PC Installed base passes 1 Billion
For all the talk of convergence centered on the computer, it is lagging far behind the mobile phone as the world’s go-to information machine for the masses. We reported a few months ago that half the world’s humans now carry a mobile phone and soon the number of active mobile services in the world will touch 4 billion. Gartner’s latest figures put the number of installed PCs worldwide as just having surpassed 1 billion units and at a growth rate of just under 12 percent annually, will surpass 2 billion units by early 2014. (read more...)
Flash file format becomes indexable
In a move that will inevitably lead to a richer user experience on the internet, Adobe is teaming up with Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF). This will dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs) because for the first time they will be discoverable by search engines. (read more...)
Toshiba launches world's lightest laptop with 128GB Solid State Drive
In the world of laptops slim is definitely in. Toshiba’s Digital Products Division has announced the addition of a 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD) to the latest incarnation of its Portégé laptop series. The 2.4 pound Portégé R500-S5007V with a 128GB SSD is billed as the world’s lightest laptop, beating the much hyped Macbook Air, which weighs in at 3 pounds and, unlike the Macbook Air, even manages to include a built-in optical drive into a unit that measures as thin as 0.77-inches. This does mean that the Macbook Air 0.76-inch high Macbook Air retains its world’s thinnest title and it does feature a slightly bigger display – 13.3-inches to the R500’s 12.1-inches. (read more...)
The WOW-PEN Joy joins the alternative mouse market
June 26, 2008 If you spend long hours slaving over a hot keyboard, the latest vertically orientated mouse from WOW Technology might be worth a look. Mice designed to keep the wrist in the more natural handshake position are being pitched as ergonomically superior to lie-flat mouse and we were surprised to find so many variations on the theme – others worthwhile checking out include the 3M Renaissance (formerly Animax), the Evoluent VerticalMouse, the E-Quill-AirO2bic mouse, and the Zero Tension Mouse. (read more...)
Genius' touch control notebook speakers
Push-button technology is just soo 20th century. Driven by versatility, user friendliness, and because they just look so good, touch-screens are fast becoming the interface of choice... and mobile phones are just the beginning. Genius has just announced its latest notebook speaker system which features touch panel control of on/off, mute, volume, bass and treble functions. (read more...)
Samsung rolls out promised new HDDs
June 23, 2008 Two previously announced Hard Disk Drives (HDD) from Samsung have entered mass production. The 500GB capacity Spinpoint M6 HDD for laptops and the Spinpoint F1 RAID Class (F1R) 3.5” SATA hard drive that features 1TB capacity were on show at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last January and are joined by the new Spinpoint MP2 - a 250GB 2.5” hard drive operating at a 7200rpm rotation speed. While the Spinpoint M6 and MP2 are built for the booming laptop market, the Spinpoint F1 is designed for enterprise storage and surveillance applications. (read more...)
Toshiba announces 160GB, 1.8-Inch, serial ATA interface HDD
While the future for mobile hard drives looks certain to be Flash memory based SSDs, there is still some life in the traditional platter based drives for a while yet with Toshiba announcing a new line-up of 1.8-inch hard disk drives adopting a serial ATA interface. The new releases include the industry's first drive of this type with a capacity of 160 gigabytes. The new 160GB drive, MK1617GSG, and an 80GB drive, MK8017GSG, boost interface speeds to 1.5Gbps and offer rotation speeds of 5,400 rpm, faster than the current generation of Toshiba 1.8-inch HDDs. (read more...)
SanDisk solid state drive aimed at Ultra Low-Cost PCs
June 5, 2008 Ultra Low-Cost PCs (ULCPC) were originally developed as low-cost computing solutions for school children in developing nations, but the diminutive, inexpensive devices have also caught on with adults, and now manufacturers are rolling out devices that are designed for general consumer use. Recognizing this SanDisk has introduced a line of flash memory-based solid-state drives (SSDs) that are designed for this emerging new category of ULCPCs or “netbooks”. The new SanDisk pSSD (Parallel ATA solid state drive) eliminates the need for a hard disk drive and can store both the operating system and application data for these new devices. (read more...)
Computer speakers integrate iPod dock
iHome's new iH69 and iH70i speakers are designed to save on clutter by allowing users to dock, charge, play and sync iPods directly to their computer. (read more...)
UPEK's fingerprint sensor to be incorporated on 2009 Notebook PCs
June 6, 2008 Consumers are increasingly attracted to the security and convenience offered by fingerprint scanners. Not only does it ensure the confidentiality of computer files, it's a silver bullet for the frustrated segment of the market that is running short on favorite sports teams and childhood pets to use as passwords. The latest example of fingerprint reading being brought to the broader consumer market comes UPEK, which has launched the TCS5 TouchStrip Fingerprint Sensor, a system that uses High Definition 3 Dimensional amplified sensing technology to read past the surface of skin to the “live layer”. The TCS5 is set to be included on 2009 Notebook PC models and is currently being demonstrated to select PC manufacturers at Computex Taipei. (read more...)
OLPC to produce sub $100 dual-touchscreen laptop
May , 2008 The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project looks to be on track to meet its target of producing a laptop for a price per unit below US$100 set out when the initiative was launched in 2005. At a press event OLPC project founder Nicholas Negroponte gave the “State of the State” address on the project to date and the evolution of the XO laptop, presenting the design for the next generation of XO hardware. According to Negroponte, work is already underway on the "XO-2" laptop, which will be cheaper and smaller and will use less power than its predecessor. The XO-2, or XOXO as it's also called, comes with Nintendo DS-like dual-touchscreen displays, which allows one of the touchscreens to be used as a keyboard, which can be customized for different aged children, different applications or different languages. (read more...)
LaCie updates d2 Blu-ray drive
May 29, 2008 LaCie has doubled burn speeds to 4x for its d2 Blu-ray Drive and has updated the aluminum alloy case and software suite. The multi-format drive records, rewrites and reads 25GB or 50GB BD-R (recordable) and BD-RE (rewritable), as well as DVD±RW DL and CD±RW and comes fully equipped with Roxio burning software, including Easy Media Creator for Windows, and Toast Titanium for Mac, and dual FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces. (read more...)
World's fastest 2.5-inch 256GB SSD from Samsung
May 27, 2008 Following on from last year's 64GB solid state drives (SSD) with SATA II interface, Samsung has upped the ante by developing a 2.5-inch, 256 Gigabyte (GB) multi-level cell (MLC) based solid state drive using a SATA II interface, which it claims is the world’s fastest. With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speed of 160MB/s, Samsung's MLC-based 2.5-inch 256GB SSD is about 2.4 times faster than a typical HDD. Samsung are also laying claim to title of the thinnest drive with the largest capacity to be offered with a SATA II interface - it measures only 9.5 millimeters (mm) thick, and has dimensions of 100.3x69.85 mm. (read more...)
Dell first to ship systems using new high performance Ultrastar Hard Drives
May 26, 2008 Dell is the first computer supplier to ship server and storage systems using high performance 450GB SAS disk drives based on Hitachi's new Ultrastar 15K450. The 3.5-inch, 15,000 RPM drives deliver 450GB of storage and a 30 percent improvement generation-to-generation in sequential throughput. They also have 50 percent more available capacity than their 300GB predecessors, but similar low power characteristics. The drive features average seek times as low as 3.3 milliseconds and the fast rotational speeds reduce average latency time to 2 milliseconds. The drives are available with either 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or 4Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces. (read more...)
IBM’s new BladeCenter QS22
May 19, 2008 IBM has expanded its High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities for businesses with the introduction their new BladeCenter QS22 - a new, economical supercomputing technology inspired by advanced scientific research facilities. The heart of the QS22 is the multi-core IBM PowerXCell 8i processor, a new generation processor based on the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) Architecture, which is compliant with the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) Architecture, originally developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba to provide the computing power for cutting-edge gaming applications. For challenging arithmetic operations the IBM PowerXCell 8i offers five-times the speed of the original Cell/B.E. processor and, coupled with additions like 16-times more memory (up to 32GB) than its predecessors, the QS22 can handle workloads that previously required dozens of servers. (read more...)
Record breaking one petabyte data warehouse
The Sybase IQ analytics server has set a Guinness World Record by powering the world’s largest data warehouse on a Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server. The environmentally friendly system uses a column-oriented data structure with patented indexing and a scalable grid to allow data to be compressed by up to 70% of its input size, and searched and analyzed in less time. (read more...)
New Travelstar 320GB notebook HDD from Hitachi
May 9, 2008 Hitachi has begun shipment of its fourth-generation 7,200 RPM mobile hard drive, the Travelstar 7K320. The new drive delivers 60 percent higher capacity than its predecessor, while improving application performance by 12 percent and power consumption by 22 percent. The 320GB Travelstar 7K320 features a SATA 3Gb/s interface and fast media transfer rates to provide faster file copying and document retrieval, better graphics and improved game performance. A best-in-class operating shock protection of 400Gs minimizes the effects of rough handling and vibration and with power utilization on par with Hitachi’s 5,400 RPM mobile drives, users can enjoy more “unplugged” notebook computing time. (read more...)
IronKey 8GB Secure USB Drive
Flash drives are becoming almost ubiquitous these days, and with Flash memory continuing to follow its own version of Moore’s Law, capacities that were groundbreaking a year or two ago are now low-cost promotional items and the overall effect is that all flash drives become disposable within a short time. This is sad, because once the public’s mind has perceived an item as being of no enduring value, that becomes the truth. It’s particularly sad when an item such as the IronKey comes along, because it has all the virtues of a state-of-the-art flash drive and delivers great bang-per-buck for its unique functionality. (read more...)
Apple speeds up iMac line with faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors
April 30, 2008 Apple has updated its all-in-one iMac line with faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors with 6MB L2 cache and a 1066MHz front-side bus across the line. The new iMacs come with 2GB of memory as standard in most models, but support up to 4GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory, and for the first time, the 24-inch iMac features an optional NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB of video memory, delivering up to two times standard performance for graphic intensive applications in tests conducted by Apple. (read more...)
LaCie Rugged HDD capacity supersized to 500GB
April 28, 2008 LaCie has pushed mobile capacity to 500GB for its Neil Poulton designed Rugged Hard Disk. The LaCie Rugged features a unique scratch-resistant aluminum shell and a shock-resistant rubber bumper to protect data against the everyday bumps, bruises and hard knocks. Utilizing a Hitachi Travelstar 5K500, 2.5-inch internal hard disk, LaCie was able to produce a product nearly identical in size to its previous Rugged offerings. (read more...)
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