Personal Computing

Recently we heard about the M-DISC, which can reportedly store data in a rock-like medium for up to 1,000 years. Now, scientists from the University of Southampton have announced the development of a new type of nanostructured glass technology. Not only might it have applications in fields such as microscopy, but it apparently also has the ability to optically store data forever. Read More

In April, the University of Southern California made the headlines when it announced that researchers there had created a functioning synthetic synapse circuit using carbon nanotubes. Well, today IBM unveiled a new class of experimental computer chips that are designed to emulate the human brain’s abilities for perception, action and cognition. According to the company, “The technology could yield many orders of magnitude less power consumption and space than used in today’s computers.” Read More

Soon there could be another reason to replace the spinning disk-based HDD in your desktop or laptop computer with a cutting-edge Solid State Drive (SSD) - Samsung has unveiled its new SSD 830 Series, which utilizes a SATA Revision 3.0 6 Gbps interface, and is encased in a brushed metal housing. It is aimed at the retail market. Read More

Despite the widespread belief upon their introduction to the market in the early 1980s that CDs would safely store data encoded on them forever, CDs and DVDs are actually susceptible to damage from both normal use and environmental exposure and have an average lifespan of under 10 years. A new optical disc company based in Salt Lake City called Millenniata is set to deliver a new type of optical disc that can be read on standard DVD drives but will safely store data for up to 1,000 years. Read More

One of the big changes ushered in by Apple with OS X Lion was the form of delivery. Since Lion was initially only available as a digital download, users no longer had a physical disc if they wanted to do a reinstall of the OS. Although Lion does automatically create a recovery partition on your hard drive during installation, this isn’t much help if the reason you want to do a reinstall in the first place is because the hard drive itself has failed. Apple has now provided a simple solution that lets Lion users create their own recovery disk – or rather, recovery USB drive. Read More

WiFi and USB have both become inexpensive and ubiquitous connectivity solutions, so the idea of exploiting them both at the same time a single device makes sense. IOGEAR's latest take on the theme is its Wireless 4-Port USB Sharing Station, which allows up to four USB peripherals (external storage, camera, printer, etc.) to be shared over a WiFi network and in the process provides a recipe for an uncluttered desktop environment. Read More

It wasn't so long ago that speed junkies were foaming at the mouth at the read/write performance offered by Intel's 510 series of SSD storage solutions. Now Smart has announced that it's managed to squeeze up to 1.6TB of solid state memory into the 2.5-inch form factor Optimus drive and leave the competition standing with a sequential read of up to 1GB/s, and write of 500MB/s. Read More

There are few things as maddening as being in the middle of a task on a computer, and having the software freeze up on you. This can be particularly enraging if you haven’t backed up your work recently, and you know that the only way of “thawing out” the program will be to execute a force quit – your work will be lost, all because the (insert word of your choice here) computer didn’t know what to do next. Fortunately, however, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a tool that jolts stalled programs back into action. Read More

Mobile number crunchers whose laptop keyboard is lacking in a useful separate keypad will no doubt be interested to discover that Canon is about to release a new slim laser mouse which includes its own keypad. The new X Mark I Mouse could also please trackpad haters looking to reduce the number of peripherals housed within the laptop bag, as it also operates as a 10-digit calculator complete with LCD screen. Read More