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Apple Tablet format computer comes another step closer!

Steve — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:06:24 +0000

Original article: Apple Tablet format computer comes another step closer!
From Machines that go Bing

LoopRumors reports that Apple plans to reveal a Tablet format Mac in January and that it will be a completely new type of device with its own variant of Leopard geared specifically to the unique features of the device. It will include a solid state drive, a miniDVD reader and most interestingly of all users will be able to interact with both sides of the device!

In this blog we have already discussed Apple iTablet rumours:

Around the web rumours are increasinly circulating around a January launch, probably at MacWorld.

Seagate Momentus 5400 PSD

Steve — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:32:08 +0000

Original article: Seagate Momentus 5400 PSD
From Machines that go Bing

Seagate Technology has joined Samsung Electronics and Sony in launching a combination disk and flash memory storage pedaling the theory that they speed up boot time and significantly boost battery life.

PSD stands for “Power Savings Drive” and offers 160 GB of traditional disk storage and 256 MB of flash memory. Sony was the first to launch a product built around the hybrid drive concept in its Vaio SZ650.

But Seagate will have to convince customers to part with a 30% premium over the average price for this size of hard drive. For this they will get faster boot times (by 20%) and a 25% longer battery life.

Seagate is offering the same size of drive that Samsung was shipping in March. If you believe in Moore’s law and choose to apply it to this industry current drives should be about 60% larger than those produced in March. Samsung also offers 80GB and 120GB models. Having said that Seagate plans to offer hybrid versions across its entire range of drives for notebooks, desktops and mobile PCs in the near future.

Microsoft Vista does contain some technology to take advantage of hybrid drives.

ReadyDrive in Vista treats flash and hard disk as a single memory space so it can cache frequently used data or as a disk-write cache when the disk is spun down saving battery power.
ReadyBoot speeds up the booting process and the post-hibernation process caching files required when the system restarts.

Despite these Vista technologies PC users won’t be able to take full advantage of hybrid drives until other PC components conform to the concept. BIOS makers and device drivers still need to take advantage of the flash memory component in hybrid drives.

Hard disk drive manufacturers are already there and the Hybrid Storage Alliance includes the following major players:

Fujitsu
Hitachi
Samsung
Seagate
Toshiba

An increasing number of notebook manufacturers are using some kind of flash memory as data storage and this is due to continue rising to over 50% in two years according to iSuppli who ses three families of flash based storage:

Intel(INTC)’s Robson
Hybrid hard dis
Solid state drives

Robson is a code name for a system that uses flash memory to increase responsiveness, speed up multitasking and increase battery life.

UFS memory on the horizon

Steve — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:29:09 +0000

Original article: UFS memory on the horizon
From Machines that go Bing

Universal Flash Storage or UFS is an attempt by the industry to drive up memory capacity and specs for consumer electronic devices such as mobile phones and digital cameras. Access speeds are expected to be around twenty times todays speeds.

UFS is still a work in progress by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association and a final standard is expected to be available by 2009.

Major consumer electronics companis which are backing the development of the standard include:

Nokia
Samsung Electronics
Micron Technology
Sony Ericsson
Spansion
STMicroelectronics
Texas Instruments

Expect to see cameras and phones with vastly greater capacity and speeds than we take for granted now when the new standard is hopefully announced in eighteen months time.

Machines that go Bing » flash_storage

Apple Tablet format computer comes another step closer!

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