17 July, 2008

Seageate unveiled the industry’s first 1.5-terabyte desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives to meet explosive worldwide demand for digital-content storage in home and business environments.

The debut of the Barracuda® 7200.11 1.5TB hard drive, the eleventh generation of Seagate’s flagship drive for desktop PCs, marks the single largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives – a half-terabyte increase from the previous highest capacity of 1TB.

The drive packs 1.5TB on just four platters and its fast Serial ATA 3Gb/second interface delivers an industry-leading sustained data rate of up to 120MB/second for fast boot, application startup and file access. The 3.5-inch drive is also offered in capacities of 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB with cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

Seagate’s also introduced the new 2.5-inch half-terabyte 5400- and 7200-rpm drives – Momentus® 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4.

Both of it hard drives are the fourth generation of Seagate’s laptop family to use PMR. The Momentus 5400.6, a 5400-rpm drive, combines a powerful Serial ATA 3Gb/second interface and capacities ranging from 120GB to 500GB with an 8MB cache.

Shipments of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB are set to begin August 2008. Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 hard drives are to begin shipping in Q4 calendar 2008.

16 July, 2008

Monday, Intel announced its latest Centrino platform – which oddly named Centrino 2, not just because it really is the fifth generation (and should be called Centrino 5), but also because its brains, the Core 2 Duo processor is just a refresh and may not have justified the new name by itself. That aside, the new platform offers more processing, graphics and wireless performance, while consuming less power, the company promises.

Besides the shiny new name, there is very little that is truly new about the platform, which consists of a refreshed 45 nm Penryn CPU, a new integrated graphics chipset and a wireless chipset. While the platform is new, the processor architecture is not. What we are really waiting for is the new Nehalem architecture scheduled for a Q4 release. If you have just purchased a Penryn notebook, there is no reason to get excited about Montevina. If you really need a notebook now, then it certainly is a solid platform. But if you can afford to wait, then hold off buying a new notebook until Nehalem chips become available in Q4 or early in Q1.

New in Centrino 2 :

New processors

So, what is new in Centrino 2? Well, first off, there are new processors. Intel has six new processors – two 8000 series (3 MB L2 cache) chips with 2.26 GHz (P8400) and 2.4 GHz (P8600), three 9000 series CPUs (6 MB L2 cache) with 2.53 GHz (P9500 and T9400) and 2.8 GHz (T9600). The P-series marks chips that are rated at a 25 watt TDP while the T-series marks chips with a 35 watt TDP. The new flagship model is the X9100 Extreme model with a 3.06 GHz clock speed and a 44 watt TDP – this processor was widely believed to have been used by Apple in its latest iMac introduced earlier this year (Intel however claimed that the iMac CPU has a 55 watt TDP). Intel said that it will add a mobile 45 watt quad-core version of the Penryn processor later this quarter.

Prices are in line with previous product launches, but there is no denying that the high-end has been moving higher. The entry-level P8400 has a tray-price of $209 and the T9600 checks in at $530. The X9100 is priced at $851.

New chipset, new graphics

Montevina comes with a new 45-series chipset that, in its IGC version, promises users enough power to playback Blu-ray movies and enable notebooks to playback an entire Blu-ray movie on one (full) battery charge. Overall 3D mark 06 performance is up 70% over the previous version.

Much more interesting, however, is the introduction of Intel switchable graphics – a technology that can switch between discrete and integrated graphics on the fly. This means that even multi-GPU graphics won’t be draining your battery anymore, if you need the battery power instead of GPU performance – simply switch to integrated graphics and the system will run much more efficiently. The technology works with AMD/ATI and Nvidia graphics.

New wireless chipset, WiMax and Turbo Memory

Complementing Montevina is the new 5000-series wireless chipsets, which comes in two form factors – as 5300 version for regular notebook sizes as well as a smaller 5100 version for compact notebooks. Montevina will also support WiMax within the 5000-series WiFi/WiMax chipsets – as soon as the network is being rolled out (which will be the case this September.)

And no, Turbo Memory isn’t dead yet. Despite its very limited success and AMD’s decision to shelve its competitive solution completely, Intel continues to offer Turbo Memory as flash cache to manufacturers. A 2 GB module is priced between $27 and $30.

15 July, 2008

Via Technologies on June 6 unveiled the NanoBook Ultra Mobile Device (UMD) reference design -- a UMPC-like device, but with a full QWERTY keyboard. The "sub-notebook" style design aims to enable device-makers to build customized low-cost, light-weight mobile PCs for consumers, businesses, and schools, Via said.

Unveiled at the annual Via Technology Forum in Taipei, Taiwan, the NanoBook design is based on Via's C7-M Ultra Mobile Platform chipset, which includes a 1.2GHz Via C7-M ULV Processor. The design packs a 7-inch WVGA (840 x 480 pixel) touchscreen LCD, a full-size, standard QWERTY keyboard, a 30GB or 60GB hard drive, and stereo speakers. It also includes up to 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, a 4-in-1 card reader, 802.11b/g and Bluetooth wireless, Ethernet, DVI video output, and two USB 2.0 ports.

One unique feature of the NanoBook is a USB-connected module dock to the right of the main display. A fingernail latch on the edge of the display lid lets users swap various "MobilityPLUS" modules into the bay. Available modules will apparently include a World Time Clock, GPS receiver, DVB (digital video broadcast) receiver, VoIP (voice-over-IP) phone, and 3G/CDMA wireless broadband modules.

The NanoBook is about the size of a composition notebook, weighs less than two pounds, and is a little over 1-inch thick, Via said. The company claims the device will operate up to 4.5 hours on one charge of its internal four-cell battery pack. Supported operating systems, according to Via, include "all popular Linux distributions," as well as Windows XP and Vista.

14 July, 2008

Asus has now officially confirmed the existence of this new netbook – and confirmed both its price, and that of its other new models.

The Eee PC 904 is essentially an Eee PC 900 in an Eee PC 1000’s body and it’s aimed at people who want a low-cost laptop with a large(ish) keyboard. It uses the Intel Celeron-M 900MHz processor rather than the Atom chip of the 901 and 1000, but it also has an 80Gb hard disk rather than an SSD. You can see the full specification and price breakdown after the cut.

At £269 inc Vat, the Eee PC 904 also considerably cheaper than the short-lived Eee PC 900. which means some early adopters will no doubt be kicking themselves.

Asus has also confirmed the final pricing of the Eee PC 901 – both Linux and Windows XP models will cost £299 inc VAT, rather than the £319 we initially predicted.

Finally, the Eee PC 1000 – the 10in-screen netbook with a larger keyboard – will cost £369 for the 40Gb SSD model and £349 for the 80Gb HDD. Both prices include VAT. We now have an Eee PC 10000 in the office, so we’ll be posting a video review that compares it with the MSI Wind U100 shortly.

Incidentally, the Eee PC 905 that was rumoured to exist has been officially confirmed by Asus... as an unfounded rumour.

Source : mobilecomputermag