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Posts Tagged “hard disk”

Dec 12 2007

Will we find them on board of the next laptop generation ?

Posted by Cedric in ICT Security, Telecommunications, technologies

Toshiba will soon start production of 2 new interesting products which may find their way into future mobile/portable devices.

First are the new SATA SSD (Solid State Drive) drives on 1.8' and 2.5' formats. According Engadget 32, 64 and 128 GB will be available. Speed announced is read 100 MB/s while reading and 40 MB/sec writting.

With such capacity, traditional mechanical hard disk will slowly disappear from portable devices. With no moving parts, a solid state drive largely eliminates seek time, latency and other electro-mechanical delays and failures associated with a conventional hard disk drive.

The second interesting product announced by Toshiba is the so called "Super Charge ion Battery" (SCiB) which is at this stage not intended for portable devices but for industrial systems and electric vehicles.

SCiB Major Characteristics

Safety : SCiB adopts a new negative-electrode material that offers a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point electrolyte. Its structure is resistant to internal short circuiting and thermal runaway
Long-life cycle : Capacity loss after 3,000 cycles of rapid charge and discharge is less than 10%. SCiB batteries are able to repeat the charge-discharge cycle over 5,000 times which is equivalent to more than 10 years with a once-a-day recharge-discharge cycle.
Rapidly rechargeable : Safety characteristics of SCiB allow recharge with a current as large as 50 amperes (A), allowing the SCiB Cell and SCiB Standard Module to recharge to 90% of full capacity in only five minutes.
High power (practical capacity) : The SCiB has an input-output performance equivalent to that of an electric double layer capacitor.
Temperature : Extreme temperatures supported with sufficient discharge at temperatures as low as -30°C.

SCiB batteries will first be available on the market in March 2008 with the following specifications:

Nominal voltage : 24VDC
Nominal capacity : 4.2 Ah
Size : 10×30x5 cm
Weight : 2 kg

Perhaps these batteries will also find other field of application, but for portable devices they will need to become lighter and slimmer..but batteries that get charges in five minutes are definitively very attractive for mobile users.

What do you think ?

Sources: Engadget Toshiba

Tags: 2007, 2008, 24, api, arc, art, ATT, batteries, blog, capacity, ces, CTU, delay, failure, fast charge, find, flash, fon, hard disk, hdd, ia, im, lan, laptop, LED, light, minutes, mobile, nomadcom.net, portable, power, rechargeable, safe, safety, SCiB, Solid State Drive, SSD, technology, toshiba, user, vehicles, wp, www

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Nov 01 2007

Extensive mobile data storage. Lead to configuration changes ?

Posted by Cedric in Nomad Tools

The world of data storage is constantly moving. With more and more data to store and carry, the market propose some interesting solutions.

Time to upgrade ?

What is the capacity of your USB stick already? Patriot Memory proposes a 32GB (150x writting speed) USB key for about 580.- USD.
Western Digital has released a Scorpio 2.5'' SATA hard drive with 320 GB (transfert 300 MB/s) capacity for 290 USD.
Harsh living condition? I-O data proposed HDMC a 2.5 x 2.5 cm hard drive with up to 12 GB capacity which is shock and water proof. Price 180 USD.

With the possibility to carry-on such storage capacity (e.g 32GB USB stick) could we imagine to have computers installed only with operating system and let's say "standard application" and let users to connect removable media that contains not only their personal data but as well their user profile as well as their usual software (individual software licence vs. per computer ones) ?

What do you think ?

Tags: 2007, blog, capacity, computer, computers, configuration, digital, flash, hard disk, hdd, ia, im, install, IT World, lan, LED, memory, mobile, nomadcom.net, personal data, release, sco, storage, upgrade, usb, user, user data, water, what is, world, wp, www

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Jan 11 2007

Apple iPhone…finally announced but disapointing…

Posted by Cedric in Uncategorized

Today, following Steve Jobs presentation during Mac World 2007, all technical blogs were speaking about the long expected Apple iPhone.

Will this iPhone be so different than all others ?

Will Apple have a similar success like with iPods ?

Will it be THE new must to have gimick ?

What do you think ?

A Quick Overview

3.5 inches, 480×320 display
Input method : multi-touch
OS : Mac OS X "slim version"
Storage 4 or 8 GB
WAN : Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Wifi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.0
Built-in camera 2.0 mega pixel
Size : 115 x 61 x 11.6mm / Weight 135 grs
Battery :Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing - Up to 16 hours Audio playback

Pros:

All-in-One Ipod-Camera-Phone
Wide 3.5'' screen
Using fingers on screen instead of stylus is rather a good idea
Great design… as usual
Safari browser + widgets
Rich text email client
Predictive input keyboard
Hard Disk 4 or 8 GB
Automatic display configuration change (portrait to landscape)
Video Player

Cons

Not a smartphone, impossible to add software
No memory extension slot
Impossible to remove the battery (with so few autonomy is pity)
Not UMTS nor HSPDA
Price (499 or 599 USD for 2 year contract with the mobile network operator - USA)
No wireless (wifi nor GPRS/EDGE) iTunes Store downloads
No WiFi syncing to your host machine.
No tactile feedback when strocking keyboard
No MS Office, MS Exchange, Lotus Domino support
Only available in 2007 Q3 in USA & 2008 in Europe & Asia.

Some links that speaks about the iPhone:

Some report from guys who could briefly play with it:

Brian Lam Gizmodo
David Pogue New York Times

Mac World 2007 Keynote and full technical specs

Latest News
CBS News iPhone demo via Presse-Citron

Now let's wait until the moment we will be able to play with a real one… and see if Steve Jobs was right or not when he said "Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone".