Samsung's big advances in tiny chips.
That 128 gb iPod isn't all that far off, neither is SSDs (solid state drives) with more that 32 gb of storage that won't cost you an arm and a leg.


Electronics giant Samsung has shown off what it claims is the world's most powerful chip for use in memory cards.

The 64 gigabit (Gb) chips could be used to make 128 gigabyte memory cards, commonly used in MP3 players, capable of holding the equivalent of 80 DVDs.

The chips are built using circuits with a minimum feature size of just 30 billionths of a metre (nanometre).

Rival firm Toshiba has said it is also working with similar technology. Both firms will release products in 2009.

Flash advance

Flash memory is a so-called non-volatile computer memory, primarily used in memory cards, USB drives and MP3 players.

Non-volatile memory retains information even when there is no power to the device.

Samsung said there was currently "exploding demand" for flash memory as a storage medium in a range of applications.

The new chips are designed to be used in a specific type of memory known as NAND flash.

NAND is one of two types of flash memory and offers higher storage and faster speeds than the cheaper NOR flash.

NOR is commonly used in low-end applications where smaller memory capacity and slower speeds are acceptable, such as in cheaper mobile phone handsets.

Samsung has said that a single chip could be used in an MP3 player capable of holding 18,000 songs.

Combining 16 chips would allow 128GB devices, the company said, making Flash a rival to hard drives.

"This has the biggest storage capacity of a single memory chip ever developed in the world," Kwon Hyosun of the firm told AFP.

Toshiba announced its plans to use 30nm technology earlier this month.

"Our goal is to gain an edge over rivals by supplying the most advanced chips before anyone else," a spokeswoman for Toshiba said at the time.


Read all about it here, courtesy of news.bbc.co.uk

Eric

Video Guided tour of Mac OS X Leopard
There is some slick stuff in that new OS from Mac. It promises to be the most important release to date for Apple.

With just one week left before Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard becomes available, Apple has posted a guide tour to show users some of the newest features of the operating system.

The video shows Stacks, Coverflow, Quick Look, Time Machine, Spaces, Mail and several other features.

Apple officially announced the release date for Leopard earlier this week. Calling Leopard “the richest OS X release yet,” Apple will begin selling the operating system on October 26.

Leopard will cost $129 is available for pre-order from the company’s Web site.

Read and see all about it here, courtesy of apple.com. Blog intro courtesy of macworld.com.

Eric

"Orange Box" emerges as video game sleeper hit.
Seriously now, how many different ways can you re-package Half-Life 2?

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Life!) - What do you get when you throw together a 3-year-old video game, two sequels, a multiplayer variant a decade in the making and a quirky concept game involving a gun that shoots teleportation holes?

If you're Valve Corp, one of the best-regarded independent video game studios, you get "The Orange Box", which is winning rave reviews and emerging as a sleeper hit.

The main game is "Half-Life 2", a shooter set in an Orwellian future where aliens walk freely among us. The game came out in 2004 but is going strong thanks to two expansion packs, 2006's "Episode One" and now "Episode Two".

"We wanted to provide a mix of gameplay mechanics and environments," Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi said of the latest installment.

"We try to give you more of an epic scale than we've done before."

As Valve was putting the finishing touches on "Episode Two", it was also wrapping up "Team Fortress 2", an online multiplayer combat game. The original "Team Fortress" came out in 1996 as a popular free modification for the game "Quake".

"'Team Fortress 2' and 'Episode Two' were kind of on a collision course release-wise," Lombardi said of the decision to sell the games together.

"We said do we want them competing or complementing each other?"

Read all about it here, courtesy of in.reuters.com

Eric

It's official - Mac OS X Leopard lands October 26th
With over 300 new improvement, it's Apples most robust and feature paced OS ever.

A Leopard is set to join the Apple family, the latest in a string of animal-named products aimed at taking a bite out of the competition.

Apple calls Mac OS X Leopard its biggest operating system upgrade ever. At $129, it's due in stores Oct. 26 and promises 300 new features.

Leopard, which replaces OS X Tiger, arrives as Apple is having a record year. Its stock has doubled in 2007, from about $85 a share in early January to nearly $170 now. It has sold more than 1 million iPhones, the year's most hyped and discussed tech product. And Apple's iPod business remains strong. New iPod units recently introduced include a video-capable Nano, a small media player that is the most popular in the line.

While much of Apple's attention has been focused on non-computer activities, Leopard is aimed at a core goal - selling more Macintosh computers. The new operating system has loads of new stylistic bells and whistles, with two notables:

• Time Machine automatically backs up files without your involvement and lets you "turn back time" to retrieve a lost file. It's different from other backup utilities in that with "a couple of setup clicks, you're done," says Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller. "Everything is automatic."

• Boot Camp gives you the ability to run Windows on a Mac. All you need to do is buy a copy of Windows software, and you can run both platforms on one machine.

Read all about it here, courtesy of apple.com and blog intro by indystar.gns.gannett.com

Eric

Asustek Eee PC goes on sale in Taiwan
Boy, this sure would make a great "stocking stuffer"! (Notice the OS that they use.)

Asustek Computer's low-cost Eee PC notebook has gone on sale in Taiwan with pricing at online retailers at around NT$11,655 (US$358). This is much higher than the price of US$199 Asustek originally promoted for the portable PC, but this was to be as expected as Asustek recently admitted that the lower price would only be available for bulk purchases of a model with lower specifications, and which is intended for emerging markets.

The model now on sale in Taiwan features a 7-inch LCD display, 4GB solid state storage, 512MB DDR2 RAM and runs on an Intel mobile processor. Weight is given as 920g. The devices also features three USB 2.0 ports, Wi-Fi b/g connectivity, a VGA output, two audio jacks, Secure Digital (SD) card reader (which according to earlier reports also supports SDHC cards), webcam, speakers, and LAN and modem ports. Battery life is listed as 3.5 hours.

As previously reported the Eee PC comes loaded with a customized Linux-based operating system and a suite of software applications. These include the Firefox web browser, email and instant messaging clients, Skype, and OpenOffice 2.0. In line with Asustek's aim of promoting the Eee PC for educational use, a collection of children's learning software which covers subjects including science, math and languages is also included. Additionally, the Eee PC supports multimedia functions and includes a selection of games. Whether or not users will be able to add additional software through repositories maintained by Asustek is unclear at this stage.

Asustek has set up a service network in Taiwan including toll-free call center, service center, and a drop off/collection service with a local chain of convenience stores. Interestingly, it is explicitly made clear that the service center will not support issues related to the installation of Windows XP on the Eee PC although Aststeck notes that the hardware does support the operating system.

According information on the Asustek website a total of four models can be expected to be available.

Asustek Eee PC specifications
	Eee PC 8G	Eee PC 4G	Eee PC 4G Surf	Eee PC 2G Surf
Display	7-inch
CPU	Intel
OS	Linux (hardware Windows XP compatible)
LAN	Yes
Wireless LAN	Yes
Memory (DDR2)	1GB	512MB	512MB	256MB
Storage	8GB	4GB	4GB	2GB
Webcam	Yes		Yes
Battery	4-cell 5200mAh: 3.5 hours		4-cell 4400mAh: 2.8 hours

Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, October 2007

Read all about it here, courtesy of digitimes.com

Eric

Apple drops price of DRM-free iTunes
The Cupertino based company prices DRM-free music the same as the "leaded" version...0.99 cents.

This report was updated midday to reflect that Apple has confirmed the DRM-free iTunes price drop.

Apple has dropped the price of its iTunes Plus songs that have no digital rights management (DRM) software protection and allow owners to move song files freely from one device to another.

The 256kbps DRM-free song files were originally priced at $1.29 per song with a lower per-song average price for buying an entire album. iTunes now seems to be offering the same files for 99 cents per song, the same price it charges for its usual 128kbps DRM versions.

"iTunes Plus has been incredibly popular with our customers, and now we're making it available at an even more affordable price," Tom Neumayr, senior manager for iPods, Apple TV and iTunes, said in a statement. "We're adding over 2 million tracks from key independent labels, in addition to EMI's digital catalog, and look forward to even more labels and artists making their music available on iTunes Plus."

The change closely follows Amazon.com's launch of its own digital-music store.

As of September 25, Amazon.com began offering 256kbps DRM-free MP3s for between 89 cents and 99 cents each, depending on the song.

While Apple has made no formal comment as to why it's decided to reduce its DRM-free iTunes prices, Amazon's new music store could be the reason.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.com

Eric

Hard Disk Drive to get smaller in size, with bigger storage and cheaper?
Hitachi's new technology breakthrough unlocks the 1 tb limit...

A single hard drive with four terabytes of storage (4TB) could be a reality by 2011, thanks to a nanotechnology breakthrough by Japanese firm Hitachi.

The company has successfully managed to shrink the read-write head of a hard drive to two thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The smaller head can read greater densities of data stored on the disk.

Hitachi said the advance would fuel the "terabyte era", with a 4TB drive able to hold more than a million songs.

Hard drives store data by magnetising the surface of the disk in a pattern which represents the data in digital form.

The data is stored digitally as tiny magnetized regions, called bits, on the disk. A magnetic orientation in one direction on the disk could represent a "1", while an orientation in the opposite direction could represent a "0".

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.bbc.co.uk

Eric