Interview With Micron Technolgy CEO (CNET)
CNET published an interview by Michael Kanellos, with Micron Technology’s CEO, Steve Appleton, in which a few things concerning NAND/Flash memory and notebooks were brought up.
Storage
Perpindicular Recording Hard Drives from Seagate
Seagate has officially launched their 2.5-inch, 5400rpm, perpindicular recording hard drives. Available in capacities upto 160GB, the new drives (the 5400.3 series) offer several advantages over previous lineups, including larger maximum capacity and better performance. LaptopLogic.com has a great overview of this new technology, including what differentiates “perpindicular recording” from traditional drive recording methods.
Fujitsu Going After Ultraportable Storage Market
DailyTech has news that Fujitsu is going after the ultraportable storage market, that they are working very on 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch drives, going head-to-head with Toshiba in the 1.8-inch arena. The 1.8-inch drives are found in many portable music players (including the iPod), and some of the smallest of the ultraportables notebooks.
Flash Memory to Rival Hard Drives
vnunet.com is carrying a story detailing plans Samsung has to start 16GB Nand Flash chip production later this year. This could definitely have an impact on ultraportables, probably starting in 2007 or thereabouts, although from the sound of things, it’s easily adapted, so it might even allow for retrofitting into existing laptops. Imagine being able to replace your current harddrive with Flash memory and increase your battery life substantially as well as adding some durability.
1.8-inch HDD USB 2.0 Enclosures (IO-DATA)
Akihabara News has released details and pictures of a new drive enclosure that is tailor-made for ultraportable users. IO-DATA has a new USB 2.0 harddrive enclosure for 1.8-inch harddrives (20GB – 60 GB capacities). This thing has to be seen to be beleived. More information at IO-DATA’s website (Japanese).