Hitachi goes very green by implementing features to greatly reduce hard disk drive power consumption in the latest Deskstar line

It's rare to find hard disk drive manufacturers focusing on anything other than increasing the speed and capacity of its products because those are the two features consumers look for in hard disk drive products. Hitachi has taken another approach to improving its hard drives by developing drives with reduced power consumption; specifically up to a 40 percent decrease in consumption.

Hitachi introduced the Deskstar P7K500 line of desktop hard disk drives today which contain a number of technologies to reduce power consumption. The first technology Hitachi has implemented in the P7K500 line is the HiVERT technology for a more efficient conversion of voltage. This technology has been borrowed from the Travelstar line of laptop drives along with the more power-efficient profile which allows the drive to handle power saving features better than traditional desktop drives and more like today's mobile drives.

Hitachi has also implemented its Advanced Power Management capabilities which have given the Deskstar line more efficient power handling when idle for generations now. The last feature is Hitachi's patented load/unload technology explained below:

-> Unload idle – The heads are safely unloaded to the ramp and the servo is shut off; this mode delivers power savings of 11 percent better than idle mode.

-> Low RPM idle – The heads are safely unloaded to the ramp, the servo is shut off and the spindle motor RPM is reduced; this setting achieves power savings of 44 percent better than idle mode.

The Deskstar P7K500 line will come in capacities of 250GB, 320GB, 400GB, and 500GB. The technical details are listed below.

Hitachi plans to launch the new P7K500 line during this last quarter of 2007 in mass quantities. Pricing information has not yet been released but we're thinking numbers won't be too much higher than current Deskstar models with similar capacities.

Source from DailyTech

SanDisk introduces affordable, light-weight media center-like technology to the living room

Many of us jumped on the media center PC bandwagon a long time ago, either by purchasing a complete media center computer or by building our own media centers based on proprietary or open-source operating systems. Not everyone had the resources to purchase such hardware or the hardware to build such computers but lately it is becoming simpler and more affordable to put such capabilities in the living room.

Today, SanDisk, manufacturer of flash storage media-based products, has introduced a USB flash drive-based set-top media player and a dynamic video distribution platform called Fanfare to compliment the device at a lower price than traditional media center hardware.

The Sansa TakeTV platform utilizes a flash-based USB thumb drive to transfer videos from the PC to the TV in a few steps. A user would first copy videos they would like to view on their television to the thumb drive by connecting it to a computer's USB port and dragging and dropping media files onto the thumb drive. The user would then connect the TakeTV USB thumb drive to the docking station which has audio and video outputs. An included remote controller can be used to browse the media files on the thumb drive much like a media center application.

The TakeTV system features composite and S-video outputs and stereo audio outputs for both newer and egacy television models. There is no high-definition version of the TakeTV system yet so HDTV owners may want to look at other solutions to make full use of their equipment.

The TakeTV solution USB thumb drives come in 4GB and 8GB models and are priced at $99.99 and $149.99 respectively.

SanDisk has also introduced the Fanfare online digital media distribution service to compliment the TakeTV product and will feature TV shows from Showtime, CBS and other networks signed on to this service. The service will allow users to download ad-supported or paid/ad-free episodes directly to the TakeTV USB thumb drive.


Source from DailyTech