Fujitsu to offer standard height half-terabyte notebook drive

The capacity war in the hard drive industry is in full force and desktop drives are not the only ones benefiting. Current notebook hard drives are at the 500GB mark with recent launches from Hitachi and Samsung when only about 6 months ago the highest capacity notebook drives weighed in at 250GB.

Today, Fujitsu announced its MHZ2 BT line of notebook drives which includes 400GB and 500GB capacities to compete with the capacity of the front-runners in the notebook drive market.

The MHZ2 BT line features a SATA 3.0 Gb/sec interface and an 8MB buffer. The rotational speed clocks in at 4200RPM which may prove to be a bit slow compared to the 5400RPM, 500GB drives from Hitachi and Samsung. Despite the rotational speed, the average seek time while writing is 14ms while average read seek times clock in at 12ms which is comparable to the competition.

The MHZ2 BT drive dimensions conform to the standard 9.5mm drive height which fits all notebook computers as opposed to the 12.5mm drive height of Hitachi's 5K500 and E5K500 series drives. The reason for the 3mm of extra height on the Hitachi drives are mainly due to the extra platters required to reach the 500GB capacity, whereas Fujitsu fits three 166GB platters in its drives.

Fujitsu's MHZ2 BT line of notebook drives shines in the power consumption area as it consumes only 1.8W of power during read/write operations in a SATA 3.0Gb/sec setup, and 0.5W and 0.13W in idle and standby modes respectively.

Fujitsu is aiming for an late May 2008 launch, around the same time-frames as Samsung's planned launch of its SpinPoint M6 series and pricing has not yet been released. Fujitsu also projects sales of the MXZ2 BT line to hit 20 million units within the 2008 fiscal year.

Source from DailyTech

Apple updates the iPod shuffle line

Yesterday, DailyTech reported that price cuts are in store for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch. We reckoned that it would be nice for Apple to also consider dropping the price on its lower-end players as well.

It seems as though Apple has answered our wish with at least one product line: the iPod shuffle. Apple today dropped the price of its 1GB iPod shuffle from $79 to a more manageable $49. The price cut is sure to give sales of the tiny, display-less player a boost.

In addition to the price cut for the 1GB iPod shuffle, Apple also introduced a new 2GB model for a low $69. Pricing the new 2GB iPod shuffle under the previous price point for the 1GB model is a great move on Apple's part and is sure to anger a few customers who purchased shuffles in recent months.


"At just $49, the iPod shuffle is the most affordable iPod ever," said Apple VP of Worldwide iPod Product Marketing Greg Joswiak. "The new 2GB model lets music lovers bring even more songs everywhere they go in the impossibly small iPod shuffle."


The 1GB and 2GB iPod shuffles are be available in silver, blue, green, purple and (PRODUCT) red.

Source from DailyTech