It's only been approximately a year and a half since the first 1TB disc drive* got to make the marketplace. Hitachi was the first to bring out its 1TB HDD in January of 2007.
Just this week Hitachi brought out its second generation 1TB HDD with a 43% power savings equated to the first generation. The Hitachi drive applies 3 discs to bring the 1TB capacity and economize energy. Nowadays, Seagate declared the world’s first 1.5TB desktop disc drive known as the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB.

As you are able to gather by the name, the drive spins around at 7,200 RPM and applies four discs to gain the massive 1.5TB capacity. Seagate says that this is the biggest growth in store capacity in the latest 50-years and the 500GB growth in capacity is thanks to improved perpendicular magnetic recording technology.

Along with the 1.5TB 3.5-inch desktop HDD, Seagate as well declared new 500GB 2.5-inch HDDs for use in notebook computer*. The 500GB notebook computer drives will ship in 5,400 and 7,200 rpm varieties. The drives are called the Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4 HDDs. The 5,400 RPM drive applies an 8MB memory cache and the 7,200 drive has a 16MB memory cache.

Seagate executive VP and general manager of PC Business Michael Wingert told in a statement, “Organizations and consumers of all kinds worldwide continue to make, share and consume digital content at stages never before seen, giving rise to new markets, new application program* and requirement for desktop and notebook computers with unprecedented storage capacity, performance and reliability. Seagate is committed to powering the next generation of computing nowadays with the planet’s quickest, highest-capacity and most reliable storage solutions.”

Seagate declared in 2006 that it expected capacity of HDDs to hit 2.5TB by 2009. The Seagate 1TB HDD was declared a bit over a year ago in June 2007.

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Samsung announced that its latest SSDs are now in volume production. The new SSDs will be available in 128GB and 64GB capacities. The capacity isn’t what sets these drives apart, rather it’s the multi-level cell (MLC) technology used in the Samsung SSDs.

According to Samsung the new MLC SSDs are capable of providing read speeds of 90MB/s and write speeds of 70MB/s -- performance on par with SSDs using single-level cell technology. The difference is that SSDs built on the MLC technology offer about a 20 times improvement in the typical 4-5 year lifespan of a PC hard drive. Power consumption is another big feature of the MLC SSDs with requirements for 0.2 watts in standby and 0.5 watts in active mode.

Jim Elliott, VP memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor said in a statement, “With the 64 GB and 128 GB MLC SSDs, we are satisfying the density requirements of most business users and many PC enthusiasts, who will appreciate not only the performance gains and added reliability, but also the more attractive pricing.”

Samsung says that the MLC SSDs will use a 3 Gbps interface and that the 128GB uses 64 MLC NAND flash memory chips of 16 gigabits each and is enclosed in a brushed metallic casing measuring 100mm x 69.8mm and 9.5mm thick. Samsung declined to comment on the pricing of the SSDs.

Samsung first announced the 128GB MLC SSD in January and it is just now entering mass production.

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When ASUS first launched its Eee PC the term netbook was coined to describe the small, low-cost systems with roughly enough power to only surf the net. As time has gone by, ASUS and other manufacturers have introduced new models with more features and the price for a netbook has slowly began to creep up into real notebook territory.
Laptop Magazine sat down with ECS vice president of sales Henry Kwan to get some information on what the ECS G10IL netbook will bring to market to set itself apart from the netbook masses. Kwan says that the G10IL will feature EDGE, HSUPA, and HSPDA mobile broadband support, but will not feature support for WiMAX.

The ECS netbook entry will be produced in 8.9-inch and 10-inch size systems, but the version most likely to hit the U.S. will be the larger 10-inch version. The ECS G10IL will hit stores in the U.S. in September with prices for basic systems lacking mobile broadband capability starting at $399.

The G10IL will be available in versions running Linups Lite 9.4 Linux on an 8GB SSD -- likely to be the $399 version -- and systems will also be sold with an 80GB HDD running Windows XP. ECS says that the G10IL is the first netbook designed specifically for the business user, not the education customer.

DailyTech first reported on the specs of the ECS G10IL in March of 2008 when specifics were scant and pricing was rough. Later in March DailyTech confirmed the ECS netbook would use Intel’s Atom CPU.

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Desktop sales have slowed due to the rise of notebooks across most manufacturers over the last few years. Despite that fact, a market remains for desktop computers -- especially those that are small and low-cost.
Acer, the third largest PC maker in the world, added a new X1200 model to its Aspire line today that is both small and cheap. The systems are very small with the case measuring 10.6-inches high x 4-inches wide x 14.4-inches long. This helps maximize desktop space and can allow the systems to fit into cramped entertainment systems for those looking to surf the web on their big screen.

Despite being a small system room for expansion is available inside the chassis with two PCI Express slots. One of the slots is an x1 design and one is an x16 slot. The X1200 has five available USB 2.0 ports, a 14-in-1 memory card reader, IEE 1394 port, and audio jacks all on the front of the PC for easy access.

Several different X1200 configurations are being offered with prices starting at $450. The X1200 which retails for $449.99 has a AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 4850e CPU, NVIDIA 8200 on-board graphics, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 320 GB HDD, and runs on Windows Vista Premium 64.

Stepping up to $459.99 gets an Athlon X2 5000+ CPU in addition to the aforementioned specifications. For $699.99 a version using the 4850e and a 500GB HDD and shipping with a 22-inch LCD is available.

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