solid state
Hardware
Samsung Working With Apple To Optimise Solid State Drive Performance In Snow Leopard
12:30PM Matt Hickey | Samsung has been pioneering efforts to improve performance of SSDs in operating systems, working with Apple to integrate ZFS reading and writing to the next version of OSX Server. This means a 128-bit file system with faster data throughput and lots of other fun things that make servers run better. This also means Apple is taking SSD technology seriously, as it has already dropped the price of the SSD upgrade for the MacBook Air—the only current MacBook to ship with an SSD option—to US$599 from US$999. We likely won’t see SSDs across the MacBook lines yet, but this means it could be in the cards. [MacRumors] More »
Hardware
Buffalo’s 32GB and 64GB SSDs For Eee PC Get Launch Date, Price
6:13PM Kit Eaton | Asus’s EeePC 901 has already proved itself very hackable but Buffalo’s newest product won’t require much modding: 32GB or 64GB replacement SSD’s. Not much more to say, apart from the obvious: more storage, more impact resilient, longer battery life. The best bit? The 32GB SHD-EP9M32G is a mere US$156, and the 64GB SHD-EP9M64G an equally neat US$316. Available in Japan at first, mid-September. More »
Hardware
Tom’s Hardware Corrects Study, Says Solid State Drives Do Improve Battery Life
11:45PM Benny Goldman | Tom’s Hardware tested battery life in laptops with SSDs yet again and found that they aren’t such a power suck, correcting a previous study. SSDs didn’t outperform their HDD counterparts in all tests, but combined with Laptop Mag’s study I think we can safely put the issue to rest for now. [Tom's Hardware]
Hardware
Samsung Starts Mass Production of Cheap 128GB MLC Solid State Drives
6:20PM Kit Eaton | We mentioned it back in February, and Samsung has now come good with its promise, announcing today that it’s started mass-production of 128GB SSDs. They’re of the slightly slower but cheaper multi-level cell technology, with a read speed of 90MBps and write speed of 70MBps. And Samsung claims they’ll have a life span around “20 times longer than the generally accepted 4-5 year life span of a notebook PC hard drive.” It’ll be interesting to see what this move does to the price of SSDs, particularly now that we like them again. Press release below. More »
Hardware
New Study Says Solid State Drives Are Better for Battery Life, Not Worse
4:00AM Gizmodo US Edition | I hope this SSD good/bad theme doesn’t turn into one of those long-running “good for you/bad for you” food fiascoes (is coffee on the good list again, by the way? Blogging is thirsty work.) A new bit of investigation by Laptopmag seems to challenge the Tom’s Hardware study that put SSD’s battery performance in the shade. Citing flaws in the original method, the new study tried the drives under a more “real world use” test regime: cycling through webpages over and over. More »
Hardware
Swindled: Solid State Drives Don’t Extend Battery Life, They Shorten It
6:40AM Mark Wilson | Solid state drives (SSDs) are the inevitable future of mobile computing, but a new experiment by Tom’s Hardware is extremely disappointing. It ends up that the touted power savings of SSDs over their moving-parts-laden cousins are nonexistent. In fact, SSDs are sucking more power than conventional hard drives. How is this possible? Tom’s Hardware thinks they know. More »
Hardware
Sub-US$500 128GB Drive from OCZ May be the SSD You’ve Been Saving For
10:54PM Gizmodo US Edition | OCZ’s new Core Series SSD’s are designed to be large and affordable. So the new 2.5-inch SATA II flash drives are coming in 128GB, 64GB and 32GB sizes at US$479, US$259 and US$169 respectively. They don’t match up to the 200Mbps read speeds Samsung has promised–managing 135Mbs– but that price point is pretty low. And while they’re too big to drop into the smallest laptops (MacBook Air owners will weep), they might be just the ticket for people looking to cheaply upgrade to SSD–OCZ claim ten times faster than their HDDs and half the power. Available “soon.” Press release below. More »
Cameras
Panasonic HPX-170 P2 Camera is Solid State, HD, Handheld
7:44PM Addy Dugdale | NAB in Las Vegas saw the unveiling of Panasonic’s HPX-170 P2 solid-state camera. The 1080p camcorder has the widest zoom lens in its class, a 13x Leica Dicomar with 28mm wide-angle setting, and an SDI interface, all in a 1.2kg body. Full press release of the HPX-170 P2 after the jump. More »
_
Alienware Puts 64GB of SSD in Their Desktop PCs
3:20AM Brian Lam | They’re not the first—Falcon NW had the blazing fast MTron SSD in their Mach V a month ago, says buddy Gordon from Max PC—but Alienware has just started offering 64GB of SSD in their Aurora ALX and Area-51 ALX desktops. [Alienware] AU: Of course, Alienware is still MIA here in Australia – we’ve made repeated attempts to contact, and even local reps for Dell have indicated things are very thin here for that brand (it is still very much a separate entity). Considering the site still says ‘coming soon’ for P2 chassis desktops (as it has for many, many months) and it also ‘recommends Vista Home Premium’… lets just look on at the US and look forward to Dell whipping things into shape in future. -SB More »
_
