News Bits: Apple Sells More Notebooks, SSDs Get Cheaper, New Toshiba Hard Drives

Sony introduces 18.4-inch VAIO AW

Sony recently introduced its AW series 18.4-inch desktop replacement notebook in Europe. Its large display has a full HD (1920x1080) resolution and a Blu-ray disc drive. The AW is based on the latest Intel Centrino 2 technology and features Core 2 Duo processors, a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M-GT graphics card, available SSDs, and come bundled with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop Elements. The AW starts at£999 (US$1,777).

Full Story (Pocket-lint.co.uk)
Via (Engadget.com)

Apple notebooks make up 20% of retail sales in US

Apple notebooks accounted for 20 percent of retail notebook sales in the US during July and August. Their percentage of revenue market share was an even higer 35 percent. Apple notebook sales grew 30 percent in revenue and 35 percent in units on year compared to last, while Windows notebooks were down 1.5 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Full Story (RegHardware.co.uk)

Can Santa Rosa notebooks use more than 4GB of RAM?

NBR forum member SomeFormOFHuman has done some experimenting with his Intel Santa Rosa-based Dell Inspiron 1720 notebook. The Inspiron 1720, according to Dell, can only support up to 4GB of RAM. SomeFormOFHuman found that the machine actually recognizes 6GB, and it is all usable. Perhaps there are more Santa Rosa notebooks out there hiding their RAM support capabilities.

Read the Full Story in the Forums

Super Talent SSD prices drop

Super Talent has lowered the price of its MasterDrive LX Solid State Disk (SSD) range. The 64GB is down to $179, and the 128GB $299. Read speeds for both drives are 100MB/s, with a read of 40MB/s. While not as fast as Intel's SSD offerings, Super Talent's are certainly much cheaper.

Full Story (HEXUS.net)

New Toshiba 1.8" hard drives coming

Toshiba will be introducing new 1.8-inch MKxx29GSG hard drives this December. They will have 120, 160, and 250GB capacities and 5400RPM speeds.

Full Story (DigiTimes.com)

Synaptics Adds Two New Gestures For Touchpads

Synaptics Inc., a leading developer of notebook touchpad technology recently announced the availability of two new multi-touch gestures ("ChiralRotate" and "Two-Finger Flick") for Synaptics touchpads.

"ChiralRotate" lets users move one finger in a circular motion to rotate images and graphics within applications, quickly and easily. "Two-Finger Flick" enables users, depending on the application, to either use two fingers to flick horizontally to navigate back-and-forth through images, documents and objects, or to flick vertically to minimize and maximize an application.

These new enhanced gesture options are available now on Synaptics TouchPads for PC notebook and keyboard devices. For more information on Synaptics’ ChiralRotate and Two-Finger Flick, visit www.synaptics.com/technology/chiral.cfm.

 

Two things:

1) The "Discuss (0 replies)" buttons link to another wrong thread.

2) About Super Talent SSD's:
[...]Read speeds for both drives are 100MB/s, with a read of 40MB/s.[...]
Should be write speed.

 

Its really too bad Alps doesn't add these features nor much of the cool options on Synaptics' touchpad's to theirs.
Alps is a much older company than Synaptics and really should catch up to them in touchpad drivers and options.

 

I'm glad to see SSD's going down, and 1.8" drives to compete with them.

And I see the whole apple thing on my college campus. Apparently having an apple is the cool thing to do now.

I just find them far too overpriced for their own good, and am not a huge fan of OSX.

But for all the super trendies on campus... They just use them to go on the internet and use Microsoft Word anyway... Which they can still do on a mac.

 

I wonder if SuperTalent's drives have the crap JMicron controller that causes the stuttering issues in the OCZ Core drives.

 

It has the same controller but it's not the controller's fault, it's the more of the chipset+filesystem combo.
Until M$ decides to fix NTFS EasyCo's MFT should take care of your problem: http://www.easyco.com/mft/downloads/windows/index.htm

If you look around you'll see a report in the Aftermarket session someone is using a 128GB Patriot SSD (same JMicron controller) in a Macbook with no problem whatsoever: playing 5 YT video in FF, 5 in Safari, running IM and posting here without any slowdown.

In my Vaio (AHCI disabled, of course) I turned off all built-in M$ crapware (prefetch, defrag, indexing, 8.3 filenames, change journaling etc) and stuttering is pretty much gone now. The only thing I still have is Opera's stalling for a few seconds occasionally but I will move its cache to a 2GB MS and I think I'm done.

BTW I bought my OCZ 64GB SSD for $170 - $70MiR = $100 shipped.

 

And it also looks like the IFL90/JFL92 can also support more than 4 GB of RAM (link here). And it's reporting the full 8 GB.

I'm going to try out the multi-touch and see how that turns out. Hopefully it doesn't end up as useless as the ones I've seen in some other places.

 

T2K: Thanks for the info on the SSDs, I had no idea there was a working solution for the Core series yet. I already sold mine so I can't try it out but I'll pass it along to others who're still annoyed with their purchase.

 

Sure but keep in mind, it's not 1oo% solution yet - I haven't tried the MFT app, only the free tricks and I'm not heavy on multitasking either.

Hope it helps...