News Bits: Dell Grows in Asia, Man shocked by Laptop During Storm, 32GB ExpressCard

<!-- Generated by XStandard version 1.7.1.0 on 2007-07-07T22:25:24 -->

Dell expects shipments to grow up to 20 percent in Asia

Dell expects shipments of personal computers and servers to grow almost 20 percent in 2007 in Asia excluding China, Japan, and South Korea. Dell's shipments for all of Asia reached about 3.5 million units per quarter in 2006.

Dell is currently the world's second largest PC maker, with an estimated worldwide market share of 15 percent.

Read More (NYTimes.com)

 

Man shocked by laptop during a storm

Add this to your safety repertoire: don't use a laptop in your lap during a storm. A man that lives in Washington DC found that out the hard way this past week. As his laptop battery drained to near empty he went down to the basement to plug in and finish up some work. Moments later there was some rumbles of thunder and a sudden surge of power shot through his legs via the laptop. At first they thought lightning had struck the house, but it turns out it was a power surge caused by the storm being in the area.

&quot;Fischer, who said the welts on his legs had subsided by about 10 that night, considers himself lucky that he emerged largely unscathed. 'I think it was just a big scare,' he said.&quot;

Read More (Washington Post)

Transcend introduces 32GB ExpressCard/34 SSD

Transcend has introduced its 32GB ExpressCard/34 Solid State Disk (SSD). It is compatible with Windows Vista and supports ReadyBoost. It comes bundled with a USB 2.0 adapter so it can work as a standard flash drive.

Transcend's ExpressCard/34 cards are available in 2, 4, 8, 16, and now 32GB capacities. The 32GB version retails for a hefty $509.

Read More (Laptoping.com)

OCZ launches 2GB DDR2-800 notebook memory SO-DIMMs

OCZ Technology has introduced PC2-6400 (DDR2-800) 2GB SO-DIMM modules for notebooks. Previously 2GB DDR2 SO-DIMMs were only available in PC2-5400 (DDR2-667) speeds.

Having more RAM means less hard drive access and reduced usage of the page file according to Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology Development at OCZ.

The company's PC2-6400 2GB SO-DIMM modules have 5-5-5-15 timings for high performance.

Product Page (OCZTechnology.com)
Read More (OCZ.com)

 

Hrm...questions.

1. does that Transcend still only use USB connectivity instead of PCIe?

2. Does that 800 MHz even do anything for current laptops? Not even SR can fully use 800MHz RAM yet right?

 

It looks like it is a USB based drive, but I can't be certain from the links I followed. Thats just too bad, that would have been incredible to have.

 

Timings of "5-5-5-15." Oh man that is blazing fast! I know in the desktop world that is considered slow, low end memory.

I'm sure dell is going to do a lot better with their new notebooks out, as far as sales go. They finally are listening to their customers. More dedicated GPU options, built in webcam in Inspirons now etc. No more white "bumpers."

 

For 2, the Socket P Intels (those with an odd number where the x is in T7X00), have a native 800FSB bus. So they memory will be running 1:1 Ratio which gives better performance in benchmarks. If you use 667 it runs 4:5 I believe, so you loose a little in benchmarks

 

Finally a 800 memory instead of the 667 to match Santa Rosa.

How much more expensive is the 800 vs 667 now?

 

Unfortunately this is not the case. While the new socket P CPUs have an 800MHz FSB, the Santa Rosa chipset only operates at 667 MHz. The CPU must talk through the chipset to the memory, so all memory access is limited to 667MHz.

The whole 800MHz FSB thing, at this time, is nothing more than marketing rhetoric from Intel. The only advantage you get from it is the ability to have a CPU with a higher internal clock.