News Bits: Fujitsu Flash Drive Notebooks, Star Wars Flash Drives, Libya to Buy 1.2M $100 Laptops

<!-- Generated by XStandard version 1.7.1.0 on 2006-10-13T23:42:58 -->

Fujitsu to offer flash drives in B-series and Q-series notebooks

Fujitsu is planning to offer flash drives as an option in both its B-series and Q-series notebooks in late October and early November respectively. The drives will be offered in 16GB and 32GB sizes, and selecting them as an option will add an extra $670 and $1,340 respectively. The flash drives are made by Samsung, and can already be found in the Samsung Q30 laptop and Q1-SSD ultra-mobile PC.

The advantages of a flash drive over a conventional hard drive include longer battery life because flash drives have no moving parts. It is expected to add an additional 15 minutes of runtime to the B-series and 30 minutes to the Q-series versus a hard drive. Flash drives are also faster than hard drives because data can be accessed more quickly; Windows XP boot-up time on a B-series takes about 19 seconds versus 32 with a hard drive.

Read More

mimoco announces Star Wars mimobot flash drives

October 12^th - mimoco and LucasFilm Ltd. have announced officially licensed Star Wars-themed mimobot Designer USB flash drives at DigitalLife in New York City. Darth Vader is the first figure in the Star Wars mimobot Series 1; more characters will follow in the coming weeks.

The capacities of the flash drives range from 1GB to 4GB, and prices from $79.95 to $169.95. Preorders begin on October 12 at DigitalLife and online at www.StarWarsShop.com and www.mimoco.com.

mimoco is pre-loading the drives in the typical mimoco fashion with exclusive content, including avatars, wallpapers, videos, and soundbites. Each memory key is collectable and will be produced in limited production runs of 2,500 to 3,500 units. The Star Wars series will begin shipping January 2007; visit www.mimoco.com for details, and find mimobots on myspace here.

Libya to purchase 1.2 million $100 laptops

Libya will become the first nation to have all its school-age children connected to the Internet through an educational computer when the purchase 1.2 million $100 laptops as reported by theNew York Times on October 11. The $250 million agreement Libya signed with the One Laptop Per Child project includes the laptops, server design, technical training, setup, and satellite connections. Mass production of the laptops is slated to start in June or July of 2007, and the deal wiill hopefully be completed by June 2008.

Read More

Asustek to use UPEK fingerprint authentication in new enterprise computers

October 11^th - UPEK announced that Asustek has launched two security-focused enterprise notebook computers featuring UPEK's TouchStrip fingerprint authentication solution.

The Asus R1 tablet PC and V1 notebook PCs target enterprise customers and feature a comprehensive suite of software and hardware security features. In addition to UPEK's security, the R1 and V1 also feature TPM (Trusted Platform Module), which provides hardware-based security to counter password and encryption key hacking attempts.

Read More

Activision games to be available through Valve's Steam

October 12^th - Activision and Valve today announced a joint agreement to bring four new PC games to Valve's Steam platform; users can now buy and download the game immediately. Available games include Call of Duty 2, GunT, Call of Duty, and Call of Duty: United Offense.

Read More

,

 

bwahaha, I think we've found the geek christmas gift of the year.

 

Chaz are you going to get one of those mimobots? They look pretty cool. I wonder if he comes with a lightsaber.
Tim

 

Great news on the flash drives--hopefully the prices and capacity will be better when it's time to get a new system.

Also great news on Libya--I think it's an excellent investment on a national level for their future.

And of course, the Darth Vader mimobot looks cool. Does he come with the Dark Jedi robe too?

 

It makes Darth Vader look cute

 

Maybe, although I can't see the drive being very practical.

Those prices for the flash drive upgrade on the Fujitsu notebooks are incredibly high; it's similar to getting 4GB of DDR2-667 (2x 2GB) installed in a new notebook. Not worth it and not practical.

 

I wonder which manufacturer is getting the 1.2 m laptop contract...Dell or Acer would be my guesses.

 

Dell and Acer use ODMs to make their systems for them--they don't manufacture their own systems.

It looks like Quanta is going to make the $100 laptops.

 

Can we buy $100 Quanta laptops?

 

For the program to work, the minimum order for any given country had to be stratospherically high-we're talking about 1 million or more of the things per batch.

So, no.

 

No, it is only available for qualifying orders.

I thought I remembered reading that it had to be a minimum of $1M worth of laptops ordered--to help out with the economy of scale on production. But that was a while back. It's definitely not available to individual buyers though.