News Bits: Intel Chip Updates and Price Cuts, New Samsung 64GB SSD

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Intel introduces Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Solo, cuts prices

Intel confirmed price cuts across its lineup of processors; some saw a 40 percent decrease in price. The company also updated and added new processors in its lineup, including a first-ever Core 2 Solo.

Intel introduced the Core 2 Extreme X7900 for notebooks, which runs at 2.8GHz. The T7800 was introduced and replaces the T7700 as the top-end non-Extreme chip, running at 2.6GHz. As a result, the T7700 and T7500 saw price cuts, going from $530 and $316 to $316 and $241 respectively. The T7800 will take over the T7700's previous $530 pricing position.

Intel also introduced the Core 2 Duo T7250, which is essentially the same as the T7300 except it has half the cache (2MB L2 vs. 4MB L2). It runs for $209.

The Core 2 Solo is the new single-core addition to Intel's lineup. The U2200 and U2100 run at 1.2GHz and 1.06GHz respecitively. They are Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) chips, with a 1MB L2 cache and a 533MHz front side bus.

The Celeron M lineup saw some new additions - the 550 and the 530 run at 2.0GHz and 1.73GHz respectively. The Celeron M 540 saw a 20 percent price drop from $134 to $107.

Finally, the Celeron M ULV lineup received a new member, the 523 which runs at 933MHz. It goes for $161.

It should be noted that all prices are in batches of 1,000, so expect to pay more than seen here.

Read More (ChannelRegister.co.uk)



Samsung ships 64GB Solid State Drive

Samsung today started to ship its 2.5-inch 64GB SATA Solid State Disk (SSD). It is already available in select Dell and Alienware notebooks. SSDs provide higher performance and improved reliability compared to traditional hard drives.

Alienware is currently offering the 64GB SSD in its M9750, which is capable of holding two of the drives. The M9750 currently starts at $2,099, and adding the two 64GB SSDs costs a hefty $2,000, essentially doubling the price of the notebook. We reviewed the Alienware Area-51 M9750 here.

Dell is offering the 64GB SSD in its 13.3-inch XPS M1330 notebook - our review of the M1330 can be found here. The company expects to make the SSD drive available on other XPS systems in addition to its Latitude and Precision Mobile Workstations later this year.

Read More (BusinessWire.com)



Quanta has record notebook shipments in August

Quanta Computer shipped 2.9 million notebook computers in August, beating July's 2.8 million. The company shipped 19.3 million notsbook computers in the first eight months of this year. Quanta projects it will ship 28 million notebook computers this year and it has already shipped 69% of that goal.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)



Acer expects 20% sequential growth in notebook shipments in September

Acer is expecting a 20 percent sequential growth in notebook shipments in September. Acer has shipped 1.5 million notebooks per month since July this year. The company is confident that it can reach its goal of 15 million notebook shipments in 2007, representing a 50 percent increase over the previous year.

While Acer is currently not in the ultra low-cost notebook market, Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin says it would only take the company three months to enter it if demand picks up.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)



Seagate introduces Momentus 5400.4 2.5-inch hard drive

Seagate today announced its Momentus 5400.4 series 2.5-inch SATA 3.0Gbps hard drive. The 5400.4 has advanced operating and non-operating shock resistance levels, making it ideal for use in notebooks in rough environments. The 5400.4 series hard drive has a 5,400RPM rotation speed and an 8MB cache. Seagate is expected to ship them to OEMs in Q4 2007.

Read More (Laptoping.com)



InnoDisk introduces 32GB ExpressCard + USB device

Image courtesy Engadget

Although 32GB SSD Expresscards and 32GB USB flash memory sticks are nothing new, a combination of the two is. InnoDisk has introduced a 32GB SSD ExpressCard that also has a USB 2.0 connector. It will also be available in smaller capacities.

There is no word on pricing for the device but look for it to show up on the market soon.

Read More (Engadget.com)

 

Of course, that figures... I buy a new laptop, two weeks later major price cuts come along.

That SSD Expresscard seems kind of interesting though. Depending on the performance, it'd be wicked to set it up as a ReadyBoost drive for Vista if it'd allow it.

 

Price cuts, new ssd option, people say that it is not worth waitting for new things, but in about half year maybe more, we would get LED displays SSD with more storage cheaper blue ray/hd dvd, processors and graphics can be change all the time but those are great upgrades

 

I think sooner or later SSD drives will force harddisks out of everyones computers.

 

I'm not entirely sure that SSD drives are ready for prime-time. They're NVFS based tech that, while having a substantial number of read/write cycles allowed, is no where near magnetic discs ability to continuously record and re-record data. I don't know numbers off of the top of my head, but I'm fairly certain the difference is large.

SSD certainly promises to revolutionize the tech market much like IBM's first magnetic drives did way-back-when. But hard discs have been out for decades, and it is a proven and stable technology. Yes, sometimes they fail...but MTBF is fairly good, and now-a-days backup techniques are quite advanced so the risk of data loss is small if you take precautions.

SSD hasn't been around for long, numbers made are relatively low, and I don't think they have been tested enough.

Feel free to use them as only via more testing and use can we improve them, but keep a 'traditional' hard disc around at least for backup purposes! But as for me, I intend to stay away from them for at least a few years to make sure the bugs are all worked out!

 

So how long does it typically take for Intel CPU price cuts to filter down to lower prices at the notebook manufacturers web sites? (e.g. Dell/Lenovo)

 

Yeah the record limit is the only concern with SSD(but will be sorted out I guess). In future SSD would be much improved, but still after having to hard drive failures in notebooks, every clicking sound of my hard drive make me nervous;/

 

yes i tottally agree, their read/write cycle are not exactly suited for computer's main drive as OS tends to write and delete things frequently.

who would not stay away from them they are really expensive so unless you have specialize needs....

 

@Greg amd others ,

I think they fixed that , read somewhere about SSD that in the new gens the life cycle is many years even if you rewrite the SSD content several times a day .

I also think they give 5 years warranty but I agree that :
It won't protect your data .
It won't protect your investment as their price will go down quickly .

@Acer , I'd like to see more models from the brand that is going to have the biggest market share .

 

Well, but I guess it's a long way until we can order a SSD here in Yurop. Even the 32 GB SSD is still not available...

 

yea
can someoen answer that pls?

 

the t7500 seem to have already dropped in price for a vostro 1500 upgrade. And t7300 dissapeared all together. it is now only $250AUD to go from a t5270 to a t7500. Thats more than a 6ghz jump.

 

ReadyBoost doesn't make a difference for more than 1GB of RAM. If you have 512 then it's worth it.

I'd like to see when DELL, HP and Lenovo (why not, since it has some stupid prices, making it easier to buy the lamest components and buying new, separate ones later as it will get you cheaper) and others will start to offer proper upgrade prices. The upgrade from T7500 to T7700 is sometimes the price of the T7700 or more. That's just plain stupid. And this is why I like small resellers like XoticPC.

 

I don't think that the reliability of SSD will be a problem for most users.

One of the biggest uses for SSD right now is in lightweight business laptops (that already have slower 4200rpm 1.8" drives and LV/ULV CPUs). If they're used in a business, chances are they're going to be on a 3-year lease with a 3-year warranty... so if they were to fail, they'd be replaced promptly.

SSDs should also have less unpredictable failures as the drive should be able to report wear-leveling statistics and do a decent job of predicting when the flash is reaching a point where it is worn enough to call problems. I don't know if the SATA/IDE SSD drives actually report this, though. If this was the case, all it'd take is drive/system manufacturers to include monitoring software.

A SSD also has the advantage of being cool. If you're an idiot that leaves a laptop running on something like a bed with a magnetic hard drive, the drive could easily overheat (especially if it's a power-hungry 7200 rpm drive in a computer not designed for it.) And there's no shock issues, either, so those motion sensors aren't needed anymore.

And if you can discount reliability issues with magnetic drives by talking about backup technology, it's only fair to do the same for SSDs...

 

Awww, but the motion sensor in the Macbooks are so cool for nifty programs like smackbook and ialertu

 

mmm
in what country can i order 1330 with 64Gb SSD?

 

The 64GB SSD option is available for US and Canada for $950 and $1000 respectively. I didn't check any other regions.

 

Acer to gain 20%??? not unless they fix there support.

 

vanger 900/1000 is not worth it, at least in my opinion. It's a huge price to pay for no performance difference compared to a 200GB Hitachi.