News Bits: Make an SD Hard Drive, Lenovo in Circuit City, LG W1Pro

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Make a Solid State Drive for your notebook

Solid State Drives (SSDs) fetch a premium at current, selling for up to $1,000 for a 30GB drive. But now there is an alternative - you can make your own. GeekStuff4U is selling a DIY drive with the ability to hold up to 4x 2GB SD cards, making 8GB of total capacity. The bare drive without the SD cards goes for a cool $258.50.

Product Page

Read More (Gizmodo)

Lenovo offers ThinkPad and Lenovo Notebooks at Circuit City

Lenovo today announced that several Lenovo PCs are available for purchase at almost 700 Circuit City stores across the United States.

Customers can now purchase ThinkPad T60 widescreen and Lenovo N100 notebook PCs at select Circuit City locations, online at www.circuitcity.com, or over the phone. The Lenovo C200 series notebook PC will also be offered. Lenovo notebooks will be pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, while ThinkPad T60 widescreen notebooks will be pre-loaded with Windows Vista Business.

Read More (Business Wire)

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 now available as free download

Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 is now available as a free download. The virtualization software allows users to run multiple operating systems within Windows. It will also help users run older applications if Windows Vista's compatability mode does not work. Everything from Windows 98 to Linux can be installed inside of Virtual PC.

The download size is about 30MB; both 32- and 64-bit versions are available.

Download page

Read More (TGDaily)

Dell undergoes senior management changes after return of founder

After returning to Dell, Michael S. Dell is making senior management changes. Dell has recently hired the following people:

• Ronald G. Garriques, a Motorola executive vice president to run Dell's global consumer division
• Michael Cannon, chief executive of Solectron to oversee parts procurement and manufacturing operations
• Donald Carty, former chief executive of AMR as chief financial officer
• Stephen F. Schuckenbrock to expand consulting and services business to large businesses

Mr. Dell said he was loking for a chief marketing officer and an executive to run European operations.

All these changes mean Dell is putting more focus on its consumer products, which only made up about 15 percent of Dell's $56 billion revenue last year. HP has a much stronger consumer status.

Mr. Garriques will be in charge of all consumer products Dell sells, from PCs to TVs. He helped Motorola's phone business in 2004 turn into a $28 billion global business mainly because of the Razr phone.

Despite the new job hirings, many current executives are leaving:

• Kevin Rollins, former CEO
• James Schneider, former chief financial officer
• John Hamlin, senior vice president for global online business and marketing
• Paul McKinnon, head of human resources
• Rosendo G. Parra, senior vice president for home and small business group
• Glenn E. Neland, senior vice president for procurement

Mr. Dell also announced that Dell has set up a new website, www.dellideastorm.com, where customers can post their ideas for new products and services.

Read More (NY Times)

LG introduces new 17-inch W1PRO EXPRESS DUAL laptop

Image courtesy of Engadget

LG Electronics has introduced their latest 17-inch laptop, the W1PRO EXPRESS DUAL. It has a silver and black enclosure and features an integrated TV tuner and Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The W1PRO has the following specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Duo processors
• 17&quot; WSXGA+ display
• 5.1 Dolby Digital audio support
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics
• Bluetooth 2.0
• WiFi
• 2x 1.2 watt stereo speakers
• Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed
• Weight: 6.8 lbs

The W1PRO carries a pricetag of nearly $2,600, so it is not for the budget-minded.

Read More (Engadget)

 

 

an 8 gb hd to replace my current hd? will that even fit the os?

i can't understand why lg notebooks are so expensive.

 

The W1 is under 7lbs, which is pretty nice. As for the pricetag, its kinda high, it's in the same category as the ASUS W2 but seems to lack a few features and perhaps quite a bit in build quality.

 

wow that is almost as light as my 15.4" with a 6-cell battery :O

There probably the nicest looking laptops i've ever seen =/
Right now i'm considering the S1 series to be the next notebook i'll be looking at (although probably won't happen for another 18 months). Can't wait for 965PM + x2700 + draft-n + 160gb 7200rpm

 

The make your own SSD goes well with the measley FREE after rebate 4-pack of SD cards that I posted yesterday on NBR

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1815574#post1815574

Spend $200 odd dollars on the enclosure and get 1 GB of free SSD HD space! Woo-hoo!

 

So long as you're running DOS, that'll work. There's no guarantee this HD will be a ton faster than a regular HD anyway, I can't imagine implementing 4 different SD cards is going to be as fast as 1 8GB flash drive when you've got the overhead of figuring out which SD card the data is on before fetching it.

 

So true. And, it's going to be crippled by a number of factors - what immediately comes to mind is accessing each SD card separately, data transfer issues, and the speed rating(s) of the card, the variance in that speed rating across card(s)...

Might as well just wait for the real deal to become affordable.

 

the drive is a good idea... but:
1) why it is so pricey? (it should cost no more than 50$)
2) there are fast 4gb sd cards and I hope soon, we'll see fast 8GB SD cards (faster than 8GB 2mb/s apacer ). why limit capacity to only 2GB SD cards?

 

It's pricey since they can make money on early adopters.

I think 2GB is the max for non-HC SD card. SDHC cards begin at 4GB and go on up from there.

 

I thought that you can make a SSD drive like that beofre seeing this product , didn't know it will be so soon out .

Still its to pricy for what looks like a 4X card reader with IDE interface .

Whats more I don't understand why SSD drives are so slow , can't they use 4 memeory modules and use RAID like option to write at 4 threads for example getting a X4 boost ?

 

The SD-IDE adapter is a huge ripoff: you can buy a CF-IDE adapter for $15 and plug in a 8GB CF card for under $100.