News Bits: Samsung Ships Hybrid Hard Drive, OLPC Gaming, Asus G1 Contest

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Samsung ships world's first hybrid hard drive

Samsung announced that it has begun shipping its hybrid hard drive to the commercial marketplace. The 2.5&quot; MH80 series hybrid hard drive comes in 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB capacities. Samsung is the first company to offer a hybrid hard drive; it is currently available to select OEM customers and will be available a short time later at retail and commercial outlets.

The MH80 series hybrid drive is optimized to work with Windows Vista. The drives are composed of the hard disk itself and 128MB or 256MB of OneNAND Flash cache memory. The hard drive uses Microsoft ReadyDrive software to decrease boot times and increase battery life. According to Samsung, the drive can provide up to a 50 percent reduction in boot time compared to a traditional hard drive. The MH80 hybrid drive also consumes 70 to 90 percent less power than a traditional hard drive, which means about a 30 minute increase in battery life.

Read More (Business Wire)

Fujitsu introduces 2.5&quot; 7200RPM hard drives for notebooks

Fujitsu announced its new MHW2 BJ series 2.5&quot; hard drive, which features a 7,200RPM rotation speed. It has a SATA 3.0Gbps connection and comes in a capacity of up to 160GB using PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) technology. The drive is aimed at the high-performance notebook PC market.

The MHW2 BJ series will be available on a global basis at the end of May 2007; Fujitsu has set their sales target at 1.6 million units for 2007.

Read More (DigiTimes)

OLPC Laptop initiative asks for game developers to help out

Yesterday at the Game Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco, SJ Klein, director of content for the One Laptop Per Child initiative, made a pitch to game developers to help out with developing &quot;serious games&quot; for the OLPC.

Klein said serious games can add weight to the project. &quot;Games attract real attention,&quot; he noted, and inspire kids to wonder what more they can do. &quot;Kids without games can certainly learn,&quot; said Klein, &quot;but the first way children learn is through gaming... by seeing how things work and remaking their world... Let's give them useful worlds to make.&quot;

At the moment Tetris has been ported to the OLPC and work has started on getting SimCity ported over.

Read More (Gamasutra)

ASUS G1 &quot;Test Drive&quot; Contest at Best Buy

ASUS is having a promotion for the ASUS G1 unit, which can be found at select US Best Buy stores. Check their site here for locations and if a close store has it in stock and on display.

The prize will be twenty targus ASUS branded gaming notebook backpacks, with a value of $69.99. The contest is for residents of the United States only.

Enter at: http://usa.asus.com/event/bestbuy/index.html

All you need to do is to fill in a form, and answer questions and give your opinion.

See the answers and discuss in the forums

Dell retains spot as top PC maker in 2006, HP gaining momentum

Despite the fact that Dell sold more PCs than any other vendor in 2006, it was HP who captured the top spot in the second half of the year according to iSuppli. HP held onto its number 1 spot in Q4 2006, shipping 11.6 million PCs versus 9.6 million for Q4 2005, representing a 21.1% increase. Dell only shipped 9.6 million PCs in Q4 2006, down a consierable 8.6% from a year earlier. Dell was the only top five vendor to see a decrease in shipments.

Lenovo held the number three spot in Q4 2006, shipping 4.8 million PCs. Acer was close behind. Toshiba took fifth place. Worldwide PC shipments in Q4 2006 were about 66.7 million units, representing an 11% sequential increase and a 6.3% increase from the 62.7 million units shipped during the same perod a year earlier.

Read More (DigiTimes)

Matrox introduces TripleHead2Go Digital Edition

Matrox today unveiled the TripleHead2Go Digital Edition, the latest product in Matrox's lineup of Graphics eXpansion Modules (GXM). The Digital Edition allow for digital output and supports a stretched desktop of up to 3840x1024 (three 1280x1024 monitors). The connection is all digital thanks to DVI-D connection.

The TripleHead2Go Digital Edition's ability to support ultra-widescreen resolutions enables gamers to immerse themselves in a Surround Gaming experience. Games can be expanded across three screens, allowing users to see more of the game. Over 150 popular game titles are currently supported.

The TripleHead2Go Digital Edition supports Windows Vista, XP, XP 64-bit, 2000, and Mac OS X v10.4. It will be available in Q2 for an MSRP of $329 USD.

Product Link

Dell expands 'Plant a Tree for Me' program

Dell is expanding its 'Plant a Tree for Me' carbon-offset program. It is now available to all US-based customers and businesses with no purchase required. An extended set of products are supported. Visitors to Dell.com will be able to donate $99 if they wish.

Dell Plant a Tree for Me website

 

Wow great post Chaz!

I want to draw everyone's attention to the fact that the 7200 rpm hard drive is SATA II (at least that is what the article says). I didn't know Merom/Yonah supported SATA II. But I guess this hard drive is ment for Santa Rosa.

I hope Seagate follows fast, because I prefer Seagate then Fujitsu. Usually faster and quiter. But this drive could be different.

 

I'd be interesting in knowing how much more a 7200RPM 160GB hard drive would cost relative to the top 5400RPM ones that are currently out...

 

Now heres a question for everyone,

If Santa Rosa has NAND flash and the hybrid drives have flash.....What happens when you put a hybrid drive into a Santa Rosa notebook with Robson? Will they work together?

 

I think hybrid drives and Robson are not exactly the same. Robson under Vista is called ReadyBoost where as Hybrid disks are called ReadyDrive. I am not sure of the differance myself and there might not be one.
Vista can use more then one ReadyBoost device so they should work together nicely.

 

How does the hybrid drive work under WinXP? Any benefit over standard SATA drives?

 

It won't make any difference if you run it under XP, it's only for Vista.

 

Robson is integrated directly onto the motherboard, whereas the hybrid drive's flash memory is directly in the hard drive. I think they'd work side by side; I don't see any tradeoff that might occur.

I was under the impression that Robson is like pseudo-RAM in flash form.

 

Those hybrid drives sure are attractive. I'm wondering on the price point of those drives, as well as the 160 GB 7200 RPM drives coming out.

 

According to Wikipedia, ReadyDrive (for hybrid hard drives) can help out with booting and resuming from hibernation, both of which ReadyBoost can't help with (strictly for caching while the OS is fully loaded). Also, I think that ReadyDrive is considered a bit more reliable to Vista since HDDs can't be yanked out of the PC without adverse effects like ReadyBoost devices can.