News Bits: Toshiba 100GB 1.8" Hard Drive, Intel WiMax Chip Completed, Business PCs not Vista Ready

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Toshiba announces 100GB 1.8-inch hard drive

December 5^th - Toshiba announced a new 1.8&quot; hard drive with a 100GB capacity. The new drive, model MK1011GAH, uses Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technologyin order to achieve high storage density. The new drive is ten percent smaller than first-generation 1.8&quot; hard drives, and features an 8MB cache. It is specifically designed for notebook computers.

Toshiba plans to start mass production of its 100GB, 1.8&quot; hard drive in January 2007 for OEMs.

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Intel announces completion of first mobile WiMAX chip

December 6^th - Intel today announced the design completion of its first mobile WiMAX baseband chip. Paired with Intel's single-chip, multi-band WiMAX/Wi-Fi radio, the pair makes a chipset called the Intel WiMAX Connection 2300.

The chipset design was demonstrated during a keynote at the 3G World Congress and Mobility Marketplace in Hong Kong. Executive Vice President and Chief of Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney displayed an Intel Centrino Duo-based laptop with mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005), Wi-Fi (802.11n), and HSDPA 3G capabilities. The machine successfully accessed the Internet at broadband speeds over a WiMAX network.

The Intel WiMAX Connection 2300 puts Intel a step closer to an integrated wireless system-on-chip that will help push along WiMAX adoption by minimizing the amount of space needed in mobile devices. The baseband chip has low power requirements and low thermals, allowing it to fit in very small designs.

With the first Intel Connection 2300 complete, Intel plans to test and validate this product, and hopes to sample it in both card and module forms in late 2007.

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Foxconn to ship 3.2 million notebooks in 2007

After securing notebook orders from Apple and Lenovo, Foxconn Electronics is expected to ship 3.2 million notebooks in 2007. Foxconn will start shipping notebooks to Apple in 2007; the total production will be about 1.5 million units. Unit production for Lenovo will top out at about 500,000 units compared to 300,000 this year. Foxconn's notebook shipments to Sony will remain steady at 1.2 million units.

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Half of North American Business PCs don't meet Vista requirements

Although over 90 million copies of Vista will ship in the next year, many businesses will have a bleak upgrade path. Many business PCs will not make the cut when it comes to meeting Vista's system requirements. According to Softchoice research, about half of all North American business PCs will not meet the requirments. Only 6% will meet the requirements for Vista Premium. Businesses still have time yet to prepare for Vista; surveys show that 33% of businesses will wait six months to adopt the new OS, and 27% will wait one to two years.

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Notebook demand to rise in 2007

Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system and Intel's Santa Rosa Centrino platform will boost notebook demand next year according to the Taiwan-based Topology Research Institute. Notebook shipments will grow 20% to 87.7 million units worldwide compared to 72.8 million this year. The TRI predicts that the average selling price of notebooks, currently at $1,097 compared to $1,219 last year, will fall slightly and become more stable at $1,086 next year.

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James Kim

Those that keep up on technology news will know CNET and likely have read or watched tech news that James Kim presented for that site; he was a Senior Editor there. Today many will have heard about the sad news of James being found deceased in the Oregon wilderness. He had been stranded with his family in the mountains when their car got stuck in snow after taking a wrong turn. Thankfullly, Kati Kim and the two children were found at the car two days ago where they had stayed while James left to find help. If only James had of stayed at the car too. We, along with the rest of the tech writing community, express our sad regrets at this news.

Read More at CNET

 

That is sad news about James Kim. If only he'd stayed at the car too...but he was trying to protect his family. Very admirable.

The WiMAX sounds very promising. I'm looking forward to developments in that area.

I can also see how businesses will be slow to adopt Vista. Why replace already-working software? Especially when it's expensive. But even more so when you would need to upgrade your hardware to do so? My business is running on older hardware because its demands are quite simple. We will stick to XP until it is no longer feasible to stay on it or until we are forced to buy a new machine.

 

My dad's work computer at a 1.2 billion dollar a year company is a Pentium Pro 266 system running WinNT 4. I dont think it is Vista ready.

 

My work PC is Vista ready (no Aero ), but as evidenced by our IT's decision to finally migrate to XP SP2 last month...I don't think our IT department will be Vista capable. They'll be Vista ignorant.

 

Y shift to Vista when my XP SP2 is totally working fine?

 

you know they can say all they want but 1.8 inch hds are for ipods.

 

Even though I never knew him, RIP James. My condolences to the family.

Anyone know when Santa Rosa laptops are supposed to arrive on store shelves?

 

Hmm, I feel for the Kim family. That must be very hard on them. I read that he had two kids under eight to.

Why not for notebooks, aren't 1.8 HDs supposed to run cooler to? Also does anyone know if these are still going to be 4200 rpm drives or if they are going up to 5400 rpm?

 

Mine at work is a P3 with 256MB ram, and running on XP!
Heh, can't wait to see how IT crams Vista onto it.
Oh wait, it can't, min RAM required is 512!

 

I have been in the area where Mr. Kim died, extremely harsh indeed.

Who cares about windows vista? Maybe in 3 years or so. I am going to buy a new laptop in a few months, hopefully Dell will have XP still available in their small business section. Office 2003 and all of my other software does everything I need it to now. Vista is, at this point, a resource hog. Just like Xp was when it came out 5 years ago. Isn't MS releasing SP3 in a year or so?

maybe they can shove one of those 1.8" hard drives into a smartphone.

 

awwww bother, they are still 4200 rpm drives. toshiba needs to bring that up to 5400 rpm if they are going to be practical notebook HDs. By the way have you guys seen the .85" HDs wow talk about small!

http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Pa...00000000/810000000B00000000010000659C000026AE

 

RIP James. We will all miss you. I loved your articles/videos on cnet.

 

I'm very saddened by the news of James Kim. I've probably read many articles written by him but never even realized. My condolences goes out to his family.

I work for a multinational company that has offices all over the world and I just got here a couple of months ago. Cannot believe the archaic technologies these guys are using! Old looking beige HP boxes with who knows what brand name crt monitors with the screen protectors running windows 2000. I often find it easier for smaller companies to adopt newer tech, and of course it doesn't cost as much as if a large cap company wanted to upgrade. But the mentality of most companies is this: if its working fine, why spend money to upgrade?

 

Coming from northern VT, I know that winters can be harsh and unplowed roads through difficult terrain can be dangerous. It's tragic that these things still claim lives... I've probably read articles by James as well, without noticing... My thoughts and prayers go to his family. I would have done exactly the same thing.

 

These drives are same old poky 4200 rpm nonsense. As for smartphones, these drives will not make any inroads there either. Flash is good enough and these things are not responsive enough.

Plus, phones already have enough battery life problems as it is without ramming 100Gb HDD in there!

 

I don't see much reason for a company to upgrade its computers unless they would seriously benefit from the new software. The place I worked over summer was using a version of Windows NT which was at least 5 or 6 years old. It did exactly what we needed to do, quickly and reliably. There would have been zero benefit in upgrading to Windows XP or Vista, all it would mean is a hefty bill for the company and a few hundred PCs confined to the scrap heap.