states

Transcend ups ante with solid-state external drive

Transcend once again takes external hard drives to the next level with its stylish new portable solid-state drive. Just announced, the SSD18M is available in a small 1.8-inch size, measuring 3 inches long by 2 inches wide and draped in a chic black "gloss diamond pattern" exterior.

Unlike other external hard drives that rely on moving parts and an actual disk, solid-state hard drives work on NAND flash memory that eliminates the possibility of damage because of vibration and shock. In addition, you also get the added benefit of weight savings, power consumption, and portability thanks to its lack of internal moving parts. This model gives supports eSATA as well as USB 2.0 interfaces for connectivity, ensuring flexibility across almost all notebook and desktop PCs.

The Transcend SSD18M eSATA drive is available now in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities. No word yet on pricing.

Click the read more link to view more photos.… Read more

Army invests $50 million in flexible displays

The U.S. Army has committed to renewing its partnership and providing another $50 million to Arizona State University's flexible-display research facility, the university announced on Thursday.

That brings the Army's total investment since the Flexible Display Center (FDC) started in 2004 to $100 million.

The announcement comes in conjunction with a two-day event in Tempe, Ariz., near ASU, in which the U.S. Army and Flexible Display Center plan to showcase their progress to the public.

So why is the military so keen on flexible displays?

It's all about information and communications...and possibly profit.

Flexible displays are paper-thin electronic screens that can be bent, mounted onto objects, and sewn into clothing. Soldiers could easily wear them on their sleeves or wrists, and use them to receive critical data in real time in the form of instructions, photos, or maps.

In addition, flexible displays can be made more durable than regular LCD screens, allowing them to get banged around in combat and still work. They also consume only a fraction of the power of LCDs.

That doesn't just make them good for the military; it also makes for cool tech products.

That commercial value is something the military, ASU, and its partners clearly have in mind.… Read more

Analyst: iPod, Zune, servers to drive SSD growth

Solid-state drives may see heady growth despite a sliding world economy, according to a report released Tuesday by a market research company. Devices like the Apple iPod and iPhone are expected to drive growth.

Flash memory revenue in the solid-state drive segment will see compound annual growth rates of over 100 percent through 2012, according to market research firm In-Stat. The type of flash used in solid-state drives is referred to as NAND flash.

"You're starting from quite a small base. Back in 2006, you're in the tens of millions (of dollars) kind of a number. By … Read more

Netbook solid-state drives expand to 64GB and beyond

Toshiba hasn't exactly been on the cutting edge of the Netbook phenomenon but the Japanese company is taking the lead in moving solid-state drive storage in these tiny laptops to the next level.

Toshiba is adding a 64GB solid-state drive to its NB100 Netbook offering, in addition to the current 160GB hard disk drive option.

While Sony's Vaio P series will be available with SSD options up to 128GB SSD, it's problematic whether Sony's tiny laptop qualifies as a Netbook, which are defined by price as well as size. The Vaio P with a 64GB SSD … Read more

Dell first: 256GB solid-state drive on laptops

Updated at 11 p.m. PST with information about Apple.

Dell is doing its part to usher in the age of the super-sized solid-state drive. For the first time, Dell laptops can be configured with the newest large-capacity SSDs from Samsung.

Back in the day (last January), laptop buyers were stuck with a Henry Fordesque choice: order any solid-state drive you want with your laptop as long as it's 64GB.

What a difference a year makes. On Friday, Dell quadrupled this to 256GB. The Samsung SSD is now available as an option on Dell's XPS M1330 and M1730 … Read more

Podcast: Harvard Law's John Palfrey on Internet Safety Task Force Report

Harvard Law Professor and former Berkman Center director John Palfrey has been a busy guy. For most of the past year he has chaired the Internet Safety Technical Task Force which, as I explain in this longer post, just released a report showing that predator danger for kids is not what a lot of people feared.

I sat down with Palfrey Washington DC on Wednesday January 14th just before he took the stage at the State of the Net conference to deliver the task force's final report.

As I disclose in the podcast, I was a member of that … Read more

Buyer beware: Solid-state drive prices vary--a lot

Updated at 9:40 a.m. PST with additional information about SLC-based solid-state drives.

Some solid-state drives are more equal than others--or, to put it another way, command higher prices than rival drives, despite being seemingly quite similar.

SanDisk and Toshiba offer a good lesson. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, SanDisk said it would start shipping 240GB SSDs in "mid 2009," priced at only $499. (Next to a comparable hard-disk drive, that may be a lot of money, but for a solid-state drive, it's dirt cheap.)

At the Toshiba booth, however, the story was very different. A Toshiba representative said his company's comparable 256GB SSDs are priced at $800. And this discrepancy is coming from two companies that get their flash chips from the same source: a joint-manufacturing operation in Japan.

Below are the prices Toshiba representatives were stating on the show floor versus prices that SanDisk announced.

Toshiba/SanDisk solid-state drive pricing:

Toshiba 512GB: $1,600, SanDisk N/A Toshiba 256GB: $800, SanDisk 240GB: $499 Toshiba 128GB: $400, SanDisk 120GB: $249 Toshiba 64GB: $175, SanDisk 60GB: $149

Throw Intel into the mix, and it gets more confusing. "Introductory" pricing for Intel 160GB versions of its X25-M and X18-M Serial ATA (SATA) solid-state drive is $945 for less than 1,000 units. … Read more

D-Link debuts USB-powered monitor

It's been just two days at CES, and I am already very tired of Alt-Tabbing and looking at my Dell XPS 1330's little screen. I sorely miss my Dell 30-inch UltraSharp LCD at home. Bragging aside, it's really hard to work with multiple little windows on a little screen, especially when I need to look at more than one of them at a time.

For this reason, I was psyched to run into D-Link's newest invention: the SideStage.

Basically, it's a 7-inch LCD monitor that you can plug into your computer via a USB port. … Read more

SanDisk, Samsung tout new Netbook, server SSDs

Both SanDisk and Samsung announced solid-state drives on Tuesday--though that's where the similarity ends. SanDisk's SSDs are aimed at Netbooks, while Samsung's new SSDs are for the high-performance server market.

SanDisk is debuting its new 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB pSSD-P2 and pSSD-S2 solid-state drives at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Samsung's 100GB SS805 drive, on the other hand, is being introduced on Tuesday at the Storage Visions 2009 Conference, also in Las Vegas.

The second-generation SanDisk drives, designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives, use the Serial-ATA or SATA interface. First-generation … Read more