Webmasters - News - Interesting Technology

Headhunter · 03-16-2004, 10:03 PM

Surprised we haven't had a news thread yet; lots of interesting tech to talk about!

How's this for portable storage?

Quote:

Guinness Record for World's Smallest Hard Drive

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 Posted: 11:23 AM EST (1623 GMT)

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Tuesday that Guinness World Records had certified its stamp-sized hard disk drives (HDDs) as the smallest in the world.

The electronics conglomerate's 0.85-inch HDDs, unveiled in January, have storage capacity of up to four gigabytes and will be used in products such as cell phones and digital camcorders.

Toshiba, whose 1.8-inch HDDs are used in Apple Computer Inc's hot-selling iPod digital music players, for example, aims to start producing the 0.85-inch HDDs by the end of 2004.

"Toshiba's innovation means that I could soon hold more information in my watch than I could on my desktop computer just a few years ago," said David Hawksett, science and technology editor at Guinness World Records.

[ 03-16-2004: Message edited Headhunter ]

Eidolon14 · 03-17-2004, 06:42 PM

Hee! I love my Asians.

REG · 03-18-2004, 05:32 AM

yep. that is old news. seen it in the Guiness World Records 2004 book.

Headhunter · 03-18-2004, 08:28 PM

That specific size? Hmm... [img]smilies/confused.gif[/img]

Ben · 03-19-2004, 08:41 PM

Looks cool. And there's me buying my 256MB USB stick.

Anyway, HDDs will be a thing of the past when M-RAM comes in and there'll be no need for them.

Headhunter · 03-19-2004, 10:05 PM

Solid state storage will be great; less noise, less heat, greater portability.

I worry about the adoption rate, however; for example, DVD's are still rarely used for anything but video, even after being touted as a versatile (hence the V in DVD) format for everything from software to audio. Price doesn't seem to be the issue, as DVD recorders/media are dirt cheap and most music and software are on compact discs.

We're finally seeing it in console games (PS2/X-Box), but it's been over half a decade since home DVD readers came already...how long does it take?

Ben · 03-20-2004, 10:17 PM

It's because of the need for everything to have to be backwards compatible. Whereas for Apple computers they just screw the old users and release new stuff that doesn't work with the old. Hence everything is super fast and shiny.

The PC is restricted way to much by the Von Neuman architcture and as such it's really hard to make it faster without changing the whole thing and thus peeing off a lot of people.

Headhunter · 03-21-2004, 08:38 AM

Yeah, legacy support can be frustrating. With Apple, not only do they dump old users at a frantic pace, but the general appeal of their systems is geared towards the novice. Customizing hardware and software on an Apple doesn't even begin to approach the intricacy or accessibility of the PC architecture...

The old architecture is indeed restrictive, but doesn't figure to change anytime soon. Aside from upsetting people, there is great value for business users in using hardware/software that has been proven to work for many years; taking gambles on new systems like Microsoft's .NET initiative is quite rare.

An opinion on the state of programming as it exists today. For the most part, I agree with it...

Headhunter · 03-23-2004, 12:31 AM

Finally, DVD burners for the home PC can do dual-layered discs. Good thing I've been holding out, heh.

Headhunter · 03-24-2004, 10:02 AM

Microsoft just got hit by a huge fine, worth noticing.


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