Fujitsu Shows 500GB Laptop Drive

The latest entry in high-capacity notebooks is Fujitsu, which will release a laptop with a 500GB drive in May.

Laptop computer storage is racing fast towards the 500G-byte level with Fujitsu becoming the third hard-disk drive maker to announce a drive at that capacity.

Fujitsu is accomplishing this capacity by combining three disk platters -- the magnetically-coated disks on which data is stored -- each with a 170G-byte capacity inside the drive. Hitachi, the first company to announce a 500G-byte drive, and Samsung Electronics are also using three platter designs.

The third platter increases the thickness of the drive to 12.5 millimeters versus most other laptop drives, which have just two platters and are 9.5 millimeters thick.

As a result the Fujitsu drive won't fit into the drive bay on many laptop computers, so its availability doesn't mean an instant capacity upgrade will be possible for all laptop users. Hitachi's drive is also 12.5 millimeters thick, but Samsung said it has been able to keep the drive height at 9.5 millimeters on its Spinpoint M6 drive.

Fujitsu will begin selling its 2.5-inch drive in May. It will have a Serial ATA (SATA) interface and can transfer data at up to 300M bytes per second. The average seek time for reading data on the 4,200 rpm drive is 12 milliseconds and 14 milliseconds for writing data. Fujitsu didn't announce pricing.

Hitachi said in January that it would ship its drive this month and Samsung announced a March shipping date. Both the Hitachi and Samsung drives spin the disk faster, at 5,400 rpm.

All three drives will also be aimed at the fast growing digital video recorder (DVR) market. Many of the DVRs use laptop drives because they are smaller and lighter than the 3.5-inch models typically made for desktop computers and servers.

Lenovo Unveils Ultrathin ThinkPad X300 Laptop

The much-anticipated ThinkPad X300 ultraportable challenges Apple's MacBook Air as the lightest and thinnest notebook available.

Lenovo today launched the much-anticipated ThinkPad X300 ultraportable, challenging Apple's MacBook Air as the lightest and thinnest notebook available today.

Weighing started at 2.93 pounds. Lenovo claims ThinkPad X300 is more feature-rich than Apple's 3-pound MacBook Air. Lenovo has included three USB drives and an ultrathin DVD burner, while MacBook Air has only one USB drive and no optical drive. With a DVD-RW drive, the X300 weighs 3.13 pounds, Lenovo said.

The laptop measures 0.73 inches at its thinnest point by 0.92 inches at its thickest point, bigger in comparison to MacBook Air, which measures 0.16 inches at its thinnest part and 0.76 inches at its thickest part. (View PC World's slide show of other MacBook Air competitors.)

Targeted at business users and consumers, the laptop uses 25 percent less power than previous ThinkPad models with a 64G-byte solid-state storage drive for data storage, a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display and use of a lithium-polymer battery, Lenovo said.

The lithium-polymer chemistry provides better battery life than standard lithium-ion batteries found in most laptops today, said Tom Ribble, director of Thinkpad product marketing at Lenovo. The system supports up to 4G bytes of memory and includes integrated graphics, a digital camera, and wired and wireless networking. It includes both touchpad and trackpoint scrolling capabilities.

The system will come with WiMax capabilities later this year with Intel's updated Centrino platform, according to Lenovo. The buyer may choose that the machine come preloaded either with Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista.

The ThinkPad 300's Processor

The X300 is powered by Intel's Core 2 Duo SL7100 LV low-voltage chip, operating at 1.2GHz. Like the Core 2 Duo processor specially developed for Apple's MacBook Air, Intel shrunk the SL7100 LV processor to make it 60 percent smaller than standard-sized processors belonging to Intel's Merom family. The chip is manufactured using the 65-nanometer process, like other Merom processors.

Although the size is the same, the SL7100 LV chip consumes less power. It uses 12 watts of power, according to processor details provided by Intel. The Core 2 Duo processor for MacBook Air uses 20 watts of power, while operating at 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz. Fujitsu also uses the SL7100 LV chip in its ultraportable LifeBook P8010 laptop, which started shipping in the U.S. this month.

Lenovo has pumped the latest technology into its laptop that both consumers and business users will appreciate, Ribble said.

Prices for the X300 start at $2,799, and it is available through Lenovo's Web site and through retail partners.

New Highly Efficient Lithium-ion Battery Being Produced

The Sonata provides on-the-go notebook computer users with the industry’s fastest recharge time – recharging to 80 percent capacity in just 30 minutes. This represents approximately half the time required by other batteries.

Additionally, Sonata is the only battery designed to match the lifespan of a notebook computer. To date, most users find that they need to buy at least three batteries in the first three years of use of a new notebook computer. Sonata is designed so these users should only need one battery during this same timeframe.

Boston-Power’s Sonata product line is a drop-in technology that can be used in existing notebook computers. Significantly, it requires no design changes on the part of the notebook computer OEM. Sonata features enhancements in both performance and safety; its proprietary safety features include slower chemical kinetics, novel current interrupt devices, new thermal fuses, unique pressure relief vents and safer pack configuration. The first notebook computers to use Sonata batteries are expected to ship this summer.

Nokia has historically had a tendency to release new colors of existing phones without much of an official announcement, and we could be dealing with that sitch again here. Retailer Plemix is now offering the N95 8GB in the black that we're all accustomed to along with a new shade -- copper -- that runs a few dollars more than the original. Hey, you've gotta pay to play, right? We're hearing that the copper version maintains the black front end, which would be inline with the original N95's tendency to sport silver up front regardless of what's going on around back. If anyone gets one of these copper suckers in their hands, do let us know, won't you?

Not to be outdone by E-TEN, Gigabyte's ready to pull some aces out of its sleeve for Mobile World Congress, too. If you can really call these "aces," that is. According to Russian site MyBestPDA, the g-Smart MW700 and MS800 are getting all geared up for MWC debuts with Windows Mobile 6 (possibly 6.1), 256MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, integrated FM tuner, and in the MS800's case, 3G data. Physically, both devices look the same -- which is to say very, very bland -- but then again, that's exactly how some Windows Mobile users like it. More on these devices, we presume, in a couple weeks from Barcelona.

Never mind the silly little internal display for just a moment -- the Windows Mobile 6 Standard-based M930 from ASUS is still a pretty interesting phone in a form factor that doesn't come along every day, and it'll likely get scrutinized for purchase by a good many folks in 2100MHz 3G-friendly parts of the globe over the next few months. TamsWMS had the opportunity to touch one at a recent ASUS press event and compare it side-by-side with a variety of other devices; it appears to be roughly the same size as a Treo 680 (pictured), but don't be fooled -- it also makes the chubby Nokia N71 look like a RAZR. Anyone out there thinking this is their next WinMo device?

3GSM's "3G For All" campaign lives on in the hearts and minds of companies around the globe that are looking to capitalize on developing nations' nascent 3G networks, and this little gem is a pretty good start. Purple Labs, a purveyor of mobile Linux software stacks, has teamed up with NXP Semiconductors to announce the "Purple Magic" reference design, a flip phone that features 3G data, video calling, media playback, Bluetooth, and a Java virtual machine for a purely theoretical retail price of under $100. Though there's no telling who'll pick up the platform -- or when, for that matter -- it's good to see that companies have their eyes on the prize and have the technology and know-how to get high speed devices pumped out for pretty dirt cheap. Look for the Purple Magic to make its public debut at MWC later this month.