Best Drives & Storage Devices

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I had to buy several items just to realize that Hitachi TravelStar 30 GB ATA-100 Hard Drive was the best choice for the price all along. The only negatives I’ve found were that there are better units available, but they are more expensive and the reviews I found on them were on the negative side. So here’s my final word. I 100% endorse Hitachi TravelStar 30 GB ATA-100 Hard Drive and will even show you some places to get it even cheaper than retail.

While microprocessor technology has reached its lithographic manufacturing limits and is inviting nanotechnology to breach those limits, laptop processors still have some room to grow with the current technology. Intel has the current 45nm Penryn and Nehalm chip with a forthcoming 32nm Westmere project that Intel claims to contain 1.9 billion transistors scheduled to be released this year. It will have multiple dual cores that include integrated DDR3 and SDRAM memory controllers.

Screen technology

The new OLED and AMOLED display technologies we find emerging in cellphones may soon find their way into laptop displays. Sony has one with an 11-inch XEL-1 display model that sports a stunning 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio in an amazingly thin profile. Unfortunately, at $2,500 a pop, you get the message that such displays won’t be going mainstream anytime soon. Not that LCD TFT screens are lousy, they are excellent alright, but if OLED and AMOLED displays can halve the power consumption of LCD, they’re definitely a welcome change to mobile computing.

Another interesting Hitachi TravelStar 30 GB ATA-100 Hard Drive development is in use of LED backlighting that promises 30% more brightness, better contrast ratios and better image uniformity across the screen but with lower power consumption for the same display size. Current LCD screens get lit by fluorescent lighting technology but with the LED backlighting, manufacturers can build thinner display lids. New laptops are expected to adopt LED technology with Toshiba, Asus and Fujitsu having come out with models using it. Apple and HPO are expected to follow.

Storage

Disk drives remain wanting in most laptops. And those that do have generous storage capacity can cost an arm. Hitachi’s TravelStar 5K500 hard drive may be a good solution but it’s quite thick and will certainly not fit most laptops if you want to upgrade your drive to one. Asus has a model that packs 2 of them so it can claim to be the world’s first terabyte notebook computer. Many users use external USB drives which are now in the 500GB capacities. But that just encumbers a laptop from its mobility advantage, unless you use more as a desktop PC.

The trend is starting to set foot on using solid state storage modules. This is the technology behind your flash drives which now have 16 GB capacities. The Sony VAIO TZ series uses 64 GB solid sate drive exclusively. More of these can be used together and still reduce power consumption and heat emission common with hard disk platters spinning at 5400 or 7200 rpm. The only problem is the cost. Solid state drives cost an average of $28 per GB. Compare that with $0.6 per GB on the traditional hard disk and you realize it still has a long way to go to reach mainstream. Just a matter of time, though.

With cloud computing just around the corner, large storage capacities may not be as compelling as it is today. Mobile users can have their files uploaded to and downloaded from remote servers anywhere on the planet over IP or internet connections. Complex disk-space hungry application won’t even need to be loaded on the laptop as they have web-based GUI to execute over the internet as well. In short, laptop hardware can remain as it is and still remain useful in the future with cloud computing. GP