1.5GB HDs On a 1" Platter

darthv506 was among several to point out a Cnet story describing a new "1.5GB HD on a 1" Platter. Samsung is releasing a sub 600 buck video camera that is "Smaller than a pack of cigarettes" featuring the drive. The drive is actually in production, and apparently goes for $65 in volume.

Comments

Radio-TiVo?

[sweeney37]

This seem to be the perfect size (capacity and physical) for a Radio Tivo project...

Mike

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[kaamos]

I don't know, when I saw this I immediately thought portable mp3 player, and one of the reasons I want to get an mp3 player is to now listen to the radio...

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Surak]

Not necessarily for music. Sometimes you want to be able to listen to other kinds of radio programs. For instance, where I work, I can't seem to get NPR to tune in very well, so I can't exactly listen to some NPR programming that goes on during the day. But with a TiVo-like system for radio, I could *record* those NPR programs *at home* (where the reception is perfectly fine) and play them back later. Of course, this also means that I can listen to the day programs better at home, and give it my more-or-less undivided attention.

Another application would be live audio recording. Take your portable radio TiVo thing and add a mic and boom -- live recording of concerts (if you can sneak it in of course ;), or audio security, or set it up in a friend's apartment and spy on them. ;)

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[the_2nd_coming]

it makes it easier to record a meeting with a person to cover your ass...just make like you are checking your time and turn it on >:-)

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Listen online. Most npr stations have online listening capabilities (Realplayer and Quicktime, respectively, usually both).

Here's one, here's mine, and here's one more.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[lannocc]

Another application would be live audio recording. Take your portable radio TiVo thing and add a mic and boom -- live recording of concerts (if you can sneak it in of course ;), or audio security, or set it up in a friend's apartment and spy on them. ;)

How is that any better than a tape recorder?

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[KevinRemhof]

Yeah, that would be cool. Or, you could just buy this:

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=139 4& showComments=true

It's an app that works like Tivo for the radio.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[lpp]

While true, where I work, we are bandwidth starved and the IT group has taken to setting a policy of no audio streaming. As a result, streaming in of any music or audio (or video for that matter) is forbidden.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Lord_Slepnir]

or set it up in a friend's apartment and spy on them

Wow, someone who is taking Ashcroft's advice seriously.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[NMerriam]

How is that any better than a tape recorder?

you can record 10,000 hours of minimal-quality audio? Silence takes up just as much space on tape as sound does, not so with decent digital encoding.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[missing000]

If they are NPR news shows you can download any of them for free already.

If the show is syndicated and not available online for free, you really should just ante-up and buy tapes to support it don't you think?

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[hummassa]

As a matter of fact silence (or just ambient constant noise) takes up ZERO space, with decent digital encoding.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[ayden]

Listen online.

Try listening online while driving or jogging.

People who want Radio-TiVo want all the same conveniences that you get with an ordinary MP3/Ogg player PLUS TIME SHIFTING of Radio Content.

We want something that will automatically record a program - AM/FM, online, whatever - and have the convenience taking that recording with us.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[strudeau]

If the show is syndicated and not available online for free, you really should just ante-up and buy tapes to support it don't you think?

Perhaps, but if you already donate generously to NPR wouldn't it be better to save them the overhead of recording and distributing tapes and just give them money? And digital content is more convenient (for some of us) than tapes.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[missing000]

I agree with your points, and I think I could have phrased my argument better.

I guess I would have to say that some of the shows I listen to aren't really paid for all that well just by their syndication fees and need some external support.

I like to accomplish that by sending them a check in exchange for media of some kind (typically books, but I buy the occasional bumper sticker too).

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[GlassUser]

Unfortunately, neither are standards, so I can't play them. When they get to some MP3 or Vorbis streaming, let me know.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[univgeek]

There's a company called radiotime working on something like this. Don't know if they are doing the hardware, but they are working on cataloging of radio sites. You should be able to choose the programs you want, and download on to your portable mp3 player, and also time-shift it to whenever you want.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Cunk]

Not for radio. For Internet streaming audio.

Most radio stations these days don't have streams.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Triv]

YOu can do this now (sort of) with an audible.com account - download individual shows and listen to them on an mp3 player, or burn them to CD. They currently offer This American Life and Fresh Air (AFAIK, there may be more). Give it a look.

Triv

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[untaken_name]

In fact, if you're listening to NPR right now, and you haven't donated, you are a thief.

http://www.rockstargames.com/vicecity/

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[stevenbdjr]

When they get to some MP3 or Vorbis streaming, let me know.

WAMU, the Washington D.C. NPR station does MP3 streaming.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're either trolling or just completely stupid.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[MrTangent]

Quicktime isn't a standard? Huh? *scratches head in bewilderment*

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[GlassUser]

Nope. The codecs are quite proprietary. Pretty much the only way to play some of the newer .mov files is to rape the quicktime binaries.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[MrTangent]

Things can be standards based and be proprietary at the same time, or am I wrong? I'm not trying to argue, but I'd like to discuss this. Mp3 is also a proprietary technology if I'm not mistaken, based on your definition. Even though a consortium decided upon mp3 there are still copyrights and licenses to deal with, from my understanding. Ogg Vorbis seems to be the only license-less of the bunch, but that doesn't make it a "standard". I think we're confusing "standard" with "open source", perhaps. Maybe? Possibly?

Anyone know if Quicktime is ISO-recognized? That would help clarify the issue perhaps. I'd also be curious if Ogg Vorbis, Real and the other audio/video codecs are ISO-recognized/approved.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Ralph Wiggam]

You can get NPR at work with a cutting edge device called an antenna.

-B

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[damiam]

mplayer natively decodes Sorenson, Sorenson 3, and MPEG-4. I don't know of any "newer" .mov files using anything else.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[GlassUser]

When I last looked at it (about three months ago), mplayer still required the quicktime binaries to play sorenson. That may have changed since then though.

Re:Radio-TiVo?

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're at it, I might as well mention another cutting edge device known as a "male-to-male stereo plug" that connects to the line-in port of your computer's sound card.

Assuming you can find a cutting edge sound source in your closet (e.g. a radio with a headphone connector), some fairly standard sound recording software, you may already be able to time shift radio programs.

But... don't try this at home if you don't know what happens when you run out of disk space.

Let's hope they learner thier lesson...

[SuperKendall]

Some of Cornice's employees came from Dataplay, a once-promising mini-disc start-up.

Hopefully, they've figured out what went wrong there and will be more sucessful this time around...

Though a camera that you can't upgrade storage for (they talk about embedding the HD in products), I'm not so sure about. 1.5GB might be enough for most people, however that comes just as 4 and 5 MP cameras are becoming popular and will probably make 1.5gb seem a bit small!

Re:Let's hope they learner thier lesson...

[Lord Kholdan]

So what? you can't upgrade the pixel amount either so it wont matter. When 4 and 5 MP cameras are out, they might very well have a larger HD out too.

Re:Let's hope they learner thier lesson...

[pVoid]

The whole point as they pointed out was the price of the HD. By soldering the thing right on the mobo, they've reduced on actual components (such as screws etc). That's why it's so cheap. That's why it's so good.

I personally can't wait to get a wristwatch sized mp3 player. MMMmmmmmm...

Re:Let's hope they learner thier lesson...

[clutch110]

I currently own a Nikon Coolpix 4500, a 4MP camera. We currently own 2 128MB CF cards. They each hold almost 70 picutres which is perfect. Now switching to an umcompressed TIFF format, you can fit 10 pictures onto a CF card, but there is hardly a need to shoot in an uncompressed format unless I want to do some serious editing on the picture.

Re:Let's hope they learner thier lesson...

[Anonymous Coward]

>I personally can't wait to get a wristwatch sized mp3 player.

Casio has had one out for YEARS now...

Re:Let's hope they learner thier lesson...

[mingot]

'No publisher will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them' - Dave Sim

Holy cow, a Cerebus fan.

Re:Let's hope they learner thier lesson...

[Shrike9]

Sail on over to the isle for the sale on aisle 4.
Spellchek, indeed!

ahem...

[neodymium]

aren't there 1gb compact flash microdrives for quite a long time ? what's so very new with these things ?

Re:ahem...

[fussman]

Yes, and isn't there an even more porable small item availible on thinkgeek? USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive

Re:ahem...

[PerlGuru]

The main thing here is that this is normal hard-drive type technology just with higher density, probably lower power consumption as well (still reading article). This makes it much more economical then a Flash drive of equivelent size. Note that in the write-up a cost of $65 in quantity is much cheaper then flash drives.

Re:ahem...

[Nathan Ramella]

These ones go to eleven.

-n

Re:ahem...

[Looke]

Umm, the IBM/Hitachi Microdrive is a hard drive, not a flash drive. It just happens to be the same size (about one inch) and have the same interface as a Compact Flash type 2 card.

Being a mechanical device, the Microdrive draws more power and is more fragile than a flash card. Its main attraction used to be high capacity, but Compact Flash is rapidly catching up.

There's a 4 GB version of the Microdrive coming this fall, says Steve's Digicams

Re:ahem...

[Anonymous Coward]

That ThinkGeek thing's much much larger than the thing in this story, so in answer to your question: no.

Re:ahem...

[confused one]

Vastly reduced part count, fixed installation (non-removable) surface mount, usb, uses shared memory instead of built-in cache, only $65 now with target price of $50 in quantity 10k

Re:ahem...

[StarFace]

Price has been a factor in the choice as well. Microdrives have been consistently cheaper than Flash alternatives. It makes a good choice for studio shooting with a high MP camera. You don't have to worry about bumping it around too much, and you can get at around 100 shots on a gigabyte drive.

But on fragility, they are not as bad as people would think. Sure, they aren't the oops-I-ran-the-flash-through-the-laundry indestructible, but if you read the actual specs on how much shock it can take before causing data loss or how much more it takes to actually destroy the unit, you'll quickly realize that the camera surrounding the microdrive would be completely trashed before the drive would get damaged. Due to their large capacity, swapping is less frequent. Most of these things lives are inside a camera or in a camera bag.

If you are walking around with a $1,600 - $2,500 camera, you tend to be so careful with the thing, the drive inside is downright spoiled.

Re:ahem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your input breathless nerd.

Here is a question for you dorkbot.

Do you have a fucking job ? If so get busy with it. Maybe practice spelling so as to not seem like a festering nerdboid.

I took a look at your webpage. You look lonely nerdbot. Perhaps people don't like you because you slobber on them while you speak. Maybe you start too many arguments with the word 'actually'.

I feel really confident that I make more money than you do, have better bitches in my stable, drive a better car, have a better house, and most of all have a better life than you do.

I also feel that I could kick your ass anyday of the week with no problem.

Have a Small Day.

Your Overlord

Re:ahem...

[PerlGuru]

Yes, you are right about it being compact flash but I was talking about the Flash that Compact Flash gets it's name from. As for the Microdrive the main advantage of this over it is the smaller size garnered by the removal of all the extras leaving fewer moving parts. This story is about, essentially, a surface mount hard drive intended for manufactures to intigrate it into products. This results in a much lower cost.

Re:ahem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, they aren't the oops-I-ran-the-flash-through-the-laundry indestructible...

Wow, I thought I was the only one dumb enough to do that.

Ah, but have you done it twice in the same week?

Yikes! Spell check on isle four...

[SuperKendall]

I apologize to all for the errors. Forgot to spell check before posting...

Smaller than a pack of cigarettes?

[Hogwash McFly]

Just pop one in a pack of smokes and you have an instant James Bond-esque spy camera!

Re:Smaller than a pack of cigarettes?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be Arnold Schwarzenegger and True Lies.

Re:Smaller than a pack of cigarettes?

[medscaper]

Just pop one in a pack of smokes and you have an instant James Bond-esque spy camera!

Yeah, that's a good idea. In this day and age, no one would notice you pulling out a pack of smokes.

And then, after the crowd has finished with their nasty looks and *gagging* sounds, and the manager has told you there's no smoking within 16 miles of the place, and the bouncer has asked you to leave, and everyone stops looking directly at you, you can be sneaky.

Uh oh

[scovetta]

I think I lost my hard drive in my pocket!

This seems to be great, as long as they're more reliable than Maxtors.

Re:Uh oh

[FroMan]

Yeah, I see the +Funny there, but just so some folks don't get the wrong idea this story was retracted by the source.

The drive manufacture folks denied that the recall happened. In short Maxtor drives are not going to die on you. Well, any faster than normal anyways. And certainly not as fast as the IBM Deathstars.

Re:Uh oh

[scovetta]

Well from personal experience, I've lost 2/2 Maxtors (within 2 years), and 1/8 WDs (it must have been 5 or 6 years old at the time it failed). I'm happy to pay the extra premium for WD, so the story didn't convince me of anything, it just reinforced what I believed anyway. M

Re:Uh oh

[FroMan]

Oh man, bad luck with the maxtors. I've only had two of maybe 20 maxtor drives go bad on me before they entered the hallowed halls of "antiques" (a cardboard box in the closet). One was a drive I had given to me from a friend who had upgraded his drive. About a year later it died. I called up maxtor and they replaced it with a new drive which was +2GB over the original. The second was a 2GB drive which was the OS drive in a fileserver in college.

My most recent drive I picked up is a maxtor 7200 rpm 80GB drive with an 8mb cache on it. What an excellent drive. Very quiet. I was amazed which how quiet it was as many other 7200 rpm drives are very loud.

Now I find WD drives to be very loud. I can pretty much tell a WD drive when I walk into a room and someone is doing a disk read. I find that very annoying. Its not that it has to be silent, but its a nice feature.

I've had a couple seagate drives. One 200mb drive from my 486 many moons ago that survived all the way until 1999. That was a beast. As loud as a WD, but it was rock solid for almost 8 years. I used it as a "portable" disk for a while since its usefulness as a hd ended after a while.

I also had a stack of seagate 1gb scsi drives I setup as a raid a couple years ago. I cut apart a case so I could put in a second powersupply for those alone. But it was amusing when I turned the machine on that it sounded like a jet taking off.

Quantum. Yeck! What an awful drive/company. I bought one quantum drive and had it go bad within a year. I had them replace it and then sent me a rebuilt drive. Well, that rebuilt drive sucked right off the bat, it wouldn't spin up all the time and clicked awfully sometimes. Well, that one gave up the ghost and when I tried to return it they said since the original drive was out of warrenty they wouldn't replace the drive. That sucked.

Re:Uh oh

[Obfuscant]

I think I lost my hard drive in my pocket!

Which answers the perrenial question "is that a hard drive in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"

Re:Uh oh

[croddy]

I have a 20GB quantum that I'm using for backup/restore staging. it was attached to my machine when I pulled it out of the trash. based on the sticker it's been working fine for 3 years, but it doesn't inspire confidence to see it identified by BIOS as QUANTUM FIREBALL 20GB. fireball? what were you THINKING??

Re:Uh oh

[FroMan]

Oh, so much better than a 20d6 fireball though. :-)

I wasn't saying that the drives were inherently bad. Just my experience with the company was bad. Granted the two drives I've had of theirs didn't exactly make me want more.

Completely off topic foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung is so cool.... they are reason enough to keep defending South Korea from the North.

Re:Completely off topic foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, Stupid

Re:Completely off topic foolishness

[mobileskimo]

It aint all their (US & USSR) fault. It's partly to blame that they (NKorea) got a completely insane paranoid powerhungry despot family for rulers. It's happened in most countries at sometime in their history. NKorea is just a late bloomer.

Longmont Colorado...

[Anonymous Coward]

seems to have had HDD 'startups' since Hector was a pup. Maxtor is there, Seagate has/had a plant there, upptey-dump others as well. What is it about Longmont? Do the same people just hop from company to company, recycling their skills with each new startup, persevering as each one cycles through some form of bankruptcy and renewal?

Re:Longmont Colorado...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup to all your questions. It's a short skip down Diagonal Hwy to Boulder, the univ, lots of empty land, low rents because of overbuilding, shopping, mountains, skiing, u name it.

Cheap chain motels at I25, plus nice ones. There's a puddlejumper airport there, too, for the pilots.

Re:Longmont Colorado...

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically it boils down to a number of simple factors.

+ Colorado is a thriving tech mecca, and provides an interesting environment for active, intelligent, fun loving people.

+ Colorado is tech business friendly and actively promotes such endeavors.

+ Longmont is close enough to Boulder but free of the Mork-like wierdness of Boulder proper.

I could live and work anywhere in the world that I want to, but find that living in Colorado is where I choose to be. There are tons and tons of similar folks with the ability (and money) to do anything they want, and they choose to be here.

The synergy of this kind of crowd spawns things like lots of cross-polination and new inovation in various established and emerging tech fields.

Re:Longmont Colorado...

[tinrobot]

Many years ago, I used to work for a computer company headquarted in Boulder, so I was in that area a lot.

Back in the 80's, Longmont was the home of a company called Stoage Technolgies. They made drives for IBM mainframes and had a huge factory and employed lots of people. The mainframe business slowed, so many of these people broke out on their own in the early/mid 90's. Kinda the genisis of all the other drive companies there...

RTFA

[joe630]

The story says it is a 5GB drive on a 1.5" platter. Maybe posters should read the article.

Re:RTFA

[joe630]

"A reduction in components cuts costs. The 1.5-inch 5GB drive, which has been in volume manufacturing since mid-April, sells for $65 in quantities of 10,000. The company is aiming for $50, Magenis said. By contrast, existing standard 1-inch Microdrives from IBM sell for $219 at retail or more, while 1GB flash cards go for around $200."

Re:RTFA

[fussman]

I'm tired of being told to RTFA when I already have and there's still better products out there. The last post I made talked about such items.

Re:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I RTFA.

To quote the lead sentence - "The Longmont, Colo.-based start-up has developed a 1.5GB, 1-inch diameter hard drive for consumer-electronics devices that the company says will be cheaper, smaller and hold more data than some other mini-hard drives or flash-memory cards."

Later on in the FA, it calls it a 1.5" 5 GB drive.

Re:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

nevermind the posters, the fucking editors should read the article.

Re:RTFA

[robkill]

That's an error in the article. According to Cornice's website, It's a 1.5GB drive.

Re:RTFA

[Jucius Maximus]

"A reduction in components cuts costs. The 1.5-inch 5GB drive, which has been in volume manufacturing since mid-April, sells for $65 in quantities of 10,000."

The 'quantities of 10,000' price is not the retail price. I remember when the 3dfx VooDoo3 video cards were just coming to market and they were selling for $28 in quantities of 10,000 or more.

Re:RTFA

[UltimateZer0]

Idiot -- posters can't read. At least, none of the ones hanging on my walls can. . . or can they and they just don't tell me?

---

Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

1.5 GB drive or 1.5" 5 GB drive???

The article calls it both. If it's a 5 GB drive, I want one for my Nikon. If it's 1.5 GB, I think I'll wait a while. I already have a 1 GB microdrive.

Great reporting, Cnet!

Re:Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

both I think... a 1" 1.5 gb drive coming soon and a 1.5" 5 gb drive that is already in production.

What about memory?

[!Freeky2BGeeky]

With all the advances we've been seeing in CF, SD, memory stick, memory sizes, why would anyone go with a HD that takes more power to run and would degrade your battery life?

Just a thought

Re:What about memory?

[fussman]

With all the advances we've been seeing in CF, SD, memory stick, memory sizes, why would anyone go with a HD that takes more power to run and would degrade your battery life?

Because it's cool goddamnit!

Oh you knew this was coming, but RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Really. Price Currently these cost $65 with a target price of $50. Flash drives cost $200 or more. These drives also have less moving parts, and save space by removing un-needed stuff (Like drive rails; these drives are surface mounted).

Re:Oh you knew this was coming, but RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Fewer moving parts? Than flash? How do you make something with fewer than zero moving parts?

A typo

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Longmont, Colo.-based start-up has developed a 1.5GB, 1-inch diameter hard drive"

"At 1.5GB, the Cornice-based devices"

Surface Mount

[Rosonowski]

It says that the drive is missing rails and is surface mounted. Does this mean it is lacking in some sort of shell? If so, it would make the drives severely lacking in upgrade possibilities.

Re:Surface Mount

[confused one]

It's surface mount, i.e. fixed, i.e. non-removable (unless mounted in a compact flash sized shell). It's got a minimalistic shell to reduce price --that's the point; it can be installed in cheap cameras.

weren't these drives announced a while ago?

[fugu]

hm...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/15/1514 24 6&mode=nested&tid=137

IBM / Toshiba MicroDrive

[RichLooker]

MicroDrive exists in 1GB capacity; 4GB is released soon. What makes the Cornice drive better ?

Re:IBM / Toshiba MicroDrive

[joe630]

Becuase it's 5 gigs, physically smaller, and has less moving parts.

Please use this for an MP3 player

[CastrTroy]

This is the kind of technology that should be used for portable mp3 players. Nobody needs to carry 20 gigs of music around in their pocket. I don't even have that much music. I would seriously like to see this technology make a small mp3 solution with adequate storage cost effective for everyone. The only current things on the market seem to be the ultra expensive ala iPod, or inadequate storage capacity ala solid state memory players. This could be the solution i'm sure we're all looking for.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[fussman]

Nobody needs to carry 20 gigs of music around in their pocket. I don't even have that much music.

Well I do!
Long live P2P!

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[OrangeGoo]

My question concerning harddrives in portable MP3 players is do you have problems with skipping? RAM-based players have no moving parts, so they don't suffer skipping as a result of physical shock. Can you jog with a drive-based player?

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[PhoenixFlare]

"Nobody needs to carry 20 gigs of music around in their pocket. I don't even have that much music"

Speak for yourself. I have 26+ gigs of music on my system, along with plenty more CD's I haven't yet ripped.

When this technology can support massive storage like current drives, then it should be used in mp3 players. But not before, I think....10-20 gigs (as in the iPod) seems to be the lower limit, certainly not 1 or 5.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[dialectro]

Hey, I have around 60 GB of music, and thats just my cd's. If I were to import my LP collection, I'd be looking at around 150GB. Pls. make my iPod 60GB, not 1.5!!

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[Jad LaFields]

It's possible, it almost seems to depend on your jogging style. I have a friend who's gone running with his Archos 20 gig and never had a problem. But maybe he doesn't prance and frolic as much as I do...

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[baker_tony]

I have filled up my 20Gb Archos jukebox (had it for a year and a half now) and it is fantastic to have my entire music collection with me, don't have to muck around deciding what music I want to take with me today and download it once I know because I have it all!

I'm sure there are people that don't want to have all their music with them at all times, but it's pretty silly saying "Nobody needs to carry 20 gigs of music around in their pocket" when lots of people do for convenience. Added to that, you can use any spare space to store data you need to transfer from home to work, have on you just in case, etc.

Looking forward to having a few hundred Gb's in my cell phone, so I can carry all my movies around with me too... of course, nobody need to carry a few hundred Gb's around... ;-)

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[jub]

i don't have 20 gigs worth of CDs worth ripping, but i would sure use it for file storage, boot drive, portable home directory, storing DVDs, etc. You couldn't do that with your average cheap-ass mp3 player.

The beautiful thing about the ipod is that it can do all of those things because it's firewire and a hard drive. Sure, you might boot up from a usb drive, on a vacation day maybe, while you take a nap.

now if i could only afford one...

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[GregWebb]

No, some people have plenty. I've got well over 160 hours of legal CDs (and not the largest CD collection I know, either) and so we're talking well into multiple gigabytes at different bitrates. The big players mean that I can listen to it all at work without dragging round piles of media.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[recursiv]

Please. I easily have more than 15 GB of legal MP3s, most of which are on my 20GB Archos. For someone who is serious about music, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a market for >100GB MP3 players.

And I do listen to all my music. I have diverse tastes, and it might be a while before I listen to one particular song again, but I do eventually listen to all the music.

Granted my music consuming habits are probably not representative of the general public, but then I think most people use MP3 players for listening to the current MTV and radio rotation playlist they downloaded off P2P, which would indeed amount to less than 1GB.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[Arslan ibn Da'ud]

Amen, brother! I have about 20GB of music and that's only half of my CD collection. But I'd still pay $100 for a 1GB MP3 player rather than $400 for a 20GB iPod!

No doubt being able to store your entire music collection on a portable HD is convenient, but so is not paying an arm and a leg for it!

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[cens0r]

I don't have quite that many mp3's. Probably 5 or 6 gig. I don't have all my cd's and gf's cd's ripped either yet. However, I don't feel the need to have them all available on my mp3 player. I'm perfectly happy with 192mb on my nomad. It's small, light, and doesn't skip; and it can easily hold 3 or 4 albums. That's plenty to get me to work and back. I've just never seen the need to have my whole collection at my fingertips all the time.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[drinkypoo]

I have 120 CDs of (legally purchased) CDDA which at 320kbps mp3 encoding (which is the bitrate at which I rip all my mp3s) will only barely fit inside of 20GB if at all. (Seems to be about 6:1, I haven't done any high-tech studies.)

20GB of mp3s is a pittance. A tiny scratch on the average mp3 collection of someone with broadband internet access and a lot of time on their hands and a CD burner.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[R.Caley]

This is the kind of technology that should be used for portable mp3 players.

If you want an MP3 player you have to replace if you drop it or if the pocket it is in gets banged against a wall or...

Flash mm cards are now cheap enough for me to be able to carry half a dozen 64mb cards with me, each holding about an album. That's enough for me. The extra space doesn't seem worth going to something mechanical.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[el-spectre]

Hell, I have that much and I own all the CDs... 'course I rip at 320 kb as well...

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[Anonymous Coward]

"needs to carry 20 gigs of music around in their pocket"

You must not travel. Try spending three weeks at some customer's site in Iowa and you will thank god for your 30GB Ipod.

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[Anonymous Coward]

I've ripped more than 20 GB from CDs I own, at 128 kbit. 500 CDs, 50 MB each. Is that unusual?

Re:Please use this for an MP3 player

[damiam]

The iPod, at least, has a 32MB RAM buffer, so the hard disk spends very little time actually spinning.

Gigs ang gigs..

[grub]

Serious question: Why don't they go back to 5.25" full height drives with many platters for archival purposes? The speed would likely suck as the heads would need to move a lot from inner to outer edges but the capacity could be huge..

Re:Gigs ang gigs..

[MarcQuadra]

Remember the BigFoot series of hard drive? They were 5.25" drives by Quantum (now Maxtor) for desktop use. The problem is that when you make the disc wider, you have to slow down the rotation to keep the platters from breaking or 'stretching'. You'd have to run the things at 5400 RPM _AND_ a 'front to back' head seek would take forever. These would be GREAT as backup-only drives, but companies that buy backupd drives now are willing to pay $BIG_MONEY for backup drives (the bank I work at uses 36GB 10K U160-SCSI for server archives). There's really no market for cheap slow drives that hold oodles of data, they exist and don't sell well. Also, they'd end up in low-end PCs for sure, your uncle's eMachine would CRAWL with one of these.

Re:Gigs ang gigs..

[confused one]

one of the reasons they've moved to the smaller platters is to improve performance. They belong to the days when IDE or SCSI transfer rates were on the order of 10MB/s

Re:Gigs ang gigs..

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely newer materials could withstand higher rotational speeds without breaking or stretching? As for seek times; why not use two sets of arms? One for the inner tracks and one for the outer.

Re:Gigs ang gigs..

[zakezuke]

Quantium actually took this approach I believe with their bigfoot series of drives (aka the slowfoot). Though it wasn't a full hight 5.25 inch drive... but it was an early on the market 8gig drive roughly 1/3 hight. Not too speddy, but pretty reliable and can take much in the way of impact and still fuction.

I know compaq used that in one of their computers. I can't remember the designation but it was an odd duck, black short desktop with speakers designed for multi-media on board amp but slow cpu and only 1 8 bit isa slot, and even that wasn't standard hight.

But yea... for mp3s and movies in a varity of formatats, i'd seriously consider a 5.25 inch full hight if it got me above and beyond 80gigs cheeply.

Re:Gigs ang gigs..

[Jucius Maximus]

"Serious question: Why don't they go back to 5.25" full height drives with many platters for archival purposes? The speed would likely suck as the heads would need to move a lot from inner to outer edges but the capacity could be huge.."

It might work. My idea is that you would would have a big brick like this 5.25" HDD in your backpack holding 120 GB or whatnot and then as your camera snaps pictures, they get sent to that drive by bluetooth. This way you can have a tiny and light camera with still a lot of storage. The camera could still have a CF slot to keep a small number of photos onboard, but would automatically offload to the HDD when in range.

Re:Gigs ang gigs..

[MarcQuadra]

OK. So to make 'less expensive' larger-footprint storage drives we have to fab custom platters (the standard size platters are _pennies_ apiece), and to make performance acceptable we have to put two expensive head assemblies in, and custom-produce a DSP to handle the new 'two heads' internal geometry. Also, you need a stronger motor to spin up these big platters.

I think it would end up costing more than a standard form-factor drive.

This is why almost everything is mass-produced these days, it's just CHEAPER to go with the flow.

Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[robkill]

These drives aren't meant to be removed from the device they are installed in, so data transfer is limited to firewire. I'd prefer a MicroDrive. It can be removed and used as a removable drive by any device with a Compact Flash reader. Much more useful, and supposedly a 4GB version is available later this year. This item will be used only in low end products where price outweighs features. Any device I can think of that can store that much data, eventually you'd want to be able to transfer it somewhere else.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[altman]

Erm, no.

USB2.0 or Firewire both have plenty enough bandwidth to saturate the drive. Cornice drives manage well excess of 3MBytes/sec in my experience (I work for Rio), which is faster than I've ever seen from my 1GB microdrive plugged into a PCMCIA-CF adaptor.

Remember USB2.0/Firewire can support up to in excess of 30MBytes/sec. This is faster than a CF interface can manage - CF doesn't have DMA capability.

Hugo

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[confused one]

They're probably targeting cheap cameras. My pencam is an example -- it's really cheap ($30) and takes crappy pictures (300kpixel cmos) and only holds some 26 images in memory (before I'm forced to download); but, it's good enough to use for quick photos to through up on a web-site.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[Stigmata669]

> These drives aren't meant to be removed from the device they are installed in, so data transfer is limited to firewire.

Since when is firewire really limiting? Sure it's not as fast as SATA but it's more than fast enough to transfer files or even copy DV video at a rate greater than 1x.

> It can be removed and used as a removable drive by any device with a Compact Flash reader.

Compact Flash is a lot slower than firewire if i'm not mistaken... I could look it up, but I'd just stick with my general experience and the fact that half of the CF readers i've used were USB... so I really don't understand your point.

I have an iPod and use it for file transfer/storage as well as for music. Even copying a full 5gb to hd only takes 15 minutes.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[Rolo Tomasi]

CompactFlash is basically ATA with a small connector, so you're mistaken.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[robkill]

Compact Flash is a lot slower than firewire if i'm not mistaken... I could look it up, but I'd just stick with my general experience and the fact that half of the CF readers i've used were USB... so I really don't understand your point.

The CF reader I use most is a PCMCIA reader in my laptop. True, most CF readers are USB, so those are a wash as far as speed. Most of my use of CF has been a digital camera, and I much prefer accessing the individual files directly rather than rely on the camera's USB transfer utility. It's as much a matter of convenience and versatility as it is raw speed.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[robkill]

Cool, I stand corrected on throughput. I still prefer the convenience of being able to remove the drive and use it on another machine, or being able to upgrade capacity at a later date.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[2nd Post!]

It's a design tradeoff.

Embedding a hard drive means you can make certain design decisions: Smaller packaging, less connectors, less silicon, certain shapes and configurations, and manufacturing decisions.

The issue is also utility... The idea that Moore's law might make the object in question obsolete by the time you get around to upgrading the capcity, or that if not obsolete, upgrading the capcity makes less sense than getting a new device with new features and new capabilities.

We aren't talking general purpose computing, we're talking fixed MP digicameras, with fixed recording modes and features.

Of course, with good software, the features aren't fixed; look at the iPod, which has gained, over it's lifetime, the ability to synch calendars, notes, gained an equalizer, sound normalization, and a remote control.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[srussell]

The CF2 spec rates the interface up to 16MB/s, which is half of the USB2/Firewire spec, but is much faster than the 3MB/s that you report for the Cornice drives. CNet reports transfer rates of 13.3Mbps for IBM's 1GB MicroDrive, which is about 1.5MB/s -- about half that of the Cornice drives. So, it looks as if the CF interface won't be a bottleneck for the drives, for a while, at least.

I'd say that the fact that the Cornice drives don't use a standard interface is a serious limitation, since it doesn't gain them anything in speed and keeps the drives from being used in a huge array of CF-capable devices. 3GB MicroDrives are available, so the density of the Cornice drives isn't anything special. The drives themselves are about twice as fast as the current crop of microdrives, but the real selling point of the Cornice drives appears to be the price point.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[afidel]

Yes, but at $50 target price for 1.5GB they beat every other form of small storage by several times when you consider price, storage, and space.

Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck

[jimwelch]

They are an OEM site. One of their Customers does make a removable drive with it: Digitalway PR stuff:

The MPIO HS100 storage device, which measures 43.6(W) x 84.5(H) x 14.8(D) mm, will available in retail stores in early summer. The MPIO HS100, combined with the Cornice SE, enables consumers to carry a small and portable device in hand that is able to store up to 1,000 floppy disks worth of information. ... The device comes with an installation CD, a USB extension cable, a carrying case, a necklace strap, user guide and a warranty card.

Or for Audio look at RCA:

Thomson expects to ship the RCA LYRA Micro Jukebox (RD2760), containing the 1.5-gigabyte Cornice SE, to retail stores in summer 2003 with a suggested retail price of $249.

Re:Yikes! Spell check on isle four...

[Timesprout]

OMG am I in another dimension?? You actually read the article and are apologising for spelling errors. This cant be the Slashdot I know.... my god its true it is a multiverse.

how big?

[RobertTaylor]

"Smaller than a pack of cigarettes"

That those big giant cigarettes packets like these?

What? I'm confused.

[fignuts]

The Longmont, Colo.-based start-up has developed a 1.5GB, 1-inch diameter hard drive... The 1.5-inch 5GB drive, which has been in volume manufacturing since mid-April... At 1.5GB, the Cornice-based devices... So which is it? Make up your minds. Really though, their PR people sound like idiots. "Even the iPod is bulkier than the flash players." Amazing... "From an audio perspective, it could kind of help spur the market. (Consumer-electronics makers) will be offering a hard-drive player at a lower price than an iPod." Whoa...

Re:restaurant menu item?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that be the Ped Xing?

If I could moderate this post down -1 Offtopic myself, I would.

Re:IBM / Toshiba MicroDrive - RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Price: 200 some dollars versus 65 (soon to be 50)

Re:how big? - MOD PARENT FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

you friggin ignorant moderators. Did you read the fucking post??!? It's actually funny for once.

They started planning early......

[Ride-My-Rocket]

Check out this article for a quick lowdown. Several areas seem to have taken this approach -- Englewood, CO, has a thriving tech center, as well.

News?

[Groote Ka]

I thought I've read this before a few days ago... here.

Well, nevermind. Funny to see that about seven to eigth years ago, everyone thought that HDDs had come to an end and that storage capacity per square centimeters is increasing even faster than Moore's Law.

Probably, HDDs will win over Flash as new IC processing technologies are getting exponentially expensive and HDD more and more power concious.

I should have studied magnetics instead of IC processing.

Re:News?

[KingRamsis]

I should have studied magnetics instead of IC processing.

dont worry you will have your day, there are alarming indications that the magnetic media is coming to an end as a concept, for one IBM sold its hard disk unit bet you that they have something big coming, and things like this (read the last paragraph).

personally I think that in the future you will buy a daily snapshot of the internet stored on a 1"x1"x1" cube instead of surfing, and you will only need a connection only for email and live events.

Re:News?

[nounderscores]

Cool. Internet via Fed Ex. Sure beats downloading the daily snapshot over dialup.

In the news
iD sofware fails to release doom3 playable demo before today's internetsnapshot goes gold. Stocks plummet and flaming monkeys burst from slashdotters butts at the news.

A video camera seems like an odd fit.

[ianscot]

I like the price and the size, but a camcorder seems like a weird place to use this -- unless it was just cheap enough to say "what the heck?" and go ahead, which'd be a really good sign for this drive.

A disk with 1.5 GB doesn't compete with DV tapes at all, so it can't be for the video. This is just replacing a flash card in that "cigarette pack"-sized camera to store stills you take along the way? Is this camcorder going to take stills much above 1.5MP? That's what the decent consumer camcorders that take stills are at -- and this one's a $600 camcorder, so it can't be that great. It'd take a looong while to fill 1.5 GB at that resolution.

Re:A video camera seems like an odd fit.

[davebarz]

I work at Circuit City and I just sold a lady a higher end Sony 1MP MiniDV camcorder today for $799. The memory stick that was included was 8 MB, so this would be a bit of a step up. Still, if you're buying something for stills, you don't want a 1 MP camera.

So, yeah, with 14fps and 1MP each, you're looking at about 3 minutes and 15 seconds of record time, if I didn't drop a zero somewhere. Not too great, is it?

Re:A video camera seems like an odd fit.

[leuk_he]

A sony DV camcorder generates 13 GB for 1 DV (~60 minutes) tape. It also has a "LP" (long play?) mode that fits 90 minutes in that same space. If they would use the same compression (DV) 1.5 GB would result in an impressive 11 minutes of DV quality video. (DV quality video is what you get for tape based 700 DV camcorders)

Better laptops

[mnmn]

Smaller drives should cut energy uptake. With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.

Even PDAs will benefit, since some people that are now using microdrives with PCMCIA cards see the battery go down in 2 hours or less.

I would buy a video camera that can save to removeable drives like these after a DivX or XVid encoding, even at a higher pricetag.

Re:Better laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.

You could, but unfortunately no one's going to make one. OEMs will just say "Oh, so now we can put X times as much storage in the laptop while keeping battery life the same. Cool!" Super-long battery life takes a back seat to features and specs. If it's a choice between a bigger disk/faster processor and more battery life, comapnies choose the former every time.

Re:Better laptops

[horza]

Smaller drives should cut energy uptake. With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.

It would be a good complement to the main hard drive. You could put the OS (along with /swap and cache dirs) on the small hard drive, and let the main drive spin down for 99% of the time.

Phillip.

Re:Better laptops

[mnmn]

Laptop for sale:
Transmeta 800MHz, 256MB SDRAM, 1.5GB Hdd, Debian Linux, CD/DVD player, ATI 3d card, 12hour battery life. $750.

I can see such a product coming soon and taking the markets like a storm. Give or take the Transmeta speed or the OS, such a system is currently in demand by people who have been putting off buying a laptop till now, or the people who have a Pentium2 or less now.

One of these companies one of these days will roll out something like this, others will see success and follow suit. Thats my thinking anyway

Re:Better laptops

[mnmn]

Subsequent versions could go up to 4GB or even 8. None of my Linux installations along with DB2, oracle, websphere, KDE3, unreal tournament and quake2 etc have taken over 4GBs. A one-drive laptop could still sell.

And then, they could plop in 4 of these SCSI drives in one laptop. The price will go up but only one drive at a time would be used, still a saving.

Re:Better laptops

[Kintanon]

Damnit! I read the top part and started looking for your auction link to go bid!
Don't DO that!

Kintanon

Re:Better laptops

[tf23]

Add USB2, a firewire port, and give the graphics enough ram to drive my 21" monitor at a high res and decent rate and I've love it.

the size of a wrist watch!!!!

[the_2nd_coming]

wow!.....I like the iPod and all but who the hell can fill up 30 GB of space? I can't even fill up 2GB with music I like.....I hope those wrist watches can interface with iTunes.

Re:the size of a wrist watch!!!!

[PhoenixFlare]

As I posted to someone above....Speak for yourself. I personally have 26GB of music, and just as much again with stuff like games, apps, DVD rips, etc.

Space is easy to fill. Why do you think 200GB+ drives are coming into use these days?

At any rate, assuming an average size of 3 megs or so per MP3, one 10-15 song CD takes up around 30-40 megs. So, 50-70 CD's would fill 2 gigs, more or less.

Are you really that picky about your music, or have you just not been buying/burning CD's for very long? Heck, even my middle-aged parents have at least 100 or 200 music discs.

Re:the size of a wrist watch!!!!

[the_2nd_coming]

I dunno if I am realy picky, but I have not been wasting my money on music for the last 5 years...I have a little over 100 CDs...but when I rip a song, I rip a song I like.

so I assume since you have 26GB of music allone you have 1300 CDs? or are you a member at E-music and just DL everyting under the sun since it is unlimited?

Re:the size of a wrist watch!!!!

[PhoenixFlare]

I don't physically have that many CD's, no...I have admittedly downloaded a lot of my collection(i'm a game/anime music freak), but the end result is the same. I'm a packrat who thinks not needing to choose what to take with me would be wonderful :):P

Flame me for that if you want, but i'm fairly comfortable with the idea, since I could rip a lot of it from the original games/DVDs with a little effort, or just listen to it while watching.

2nd lesson: use compact flash/microdrive format

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they're replaceable, upgradable, usable in my digital camera and my NEX II.

I hope they don't come up with yet another format, like that Olympus xD card, ick.

$65 for qty. =10k

[echucker]

That's all fine and dandy, but what about those of us who want... oh I dunno, 9998 or 9999 less? I think a helluva a lot of ppl will want to know how much it'll cost at the retail level.

Re:$65 for qty. =10k

[jratcliffe]

As the article notes, it won't be sold at the retail level. The drive is specifically designed to be a component designed into a board, and not replacable. I suppose if you want to do your own soldering and surface mount, you could use just one, but that's not much of a market.

Well...

[Kjella]

The gb/volume ratio wouldn't be much better

You'd need to create 5 1/4" platters for a *very* small market.

You can change a failed disk in an array much easier than a failed platter inside a hermetically sealed HDD.

Size = IDE (RAID)
Speed = SCSI (RAID)
Really fucking huge? Not sure. Big array? Tape robot? Fibre SCSI?

However, considering you can fit 1TB (4x250gb WD drives) in a desktop now, I don't see that many needing it...

Kjella

Re:Well...

[wooger]

Well,

Don't forget SATA

or even SATA-II sometime soon, which could be pretty much as fast as SCSI

Whatever happened to

[Cat_Byte]

those "crystal" drives I read about in Scientific American so long ago? It used 3D storage & could hold something like 6G in a single crystal if I remember correctly. Anyone ever hear anything else about those other than they made one & it was a prototype? I'm guessing maybe it's patented & being sat on?

Re:Whatever happened to

[confused one]

They required a lab full of optics and lasers to work. Since that won't fit (yet) into a beige box, you're not likely to see them.

Give it a few years (yeah, yeah, I know you've already been waiting) You're more likely to see these as the transition to optical computing takes place in , well, a couple of decades.

Re:Whatever happened to

[netmask]

Yah.. These were designed by scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center.

"Scientists in the lab discovered a way to manipulate the crystal's structure with lasers and store data three-dimensionally in holograms within the crystal's volume. The greatest benefit of holographic storage is that huge amounts of data locked in the crystal matrix can be accessed instantaneously. The iron-doped lithium niobate crystals are grayish in color and the size of Las Vegas dice. Although still in the experimental stage, they may one day replace hard drive platters as a storage medium."

also:

"The only rewritable material that could replace a hard drive is single-crystal lithium niobate, and writing to it requires an argon-ion laser that's about 4 feet long and weighs 10 pounds. But the real reason Kryder has doubts about holographic storage is because regular old hard-drive technology may make it unnecessary. Using new materials and magnetizing methods, he believes that a one-terabyte (1000GB) notebook hard drive could be a reality in five to six years."

(both quotes from pcworld.com articles)

Take a look at some of the pictures of the prototypes and much more technical information HERE

Flash

[Znonymous Coward]

Will there ever be a NVRAM camcorder? Flash is getting cheaper every day. And camcorders are ususlly subject to vibrations and shock. Seems like a HDD would lead to problems.

Re:Flash

[confused one]

Flash has run into a physical roadblock wrt chip fabrication capabilities. Although it gets cheaper to make with time, it's not likely to get much smaller (I know we've all heard this before; but, sometimes physics takes precedance; and, in this case, it's winning)

Were you born daft, or just dropped?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are not consumer hard drives that you can fit in your beige box. They are specialised miniture drives that are designed to be surface mounted in embedded systems. Unless you have a pressing need to build one or two small devices and you have a reflow oven lying about, you don't want nor need these drives.

If you really do need these drives (Say, for prototyping) I'm sure they can supply or point you in the direction of a wholesaler who can supply in smaller units, but you'll end up paying more than $65 a peice.

Compaired to an iPod this is... what?

[Velocity44]

Wait, has anyone seen the new Ipods? They're LESS than an inch thick, and can store up to 30 GB on them! What's the big hurrah about these things??

Re:Compaired to an iPod this is... what?

[ceejayoz]

They're not less than an inch tall and wide, though.

Think postage stamp sized.

Re:Compaired to an iPod this is... what?

[Taldo]

Wait, has anyone seen the new Ipods? They're LESS than an inch thick, and can store up to 30 GB on them! What's the big hurrah about these things??

The big hurrah is that they're less than a quarter the size, (the overall SIZE is 1.5".... not the thickness) and are less than a c-note each... and Samsung is putting one in a video camera.

Now I guess Apple users will have yet another device to denigrate because it does video and the iPaq doesn't.... :)

Yay! Super-tiny camcorder!

[malus]

That's great news for the hidden camera 'voyeur' pr0n fetish.

I can fit 6 in the bathroom, and she'll never even notice.

Re:Yay! Super-tiny camcorder!

[mr_luc]

The place I work got busted into last night. We could have used such an array of cameras . . .

The thieves took only one laptop, and a few defective USB cables. The laptop was old. There were 2 $5000+ cisco routers in the same room, sitting unplugged . . . but they took the laptop. Hardly seems worth the risk of a 5-year ass-pounding.

And, (to tie this into the topic), if they would have had a microdrive they could have easily downloaded the code for our web apps, which would (not that our competition is unscrupulous, but let's be honest) in all probability fetch an excellent price.

Silly criminals -- smash-and-grab is for kids!

Re:Yay! Super-tiny camcorder!

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think those weren't kids ? :) Anyways, most criminals aren't too terribly bright anyway.

ipod anyone?

[beattie]

Isn't the iPod the same size (or smaller) and has 30 GB capacity?

Re:ipod anyone?

[homer_ca]

The ipod uses a 1.8in PCMCIA size hard drive which is IMHO the best balance today between size and capacity. If this new drive has good enough shock resistance and durability, I could see it competing with flash MP3 players, but it can't compete with the "carry your whole music collection" convenience of the ipod and other HD MP3 players.

Obligatory Linux Comment...

[OmniGeek]

Gee, can we boot Linux on it?

But Seriously, Folks, this kind of storage addresses one of the major problems with memory stick-based still cameras: too much $, too few pictures. Say that a camera with this disk only stores 100 or so 10 MByte pictures and then needs a few minutes to D/L them to a bigger box via USB; that STILL compares well with film cameras (36-exposure rolls), and is MUCH more convenient than a CD-R on the back of the camera (seen'em, not impressed, they're bulkier than my SLR and have no interchangeable lenses). And it's inexpensive. Nice engineering job, great toy!

Re:Obligatory Linux Comment...

[Doppler00]

I don't think the average consumer wants to be able to take 10MByte pictures. Most people I know with digital cameras don't really understand resolution very well anyway. For most people, 128MB flash memory is probably sufficient for a 3Megapixel camera storing JPeg images. Remember, most people want to be able to e-mail a picture in reasonable time over a dial up modem.

Where these HD's will really be interesting would be in palm pilots, camcorders, and MP3 players.

Re:Obligatory Linux Comment...

[Erris]

Gee, can we boot Linux on it?

It's big enough, but they embedded it according to comments above. You might do better looking for an old 1G IBM CF microdrive.

The news is that they are selling them on their own for under $65. Sure, you can run Linux off of that! I'm hoping to see reasonably priced CF microdrives soon. CF fits my camera, zaurus and laptop and is the next best thing to networking them.

Re:Obligatory Linux Comment...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once any troubles occur, you lose GB important data in a blink of an eye...

Oh my Buddha!

Re:restaurant menu item?

[anonymous cowfart]

Woof woof!

More info on the camera...

[blackketter]

Does anybody have a reference to the camera mentioned? I neeeeeed that...

Jogging

[spreer]

If you check out their brochure you'll note that they say "jog profile: constant motion," in other words it should continue to work even with constant motion. It was designed with this sort of application in mind, I'm sure.

--spreer

Coincidentally

[Jonsey]

Samsung is releasing a sub 600 buck video camera that is "Smaller than a pack of cigarettes"

Smaller, and cheaper too!

Grammar check on island four!

[SuperKendall]

Time to go back to bed.

Out now

[SuperKendall]

My co-worker is looking at cameras now, and is deciding between 4 and 5 MP today.

My real point was that these cameras are all non-upgradable. The only other kind of cameras like that are disposable cameras (actually, this is awesome for the disposable digital cameras). I'm just not sure people want a camera that you can't add "film" to...

Then again, perhaps convenience of the whole thing will win people over.

Re:Out now

[thoromyr]

And the point is again that the pixel resolution isn't upgradeable either. Its really a non-issue. If you have a 5MP camera with 1.5GB of storage then that is 100 images stored as 24 bit, no compression. That doesn't seem that small, the equivalent of a few rolls of film. But wait, assuming the camera supports jpg compression it is more likely in the neighborhood of 1,000 images.

If you need more than 100 lossless images per go then look for a different solution (or have a laptop or equivalent you can download to).

Your complaint would have more merit if it weren't currently being used (as is alleged).

thoromyr

Re:Out now

[srussell]

I've had a 6MP camera for over a month.

Re:Out now

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Kodak has a very nice 14 Megapixel Camera.

Re:Out now

[srussell]

I read a review of this in which the reviewer wasn't impressed with the camera. He had the feeling that, while the technology is going in the right direction, Kodak rushed the job; the camera is big, heavy, lacking features, and the photos aren't as good as you'd expect them to be.

Despite this, I was tempted by that Kodak, until I saw the price. It is definitely in the pro price range.

Drive Failures?

[HaloZero]

Energy savings
Density also will increase, Magenis said. Along with stripping out parts, the company has worked on engineering issues such as keeping energy consumption down. The RCA device will be able to run 12 hours on a single battery charge because the drive's motor shuts down between tasks, Magenis said. Shock-absorbing materials in the drive case will allow devices to sustain the shock from a 1-meter drop, he added.

Won't that be a bit taxing on the motor itself?

Show me the Money

[mothrathegreat]

I pissed off with hearing about all these 'wonderful' storage devices that are going to save us all so much money and time. WHEN THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO SEE SOME RESULTS!
I saw stories about similar storage over 3 years ago and still nothing yet.
From now on ill only be excited about something when I can slap it in my PC and it will offer big, fast storage at low price.
Humpf!

If it helps any

[SuperKendall]

At least I don't have a beard...

1.5GB video camera! Wow!

[tomdarch]

Gosh, in MiniDV format, that's 4.5 minutes of video+audio per GB, so this camera would hold, uh, complicated calculation, wait for it, um, WOW! 6.75 whole minutes of footage! Incredible! (Maybe they could gang 10 of these drives into one unit to equal one standard MiniDV tape)

Oh, but wait, there are idiots plan to use MPEG type compression in-camera because they plan to never edit their footage. I know how we all love to sit through hours of unedited tape! Thrilling!

ARCHOS does it all and more

[Atreide]

Already exists since the 1st of june 2003 when ARCHOS offcialy launched the new AV300 series :

mp3, divx, photos, camera, video shoot & playback, tv recorder & playback, radio, speech/radio/mp3 recorder (some need modules), 3.8 inches screen, USB2/Firewire for a "few" 800 buck.

oh... forgot, it's 20Gb and 40Go in a few months.

Not yet in stores however or already in shortage ? ;)

Re:ARCHOS does it all and more

[Zeinfeld]

Already exists since the 1st of june 2003 when ARCHOS offcialy launched the new AV300 series :

Yeah and it weighs a ton. You would not want to have an archos device built into a set of noise cancelling headphones. This drive should be lightweight enough to do that. 20Gb or 40Gb is not that big a deal, I find the critical size threshold is about 1Gb, thats the point at which I can get a decent selection of CDs on the device, enough for a plane trip. It is nice to be able to hold a complete collection of CDs, but I will happily trade that for a major saving in weight.

Hey manufacturers are you listening? Stick an MP3 player with a card slot in a pair of noise cancelling headphones, repeat C-A-R-D S-L-O-T, N-O-I-S-E C-A-N-C-E-L-L-I-N-G H-E-A-D-P-H-O-N--S

The bit I don't quite get is that the article implies that this is for embedding on a motherboard rather than for sale in a compactflash format. And the price advantage looks like it disappears when you get it in a removable format - $200 for a 1.5 Gb drive is not exactly an amazing advance. FlashRom is about the same price. I can get a 256Mb CompactFlash from Costco for $60.

The microdrive takes more power than flash rom is less mechanically robust and is available in more compact formats (like SD format). This does not sound like it will be much cheaper, so what is there to be excited about? [My statement on power is based on conversations with owners of Nikon D1 cameras who tell me that the microdrive tends to flatten the battery quicker than flash rom]

About the only area where this might be a big win is handheld PDAs, but even there the gap to compact flash may not be enough to be interesting.

Re:ARCHOS does it all and more

[Steveftoth]

You may be able to get a 256Meg Compact flash from costco, but in order to get 1.5 gigs of memory, you would have to stick 6 of them together and also have 6 compact flash interfaces.

So most likley it would be more expensive and be larger.

Re:ARCHOS does it all and more

[Toraz Chryx]

I have a Nikon Coolpix 4500 with a 1GB Microdrive in it, and I've had >300 shots from a single battery before now. (full capacity for a 1GB MD is ~580 shots)
No idea how that would compare to a 1GB flash card, but I figure you might have use for the information.

Re:ARCHOS does it all and more

[Zeinfeld]

You may be able to get a 256Meg Compact flash from costco, but in order to get 1.5 gigs of memory, you would have to stick 6 of them together and also have 6 compact flash interfaces.

Or wait a short while until the larger cards get cheaper. 1Gb cards already exist and it is probable that they will be the same price as the 256Mb cards are today in a short while, particularly if the new drive is significant competition.

For a technology like this to have a significant impact it has to be radically better than the alternative. I don't see how having to swap out a CF card is a major issue for many applications. I don't see the capacity of this drive being close to a significant breakthrough mark. It is still too small to be relevant for video, it is not even large enough to store a whole CD collection, so there will be switching required.

The impact of the article comes from comparing the wholesale price of the new drive with the retail price of the existing drives. Guess what, that is not a very useful measure! I doubt that the chips inside of a 1Gb flash rom card cost more than $64 in quantities of 10K or more.

The New Samsung Camcorder

[nherc]

The ITCAM-7 is pretty slick actual... tiny, cheap and it uses MPEG4 (there's a pic of it here as well).

Some specs:

• Camcorder: MPEG4, 1.5 or 3 Mbps, VGA (640x480)
• Digital camera (JPEG, 640x480)
• MP3 player
• Audio recorder
• Data storage
• Webcam
• Lens: Optical 10x zoom
• CCD: 350K pixels
• LCD: 2.0" LCD, 211K pixels
• Storage: 1.5 GB HDD, Memory stick
• Recording time: 66min in "Super Fine" mode
• Interface: USB 2.0
• Size: 64mm x 33.5mm x 103mm (about the size of a thick calculator)
• Weight: 185g

Ah, but the real question is...

[SuperKendall]

Would you feel comfortable taking a camera with a fixed amount of storage on vacation, even if it was rather large?

It is true that storing JPG's will get you pretty far (I always tend to think in terms of raw or tiff files). Perhaps the market will accept a camera without need for "film", though I would worry about reliability with the HD (I don't buy microdrive CF cards either for the same reason).

Re:Ah, but the real question is...

[c_jonescc]

I also own the 4500, and I also use two 128MB cards (although I get about 105 pictures per card at the best jpeg format).

While the cards are quite large, and I would consider using fixed storage at around the 1GB mark (that's A LOT of pictures and when I travel, I edit out the crap every night, so I only keep what's good. 200 pictures gets me about 3 weeks to a month of continous vacation somewhere exotic), but here is the problem I see:

When I get a card with 100 pictures on it of places I'll likely never be again, I get a little worried. I start to keep it protected with my passport in hotels. I have plans so that if I get mugged and they want the camera I can inconspicuously slip out the card.

The camera can be replaced, but frequently the pictures cannot; I wouldn't want a camera with several thousand pictures saved up on it I guess. I'd rather swap cards.

smalle! cheaper! better ?

[noselasd]

Lots of fuzz about cheap'n'small drives. Ok, how good are they ?
Are they reliable ? For years ?
I'd rather have a big 20Gb@$200 disk that lasts for atleast 7 years,
than a small cheap 200Gb$50 that might do down the drain in half a year.

--
http://osxonintel.xoverzero.com - sign the petition!

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

36GB 10K U160-SCSI for server archives

Thats just silly for archives especially as 10k drives have a *much* lower MTBF than slower SCSI drives. Someone needs to do more research before they pay such premiums.

2.54cm drives...

[illumina us]

So, this seems to be the new trend. Just like with cellphones. They keep making the things smaller and smaller so they are easier to lose and you have to buy new ones. I'd like to see this size of drive in my tower (physically of course), though I would want it to hold roughly 20 GB.

Ooh, imagine a raid cluster of a couple of those!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now where did I put that pocket 19" rack--

s/9//

[Anonymous Coward]

So, sue me

YOU FAIL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU FAIL IT

In Reply to most of the replies

[CastrTroy]

Yes, so everybody has terabytes worth of music at home. But the point being, that you do not really need to take this music with you. I don't see everyone with a discman carrying around 100 cd's. If you're going for a jog, you'd only need maybe 1 hour worth of music. Hell, with a gig or so worth of mp3's you could easily complete an ironman triathlon without hearing the same song twice.

For at home, I can understand having 40 gigs worth of mp3's, but for on the go, it's hardly necessary.

Fortunately Hitachi's beat them with a 4GB disk

[stienman]

Hitachi announced a 4GB Microdrive (one inch) earlier this year.

The differences between these two products:

• Hitachi is more expensive, more parts, requires more power
• Cornice is more 'dumb', less capacity, smaller (mounted to PCB) and non-removable

So they each have their advantages. I don't know if I could be satisfied with being unable to 'change tapes' in my camcorder - it probably takes on the order of minutes to transfer from the camera to a computer or other storage device, and I doubt the drive has enough throughput and a low enough seek time to allow both high speed recording and high speed reading which would allow me to offload portions of the data while still recording.

But not owning a camcorder I don't know what the usage patterns typically are. I imagine that most days it's used it isn't used for more than an hour throughout the whole day. At this point the MPEG4 encoder may require more power then the HD, which means that a very small li-ion polymer battery will last through the entire drive.

-Adam

Re:Fortunately Hitachi's beat them with a 4GB disk

[zwoelfk]

But not owning a camcorder I don't know what the usage patterns typically are. I imagine that most days it's used it isn't used for more than an hour throughout the whole day.
Ah... I see you've never been suckered into taping your friends Catholic wedding.

Wrong data

[gcantallopsr]

They're talking about a 1.5", 5GB drive (not 1", 1.5GB) for $65.

Who can fill an IPOD?

[SkimpySkeptic]

I can of course, but then, my machines are frequently referred to as the whores of the internet. Downloading anything and everything simply because A) they can B) broadband C) mass storage D) I'm a member of downloaders anonymous I myself have approximately......72 gigs of music. Honestly? I don't think I've ever heard the same song twice. Back on topic.... This would make for the perfect "Instant on" computer. Depending on the speed of the media of course. But just imagine if the computer was held in a constant state of hibernation, and this being non-volatile storage, power could be off, boot it back up, and voila, just like a pocket pc, your OS is contained on the mini-hd, and all programs, changes, etc are contained on the much larger hard drive. Something goes wrong, flip a switch, back to normal, with a brand new install. Imagine a.... Oh nevermind.

Yes, but...

[SuperKendall]

I'm talking the middle ground cameras that most people are looking at when buying a digital camera. Not 6mp (though they are getting down to consumer level) or a 1Ds or anything like that. More around $300 - $500 cameras.

Re:Yes, but...

[srussell]

Ah. Well, I think I spent more than many would, but not as much as some. The price was less than double the price of my last two cameras, so I don't consider that extreme. Maybe a bit excessive, although the 10D is worth much more than I paid for it, so I'm not complaining. ;-)

In any case, I'm not the only person buying these 10Ds. They're consistently back-ordered for 4-8 weeks, and you can't find them on store shelves. But I agree with your sentiment; my mom isn't going to be buying one of these any time soon.

only evolutionary not revolutionary

[u19925]

we have had ibm 1 gb 1" hd for ages. in that sense 1.5 gb 1" is only an evolutionary. however, the price point may be little attractive. at $65, it would compete with 512 MB compactflash.

samsung video camera using 1.5 gb hd is less interesting in a sense that they don't have comparable optical and video quality specs and if you take history as a reference, it will be a mediocre camcorder. panasonic is working on pro level camcorder with 6 CF cards, each upto 4 GB. a consumer version of this may be more interesting.

hitachi, which took over ibm microdive, plans to make 4 gb version before the end of the year. if they can make price down, it might succeed.

microdrive had only a partial success in the beginning when CF was very expensive. today, it looks like a solution in need of a problem. for mp3, the 1.8" factor is good enough (e.g. iPod) where you can get upto 30 gb. for cameras, you need lot more reliability that many people are dissatisfied with microdrives. for pda, 512 MB CF is more than enough. for camcorders, tapes provide reliability; dvd based camcorder provides direct archive and micro-dv (Sony) provide compactness. as much as i like the technology, i don't see where to fit it.

Wow! That's... not big enough

[phallen]

I'd be impressed if it was 3+GB, but 1.5? Use 1GB compact flash or some other form of solid state. It's heading towards 2GB soon, most likely. Who want's moving parts?

But that said, it does seem likely the capacity of these little suckers will go up, way faster than Flash, so it'll be worth it soon. But 1.5GB? It's too late to be impressive, kinda like... Don't make me say it.... Zip GIZZMO DRIVE! Remember when those seemed big?

Try OZradio...

[msimm]

OZradio is a Linux FM radio player for KDE and GNOME. It supports BTTV-compatible FM and TV cards. It features the ability to save up to 10 preset stations, a sound mixer, volume control, a mute button, automatic frequency scanning, on-demand recording and replay of radio, and programmable recording.

Looks like OZradio should work and witht he money you save you can get a nice player to listen with.

Re:1.5GB video camera! Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still wondering why there are no consumer camcoders with hard disk instead of those dirt expensive miniDV tapes. With hard disk, you can easily remove unwanted shots and are not left with bunch of half-filled tapes you do not know about.

I would be perfectly statisfied with six hours of recording capacity. A 80GB 2.5" drive will cost about the same as miniDV tape drive, I guess. Of course, you need then a larger unit with 3.5" drive(s) to store your recordings. But I guess only few people shot more than 18 hours of video on their vacation.

The thing that stuck out in my mind...

[ProfessionalCookie]

Was the Memory Stick- I know Sony started licensing them but I think this is the first time I've seen one in a non-Sony product. BTW San Disk sells 4 GB Compact Flash Cards, but for a lot more than $65.

Already a standard: The chinese are on it too

[pacc]

A preceeding article mentions the 2.4 Gb Magicstor already in production with 3.6 Gb on target this year and 4.7 next year. The same article predicts that 0.7 inches will be the next big standard if some barriers are passed.

If Cornice or some other company bought Ritek's Microstor is unkown to me (it seems to have been related to dataplay developers too) but it's clear that there is a shortage of good brand names for this product. The Press release for Magicstor was hilarious, promptly stating that the company GS Microdrive released a harddrive called Magicstore, showing a picture of the HD with MICRODRIVE written all over it and stating that this is the company's name not the brand name since Microdrive is a trademark of IBM (Hitatchi Storage) ((Sorry lost the couldn't find the pressrelease again on nikkeibp.com))

Re:1.5GB video camera! Wow!

[Scott Laird]

Did you read the specs? It records 640x480 MP4 at 1.5 or 3 Mbps. Assuming they actually mean Mbps not MBps, that works out to around an hour of high-quality video. Not too bad, but it depends on the video quality.

Re:Yikes! Spell check on isle four...

[untaken_name]

heheheh. isle 4.
i guess no man is an aisle.
*duck*

Gotta love homonyms.

---

Main Entry: aisle
Pronunciation: 'I(&)l
Function: noun

1 : the side of a church nave separated by piers from the nave proper
2 a : a passage (as in a theater or railroad passenger car) separating sections of seats b : a passage (as in a store or warehouse) for inside traffic

Main Entry: isle
Pronunciation: 'I(&)l
Function: noun
ISLAND; especially : ISLET

Re:Wow! That's... not big enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Who want's [sic] moving parts?

If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.

Ironic, considering that the word "wants" doesn't have an apostrophe. Maybe you should have said "Who want's moving part's?" to be consistent...

The Cornice website has customer details

[adsl]

They show upcoming products from OEM manufacturers such as Digitway, iriver, TIO etc. The Digitalway portable HD has me thinking. A minature HD would make a great attachment to a small flashbased mp3 player. I am thinking the flash player could be used at the gym, but when I travel I could hook up a cheap HD. There has been one company trying with such a dual purpose machine, but it's nothing like as practical as one with of these timy drives.

Re:Wow! That's... not big enough

[Anonymous Coward]

For one thing, a 1GB of compact flash costs a hell of a lot more than this harddrive.

66 minutes of MPEG 4 video

[count0]

is the intent of the 1.5 GB drive in the camcorder. Said camcorder also uses Memory Stick media for storing stills...

All that grief

[SuperKendall]

When I just forgot to type an "A"...

Re:All that grief

[untaken_name]

Well, since I have no way to know your intentions, I gotta call 'em like I see 'em. It's pretty easy to go back and cry typo later, too. Not saying you did, mind you, cause I doubt anyone would just to avoid a bad pun. :) I'm only saying there's not any way for the rest of us to tell, excluding the psychics. :)

How could a radio tivo work??

[zapp]

One of the key things about TiVo and the like, is that you can get program listings. I am unaware of any such listing for the radio containing info on what station has what program when.

wrong! wholesale vs. retail price comparison made

[getnuked]

The quoted prices for these new drives are for wholesale volumes of 10,000 or more. The comparison prices for equivalent Flash drives is for retail quantity (I don't know why they made the comparison - it's apples and oranges).

You can get 512MB CFI/II Flash drives for $125 retail, or 1GB for $230 retail, or you can get IBM 1GB micro-drives, which are also CFI and CFII compliant for $190 or less at many etailers. I will bet wholesale prices are half that, so there is only a $30 price premium for an IBM 1GB micro-drive. Do a quick google and see (here is one link - no I don't work for them).

Personally I want the upgradeability that you get with a CFI/II based mp3/video/PDA/whatever. Not only can you upgrade to a new capacity, yet if you ever toast the drive you don't lose your entire investment of player + memory (they aren't indestructible).

What about Flash?

[elinenbe]

I know it is expensive, but CF cards have come a long way. pretec just announced a 6GB CF card -- that's right 6GB. Fit 12 GB into one of those little NExII MP3 players or take tens of thousands of pictures. I can't wait until these come down in price (they will!)

http://www.pretec.com/PR/CeBIT_PR_3GB_6GB2%20021 .p df

1.5GB on a 1" Platter? ....Uhm... Why?

[Bowie J. Poag]

Helloooo? CompactFlash?

No moving parts, less power consumption, comparable speeds, practically indestructible.

Sorry, gang, but the idea sounds patently insane. Are these guys funded by Sun's "Insanity First" program or something? :)

1.5 GB / 1 inch form factor

[porky_pig_jr]

went to the company site, checked the original sources. It *is* 1.5GB and 1 inch platter. For $60.00 or something like that. My take on it: they should bring the price down. You can get a solid state card (CF format) 1GB for $160 and the prices are coming down rapidly, expect to see 1GB CF for $100 soon. I'm sure Hitachi will bring down the price on their hard drives (CF-form factor) as well, just to stay below the solid state memory, otherwise why bother with hard drive in a first place (yes, it has a higher access speed vs vanilla CF, but the latest versions of CF are about the same). Once again, it's not such a big deal.

Smaller quieter PCs

[failedlogic]

I'd like to build a smaller and quieter PC with 2 HDDs ie like the mini-PC cases out today. It would be nice if in the next few years they find a way to fit 40 or 60 GB on smaller HDDs which would fit in consumer PCs. The SATA connector pins might in some way help.

I know there are some limits here but remember no more than 10 years ago we'd buy a $500 200 MB 5"1/4 HDD and think it was a bargain. The data density on the platters and the access speed is increasing phenonmenolly.

Re:Wow! That's... not big enough

[abe ferlman]

Maybe not, but 1gb compact flash cards are what, $250? More? This is more storage for way less money and makes some devices price come down into a range where someone might actually buy them.

Solid state is nice, but price-wise it's still next-gen.

Keychains!

[Relyt]

Put it in a thick rubber casing, and attach it to a USB plug.

Voila!

There is some proof

[SuperKendall]

in my other response to someone pointing out the issue, where I used "Island" in place of isle even before you posted the definition.

Cheaper method than the psychic, at any rate! At least if you call them...

Why to use spindles and NOT flash, for video

[Nonesuch]

The "Compact Flash" interface itself has a relatively low transfer rate, which may not be sufficient for sustained video recording.

Beyond the speed of the interface itself, there are two issues with actual "CompactFlash" storage (as opposed to CF-form factor spindles):

1. Flash memory has a relatively low sustained write speed of 3MB/s (for 20X CF storage.)
2. Flash memory has a limited (1 million cycles) re-write lifetime, strongly affected by the operating temperature.

Neither of these limitations are all that critical for a still camera, but can pose a real problem for a camcorder.

I ran up against both of these limits while working out the issues of booting and running a firewall (OpenBSD on AMD) using only flash storage.

noise cancelling headphones...

[Nonesuch]

Zeinfeld writes:

Hey manufacturers are you listening? Stick an MP3 player with a card slot in a pair of noise cancelling headphones, repeat C-A-R-D S-L-O-T, N-O-I-S-E C-A-N-C-E-L-L-I-N-G H-E-A-D-P-H-O-N-E-S

Good idea. And please make it a "MMC/SD" slot, none of that proprietary stuff.

Actually, I'd settle for a pair of cordless noise-cancelling headphones that I could use with my home stereo.

Is that a HD in your pocket...

[Zathras11]

Oh, it is a HD.

WOW! 1 inch. I saw a web site once where someone
built a computer into a lunch box, and he used a
notebook computer HD (of course, the motherboard
he used probably wouldn't fit into anything smaller).

Re:Wow! That's... not big enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash media tends to have a very finite number of write cycles. Depends on the use as to whether this is a problem or not.

Re:Yikes! Spell check on isle four...

[croddy]

you mean homophones. lead/lead are homonyms.

Re:Wow! That's... not big enough

[wfrp01]

Solid state is going to take off big time. Combine a solid state disk drive with a fanless CPU and you have a general purpose computer competing against appliances that have historically been able to charge a premium for their solid-state reliability.

This raises some interesting questions. What if you can buy a computer today that will last for, say, 50 years? What are the implications? Software reliability comes to the fore as never before.

If solid state drives are good enough for Mars Rovers, they're good enough for me.

I guess this implies that I would like to be a Mars rover... :/