Slashdot Mirror
Toshiba Unveils 80GB 'iPod drive'
sushant_bhatia_progr writes "The Register has an article about a new 80GB drive from Toshiba. Toshiba says it will ship an 80GB 1.8in hard drive in Q3 2005 - a year after it introduced the 60GB version that can currently to be found inside the iPod Photo. The 80GB HDD - model number MK8007GAH - comes in a 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8cm casing. Toshiba will ship a 40GB version - model number MK4007GAL - that's just 0.5cm thick in the second quarter. It's lighter, too: 51g to the 80GB HDD's 62g. Toshiba's current 40GB and 60GB (model numbers MK4004GAH and MK6006GAH, respectively) 1.8in HDDs are 0.8cm thick, so the new drive should make for thinner mid-range iPods.
Both drives spin at 4200rpm, offer an average seek time of 15ms and operate across an Ultra DMA 100 interface. They can take 500G operating shock and 1500G non-operating shock."
I think the shrinking of the 40hb hard drive from .8cm to .5cm is much more important than the creation of the 80gb model.
I think I would rather have a really thing 40gb model than a slightly larger 80gb model that probably will cost a lot more.
"I see a new, higher capacity iPod in the future..maybe just in time for MacWorld SF 2005..."
*cues fog machine*
This is a good point. From the time the iPods were first announced each iteration that came after continually became less thick and I think this is what really helped the iPod continue at its spot in #1. When you hand someone an iPod, they are first amazed by its dimensions and feel in their hand. As an owner of a 40gb iPod Photo, thickness went up considerably, and I think this would be the thickest portable harddrive/player that I would consider purchasing after owner the thinner previous models. Atleast with the size increase on the 40gb Photo the battery life went up instead of down, so this is probably what has to do with most of the thickness. Guess its a hard balance for Apple to find between thickness and battery life.
A thinner hard drive allows for a fatter battery.
I'd rather see a hard-drive-enabled video cam. No need for tapes, easy editing... don't feel like I have to continue.
And it better be 80 GB, not the measly 4GB like in some recent news...
I really believe that a device like this would win the market... it's beyond me why is nobody making them yet on mass scale.
I realized now Apple will have yet another high capacity music player I'll never be able to afford. Thanks Steve
2. The iPod gets 12 hours now. The iPod Photo gets 15. Whaddaya want? A micro-fusion-reactor?
YES
I think you are off a few decimal places......
slashdot username - at - email.domain.name
Personally, I wear a helmet to protect my "money-maker"....
That's one thing our sex ed class in high school taught us as well...
oh wait..
Karnal
With iTunes 4.7 http://www.apple.com/itunes/, you can encode to Apple Lossless Format, which can compress to half the space an uncompressed song would.
80 GB storage
6MB mp3 file
14 songs per CD
975 CDs
$10 per CD
$9,750 to full load the damn thing
So let's flip the logic.
What if, IF, you already have 50 CDs? 200 CDs? 300 CDs?
If you have $1,000 in music, or $2,000, or $3,000, the cost of an iPod is CHUMP. What's $249 for 4g? $299 for 20g? That's essentially nothing when you consider the ability to access almost 1,000 CDs at any one time.
Where before the iPod you could only access 1, maybe 10, CDs depending on your mp3 player.
GPL Deconstructed
Audiophiles have plenty of other excuses for not buying iPods, most of them, as near as I can tell, made up out of thin air.
For those that don't know, thin air is a huge problem if you are trying to faithfully reproduce a sound. Thicker air carries and holds sound much better, with less distortion (especially in the upper ranges).
iPods, like most other advanced electronics are manfactured in what is called a "cleanroom environment", where normal air is stripped of all it's suspended particulates. This thinned out air is then included in the iPods when they are shipped are are one of the reasons it tends to attenuate the upper frequencies, leading to muffled highs.
Hope that clarifes things a bit.