Micron announced updates to its RealSSD lineup of Solid State Drives (SSD) . The  RealSSD P200 and C200 will be available later this year.

The 2.5-inch RealSSD P200 which is based on Micron’s SLC (Single-Level Cell) NAND technology will offer up to 128GB storage capacity with a standard 3Gbps Serial ATA (SATA) interface.

The RealSSD C200 which is available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch forms are based on Micron’s MLC (Multi-Level Cell) NAND process technology. The 2.5-inch version will have a maximum capacity of 250GB while the 1.8-inch version will have a maximum capacity of 128GB. The two versions use a standard 3Gbps Serial ATA (SATA) interface.

The RealSSD P200 and C200 offer a read speed of up to 250Mbps and a write speed of up to 100Mbps which are very fast compared to SSDs currently available in the market.

SSDs are now being used in netbooks and sub-notebooks because they are more power-efficient and generate less heat compared to traditional hard drives.

Popularity: 7% [?]

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE has approved 1394-2008 or the faster version of the twelve-year old FireWire interface.

Firewire, the favorite interface of the Consumer Electronics World will push its speed up to 3.2Gbps, dubbed as S3200. At the same time, IEEE also gave the green light to S1600 which offers 1.6Gbits. The new standard will use the existing 9-pin FireWire 800 connectors.

Hmmnn… looks like there is going to be a big competition between USB 3.0 and the new FireWire standard.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Open Tech has unveiled Open Tech XT, a computer  capable of running OS X Leopard, Windows Vista 64bit, Windows Xp 64bit, and Ubuntu 8.04, and other open source operating systems.

Below is the hardware specifications of Open Tech XT:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz Processor
• 4GB DDR2 800MHz Memory
• 640GB Hard drive- 7200 RPM
• Optical Drive (RW)
• CoolerMaster ATX Mid-Tower Case
• Integrated Wi-Fi 802.11g

With Open Tech XT running OS X Leopard,  it appears that Open Tech is unaware of Apple’s EULA, which specifically states that OS X Leopard should only run on Apple systems. However, Open Tech doesn’t ship their XT system with OS X preloaded compared to Psystar Corporation’s off-label Mac clones. It does ship with instructions on how to get Leopard up and running on it, though. Hmmnnn, I wonder what steps will Apple take to  stop Open Tech from becoming an Apple clone.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Hitachi announced their latest 2nd generation 1 Terabyte HDD, the Deskstar 7K1000.B, which claims to be the most energy efficient 1TB 7,200 RPM hard drive in the world.

The drive’s main feature is the use of three platters which can store up to 374GB of data each. With only three platters, the drive’s  idle power consumption is reduced up to 43% compared to Hitachi’s first generation 1TB HDD. The 7K1000.B also offers users the option of bulk data encryption (BDE) for the entire contents of the drive.

Below are the drive’s few specs:

•  7,200 rpm
• 1TB capacity
• 3 Gb/s SATA interface
• 32 MB buffer
• 1.2 million hours Mean Time Between Failure
• Rotational Vibration Safeguard

Popularity: 5% [?]

Seagate announced their 1.5 Terabyte, 3.5-inch version of the Barracuda 7200.11. The drive’s storage capacity which is 500GB more than any 3.5-inch desktop hard drive, is accomplished through refinement of perpendicular recording that allows 375GB of data to fit on each of the drive’s four platters.

The drive’s fast Serial ATA II interface delivers an industry-leading sustained data rate of up to 120MB/second for fast boot, application startup and file access. The 3.5-inch drive is also offered in capacities of 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB with cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

Seagate also developed a new unit, a 500GB, 2.5-inch laptop drive under their Momentus line of drives in both 5400RPM and 7200RPM flavors with 16MB of cache.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Good news to all SSD technology fans, Samsung announced today that they have started mass producing 1.8-Inch & 2.5-Inch MLC-based Solid State Drives in 64GB and 128GB versions. These SATA II SSDs provide a reading speed of 90MB/s, writing speed of 70MB/s and power consumption of 0.2-watts in idle state and 0.5-watts in active state.

The 128GB MLC-based SSD consists of 64 MLC NAND flash memory chips of 16 gigabits each, optimized single-chip controller technology and advanced flash-management firmware technology. Enclosed in a brushed metallic casing, it measures 100mm x 69.8mm and is only 9.5mm thick.

Samsung plans to produce 256GB SSDs by the end of this year.

Popularity: 6% [?]