Technology Reviews

2007 has surely started with a bang as far as Hitachi goes and for the media storage market. Hitachi had earlier said they will be announcing the 1TB hard drive soon, but we thought it would take much more time that they suggested.

Well, we have been proved wrong and they have actually announced the launch of the 7K1000 Hard drive which comes with 1TB of space. These babies will cost you about $400, which is pretty aggressively priced in our opinion. The disk is available in both SATA II and PATA 144 variants.

The 7K1000 comes with a 32mb buffer, super quiet whilst operation feature and 7200 rpm sindle speed. We thought we could get a 10k rpm drive from them but they have stuck to the much common lower speed drive. The transition from 7200 rpm to 10,000 rpm has not been quick at all but we expect a few manufactures to go aggressive on this one and probably come out with a 15k rpm drive by the year end.

One of the major fears among many laptop owners is that their laptop will catch on fire because of a battery that overheats and explodes. This has been a major problem recently as many cases of exploding batteries have been reported and videos of the dangers of exploded batteries have been posted on sites like YouTube and are spreading across the Internet at a rapid rate.

Matsushita has recently announced that they are working towards developing spark-resistant notebook batteries and hopes to mass produce these batteries in the very near future. According to the manufacturers the heatproof layers in the battery reduce the chance of the batteries exploding due to overheating. We will keep you updated on their progress, here at Tech.Newsthis.com.

For someone like me who spends hours in front of the computer typing, wrist pain sometimes becomes a slight problem, after a few hours. The new Kinesis Freestyle keyboard was created to solve this problem and it allows one to separate their keyboard into two different halves which evidently reduces wrist pain. There is also another version of the Kinesis Freestyle keybord where the keys are placed on an incline.

Although this may reduce pain, it would be too difficult to use a key board split in half or a keyboard with keys at a sharp incline. You can check out the product for yourself.

Transcend are the world leaders in portable storage especially when it comes to Usb drives that is flash drives. They recently announced their new range of JetFlash V10 USB flash drives which are compatible with Usb v2.0.

The JetFlash V10 series is extremely small and measures about 64 x 21 x 10 mm. It weighs close to 11grams. This series comes without a cap, so it makes use of the slider button which pops open the connector. This is now becoming the norm in the flash drive market and more and more companies are using this.

The JetFlash V10 comes with PC-Lock, which is a new thing that allows you to lock your computer using the drive. There is a DataBackup function which allows you to restore, backup and synchronize your data. Other features like Secret-Zip, Email function and favorites feature is also included but are not often used by people. Along with all these functions lets just have a look at the run of the mill type features like, ‘easy plug and play’, compatible with all versions of Windows, Linux, and Mac OS 9.0 or later.

Incipio has come out with yet another innovative device for the iPod lovers. This time we can have a look at the IncipioBud or in more general terms we can call it the ShuffleBud. The ShuffleBud is a very small and handy dvice which you can attach to the 2GB apple iPod Shuffle instead of the cable which comes with the iPod. The ShuffleBud can be connected to any Usb port.

The IncipioBud can handle high speed data transfer for your music, and is also compatible with working with iTunes. One of the best features of the IncipioBud is that it can charge your iPod too. The ShuffleBud costs around $10 and is really cheap for its use. It does not take any space and you can carry it in your pocket too. It weighs around 5 grams and measures 47mm X 16mm. So throw your cables away and get this neat useful thing.

The guys over at Toshiba are really working hard in all departments, be it phones, LCDs, Plasmas, or other computer hardware. This time the Toshiba Storage Device Division, the (TSDD) has come out with a 1.8inch 100 GB hard disk.

Samsung and Seagate have also come out with Hard disks of this size but none of them with such a high storage capacity. The Toshiba MK1011GAH hard disk is due to be released in January and when it actually comes out it will be the best in its class. To add to the increased storage ability it is also quite a bit smaller than its counterparts in size. The hard disk comes with a 8mb cache and supports all kinds of storage from all sources.

The HDD measures about 54 × 71x 8 mm and weighs close to 60 grams. It comes with four heads and works at 4200 rpm. The price of these is not yet known, but as we hear from Toshiba that it will be out within a month.

The Usb – Flash Drive market is rising day by day and it is progressing in the right manner in terms of new technologically advanced features. We have seen Biometric laptops from IBM and other such devices.

The Biometric flash drive by Elecom is one of the first ones in the market. The drive encrypts the data on the drive with the fingerprint of the person and it can be decrypted by the same fingerprint only. It looks pretty good and is small in size too.

The Elecom CR-FP2 drive costs around $75 and is not too expensive at all. At the moment, it is only available in 512mb sizes but we can definitely expect high memory ones to come out soon from Elecom or for that matter other companies too. There is no particular date when it is going to be launched but the rumor has it that we should see some of these babies by the start of the Holiday season.

It is time that we now have to move to the generation of Blu-ray and HD-DVD. DVDs are now a thing of the past and storing about 9GB is just not enough when it comes with High definition stuff. The Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player is one of the first Blu-Ray disc players in the market and something that you will cherish if you have the right TV to view it on.

To take complete advantage of the quality from your Blu-ray player, make sure you have a HDTV in place first otherwise it is just rendered useless. The Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player provides you with full 1080p output and delivers up-conversion according to your needs.

The players measures 16.94(W) x 3.11(H) x 12.8(D) inches and is pretty normal when it comes to size. It weighs close to 10 pounds.

The Blu-ray player comes with a Composite video out, S-Video out, HDMI connections and Y/Pb/Pr out ports. For audio ther is audio out(L/R), 2 and 5.1 channel sound, 1 Coaxial and Optical connection each.

The Samsung HL-S4676S is a 46 inch Slim DLP released just recently. The Samsung HL-S4676S DLP comes with only a 10 inch deep cabinet so it’s Slim alright! The DLP TV weighs around 50 pounds and is not that heavy at all compared to its counter parts. With DLP you will surely get great picture quality and the design gives you a neat and stylish TV on the whole.

The Samsung HL-S4676S DLP provides you with a decent 1280 x 720p high definition resolution. The TV uses SRS TruSurround XT sound system that gives you an experience of watching the movie/TV on a home theatre. It also comes with a HDTV tuner, HDMI connections and other features delivering a technological advanced gadget. The ATSC allows you access streaming and digital movies over a network.

The TV also comes with a USB v1.1 port so you can attach your device to the tv and view your videos and photos with everyone. A PC-input also gives you the freedom to use it as your monitor with your portable laptop or desktop computer. The Samsung HL-S4676S costs around $2000 and is a good buy.

In a new viral marketing technique, Razer, the creator of the $100 Tarantula keyboard, is giving away 5 keyboards if you take a video of your old keyboard being destroyed. Only 5 people will win a new one, so the more “outside the box” and destructive video you make, the better chance you have of winning.

This new keyboard has a very nice design and according to the creators, it was created for the computer gamer.