Google Chrome all versions

Google’s newly launched web browser Chrome is all set to shake the web browser industry. On the first look and it looks like the later the better quote fits up for Google Chrome. Chrome has borrowed and acquired most of the features from Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer to emerge as a hybrid and fast browser.

You can clearly see in the screen shot below that Google Chrome has the dials feature which has been taken up from Opera. Another thing by launching its own web browser by Google means a complete dominance over the Internet. Google has it own search engine, its own social network etc. and at last its own browser Chrome to integrate all its services at one place. Read More »

Century Old Idea for Memory Cards

Don’t ask us how they know, but SanDisk claims that its new 128Mb Write Once, Read Many times (WORM) SD memory card will store data for up to 100 years. If true and they’re on pretty safe ground from warranty claims — that’s a definite improvement on current technology. Data on rewritable cards and drives can start to deteriorate in as little as 5 years, though most manufacturers reckon they’re good for between 10 to 25 years.

Potential applications for the new WORM card includes storing evidential data used in police investigations, medical data, company records and so on. WORM cards can also be used for archiving photographs and home videos, in fact anything that you would like still to be around in 100 years time, though the big question with all these things is, will there be anything that can read SD cards in just 10 years, let alone in 2108…

Hitachi Hard Drive with Half a Brain

I am so old that I can remember when PC’s boasted having one kilobyte (1kb) of storage and I can still recall placing a special order, and waiting weeks for 1Mb hard disc drive, which I was convinced that I could never fill in my lifetime… So it is with a world-weary shrug that I learn than Hitachi is planning to market a 5 terabyte hard drive, probably within the next 18 months.

What makes this particularly interesting, not to say a bit spooky, is that Hitachi’s Dr Yoshihiro Shiroishi reckons that just two of them will be need to match the storage capacity of the human brain, which he estimates around 10Gb. Frankly I find that hard to believe; a lifetime of memories in a mere 10Tb, when a 2–hour movie swallows up 5 gigabytes? There must be some pretty impressive compression involved… Read More »

How Flash Memory Works

Flash memories are solid state electronic devices with random access memory capabilities used for fast digital information storage. They are used in a wide range of applications, such as storing BIOS routines in typical digital computers, as medium capacity hard drives for digital cameras or as memory cards for laptop computers and video consoles.

The technology used to manufacture flash memories is based on EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) chips, which consist of memory banks formed of storing cells disposed in a grid of columns and rows. A basic storing cell has two MOS-FET transistors at each intersection, and are separated by an oxide layer. The two transistors are known as the floating gate and the control gate. Read More »

Ultimate Disk Reader

We’ve all seen those nifty little multi card readers that plug into your PC’s USB port, well, here’s the granddaddy of them all. Not only does it read all of the usual SD, MMC, XD, CF cards, Memory Stick, USB pen drives, you can stuff a whole 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA hard drive into a slot on the top and read and write data. The SATA HDD Multi Function Dock works with PCs and Macs and costs around £40. We’re not aware of any UK distributors just yet but knowing the speed at which these things take off it shouldn’t be too long, so keep your eyes on Amazon and the usual gadget sites.

Transformer USB Storage Drives

Since pretty much everything else has been Transformerized, it was only a matter of time before Transformer USB storage devices hit the shelves. Well here they are, available in two models, the 1 GB Autobot ($40), and the 2 GB Decepticon ($60). Why they made the Decepticon the larger of the storage capacities is a mystery to me. Probably because the money grubber that made them didn’t know who was good and who was bad. Those stupid greedy bastards. Autobots, transform and roll out!