The Dell Studio Hybrid’s been released!

This is so cool it’s sick:
Introducing the Dell Studio Hybrid.

* IT’S SMALL
Same footprint as a Mac Mini Combo.
* IT’S MORE AFFORDABLE
Cheaper than a Mac Mini Combo. ($499)
* IT’S MORE POWERFUL
1.86Ghz Dual Core Pentium, 2GB memory (twice that of Mac Mini Combo), 250GB hard drive. (3x that of Mac Mini Combo) And it comes with Windows Vista Home Premium. 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…

Hacked Off USB Memory

It started off as a bit of a joke but now it’s a commercial product. A bright spark at Evilmadsicentist.com came up with a simple mod that turns a flash drive into what looks like a USB cable that’s just been torn apart. Clearly designed for that special someone, the sort of person who enjoys humorous, witty and ironic artefacts, and probably already has a dog’s back end sticking out of their lawn and fake bullet holds on their car. Anyway, a company called Fred & Friends is now making them and it’s called ‘Hacked’ the ‘OH! *#%’ flash drive. It’s available with a 2Gb capacity and that’s just about all that’s known about it at the moment, so if you want one head over to Worldwidefred.com and pester them, not me…

Flash in the Can

Hard on the heels of Hitachi’s 5 terabyte hard drive (see below) comes more data storage news, this time the promise of cheaper and more reliable and longer lasting solid state drives (SSDs). Later this year Samsung are about to start production on 64 and 128Gb SSDs, with 256Gb drives in the pipeline later in the year. The Flash memory modules are mounted inside a metal case that’s the same size and can directly replace standard SATA II type hard drives in laptops, and since there are no moving parts they are not only faster than HDDS but they also out-perform and consume less power than rival first generation SSDs.

Firefox With Many Addons

Most of the Firefox users I know have a lot of addons, no matter if they’re running Firefox 2 or Firefox 3. Now, the problem appears when some of those addons start crashing, or when Firefox ends up eating huge amounts of memory. Yesterday, I read an older article on CybernetNews about having 200 addons installed in Firefox, and this made me think about taking things to a whole new level… Since all that was happening back in 2006, when Firefox 3 was not ready yet, and to have 200 addons installed and notice how the browser behaved with one or two sites opened is already a bit outdated, I decided to try and go for a new Firefox 3 world record as of 2008!

Obviously, things are not that easy as it seems, because I have a really rough ride in mind for Mozilla’s pet, my computer, and myself as a user. Here’s what I want to do: Read More »

How HVDs Work

HVDs, or Holographic Versatile Discs, are a type of optical digital data storing devices bearing a striking resemblance to the construction and operation of more common optical storing devices, such as CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, relying on read/write techniques based on the principles of holography. Similar to typical optical data storing devices, the first holographic memory systems were created several decades ago; however, they did not became as popular as CDs and DVDs mostly because of the manufacturing costs involved and the complexity of the read/write processes.

Lately, holographic memory systems have started gaining more ground in relation to more common optical storing devices, as HVDs become cheaper to manufacture. After all, HVDs have both significantly superior storage capacity and read/write speeds. Read More »

Sleep Respiratory Disorder Linked to Memory Loss

Sleep apnea is a respiratory disorder manifested during sleep that involves episodes in which a person misses one or more breath at a time. The disorder is usually experienced in several episodes during the night and triggers fatigue and sleepiness during the day. Snoring and restless sleep are also symptoms associated with sleep apnea. According to a new study carried out at the University of California, five or more episodes per hour may have serious consequences on the brain tissue and can lead to problems related to memory recognition.

High-resolution images made through a magnetic resonance imaging process on about forty patients revealed that parts of the brain known as the mammillary bodies, that are located in the anterior end of the archer of the fornix and are responsible for processing memories, are about 20 percent smaller than those of people that don’t have sleep apnea. 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.

X58, Intel’s First Nehalem Chipset

Intel’s upcoming generation of processors, called the Nehalem, will be introduced later this year, and all the signals point to a Q4 release. As previously stated by the chip manufacturer during this spring’s Intel Developer Forum, the first Nehalem units to hit the market will be built on the 45-nanometer process technology (Bloomfield silicon) and will sport four processing cores.

It is widely known that the 4-core behemoth will come with an integrated DDR3-1333 memory controller, SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading) technology and 8 MB of L2 cache. The SMT implementation will allow each of the CPU cores to simultaneously process two threads, just like the previous HyperThreading technology introduced back in the Pentium 4 era. Read More »