Filed under: Laptops

If you’ve been tearing your hair out, pacing wildly around the room, and sweating bullets over the availability of the ASUS Eee PC 1000 (and we know you have), you’ll be pleased to know that the grown-up sized version of the company’s mini-laptop is now available for pre-order on Amazon. The site doesn’t provide specific release dates for the systems (the $699.99, 40GB SSD equipped 1000, and the $649.99, 80GB HDD equipped 1000H), though we’re figuring it can’t be too long till these models hit shipping centers. In the meantime, we recommend going for long jogs.

Read - ASUS Eee PC 1000 40G
Read - ASUS Eee PC 1000H 80G

[Via I4UNews]

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Filed under: Storage

If you were shaken to your very core at the recent report that SSDs may not be as power-friendly as you’d been led to believe, drive-maker STEC wants to talk you down from the ledge. According to the company’s Patrick Wilkison, the Tom’s Hardware article which benchmarked (and gave failing grades) to power-consumption of the non-mechanical drives was flawed because, “They are using legacy drives, none of which will be used by any major PC OEM.” According to Patrick (whose job, you might note, is to sell SSDs), new versions of the drives will / do have intelligent power management which circumvents the issues that report shed light on. Wilison goes on to say that, “Drives will need to have very intelligent power management systems. Some of these SSDs will have them, and those (that) do not have such power intelligence will not be used (by PC makers).” So it’s sort of like saying a car you buy in the future will get better gas mileage than the one you own now, provided the automaker cares about fuel efficiency. Small solace, we’d say.

Update: We’ve gotten a statement from Micron concerning the report — you can check it out after the break.

Continue reading SSD-maker responds to nasty report, says it’ll do better next time

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Filed under: Storage

When it comes to drives, it’s all about space and speed. That’s why we were happy to see that Greenhouse is boasting that the DH-SSDGS series is the “industry’s fastest” — sure, we can’t verify that claim, but at least they’re trying to get our attention. Regardless, the new drives read at up to 130MB/s with write speeds of 67MB/s, with capacities that range from 16GB up to 128GB. Drive size is a standard 2.5-inches, with a 9.5mm height. Greenhouse says the SATA-compatible boxes will be available in late May (in Japan at least), no word on pricing.

[Via Impress]

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Filed under: Storage

Listen, we know you think your RAID setup is pretty snazzy, and, truth be told, it probably makes our rig look silly by comparison. However, in the computer world, there’s always someone out there with a bigger, nastier system — and we’ve just spotted one of the nastiest of them all. Next Level Hardware is a site that specializes in putting outrageous setups to the test, and this time they haven’t disappointed with their benchmarks on the Mtron 16GB SSD (reportedly the fastest SATA drive in the world). Oh, did we mention the test was on a RAID 0 array of nine drives? Dubbed the “Battleship Mtron,” the sickening collection of hardware blazed past the competition (a WD Raptor, less stacked Mtron RAID setups), delivering mind-boggling data swaps like copying a 1GB folder in four seconds. You read that right: four seconds. Like where this is headed? Truck over to the test page and peep all the stats… seriously, it’s upsetting.

[Thanks, David]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Storage

Cramming 2GB of storage space into a device no larger than a standard postage stamp is decently impressive, and SiliconSystems has done just that with its new SiliconDrive USB Blade. Hailed as the “industry’s first ultra-small solid state drive for embedded storage applications,” this wee device feels most at home when shoved into incredibly tight quarters on any flavor of PCB. Additionally, the USB 2.0-compliant device is designed to handle shock, vibrations and extreme temperatures, and it features read / write rates of 10MB/sec. The firm plans on releasing these in 512MB and 1GB flavors as well, and while we’ve no idea when to expect ‘em on store shelves, evaluation units and host developer tool kits should be available in December.

[Via SlashGear]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!