CES 2006 - Day 3: Playstation 3, Quarter-size Hard Drives, SED and lots of TVs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2006 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
A Hard Drive smaller than a Quarter
Toshiba showed off the world's smallest hard drive with a 0.85" form factor. The 4GB drive featured a spindle speed of 3600RPM and weighed less than 10 grams.
Toshiba expects the drive to be used in cell phones and other portable devices later this year.
Although Toshiba says the drive features a "rugged" design we are still wary of putting a storage device with moving parts in something as frequently abused as a cell phone.
On display next to the 4GB 0.85" hard drive was a 1.8" perpendicular recording drive with a capacity of up to 80GB.
We explained the benefits of perpendicular recording here. To recap from our article: "What perpendicular recording does is it records, or magnetizes, bits vertically through the platter instead of horizontally which efficiently conserves surface area which, in turn, results in the effective doubling of the areal density of the platter." The end result in this case is a very small 80GB drive.
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Sunbird - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
No problem for me here. IE6 on WinXP SP2.Aquila76 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Hmm... I wonder if my account is experiencing the 'y2k6 bug' that wiped out some of the lifers.semo - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
some lifers accounts got wiped out?y2k6 bug?
man i should stop living under this stupid rock. soooo much hilarity.
Aquila76 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
dwell, SampSon, buck and a few others got wiped out last week - all their posts got wiped too.ukDave - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Last word in 2nd last paragraph on pg14."comarpsion" should be "comparison".
Word.
Calin - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Why they compare the quality of digital TV seen on a shiny new digital TV to the quality on a 1980's analog TV? Why not compare to the latest analog only TV they built?Probably because the quality difference would be underwhelming?
Calin
psychobriggsy - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
If I read what that digital TV 'convertor' box did, then they have been available in the UK (and probably other European countries) for around 4 years already, initially as the ITV Digital boxes, and for the past couple of years as Freeview boxes.They usually have two SCART (Eurotel) outputs (what we have instead of S-Video outputs, ours can carry RGB signals as well as composite, but the connector is pig-large), one to the TV, another to a recorder, and an RF output in case the TV is old and doesn't have SCART inputs.
Cheap models (<£40) skimp of course, or 'specialise' in not having some of the features like RF output of digital signals. They also lose the 7 day program guide and only offer Now&Next, grrr.
Regardless, it should mean that these boxes will cost under $99 when they're released in the US, probably around $79. If they try it on with $199 then you know they're trying to rip you off, unless it downconverts terrestrial HD signals too.
semo - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
good point. how many ppl have tvs from the 1980s anymore (as far as the targeted audience of ces is concerned)Sc4freak - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Is it just me, or is the entire page completely screwed up?gsellis - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I noticed that the index and pages were one off.