Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

MSI has officially unveiled the “world’s first hybrid storage netbook” effectively dubbed the MSI U115 Hybrid.  Of course, at first glance, the U115 may seem like many of the other netbooks on the market.  It features a 10-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, a 1.3-megapixel camera, built-in card reader and a 3-cell battery.  Additionally, the U115 Hybrid is running Windows XP, and has an option to add a 6-cell battery as well as Bluetooth 2.0.

Now, as for what makes the U115 different from the rest—it has two built-in storage options.  The U115 include a standard 120GB hard drive along with an 8GB SSD. 

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Dell has continued to improve upon the Inspiron Mini 9 with new colors along with new features.  We saw those new colors hit the US market just a few days back, and now Dell has followed up with an even more welcomed addition—an optional 32GB SSD. 

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The Eee PC has been the most popular net book since it started selling, namely because it was the first, but also because it is damn good at what it does. However a few people have some qualms with it, mainly about the fairly low storage that it offers: 12GB.  I know I could easily fill that in a day and obviously the people at the Japanese company GreenHouse agree with me as they have released some Eee PC hard drive upgrades.
You can now replace your measly 12GB SSD with either the 32GB or 64GB modules which will over quintuple your storage, making the Eee PC a much more attractive option.  The specifications aren’t awful (considering that it is for the Eee PC) with 35MB/s and 15MB/s, but comparing that to a desktop internal hard drive it is poor and even for a laptop it is slow.  What’s it cost to upgrade that Eee?  Keep reading.

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The latest Mobile Internet Device (MID) coming from UMID, at first glance looks like any other netbook on the market, except this one is much smaller and much more equipped than many.

As for features, the MID will have a 4.8-inch touchscreen display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, either a 1.1GHz or 1.3GHz Intel Atom processor, a max of 1GB RAM, up to 32GB of SSD storage, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and a microSD card slot. 

Sadly, it has just one USB 2.0 port.  Other features include the standard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as well as WiMax, WiBro, HSDPA and both DMB-T and DVB-T digital TV tuners.  Still unstated was a release date, or any pricing information.

Plenty of pics after the break.

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I really like simple things.  I got this press release today about a DIY (do it yourself) flash hard drive using little more than six SDHC cards.  SDHC cards are simple things.  This tech comes straight out of Germany and almost as good as that is, it sells for just $102 US (SDHC cards not included).

The Flexi-drive S2S is slim and supposedly fast.  The modular design can handle SD cards up to 32GB meaning you can build up to a 192GB drive.  And because it is a flash drive, it is silent, uses little power, and it typically unaffected by shock so its perfect for a drive on the go.  Sweet!

I can hear you asking about speed.  Sharkoon, the manufacturer, tested six 8GB SDHC memory cards with Class 6 speed ratings.  The drive was clocked at reading at 140 MB/s and a write speed of 115 MB/s with HD-Tune.  Respectable numbers for sure.  I wonder how it will fare in the real world.

The drive will be available from retail partners now.

Product page [Sharkoon]

Perhaps HP is making an effort to clear some inventory in preparation for a refresh of the Mini-Note or maybe they are just looking to offer a little more competition in the netbook market.  Either way, it seems it will be the consumer who will be the winner because they have just announced a new, lower price on the low-end Mini-Note models.

The Mini-Note pricing will now begin at just $399, which will give you a very capable netbook running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and features a 1.0GHz Via C7 processor, 8.9-inch display, 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD, VGA camera and a 3-cell battery.  Interested in what else HP’s got?  Keep reading.

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Modern laptop users demand SSDs for their laptops due to their inherently faster seek time and shock-proof nature.  With that in mind, Toshiba has recently announced a boost in its SSD and Flash Modules line-up, satisfying laptop and netbookusers.

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Buffalo has recently introduced their latest portable storage solution, the MicroStation. The new drives come in a variety of storage options to include 32, 64 and 100GB and the exciting part is they are solid state drives. As of now pricing and an availability date have not yet been announced, but we can tell you that these portable SSD’s will be USB-powered and feature the USB cable in a wrap around style, which means it will not get lost in your gear bag, or even worse forgotten at home. Other features of the new SSD based MicroStation drives include a shock resistant chassis and a data transfer rate of up to 35 MB/s as well as as included Secure Lock Ware encryption software and Memeo backup software.

Product [Buffalo] Via [iTechNews]

With consumer’s growing interests in the so called ultra-low cost PC (ULPC) market, it seems only logical for data storage companies to take advantage of the situation and come up with something that is very essential for most ULPCs available on the market today. We’re talking about solid state drives (SSD), and SanDisk has come up with its 16GB pSSD to add to its line-up of flash-memory based SSD’s.

In addition to the 16GB model, SanDisk’s new pSSD is also available with 4 and 8GB capacities. Regardless of which model you get, the SanDisk pSSDs all boast a 39mbps read speed and 17mbps write speed. The SanDisk pSSD’s were built using multi-level Cell and Single-Level Cell flash memory.

If you’re wondering about the pSSD’s other features, we are glad to inform you that the pSSD are packed inside a memory device which is 1/10 of the weight of a 1.8-inch HDD. The pSSD is also rugged, reliable and fast, is also utilizes a standard low power interface and form factor. These new pSSD’s from SanDisk should definitely help boost the popularity of future ULPC’s.

Via [Electronista]

It was only a couple of months ago when we said that Samsung was planning to roll out a new 256GB SSD by 2009. And look what we have here right now, Samsung just announced its new ultra-fast 256GB SSD. Yes, folks Samsung was really dead serious in upgrading its previously released 128GB model with this new higher capacity flashSSD.

The 256GB flashSSD doubles the reading speed of the 128mpbs model with its own 200mpbs sequential data reading speed. Even better is its writing speed which now runs at 160MB per second as compared to the 70mbps writing speed of the previous model. And not only is the 256GB SSD ultra fast, but it is also enclosed in an ultra-thin chassis which measures only 9.5mm in thickness.

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