Blu-ray Drives in Notebook PC's, A Brief Timeline

August’ 06: Sony introduced Blu-ray drives in notebook PC’s. The breakthrough model comes from VAIO AR series.

December’ 06: Dual layer Blu-ray discs are out that can hold up to 50GB of data. XPS M1710 is the first model from Dell to come out with a Blu-ray drive.

January’ 07: Broadcom announced a first of its kind System-on-a-Chip solution that allows for support of Blu-ray as well as HD-DVD format. Acer also offers Blu-ray drive on Aspire 9810 model.

June’ 07: Broadcom announced the availability of Media PC technology in add-in card formats that permits the integration of Blu-ray technology in notebooks PC’s at an economical price. Alienware m9750 available with Blu-ray. Dell also extendeds Blu-ray capability to Inspiron 1420, 1520 and 1720 models.

August’ 07: Hitachi makes breakthrough with Blu-ray camcorders. With Blu-ray enabled high definition video cameras coming into the market, there will be a greater need of notebook pc’s that allow for high definition video editing.

September’ 07: Sony adds Blu-ray as an option to VAIO FZ series.

October’ 07: Fujitsu announces LifeBook N6460 with Blu-ray drive.

Cheap Laptops: Is It Time For An Old Dream Coming True?

Desperate for a portable PC and short of funds, perhaps you’ve been eyeing on cheap laptop deals for quite sometime now.

Here, we are listing a number of must-read articles that give you plenty of insight and advice before you finally make that move. Don’t act in ignorance.

Cheap As Chips
This is quite an informative article that was published in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Digital Life section. The article classifies a cheap laptop as anything under $500 currently and introduces you to a few models and options that are available within this maximum price limit. While the article also covers cheaper desktop computers, that’s towards the end of the article, it’s the ‘sub notebook’ and auction sites sections that are very helpful for those looking for advice on buying cheap laptops.

The ‘sub-notebook’ section is a mini review of ASUS Eee PC, a rather stripped version of a modern day notebook pc, and the ‘auction sites’ section describes the life cycle status of laptop pc’s that are made available through sites like eBay etc. Laptops sold on auction sites could be classified as ex-lease laptops, reconditioned laptops, resealed laptops and new laptops.

The article also touches the subject of exploiting open source software and linux operating system to keep the total cost of ownership of your notebook pc’s low.

PC Guy: A budget laptop could limit your options
In this eye-opening piece of writing, Peter Grad takes a look at how popular notebook pc brands entice customers with low cost laptop models that only pack yesterday’s technology inside.

Basically a laptop pc is as good as the computing requirements it can fulfill of yours. If you are only looking for a machine that offers a portable way of accomplishing simple everyday tasks, cheap laptop models sold by mainstream manufacturers give the permanence you are looking for. But if you have extra needs, as you may find out when you go through the article as it exemplifies the built of every component of these budget notebooks, you will find yourself stuck with a need to order a number of pricey add-ons.

10 Things To Look For In A Laptop
Erik Eckel has posted a very refined entry on the subject of what to look for in laptops when shopping around. And if someone puts in the effort to sort out the comments visitors have placed on this post, he may come up with a very meticulous list of 101 things to watch out for when buying notebook pc’s.

Make sure you measure up the cheap laptop model you are going to buy against these aspects to watch out for and come up with a decision that keeps you satisfied for a stretched period of time.

64GB SATA II SSD, Samsung Expands Its Line of Solid State Drives

The high premium that one has to pay for solid state drives, doesn’t seem to be pulling customers back from stores. It’s an endless race of new companies venturing into the market for flash based solid state storage and coming up with up-to-the-minute products.

To solidify its presence in the SDD market, Samsung has announced introduction of 64GB SSD both in 1.8” as well as 2.5” format. However the chief element of the breaking news is that these latest drives follow SATA II interface, which takes the write and read speed of solid disk drives into the next level. To be more specific, SATA II offers a sequential write speed of 100MB/s over 45MB/s available in SATA I interface, and sequential read speed of 120 MB per second over 60 MB/s available earlier on.

At the same time, the latest 64GB SSD features enhanced power saving and will only consume half of what was required earlier on in solid state drives.

While demand for SSD’s continues to grow exponentially, Samsung stays at the top front of technological innovations, delivering avant-garde solutions.

SlimEdge Design, Fujitsu’s Innovative Notebook Display Goes Public

From now on, notebook consumers will not have to choose a single option between screen size and portability, they can merrily go for both when they buy LifeBook S6510.

The efforts of Fujitsu’s research department have given birth to a notebook model that easily stands out from the crowd owing to Fujitsu’s SlimEdge design.

The SlimEdge Desgin features Fujitsu’s exclusive skill in expanding the screen real estate of an otherwise 13.3” display notebook into a 14.1” one. That’s right, LifeBook S6510 accommodates a 303.4 x 189.6mm active display (equivalent to 14.1” screens) within the boundaries of its 316 x 235 mm outer walls (equivalent to that of 13.3” screens).

The 12.5% expansion in notebook’s display size is made possible by cutting down most of the screen’s conventional sidewalls, precisely from 12.65mm to 5.6mm. The benefits that this modest albeit challenging trick has brought for customers are fantastic. Thanks to the SlimEdge design, one can now sit back in a more relaxed way while still enjoying the advantages that come with light and portable 13.3” portable notebook. Furthermore, the screen now features a 16:10 aspect ratio, which gives enough room for users to open two horizontal windows simultaneously.

Overall, the SlimEdge design results in users enjoying more of display size without any corresponding boost in weight.

Western Digital Ships Scorpio 320GB Hard Disk Drive For Notebook PC's

While Toshiba was the first to announce a 320GB hard disk for notebook PC’s, it’s Western Digital that has actually hit the market with a 320GB disk coming from it’s Scorpio series.

Interestingly, WD is still not the first one to reach this capacity. Back in September, Alienware announced its latest model to offer 2 x 320GB hard disk capacity powered by Samsung HM320JI disk.

Irrespective of the who-landed-first debate, it’s great to hear that this much of storage capacity is now available for notebook users and from a mainstream hard drive manufacturing company.

The model number for this hard disk is WD3200BEVT; it’s 2.5” SATA with 5400 rotations per minute, and has a generous cache of 8MB. WD claims that the access time for this disk is 12ms.

Apart from the towering storage capacity, WD’s far above the ground hard drive also boasts of chic technologies that help it stay exceptionally quiet even when in action, resist damages from shocks and consume less of power. Perhaps exactly what mainstream notebook manufacturers are looking for.

In this era of multimedia computing, where consumers are using their notebook pc’s to store a lot more than regular applications and files, specially high quality images captured via latest digicams, full-length videos, TV recordings via integrated tuners etc, Scorpio 320GB would surely hit the most wanted charts.