It took the hard drive makers a while to exceed the maximum capacity of 160 GB at 5,400 RPM or 100 GB at a 7,200 RPM revolution speed. But ever since perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) took off, there seem to be new capacity points and new speed records almost every other month, especially in the 2.5″ notebook hard drive segment. In this article we will summarize some news and look at three of the latest models. Samsung, Toshiba and Western Digital were the first to provide 320 GB notebook hard drives. However, Samsung’s Spinpoint M6 drive was the first product to reach our storage test lab; the other two drives will follow shortly as they become available. These drives represent the crème de la crème of the high capacity notebook hard drive segment, while 7,200 RPM drives max out at 200 GB capacity. (Full article ‘2.5″ HDD Galore: Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba’)

The dynamic RAM (DRAM) chip next in line to become mainstream for PC users, DDR3 (double data rate, third generation), will start to find its place in significantly more PCs by the third quarter of this year, Taiwanese DRAM executives said today.

Inotera Memories Inc., a DRAM joint venture by Qimonda AG and Nanya Technology Corp., started pilot production of 1GB DDR3 DRAM this year, and plans to have the chips in mass production by the third quarter to meet growing demand.

“There is already demand for DDR3, and it will increase as the year goes on,” said Charles Kau, president of Inotera, during a news conference in Kuei Shan, Taiwan.

Pai Pei-lin, a vice president at Nanya Technology, forecast that 30% of DRAM demand in the fourth quarter will be for DDR3.

(Full article ‘Memory makers expect DDR3 demand to rise by year’s end’)

Apple Inc.’s CEO Steve Jobs took center stage at the Macworld Conference and Expo today to introduce what he called “the world’s thinnest notebook,” dubbed the MacBook Air.

The new laptop, which is priced starting at $1,799 and will ship in two weeks, was the final, and flashiest, of the new products and upgrades that Jobs touted in a 90-minute keynote at Macworld, which opened yesterday in San Francisco. He also talked up a new wireless backup device called the Time Capsule, spelled out changes to the iPhone that will be delivered later today via a firmware update, and announced the relaunching of Apple TV, which now features a lower price and movie downloads via iTunes. View more news from the Macworld Expo

“There were no surprises today,” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research Inc.

(Full article ‘Update: Apple airs out ‘world’s thinnest subnotebook”)

Intel Corp.’s financial results for the fourth quarter of 2007 fell short of analysts’ estimates in part because of weak prices for memory chips.

The company recorded revenue of quarterly $10.7 billion, up 10.5% from the same period a year earlier, but lower than the $10.8 billion consensus estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Revenue from computing-related products was as expected, but revenue related to NAND memory was lower than expected, Intel said in a statement (pdf format).

The company reported quarterly net income of $2.27 billion, below analysts’ estimates of $2.38 billion. Earnings per share were 38 cents.

Intel in November rolled out its next-generation Penryn processors, which the company claims provide better power efficiency and graphics performance than its earlier chips did.

(Full article ‘Weak memory pricing hurts Intel Q4 revenue’)

Seagate Technology LLC today is set to unveil an updated Momentus laptop disk drive that boosts capacity from 160GB to 250GB.

The new 2.5-in. Momentus 5400.4 version includes two disk platters and 8MB of cache, and it can spin at speeds of 5,400 rpm, the company said. The new version of the storage device is currently shipping, Seagate said.

The updated hard drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology and offers a 3Gbit/sec. interface — a sizeable jump from the Momentus 5400.3’s transfer rate of 1.5Gbit/sec., said Joni Clark, senior product marketing manager for Seagate’s personal compute business unit.

(Full article ‘Seagate boosts Momentus laptop drive capacity to 250GB’)