The boffins at Samsung have knocked out a nice looking slim-line model just in time for FPD 2007 at Yokohama. The LCD screen, you fool, not the lass! The screen is a mere 10mm thick whilst 101.6cm (40 inch) from diagonal corner to diagonal corner, other details include

The panel, using an LED backlight, reproduces 92 percent of the NTSC standard for color saturation and features low power consumption of 90 watts or less.

Not content with showing off this little gem, Samsung have also promised to unveil a new range of notebook LCD panels with 16:9 aspect ratios in two versions, a 16 inch or an 18.4 inch diagonal amongst other things. So if you’re into flat panel displays, and admit it who isn’t these days, and you’re hanging out in Yokohama then trot on down to FPD 2007 for all the latest screens you can feast your eyes on. For those of you less fortunate, I’m sure I’ll be posting about a few of the other gems at the FPD 2007 over the next few days.

Source: NewsWire

Featured tags: lcd tv samsung

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If you have lots of old 2.5 and 3.5 inch SATA HDDs lying around and are forever cursing as you have to swap them in and out of enclosures then the SATA HDD Stage Rack could be the solution for you.

This little sucker plugs into a USB port on your PC and can hold either a 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA hard disk drive whilst you access the zeroes and ones on it. Just to keep our Mac readers happy it talks nicely to Macs as well.

Whilst I’m not sure it would be a great benefit to the average computer user, I’m sure users with extra HDDs lying around would find it very useful and people working in data centers could find it a life-saver, or at least a time-saver. Check it out over at, rather appropriately, GeekStuff4U.

Source: Akihabara

Featured tags: hdd stage rack

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With the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD war remaining quiet for the moment, which is surprising as the season of goodwill to all manufacturers is not that far away, the hard drive boys have picked up their swords and are preparing to do battle. Not long after Hitachi announced their intention to be producing 4 TB 3.5 inch hard drives by 2011, Western Digital have picked up the challenge and announced they’ll be producing 3 TB models by 2010. Here’s the techie blurb from WD

Following WD’s growing investments in technology the past five years, the company achieved 520 Gb/in2 using its own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology. This level of density produces a 3.5-inch hard drive storing 640 GB-per-platter and single hard drive capacities as large as 3 TB. Based on the industry’s current density growth rate of more than 40 percent per year, those capacities are expected to be available in the 2010 timeframe.

The WD announcement was made at the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference in Tokyo after it was demoed earlier in California and whilst it does smack of a ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ mentality or more accurately ‘mine’s earlier than yours’ it has to be good news for the consumer, doesn’t it?

At least it’s good to see a couple of hardware manufacturers squaring off in the storage arena, whilst all is quiet on the hi-def front.

Source: Western Digital PR

Featured tags: hdd hitachi western digital

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Onkyo have introduced two new Home Theatre systems, the HT-SP908 and the HT-SP904. Both systems come with Onkyo’s DV-SP405 DVD player which can upscale to 1080p via its HDMI output. But the guts of the HT-SP908 has to be its A/V receiver, the TX-SR605, with more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at. For those into specs, stats and annoying TLAs, hold your breath, here we go - the receiver sports two HDMI inputs and one output, all capable of handling 1080p, on the audio front it’s able to handle Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio spurting the noise out to seven 90 Watt satellite speakers and a 230 Watt sub-woofer grunter, the receiver plays nicely with XM and Sirius satellite radio and also sports a control dock, the DS-A1X, for your iPod.

The DVD player can handle the usual media range from mp3 and wma thru wmv, mpeg 4-aac and divx, onto coping with CD, CD-R/RW and DVD+/-R/RW media formats and in case you were wondering if the receiver has enough inputs and outputs check this out ….

I started drooling when I saw that shot! So start saving your pennies now as the HT-SP908 rocks in at US$1099. Its little brother, HT-SP904, is a snip lower at $899, but is short on the audio decoding plus lacks a couple of those satellite speakers.

Source: Onkyo

Featured tags: HT SP904 HT SP908 onkyo

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D-Link has announced the launch of their latest storage enclosure the DNS-313 in the UK. The unit can hold a 3.5 SATA hard disk drive and can be connected directly to a computer via USB or using the Ethernet connection hook up to a network via a router.

The DNS-313 is based on Internet Protocol so any OS can recognise these suckers for what they are and there’s also an FTP server tucked away in there for remote access.

The usual backup software is included allowing manual or scheduled backups plus real-time data protection as well. There’s also a UPnP AV media server inside which can stream out digital media content to your player.

All in all it sounds like D-Link have stuffed all they can into this enclosure unit apart from the HDD obviously. The unit will set you back 75 sterling and is due to appear on shelves in the UK about now. So if you are a storage freak in the UK then this little puppy may be just what you are looking for.

Source: D-Link UK

Featured tags: D Link DNS313 external hdd hdd enclosure network hard drive

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SimpleTech, a division of Fabrik, have announced a series of three new external hard disk drives.

	Simple Drive	Pro Drive	Duo Pro Drive
Connectivity	USB 2.0	USB 2.0 and eSATA	USB 2.0 and eSATA
Spin speed	7,200 rpm	7,200 rpm	7,200 rpm
Capacities	250, 320, 500 GB	500, 750 GB, 1 TB	1, 1.5, 2 TB
Prices (US$)	$100, $130, $170	$230, $330, $530	$400, $600, $800

The eSATA functionality can be extended to Macs by the use of a host controller adapter card and the Duo Pro Drive models provide a dual-drive solution offering either RAID 0 for super-fast performance or RAID 1 for extra data protection.

As well as the drives (Fabrik had a busy day!), they have launched ‘Ultimate Backup’, an online backup service just in case the drives don’t meet your storage needs. Unlimited storage will set you back $5 a month but you can try before you buy with a capacity limit of 2 GB.

So I think that just about covers all the storage needs you could ever require!

Source: SimpleTech external drives, Fabrik Ultimate Backup

Featured tags: external hdd Fabrik hdd online storage SimpleTech

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The guys at the ‘plex must be rubbing their hands with glee over the figures from ComScore’s ‘first comprehensive study of worldwide search activity’. ComScore have calculated that 61% of searches performed worldwide are executed through Google’s servers - wow! And perhaps what is more worrying there’s no major contender out there either, with Yahoo hiding back in second place with a measily 14%. Poor old Microsoft have dropped to fourth place on the list with 3.5% behind Chinese search engine Baidu in third (5.3%) with Ask almost off the scale at 1.2%.

Google have certainly entrenched themselves in the search engine niche with their name now being synonymous with internet search and is used in movies, tv programs and general day to day life - ‘Just Google it’ has become a favourite phrase of many people was when referring to looking for something on the internet. Will there ever be another search provider out there that can compete with Google and more importantly do we, as searchers, want one?

Anyway for some more details on the figures check out ComScore.

Featured tags: google microsoft search search engines yahoo

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