Intel’s Two New SSDs with 60 percent less cost and better performance

The yawning gap between SSD performance and HDD performance is behind the push to SSD-specific interfaces on I/O hubs now, like with Intel’s upcoming Pine Trail platform. The Intel new drives boast a 25 percent reduction in read latency, which was already about 60x speed of an average hard disk write performance also doubled with this new generation.

The two new SSDs are X25M SATA parts weighing in at 80GB and 160GB, and they’re meant to replace Intel’s existing X25M drives in those capacities, but at 60 percent less cost and with better performance. The 80GB X25-M is $225 in lots of 1,000 (down from $595), and the 160GB is $440 (from $945). That’s some serious discounting, and it may well drive even more SSD uptake in the coming quarters despite the ongoing IT spending crunch.

Intel has announced two new solid state disk drives made on its leading-edge 34nm process. It’s also the case that the 34nm transition was in the works well before the financial crisis. So Intel has gone ahead and brought that capacity online and they’re going to use it to make what everyone wants right now i.e., cheaper storage, better performances, etc.

Noticeably absent from the announcement is a high-capacity 320GB drive, which many were expecting. A 320GB drive would be an expensive, premium product of the sort that nobody is buying right now so it is not tapped-out consumers. So instead of trying to sell a high-end SSD, Intel took advantage by cut the cost of making its existing flash products so that it could lower the price and sell more of them into a price-sensitive market.

Now Intel could even be making a bit more profit on each drive even while passing considerable savings on to customers.

World’s Largest Telescope Will be built atop Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii

Hawaii’s isolated position in the middle of the Pacific Ocean also means the area is relatively free of air pollution. Few cities on the Big Island mean there aren’t a lot of man-made lights around to disrupt observations. Hence Hawaii was chosen on Tuesday as the site for the world’s biggest telescope, a device so powerful that it will allow scientists to see some 13 billion light years away and get a glimpse into the early years of the universe.

The telescope’s mirror stretching almost 100 feet in diameter, or nearly the length of a Boeing 737’s wingspan will be so large that it should be able to gather light that will have spent 13 billion years traveling to earth. This means astronomers looking into the telescope will be able to see images of the first stars and galaxies forming some 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Native Hawaiian tradition holds that high altitudes are sacred and are a gateway to heaven. In the past only high chiefs and priests were allowed at Mauna Kea’s summit. The mountain is home to one confirmed burial site and perhaps four more, and environmentalists oppose the telescope on the grounds it would hurt some endangered species.

Thirty Meter Telescope Observatory Corp. spokesman Charles Blue said that It will sort of give us the history of the universe. The telescope is expected to be completed by 2018, will be located atop a dormant volcano that is popular with astronomers because its summit sits well above the clouds at 13,796 feet, offering a clear view of the sky above for 300 days a year.

The telescope will be built by the University of California, the California Institute of Technology and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy.

The current world’s largest telescopes also are located atop Mauna Kea, but the size of their diameters is about three times smaller than the Thirty Meter Telescope. Current telescopes also don’t routinely offer views of hundreds of planets orbiting around other stars and stars that are near the sun like the new telescope will.

A partnership of European countries plans to build the European Extremely Large Telescope, which would have an 138-foot mirror. The group is considering sites in Argentina, Chile, Morocco and Spain. It plans to decide on a location next year and be able to host its first observation in 2018. Another group of universities plans to finish the Giant Magellan Telescope, also around 2018, with an 80-foot mirror in Las Campanas, Chile.

Windows 7 RTM Release Date

Microsoft’s hardware and software partners will receive copies of Windows 7 RTM starting Aug 16 or Aug 23 2009, depending on which partner program they’re assigned. OEMs or original equipment manufacturers in other words, computer makers will have Windows 7 in hand approximately two days after Microsoft’s announcement.

Volume licensing customers, normally large organizations and companies will be able to grab Windows 7 RTM starting Aug 7 if they have an existing Software Assurance plan or if they do not have they will have it on Sept 1.

LeBlanc also confirmed that Microsoft will sell a three-license “family pack” upgrade from earlier editions of the OS to Windows 7 Home Premium, but did not flesh out that notice with pricing or timing information. Reports have circulated for two weeks that Microsoft would reprise the multi-license upgrade pack it offered for Windows Vista; at least one reseller has posted the suggested list price as $149.99 on its Web site.

Microsoft will likely announce that Windows 7 has reached release to manufacturing (RTM) status on Wednesday. An analyst with directions on Microsoft Michael Cherry said that RTM almost seems like a non-event and also stressed that he had no special knowledge of when Microsoft would declare Windows 7 finished. But it’s got to be any day now. The company earlier pledge that it would move the new operating system into its final pre-sale phase, sometime in the second half of July 2009. The importance of RTM has ebbed since Windows Vista.

Consumers and other customers will have their first shot at Windows 7 on its official launch day Oct. 22 2009.

Yahoo New Homepage Design

Yahoo launched of its brand new customizable home page, the first major revamp to the page since 2006.

At first glance the organization of the latest home page doesn’t look dramatically different. But it soon becomes apparent that this is no longer a one-size fits all Web destinations.

On the upper right, you’ll see the 10 most popular Internet searches. In the middle of the page you’ll find basic news headline links, a mix of hard news, softer stuff and local news. Near the top of the page (and just below a large Yahoo search box) you can enter your own social networking status. But the biggest deal concerns a My Favorites panel running down the left side of the screen. The list includes the requisite Yahoo properties, including Yahoo Autos, Finance, Mail, and Messenger, among others.. But several third party sites also populate the list, including eBay, Facebook, and MySpace.

The company hasn’t made any changes to the fully customizable My Yahoo page, which is currently used by about 50 million people. Yahoo plans to roll out the page in France, India and the UK by the end of the week, with a mobile version also coming soon.Currently the new Yahoo home page is an beta; If you like to check the new layout then try this yahoo

Toshiba To Release Blu-ray Players By This Year

Just last week, the Digital Entertainment Group released its mid-year report, and Blu-ray Disc was clearly doing well in spite of the weak economy: Both disc sales and hardware sales are up as compared with last year.

The timing of Toshiba’s plans actually makes perfect sense. Blu-ray has entered its mass market phase. The format is at a point of growth. Blu-ray player manufacturing costs have fallen off dramatically as compared with a year ago. And the street prices for players are also lower-you can now easily find a player for under $200.

All of these factors were apparently too great for Toshiba to ignore. That said, whether the company jumped into the fray because of Blu-ray’s worldwide popularity.

Earlier, Toshiba withdrew HD DVD from the market in February 2008 after a series of crippling blows gave rival Blu-ray a clear edge. At the time, Toshiba indicated that, in the absence of HD DVD, it would instead pursue a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies.

In light of all of this, the news that Toshiba will produce its own Blu-ray player is actually unsurprising. Still, it is appropriate to wonder aloud why Toshiba would swallow its pride and enter into the competitive Blu-ray Disc player market.

The Blu-ray Disc Association noted that Blu-ray had achieved over 50 percent market share in Japan-clearly that means Toshiba has been leaving potential revenue on the table for its competitors to grab.

Nokia to launch an entirely new series of handsets C Series and the X Series

Last April, Nokia filed a trademark application for C series. Nokia is all set to launch an entirely new series of handsets. The C Series and the X Series.

Nokia is all set for the new C Series, By the way Sony Ericsson also has handsets that belong to the C Series like the C902 and C905. Nokia filing for one more trademark name and this time its the X Series.

As we know, Nokia’s already had the N-Series (for entertainment) and the E-Series (business), but all are waiting for the answer what’s this new series for?

Not sure. However, some guess may be: Yes, the E in E-Seriesstands for business, and the N in Nseries stands for entertainment. So, what will the C in C-Series stands for? Some guess around internet are: stands for access (for Internet phone) or accent (for fashion phone).

Intex New Netbooks and its Features

Intex, the maker of mobile phones, computers, and computer peripherals, has launched its very first netbook, the thin and light N101-WC1100.

The N101-WC1100 netbook is available in two colors ‘chic red’ and ‘elegant black’.

The N101-WC1100 netbook specification as follows:

* 10-inch WSVGA LED backlight display.
* Powered by Intel Atom N270 processor,
* An Intel 82845G Graphics Controller,
* 1GB DDR2 memory expandable up to 2GB,
* 160GB SATA hard drive resides in it,
* 1.3-mega pixel webcam,
* WiFi 802.11 b/g (wireless),
* Bluetooth and
* 7-in-1 mini card reader.

The netbook also claims to offer up to 4 hours of battery backup.

Microsoft and Yahoo Once Again Talks for Search and Ads Deal

As Microsoft enjoying relative success with the recent launch of its Bing Web site. The possible alliance itself is somewhat surprising. Top Microsoft executives are currently in Silicon Valley ironing out the short strokes, which apparently are related to deployment of technology. Neither side is commenting on the potential agreement, as they have been down this and similar roads together in the past.

Microsoft and Yahoo are in the final round of talks aimed at negotiating a deal that will include Microsoft paying several billion dollars up front to take over its search advertising business and guarantee certain payments back to Yahoo.

Although confident in Bing and the popularity it has been gaining since going live, Microsoft still is clearly far behind search titan Google (as is Yahoo). This proposed deal is not a complete Microsoft takeover as was initially being discussed earlier this year, but both companies can gain some ground in the battle by becoming allies.

Sources at both companies said that if everything works out, an announcement could be made within a week. It is probably a matter of time before they finally followed through negotiations to the end.

Microsoft announces its Azure plan details and pricing

Microsoft first announced its Azure plans at last year’s PDC and the product has been available as a free technology preview form since then. The cloud operating system isn’t launching in final form until Microsoft’s October Professional Developer Conference.

On a pure consumption basis, Microsoft said it will charge 12 cents per hour for computing, 15 cents per gigabyte for storage and 10 cents per 10,000 storage transactions. For network bandwidth, the software maker is charging between 10 cents and 15 cents per gigabyte. The discount plan, dubbed the development accelerator comes in two forms and offers a 15 percent to 30 percent discount off the consumption charges. It requires a six-month commitment, with overage charges billed at the regular rates. After six months, the pricing reverts to the standard Azure rates.

Microsoft also announced pricing for its SQL Azure database, charging $9.99 for the basic Web edition, including up to a 1GB relational database and $99.99 for the Business Edition, which includes up to a 10GB database.

The software maker said it would promise 99.95 percent reliability for its compute and connectivity and 99.9 percent for role instance and storage. Microsoft finds itself in a new type of business, where it competes with the likes of Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com’s Force dot com.

The pricing announcement would be made at this week’s Worldwide Partner Conference, which is taking place in New Orleans.

Features of Sony Walkman E-Series video MP3 player and the B-Series music player

Features of Sony Walkman E-Series video MP3 player and the B-Series music player.

The second new launch is the E-Series Walkman, this time offering video playback alongside the audio, but still keeping a fairly small (and indeed slim at 9.3mm thick) profile. The E-Series player packs in a 2-inch QVGA LCD screen for a ‘detail-packed’ view of videos, photos, album art and playlists, along with Clear Audio technology for more clarity and a more powerful bass, a 5-band equalizer.

It has Dynamic Normalizer to balance audio levels between tracks and easy file transfer via both USB dragging or iTunes. There’s also an FM radio on-board, 30 hours of music playback from a single charge and if file formats are an issue, software to help with conversion. Price hasn’t been confirmed as yet.

The B-Series Walkman first broke cover in Japan last month, a small and colourful thumb-like device (with matching headphones), which offers a healthy 18 hours of music playback per charge, USB drag and drop for loading up, top-notch audio quality and a Zappin’ function. You also get an FM radio and a radio recording function.