PQI H566 – USB external hard drive: First 3.0-ready 2.5-inch portable unit

The company PQI announced the launch of a new product that is supposedly intended to be the first 2.5-inch portable hard drive in the market incorporating the new standard for connection of peripherals: USB 3.0 (Superspeed). Inside a metallic case with a minimal size and with a theoretical maximum data transfer rate of 5Gbps (10 times faster than USB 2.0), this hard drive is available in three versions with different storage capacities: 320GB, 500GB, and 640GB.

The PQI H566 is a portable hard drive with a 2.5-inch format and support for USB 3.0. It is also backward compatible with USB 2.0. The unit has a metallic protective case and weighs 200 grams. Its dimensions are 128 x 82.5 x 17 millimeters.

With a theoretical bandwidth of 480Mbps, the data transfer rate is increased up to ten times when it is compared to the USB 2.0 standard. The hard drive includes software for Windows systems; in particular: “Free Ur-Smart” for documents administration and “Free Ur Foretress” to protect your data by using AES256 encryption technology  (256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard).

Other features like HDD SATA II Interface, hot-swapping, and plug-and-play are also included.

Laptop hard drive: Toshiba announces a 2.5-inch hard drive with 750GB of available space

Toshiba’s Storage Device Division has introduced a 2.5-inch ultra-compact hard drive which, according to the company, is the first one offering a capacity of 750GB. The model MK7559GSXP has three platters into the 2.5-inch diagonal space and is designed for laptop computers where the size is a very important point.

The storage unit has an areal density of 839.1 Megabits/mm² (541.8 gibabits/inch²) and a media transfer rate of 1,363Mbps.

Toshiba believes that the big capacity, speed, and reliability will transform the Toshiba MK7559GSXP into a product to be used potentially in several markets including set-top boxes (or TV codifiers/recorders) and video recorders.

The company has also introduced the MKxx59GSM series with a 2.5-inch prototype that can reach a storage capacity of 1TB with three platters. The MKxx59GSM series is intended to be used in laptops where software with big storage requirements is installed

New Acer laptops: Aspire Ethos

New Acer laptops

The company Acer has introduced two models of the new laptops family under the name Aspire Ethos.

The Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G and the Acer Aspire Ethos 5943G will come with Intel processors ranging from Core i3-330M, to the Core i5, to the Core i7-820QM.  Regarding graphics, the laptops will have ATI Mobility Radeon HD5000 graphics adapters.

The first model has a FullHD 18.4-inch screen while the second one comes with a 15.6-inch screen and resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.

These computers will have one or two hard drives with capacity ranging from 640GB to 1.28TB,  up to 4 Gbytes of DDR3 RAM memory, gigabit ethernet, 4 USB 2.0 ports, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, HDMI port, Blu-Ray recorder, 8-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit pre-installed.

Nuclear battery

Are you tired of your short laptop battery life with only a few hours? Would you like the charge of your mobile phone to last a couple of months? Well, the answer to your “prayers” might be the nuclear batteries, which are been developed at the University of Missouri. They are designed especially for providing a lasting source of energy. And some people think these batteries could replace the current ones, including those used by the electrical cars. According to the creators, a nuclear battery has a very enormous capacity to generate electricity when compared to a regular one.

The batteries have always been the Achilles’ Tendon of the mobile devices. Usually, the designers of electronic devices for mass consumption (like laptops or media players) use small displays or screens that are not very bright in order to save the scarce energy resources that are provided from the regular batteries. But the new nuclear battery would bring a solution based on a liquid semiconductor (rather than a solid semiconductor) that will produce a much longer lifetime for the battery. The reason is the solid semiconductors are attacked constantly by some radioactive elements used by other types of batteries, while the liquid semiconductor is quite resistant  to these attacks. Although the term “nuclear” can be a little perturbing, the fact is that these batteries are not very different from those batteries used in, for example, medical pacemakers.

The new radioisotope battery has the size of a penny and provides much more power than the traditional ones because, according to the researches, its capacity is very superior. Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri, said that the radioisotope battery “can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries”. That is to say, it provides no less than a million times more charge than any “normal” battery.

Kwon and his research team have spent enough time working to solve many problems that they have encountered when developing this type of battery. One important thing is the batteries need to be small and thin in order to be practical and useful; this way, they could be used to power watches and small electronic devices. As mentioned before, the prototype (which you can see in the picture below) has the size and thickness of a penny, but the researchers think they can achieve a thinner battery. In order to do this, Kwon has required the collaboration of another professor: J. David Robertson (chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor). Together, they hope to maximize the power of the nuclear batteries as well as reduce the size and test other materials to make additional improvements. Kwon thinks that the final battery, which would be used in commercial gadgets, could be thinner than a human hair. For the moment, the research team have required a provisional patent in order to protect the exclusive right to use this invention.