Technology Metro

Hard Drives has been with us for a long long time now and it is about time our regular hard drives are replaced by something more reliable, less power hungry, smaller in size and has a faster data transfer rate. We are used to the old PATA hard drives and its successor, SATA which basically transfers data a lot faster than the old one. Well some the above traits are found in a Flash Drive but the one thing that is keeping it from replacing a Hard drive is its size limitation.

Now SanDisk and Toshiba have teamed up on a project for a new 43-nanometer SSD manufacturing process. The SSD ( Solid State Drive) will have the same capability as a regular 2.5″ hard drives we use. The advantages of a solid state drives are

• Less power consumption
• Smaller in size
• Generates less heat compared to a Hard Drive
• Faster data transfer rate

The solid state drives can be used on a ultra small and thin notebooks, in fact this has already happened. The MacBook Air and the Asus Eee PC. While the MacBook Air comes with an option to choose a 64GB flash based solid state drives, the Asus Eee PC provides SSD by default. There is one defect in a flash based solid state drives, the write cycle is limited so eventually, a SSD will wear out. If this issue can be fixed, SSD will definitely replace the old, bulky hard drives we use today.

Solid State Drives are kind of a new thing and obviously it is going to be quite expensive and it is so. A MacBook Air with a 64GB SSD costs $3098 while a MacBook Air with the regular hard drive costs $1799. You can see the huge price difference right!

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MacBook is one of the trusted laptops on the portable computer market today and lots of people love the Mac environment even though it costs quite a bit more than other Laptops. One of the main reason’s people prefer to use MacBook with Mac OS is because there are very few virus and malwares that infect a MacOS unlike Windows systems. Apple’s most recent innovation in the laptop department is the Apple MacBook Air. The MacBook air is meant to be the thinnest laptop and Apple have done the job quite well. The design of the MacBook air itself is quite cool with lots of curves which makes it a very slick laptop.

There are quite a few innovations found in the new MacBook Air, for instance the TFT LED backlit screen. Even the battery on the MacBook Air is a bit different. Usually laptops use Lithium Ion battery to power itself but the MacBook Air has a Lithium polymer battery. One downside to the design of the MacBook Air is users cannot replace the battery themselves as it is located inside the casing, they will have to go to Apple to get it replaced. You can find the specifications for the MacBook Air Laptop below.

• 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache (optional)
• 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
• 80GB 4200-rpm Parallel ATA hard disk drive
• 64GB solid-state drive and/or external USB MacBook Air SuperDrive (optional)
• 13.3-inch glossy widescreen TFT LED backlit display
• Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory
• Built-in iSight camera
• Analog audio output/headphone out (minijack), Built-in mono speaker, Built-in omnidirectional microphone
• Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking ( IEEE 802.11n) This is compatible with all A, B and G
• Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
• Integrated 35WHr Lithium polymer battery
• Backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor which automatically adjusts keyboard lighting and screen brightness

The MacBook Air also has a track pad that supports the multi-touch function found in Apple’s iPhone. You will be able to pinch, swipe or rotate by simply moving your fingers on the track pad.

The MacBook Air comes with a pre-installed Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard which includes Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row, Xcode Developer Tools. iLife ’08 Media Software is also installed in the MacBook Air which includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand. The cost of the MacBook Air starts from $1799. Only two specifications are available. The 1.8GHz version of MacBook Air costs $3098 which if you ask me is a bit to expensive. You can Pre-Order your MacBook Air here. You will receive the things mentioned below when you receive your MacBook Air package.

• MacBook Air
• Micro-DVI to DVI adapter
• Micro-DVI to VGA adapter
• MagSafe power adapter
• Install/restore DVDs

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