L
ike that tiny rabbit in a dog race,
Hitachi is making its mark as a sprint-
er in the great computer storage compe-
tition. It was the fi rst company to hit the
market with a terabyte drive, and thanks
to a partnership with Asus, the company
can now add the world’s fi rst terabyte
laptop to its list of accomplishments.
Dubbed the M70, Asus’s notebook
will use two of Hitachi’s new Travelstar
5K500 2.5-inch hard drives in a RAID 0
confi guration to hit the terabyte mark.
The drives themselves feature Hitachi’s
new Rotational Vibration Safeguard tech-
nology to counteract the threat to data
caused by too much rocking on the ol’
laptop speakers.A Terabyte for Laptops!
Hitachi and Asus partner up to set a new storage standard
W
ord of Dell’s avant-garde LCD monitor fi rst leaked several months ago.
Now, details about the stylish screen have fi nally surfaced and shipping
product is imminent.
The 22-inch, 1680x1050 screen is framed by 4mm-thick (er, thin) tempered
glass and sits atop a polished-metal tripod stand. Embedded in the glass
frame are four speakers (which can be augmented by a subwoofer via a built-
in output), as well as a webcam that’s positioned top and center. Connectivity
options consist of
DVI/HDMI, but
surprisingly, no
DisplayPort (Dell
has been a vocal
supporter of this
next-gen interface).
It all makes for
a splashy package,
but we’ll reserve
judgment until we
can actually test
the screen—after
all, we haven’t been
impressed with
other 22-inch LCDs,
which all seem
to feature inferior
6-bit-color panels.
For $1,200, we’d
expect a screen of
the highest quality.Dell Crystal Display
New 22-inch LCD looks intriguing, but is it worth the steep price?
Preview
http://www.maximumpc.com | MAR 08 | MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC 09
F
or years I’ve envied the tiny subnotebook PCs
that are popular in Japan but usually unavailable
elsewhere. Every traveling Japanese businessman
seems to have one of these little critters. They run
desktop apps, but they’re small enough to toss
into a carry-on bag—unlike most other notebooks,
whose carrying cases and accessories make them
a separate piece of luggage.
Now a Taiwanese company has scored an
unexpected hit with an affordable subnotebook
computer that was introduced late last year. Despite
humble specifications, the Asus Eee PC is selling
faster than beer at a NASCAR race. It’s about the
size and weight of a small book, costs $300 to
$400, and has a “solid-state storage drive” (2GB to
4GB of flash memory) instead of a hard disk. The
flash drive is preloaded with Linux and desktop
apps, including OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox.
A custom GUI hides the Linux command line. In
addition, the Eee PC has wireless networking
(Wi-Fi 802.11b/g), a memory-card slot, USB ports,
Ethernet, a 7-inch LCD, and a cramped but usable
QWERTY keyboard.
Ironically, the Eee PC ignores the much-hyped
ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) specification. Since 2006,
Intel and Microsoft have led a lavish marketing
campaign to promote UMPCs, which are tablet
computers with touch screens and (usually) a
tweaked version of Windows XP or Vista. Although
some people like UMPCs, they’re much costlier than
the Eee PC and aren’t generating the same buzz
among users.
Frankly, for the money, the Eee PC isn’t impres-
sive. Its 800x480-pixel screen makes web browsing
clumsy. Its 900MHz Celeron-M processor is under-
clocked to 630MHz. And because Asus downsized the
battery to save weight, the Eee PC runs for only a few
hours on a charge—no better than other notebooks.
For about the same price, you can buy a conventional
notebook with a faster processor, roomier hard drive,
more RAM, bigger screen, and better keyboard.
So why is the Eee PC so popular? It’s smaller,
lighter, and customizable. It inspires tinkering and
has spawned online communities of hardware and
software modders. Encouraged by the Eee PC’s
early success, Asus plans to introduce several
new models, including some with larger screens
and Windows instead of Linux. Asus is clearly onto
something here. I expect other companies will
soon join the bandwagon with their own teeny-
weeny PCs.Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine
and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.Teeny-Weeny
PCs
FAST FORWARD
TOM
HALFHILL