Coming soon: A notebook with a terabyte

It's the notebook for neurotics.

ASUS, the Taiwanese computer maker, will come out with a notebook that sports two 500GB hard drives from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Combined, this will give a fully configured Asus M70 notebook a terabyte of storage.

Put another way, the notebook will be capable of storing 1,000 hours of video, or more than 350 feature length movies, or 250,000 four-minute songs. That will probably tide you over for even the worst airport layovers. A terabyte also holds about the same amount of data that could be stored on the paper from 50,000 trees.

ASUS will also release notebooks with a single 500GB drive.

Hitachi's Travelstar 5K500 drive, coming in February, is the highest capacity 2.5-inch drive to date, according to Hitachi. The drive, like most cutting edge drives being made these days, features perpendicular recording, which allows the drive to hold more data into a square inch than conventional drives.

The drive will come out in the second quarter. Hitachi will also come out with a 400GB version in the first quarter. These drives record data on three platters. The prices on the drives and the notebooks were not revealed.
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HP kicks off CES season with two (sort of) new laptops

HP isn't waiting until the streaming masses descend on Las Vegas for CES to unveil new additions to the company's laptop lineup. Thursday, HP announced the HP Pavilion tx2000 and a slightly revamped version of the HP Pavilion HDX. If those sound familiar, that's because the convertible tablet tx2000 is an update of the tx1000 we first saw last year at CES 2007, and the new HDX has some updated parts, but exactly the same name as the 2007 version of the HDX, itself released just this past July. Overall, there are a handful of minor tweaks, but nothing radically new.

We liked the original tx1000, as it was one of the few consumer-focused tablet PCs we'd ever seen (most tablets are aimed at industrial or medical workers). The new version looks nearly identical from the outside, and inside it offers AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core CPUs, 802.11n Wi-Fi and adds Wacom digitizer support to the finger-sensitive 12.1-inch touchscreen, something missing from the previous tx1000 model.


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Lenovo launches three IdeaPad laptops

Getting a jump on the product-launch blitz that is CES 2008, Lenovo has announced a whole new brand of consumer-oriented laptops and desktops. Called IdeaPad and IdeaCentre, the lines are intended to complement the company's flagship business-oriented ThinkPad and ThinkCentre lines. While today's announcement does not include any specifics on desktop models, we learned plenty about the new IdeaPad laptops.

The first full line of entertainment-oriented Lenovo laptops to hit the US (we saw one consumer model, the Lenovo 3000 Y410, sneak into the States last fall), IdeaPads include such welcome design touches as textured lid finishes and a sleek "frameless" screen that's ergonomically situated a bit farther away from the keyboard than most laptops. Also key to the IdeaPad look are touch-sensitive media controls above the keyboard and a bright orange button, called the Shuttle Key, which can be used on its own to control volume or in combination with the touch controls for additional functionality (somewhat like a Fn key). There's Front Row-like media software, called Shuttle Center, and Dolby Home Theater sound. Every IdeaPad is also outfitted with a built-in 1.3-megapixel Webcam, VeriFace software for biometric security via face recognition, and a ThinkVantage-like Novo key that provides quick system recovery should you ever encounter a data-destroying virus.

Tonight's announcement includes the first three laptop models in the IdeaPad line: the 17-inch Y710, the 15.4-inch Y510, and the 11.1-inch U110. Individual specs and details after the break.


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Dell's 12.1-inch Vostro laptop

When Dell launched its new Vostro line, it got some people confused. After all, with Inspiron taking care of the consumer market and the Latitude series catering to the business crowd, where does this leave the Vostro lineup?

In a nutshell, Vostro machines are for those who do not care for the entertainment features of consumer systems while eschewing the additional support (and premium price) of business portables. The latest addition to the series is the 12.1-inch Vostro 1200 which continues the tradition of nondescript design and low cost. Starting at S$1,599 (US$1,139.78), the Vostro is highly configurable with options ranging from low-end Celeron processors to Core 2 Duo chips, as well as fingerprint sensor and integrated Webcam. The optical drive is integrated into the chassis and the DVD/CDRW combo drive can be replaced with a DVD writer. We like the fact that it comes with a Draft-N wireless card as standard and that the warranty can be upgraded to a full three-year CompleteCover coverage.

However, its low cost of ownership comes at a price. At 1.9kg with the smaller four-cell battery and a thickness of 36.3mm, it is not one of the most portable 12.1-inch machines around. Moreover, the Core 2 Duo-equipped Acer TravelMate 6292, which costs only S$200 (US$142.56) more, has many of the optional features of the Vostro 1200 (like Bluetooth and Webcam) as part of the standard configuration. Hence ,the Vostro's only edge lies in its strong warranty options.

New security rules for batteries on planes

If you don't want to lose your spare Lithium batteries for your camera, notebook or mobile phone, you might want to pack carefully for your next flight to the US.

New rules from the US Transportation and Security Administration, which took effect on January 1, ban travelers from carrying loose Lithium batteries in checked baggage. Passengers are allowed to pack two spare batteries in their carry-on bag, as long as they're in clear plastic baggies.

Fortunately, you don't have to worry about the batteries that are already installed in the devices you're bringing. The TSA has said it's safe to check in items like a laptop or iPhone that already has the batteries in place.

The agency said that loose Lithium batteries not installed in devices pose a fire risk to passenger planes. Recently, the National Transportation Safety Board could not rule out the possibility that Lithium batteries started a fire in a plane at the Philadelphia National Airport last year, according to the Associated Press.

If you do plan on bringing spare batteries in your carry-on bag, be aware of some other rules: You can only bring batteries with an equivalent of up to 8g of Lithium content. (Most batteries for mobile phones and laptops meet this requirement.) And for Lithium metal batteries, whether carried as a spare or installed in a device, batteries are limited to 2g of Lithium metal.

Via CNET.com.au

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