Just like clunky eight track cartridges, brick sized cellphones and desk hogging CRT monitors, the trusty hard disk could be heading for oblivion as Intel announce their first move into the flash drive market.
Yesterday, the electronics big boy elbowed its way onto the Flash Memory table clutching news of their Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive, offering USB 2.0/1.1 interfaces.
Despite its instantly forgettable name, Intel reckons that the NAND flash memory can whip the spinning botty of hard disk drives and removable USB storage devices, offering nippier boot times, embedded code storage, faster data access, silent operation and lower power consumption.
Although no one’s predicting that flash memory will replace hard disks quite yet (mechanical drives still enjoy a considerable cost advantage at large capacities), Greg Matson, product marketing manager for Intel’s NAND flash memory division reckons they could provide a more reliable and cheaper way of storing information on PCs for emerging markets.
The drives could also be fitted into PCs and servers as a way to speed up the boot process, and thus deprive workers of a good excuse to pop out for a walk, “while the PC’s starting up.”
Intel is currently keeping schtum about the pricing for their Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drives (it doesn’t get any more memorable the second time around, does it?) but the capacities will vary from 1GB to 8GB, with 8GB drive not expected to emerge until the end of the year.
Intel’s Green Xeon Processors
Elsewhere, Intel were giving their Eco-Trumpets an extra long parp with the announcement of two new Quad-Core Xeon processors – the L5320 and L5310.
Intel claims that these offer between a 35 and 60 percent reduction in power consumption on low-power, quad-core processors designed for high end users like data centres, blade servers and financial industries.
“Intel has really responded to the industry’s call to deliver unprecedented breakthroughs for datacenter energy efficiency,” frothed Kirk Skaugen, VP of Intel Digital Enterprise Group and GM of the Server Platform Group.
“IT managers can get outstanding quad-core Intel Xeon server performance today and at no premium to dual-core products,” he added.
Although some may already feel that walking around Brixton is akin to taking a stroll around another planet, we began to think we might have been transported to a parallel universe when we spotted bright garish yellow billboards appearing all around town exclaiming, “THEY WANT YOUR POD!”
In smaller text underneath the screaming headline, “BEWARE” the sign goes on, “Street robbers are targeting persons using mp3 music players in this street!”
Although the sign doesn’t actually tell you what to do to prevent being ‘jacked’ (
Fresh outta hi-tech Fat Farm, the new Zen Vision M and W models have managed to reduce their bulk by 15% on previous versions while wedging in a bigger hard disk.
The rather desirable little fella weighs in at a light as heck 170g (and that includes the battery) and comes with a 2.5 inch colour screen.
Vision W
When?
After growing tired of endless beer-fuelled, late night rummages around the house for a mountain of easily-lost remote controls, we thought we’d check out an all-in-one controller. 
The Kameleon only managed to find one set of codes that immediately worked on our devices; there was nothing for our 3 year old AV Yamaha amp and it neither had codes for our new Humax PVR nor wanted to learn any either (the learning process involved us continually bashing a single button, but the remote kept quitting before it found anything for the PVR).
By this time we were beginning to harbour thoughts about how far we could throw the streamlined remote, but thought we’d drop One For All a line for help instead.
Moreover, we were reminded of the shortcomings of ‘virtual’ buttons versus real hardware buttons – groovy glowing buttons emerging from the darkness of a black remote may look the stuff of Spock, but ‘real’ buttons remain easier to use and more responsive to the touch (something that those dreaming of an iPhone might want to consider).
Keen to maintain its position as the Dark Master Of All Things PMP, Archos have announced the latest addition to its Personal Media Player, the 704 Wi-Fi.
As befits its media player billing, this puppy can play a ton of video formats including MPEG-4, AVI, Divx and WMV video files, and MP3 and WMA audio files (with optional plug-ins for h.264, MPEG-2 MP@ML, and AAC support). There’s also support for PlaysForSure.
Sky has gradually been increasing the number of ways to program your Sky+ and HD boxes to record. The latest, via the Internet, joins interactive via 
Strangely they have decided to impose a limit of 10 recording request a day via the Internet – but, in our view, anyone who need to remotely programme their box more than that needs help anyway. Those afflicted can reach for their mobile to carry on programming until their thumbs bleed.
Having a ton of the latest technological gadgets bulging in your pants may give you a Noughties swagger, but you’ll be looking like a prize chump if the batteries go flat, so Solar Technology’s new Freeloader charger might help you keep your cool.
After one battle too many with our ever-flaky Epson printer (see: 
The printer tray at the bottom stores a useful 250 sheets, so you can let it get on with big jobs unattended, with the printer fairly quiet in operation.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Pocket Tunes has long been the most popular audio player on the Palm OS, and the recent update to version 4 has produced a raft of cool new features including an Internet Radio Catalogue, a swanky new interface and album cover art support.
Streaming Internet Radio
As with MP3s we had no problems listening to radio streams in the background while we used the Treo for sending off emails and editing a Word document, although the phone was occasionally a tad sluggish when switching between apps.
Once the music is loaded up on your Palm, the program shuffles through the list and categorises the content into Artist, Album, Title and Genre sub-categories.
“We still do not recommend running Pocket Tunes from a SD card because you cannot launch a stream from Blazer (system limitation), however this is less problematic in 4.0 because it has a built-in Internet radio catalog, no longer requiring the user to use Blazer. 
As I’m sure you’re aware it’s a looker … and you’ll not be surprised to hear that it’s shiny – mirrored in fact.