Sony's 40GB PS3 due 28 October?

Rumours that Sony is preparing a cut-price 40GB PlayStation 3 may have been dismissed by the consumer electronics giant as "speculation", but evidence is mounting that just such a box is indeed coming later this month.

UK online retailer Play.com, for instance, is listing an unspecified PS3, clearly separate from the other models, and which is revealed when visitors to its website do a search for 'ps3 40gb'. Presumably, then, we can safely assume Sony is readying a 666GB version of the console.

Tiny Storage device

Seagate announced nine new products on the eve of its annual analyst meeting, scheduled to take place later this week.

Seagate's DAVE 3.5 x 4.7 x .47-inch form factor into which you can cram 20GB ~ 60GB and cost less than $200 (digital audio video experience) platform, for instance, is geared toward people who want to use their phone as an MP3 player, movie player or video recorder.

The unit, which contains a 60GB 1.8-inch drive, can connect to a phone via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or a USB cable, and it can fit inside a coat pocket. Most phones come with a few gigabytes of capacity, at best, so a DAVE would significantly increase the amount of remote storage.

Some companies are also testing out the DAVE as a vehicle for renting movies. In this scenario, customers would walk up to a kiosk and select the movies they wanted. The kiosk would then beam them into the DAVE unit. The movies would contain copyright protection to prevent piracy, Watkins added.

In a twist, Seagate doesn't plan to market the DAVE as a product under its own name. Instead, it will make the DAVE for cellular companies and let them brand it.

At the other end of the Seagate spectrum is a drive optimized for security cameras. The drive, which offers up to 1 terabyte of storage, contains firmware that enables it to accept video streams from several sources.

The product launch also included a 1-terabyte desktop drive, a 250GB notebook drive, and backup drives from the Maxtor line. Seagate acquired Maxtor last year and continues to use the brand for its "value" (i.e. cheaper and less fancy) line of products.

The desktop Maxtor backup drives sport up to 750GB of storage space and cost about $270 each. In 2004, Sony showed off a 1-terabyte home server in Japan that cost about $5,000, so the price of storage continues to plummet.

Seagate also announced new drives for the first quarter of 2008, with enhanced error correction for digital-video recorders, including a 1TB model. In Japan, consumers are already asking for 2TB drives for their DVRs.

Seagate has also said it plans to move into the market for flash-based hard drives. The company now sells only hard drives that store data on magnetic platters.

Samsung Electronics and SanDisk have already released flash drives for notebooks and blade servers. By coming out with its own flash drives, Seagate can participate in what Watkins claims will be a corner of the storage market.

Flash memory is more reliable and consumes less energy, but it costs more, in terms of cents per gigabyte.
source: cnet

Compact Disc: 25 years old

Forgotten Tech The Compact Disc is 25 years old. Though the digital audio format's development stretches back many years before 17 August 1982, that was the date on which the world's first CD pressing plant punched out its very first disc.

According to Philips - with Sony, the format's co-developer - the first disc off the Hanover, Germany production line was Abba's The Visitors. While CD production commenced in August 1982, the format wasn't formally brought to market until November, and then only in Japan. US and European music lovers had to wait until March 1983 for the first discs specifically tailored for them. They embraced the format wholeheartedly.

In the UK, Dire Straits' 1985-released Brothers in Arms was immediately snatched up by early adopters keen to put their new CD players through their paces. It was one of the first CDs produced from a digital master made from digital recordings - a so-called 'DDD' album. But other albums proved even more popular.

For many years, it was claimed record label EMI had a single CD pressing plant to producing copies of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, such was the demand for that album. Dark Side of the Moon remains the archetypal CD album - who wants to get up and turn an LP over when you're happily getting intergalactic to the Floyd's spaced-out sounds?
Source: register