Best computer news

Here’s the picture of the month. This is an Asus P6X58 Premium – first motherboard with dual SuperSpeed USB ports powered by none other than NEC µPD720200 – the first USB 3.0 certified chipset.

The board comes with support for Core i7 CPUs, six DDR3 memory slots, 3 PCI-Express 2.0 slots, plentiful of USB 2.0 jacks and of course two USB 3.0 ports as well as SATA 3.0 interface capable of delivering 6Gbps (USB 3.0 maxes at 4.8Gbps.) The blue connectors are USB 3.0 and the ones in black are USB 2.0. It’s fairly easy to tell them apart. So, the host ports are here now, drivers will likely be supplied by NEC, and what we need are some USB 3.0 gear for real world tests.
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Could this be another small evidence that a shift in purchasing power from USA to the rest of the world is underway? Kingston has decided to introduce its outrageously expensive Data Traveler DT300 256GB flash drive in almost every part of the world except America. Then again, who in the right mind would want to drop $800 for a thumbdrive that can only transfer at a pitiful 20MB/s. If we were to spend this much on storage, a real SSD with dual SATA and USB makes much more sense, not to mention more flexible.

For those who aren’t too good in math, Kingston’s DT300 256GB flash drive is twice the capacity of its DT200 128GB announced last month and eight times the size of the DT150 32GB thumbdrive reviewed last year. In term of cost per gigabyte, however, the DT300 is about $3.1 which is par with a solid state drive of the same capacity. The Kingston 256GB drive definitely has a market, until SuperSpeed USB comes along and more capable flash controller is able to boost transfer rate beyond 200MB/s.
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Japanese firm, KDDI R&D Laboratories Inc is releasing a supercharged version of IrDA. This USB 2.0 IR technology is able to send data via infrared signal at nearly 1Gbps. This is approximately 30 times the speed of IrDA. Having lost much ground to Bluetooth as the wireless flavor of choice IR is still capable of transmitting data significantly faster than Bluetooth 2.0. This new technology would be a quantum leap forward and could revitalize IR communications applications. This might actually put it on par with Certified Wireless USB

In the past IR has lost out on possible integrations due to proprietary device specifications that couldn’t keep up with the USB communications standard. This new chipset has been engineered to specifically adapt to those challenges. The recipient creates a virtual USB extender that keeps the bus happy while data is being transmitted and converted. KDDI hopes that this will enable low power wireless transmission of the large amounts of data that many portable devices are generating. Camcorders, video phones and media players could all benefit from being able to completely drop the wire in favor of wireless transfers. KDDI will be showcasing this at the Wireless Japan conference next week.
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SimpleTech SimpleTough drive for X-treme computing needs. Simpletech-Hitachi has launched a new set of drives aimed at those of us who take our data everywhere. Capable of withstanding a 3 meter drop (~10 feet) the drives should keep on ticking regardless of what you throw at them. Available in 3 sizes at launch, 250GB, 320GB and 500GB just about everyone should find a drive that will suit their rugged needs. I mean who hasn’t thought of mountain biking or skateboarding with a hard drive. About once a month, I’m on my way back from an IT staff meeting and Carl from Accounting wants to do some Muay Thai sparring. No time to put your briefcase down, FIGHT!

Sadly we’ve all seen the not-so-extreme accidents that end business trips and set projects back months. Losing family photos or MP3 collections has probably affected just about everyone reading this. If you aren’t investing something in backup solutions now you’re just asking for Murphy’s Law to come smack you down. The SimpleTough drives are capable of withstanding bad karma up to and including being run over by a truck. To top it off Hitachi is bundling 2GB of free online storage via their Hitachi Ultimate Backup service as well as Local Backup. The drives cost a meager $99 to $139 depending on size and should be available soon. No word yet about a Tony Hawk or Dave Mirra special edition but we can keep dreaming.
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