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We’ve been waiting to get our hands on a USB 3.0 flash drive for a while, but if you listen to Patriot that may be a bad idea. Seems Patriot has been running into a problem with the current batch of SuperSpeed controllers. The chips are great but they run a little too hot to be in really tiny devices like flash drives. Patriot, a veteran in the memory and flash memory world, probably knows what it is talking about. Strangely though, none of the other vendors bringing USB 3.0 flash drives to the market have mentioned this heat problem.

Patriot says there are currently two ways that manufacturers are dealing with this issue. Dual under-clocked controller chips: This two-chip solution runs a pair of controllers at half the bus speed in a RAID 0 configuration. While this does allow for a cooler operation it introduces the possibility of data corruption and more importantly greater cost. The 2nd is to try and dissipate the heat with novel designs and heat sinks. This is the approach patriot is taking. The most obvious route for them is to physical attach the chips heat sink to a thermal conductive outer casing. Expect to see copper and aluminum sheathed flash drives in droves if this remains the case. This also means that flash memory makers will have much fewer options with regards to design if they hope to have them fast or compact. This should bother on the most elite of flash drive fans. For the time being, SSD memory is still too slow or too expensive to make drives that truly push the limits of USB 3.0. The stars will align and bring us better thumb drives soon though, just maybe not today.
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Microsoft brings us a couple of webcams every year, and 2010 is no exception. Last year, there’s LifeCam Cinema which introduces 720p capture as well as video noise-canceling ClearFrame technology. The only caveat with this model is the 15fps limitation to 720p recording. MS promises to unlock 30fps recording with a future drier release, which we presume can be found in these two new webcams – LifeCam HD-5000 and HD-6000. The duo should technically be the same with the HD-5000 made for desktop LCD monitors and the HD-6000 bundled with a clip that attaches itself nicely to notebook LCD screens. They both are tightly integrated with Windows Live! web services.

With these HD webcams, MS touts auto-focus, 16:9 widescreen, and true 720p HD video. Notice the word “true” is curiously missing in the LifeCam Cinema listing. TrueColor is in a nutshell another MS’ image processing technique that touches up the video brightness, exposure and saturation based on the environment. 16:9 widescreen is likely possible with a convenient wide field of view, which isn’t specified in MS’ product page. The only major distinction we can tell between the HD-5000 and HD-6000 is the 360-degree lens rotation in the latter notebook model. Perhaps this explains the $10 price difference from the HD-5000 desktop model.
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