Not satisfied with a paltry 32 or 64 GB of storage? The South Korean memory giant has announced the development of a new 1.8-inch solid state disk with up to 128 GB, which could replace 1.8-inch ordinary hard-drive in laptops. The ZIF-type SSD for laptops uses Single Level Cell (SLC) technology and supports PATA (ZIF-type) interface. It provides a maximum reading speed of 120MB/s and writing speed of 100MB/s - that is 6 times faster than the current 1.8 inch HDD. As solid state technology matures, expect to see more SSD Laptops in the 2008.

Price issues aside, this sounds like a great component for UMPCs and sub-notebooks. Factor in 50% less power used than a traditional hard drive for a little more run time.

Hey auto fans! For those of you who are CAA members, you can save $5 on the admission for February 18th to 21th by downloading this printable coupon!

For those non CAA members, you can try printing this $5 off coupon which I found it from a Chinese Auto Magazine. I haven’t tested this coupon in person but it doesn’t hurt to try it right? Apparently it can be used any day, no restriction. Valid from Monday to Thursday for adults.

If you plan to drive down to the show and park here’s the parking coupon for FREE parking.

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The PlayStation 3 has outsold the Xbox 360 and got very close to the Nintendo Wii last month, according to the latest market research.

Wii: 274,000 units
PS3: 269,000 units
xBox 360 : 230,000 units

It might be that consumers are buying the console to get what is often described as the “Best Blu-Ray Player”, and it’s also a game console. With Warner Bros. abandoned HD-DVD and go exclusively to Blu-ray, it looks like shoppers have an easier decision of which format to buy!

For all those iPhone owners, we know you’ve been waiting for the Flash support in iPhone. The good news is that you don’t have to wait much longer! We’ve just got word from a reliable source that Flash support is on its way to the iPhone, and it should be coming very, very soon. We are guessing that it would be pretty convenient for Flash support to be introduced alongside the iPhone SDK.

Even Gogole’s YouTube has to convert some of their videos to H.264 in order to be seen on an iPhone. We’ll keep you up-to-date with the latest status.

Source: GearLive

Latest News: Yahoo’s board believes Microsoft’s offer of $31 per share “massively undervalues” the company and does not account for the risk that a deal could be blocked by regulators. - CNN

The source also said that the company is unlikely to consider any offer below $40 per share. Yahoo’s response truly upset  Microsoft, but on the other hand, Google feels a relief (giggling). Another article from CNN denoted that Microsoft made a big mistake and harm their own shareholders from the hostile offer to Yahoo!

Source: CNN

Following Warner’s Blu-ray Only announcement, Blu-ray’s hardware was a comfortable 90% of the market share. However, what wasn’t mentioned is that this figure was unintentionally leaked as it accounted for “free Blu-ray player” promotions.

As a strike back, Toshiba’s $100-200 price cuts on their players went into effect on January 13th which probably accounts for the sales spur. We’ve seen the Toshiba HD-A3 for $199 and this can be lower?

Source: Pocket-lint

AMD is saying that their new chipset quad-core Phenom 9700 and 9900 are going to be delayed again, this time to the end of Q3. Apparently there’s a buffer-related glitch in the original design, so AMD decided to cancel the two chips and “reintroducing” the revised versions in Q3 as the 9750 and 9950 to improve consumer confidence.

Dell Inc. will limit online sales of computers using Advanced Micro Devices Inc. chips as part of a routine adjustment of product offerings. Dell declared it will continue selling its Inspiron AMD-based systems through its retail partners and over the phone - not online though.

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According to CNN, Microsoft has been in talks with Yahoo! about potentially acquiring a major portion of the company. The rumor is $25 Billion for this deal. This is not the first instance that Microsoft have this buyout thought for Yahoo! Last year in May, there are news about Yahoo!’s acquisition by Microsoft for $50 Billion in pricetag. (from mashable.com)

Chart provided by Search Engine Watch
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Microsoft released the beta version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (codenamed Fiji) this month in hope to improve its experience for those disappointed users. Some people found my previous article about 5 Simple Ways to speed up Vista to be helpful. As a guinea pig, I’m bravely tested the service pack for a couple of days. Generally I’m pleased with the SP1 upgrade, RC installation file size is significantly smaller than XP service packs. I find my PC is working more reliably and some tasks especially file copying, deleting, moving, take less time. The memory consumption is slightly better.

A collection of previously-released and new security hot-fixes, bug fixes (total of 300 fixes), application compatibility, performance / power consumption and other minor updates. Microsoft brings the Vista kernel (version 6.0) up to date to be more compatible with Windows Server 2008.

Some other highlights:

• Reduce of the number of UAC prompts when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location
• Improve by 25% on local file copying
• Improvement of compatibility with third-party diagnostic tools
• Improve the reading time for large images by approx 50%
• Attempt to resolve many of the most common crashes and hangs caused by applications like Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player and a number of other drivers included with Vista.

So far all the previous Google posts were positive such as the Gmail 6GB Storage and Google’s Android for mobile OS. However, this is negative! The two Google-related hacks which surfaced recently causes IT managers to look at employee Web surfing as a security hazard rather than a time waster.

Last month Google Toolbar’s security holes could let the hacker install malicious software on the system through the vulnerability of the “add new buttons” application embedded in the Google toolbar. Google later confirmed it was working to fix the problem.

Also last month, Google’s Orkut social networking service was hit by a worm. Read the rest of this entry »