Laptops Arena

Students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have received as project theme to design and build a device that converts mechanical power into efficient electrical power, during a course called Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering Design, and so they came up with an exercise bicycle that uses "pedaling power" to charge a notebook.

The resulting device is a smart tool that would allow you to power your laptop by yourself, eliminating the need for plugging it in, and in the same time you can lose weight.
And now I’ll explain a bit how it works.



These smart students have managed, after hours of work, to connect an old exercise bicycle to a donated computer, and while the motion produced by pedaling passes through the flywheel, belts and gears, an electric generator is reached and this one will transfer the energy to a standard 12V car battery.
This battery is protected by a charge controller that regulates the amount of energy coming to it, preventing this way from overcharging.
Further, the power is drained out of the battery through a 12V cigarette-lighter adaptor in order to convert the electrical power for the notebook's specifications.

After the tests, students presented the new device saying that a bicyclist would be able to produce up to 75W of electrical energy continuously, more than 30W being needed to ensure the notebook's power.

As its name suggests, the small device allows high-data download speeds and comes with the Wireless Manager interface for a simple installation, being easy configurable too.

MD300 can be used even as a memory stick and needs just 128MB of addressable memory.

Those of you that have Macs can download the specific drivers to ensure the compatibility between your system and the HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE or a GPRS networks.

With the use of Windows software and the built-in drivers the card installs and configures itself automatically after it is plugged in any standard USB port, following to get instant access through the PlayNow mobile entertainment service from Sony Ericsson.

Johan Tysklind, Marketing Director Mobile Computing at Sony Ericsson said a few words describing their new product:

"The MD300 combines high data download speeds with simple installation and configuration, making it the ideal choice for busy professionals who demand no-compromise connectivity. The MD300 is the first offering in our forthcoming portfolio of mobile broadband products that will combine Sony Ericsson’s dependability with a stylish form factor."

Having a shiny color combination of black and metallic silver, it will come out on the market in the first quarter of 2008, together with a desk stand and an USB extension cable.

Samsung has built the first 64GB Solid State Drives of 1.8 inches, featuring a fast Serial ATA II/native SATA interface.



The SATA II has a sequential write speed of 100MBps and a sequential read speed of 120MBps and intends to expand its marketing sector target from notebooks to high-performance storage applications.



According to the director Jim Elliott, “The 64GB SATA II SSD is based on Samsung’s cutting-edge NAND technology with dramatically improved performance specs that are taking system performance to a whole new level of efficiency.”

The SATA II Solid State Drive is combining a 50 nm-class single-level-cell (SLC) 8 GB flash chip with Samsung’s proprietary high-speed SATA controller and supporting software.
SATA II SSD has an interface speed of 3.0 Gbps, meaning twice as fast as SATA I, while it needs only half as much power as the 1.9 watts consumed by hard drives now used in notebooks, and just 1/10 from the power consumed by enterprise-class 15,000rpm hard drives in servers.

Most of the PC buyers prefer Western Digital as the brand for their HDD choices.
We have good news!
The company has just started to ship the latest WD HDDs called Scorpio WD3200BEVT with 320 GB storage capacity.



The 2 inches HDD has the largest capacity from its form factor category and has 5400 rpm, ATA Serial interface of 3 Gb/sec, and just 12 ms access time.



Featuring the WhisperDrive technology will allow you to operate the notebook quietly and its ShockGuard technology will protect all from shocks.
The power consumption, the noise as well as vibrations are reduced now thanks to the optimal seek speeds calculated by the IntelliSeek technology.

For $199.99 you can have this HDD latest technology from Western Digital store.

Asustek is complaining about Intel processors incorporated in notebooks specifying a deficit since September when the number of notebook buyers grows in addition to the beginning of a new school year.

This year was very hard for laptop builders to procure certain pieces, including small LCD screens and HDDs.
Asustek doesn’t believe that this shortage will affect their sales:
"Our relationship with Intel is good, so we don't have a big problem, but if it wasn't so good, our troubles might be worse."

Asustek and the other companies are waiting for the strong demanding season to end and things to get back to normal.

All companies are expecting that notebooks to hit record sales, including Asustek that predicted numbers like 4.4 million notebooks to be sold until the end of this year, and this not including the Eee PC.