The first presentation I attended at CNTRSTG was by Boston Power, a battery company that's been making some waves lately with probably the most significant enhancement to Lithium Ion batteries that we've seen in several years. Given how little Lithium Ion batteries have changed in the past decade, that's not exactly hard to do, but Boston Power is definitely moving the needle.Dr. Christine Lampe-Önnerud, the founder of Boston Power in 2005, is a scientist by training and was part of a team of 20 people who pioneered lithium ion technology in the 1990's. She studied at MIT, and worked at Bell Labs; she knows batteries. Her team at Boston Power has over 300 years of combined experience in Lithium Ion batteries. There are two main problems with Lithium Ion batteries today: poor long-term performance and the fact that batteries just don't power our devices long enough to make us happy. Although the examples that Lampe-Önnerud brought up seemed unrealistic in my experience - she mentioned serious battery performance loss in the first three months - it's true that over the long term, battery performance gets increasingly worse. I tend to use my laptops in fairly controlled environments, but if someone is routinely using (or leaving) their laptop in extremely hot or cold environments the viability of the battery will definitely be impacted. You might get four hours of battery life on your laptop when you first get it, then six months later you're only getting three hours of run time. This is what Boston Power is trying to change. Figure 1: Dr. Christine Lampe-Önnerud, the founder of Boston Power.The charging cycle industry norm for Lithium Ion batteries is broad: anywhere from 150 to 300 cycles, which varies by manufacturer. That means that if you use your laptop for a few hours, then recharge it, you've used up a charging cycle. Shallow charges also impact the longevity of the battery cells, so using your laptop for 10 minutes then plugging it back in isn't the best idea because it will use up part of a charging cycle. I've seen all sorts of opinions expressed on this matter, and unfortunately I wasn't able to ask this question to Lampe-Önnerud to find out how rooted in reality this concept of shallow charging really is.So what is Boston Power doing about these problems? The company is only four years old, but they've managed to partner with the biggest laptop company in the world: HP. HP is releasing a line of batteries called HP Enviro, which feature 1000 charging cycles and 3 year warranties. The HP Enviro batteries, as you can probably guess by the name, also leverage the environmental advantages of the Boston Power approach. There are no heavy metals or PVCs in the product, and they're highly recyclable. These batteries are created using Boston Power's design and technology, which typically test in the 1400 charging cycle range - when asked why they didn't put 1400 charging cycles on the package, Lampe-Önnerud said that the number of charging cycles depended on a number of environmental factors and 1000 was the minimum they could promise. It's nice seeing someone in the technology world under-promising and over-delivering. Can you imagine if you bought a laptop that had five hours of advertised battery life and it worked for seven hours?Rather try to invent new technologies, they worked to tighten the specs of what was out there today - to fine tune the specs and deliver greater performance than what was typical today. Their batteries are enclosed in aluminum , which is a great heat conductor, whereas most batteries are encased in carbon, which doesn't conduct heat. Most lithium ion batteries have trouble with heat, which is why batteries tend to be on the edge of the laptop. Boston Power batteries can deal with the heat much better, meaning you can put the battery cells in multiple places inside the laptop, gaining more power overall. She hinted at working with several design teams to re-think the location of batteries. I strongly prefer removable batteries, but if I knew that the battery inside the laptop was going to still give me as much run-time power three years down the road, I wouldn't care quite so much. In their product roadmap, they have technologies to increase run-time on the battery, meaning that down the road we should see Boston Power batteries that last longer than other batteries on the market.Figure 2: A sample Boston Power battery in a Compaq notebook. This sample battery has a translucent shell so you can see the Boston Power battery cells.So how do you get a Boston Power battery? That's the biggest problem right now: availability. Right now HP is the only company that's selling Boston Power batteries, but they don't have an exclusive on the technology - HP simply worked closest and longest with Boston Power and are now reaping the rewards from that. The Boston Power batteries are "drop in" for several models of HP 3 and 4-cell Pavilion notebooks, meaning they're exactly the same size as the batteries they are replacing. The batteries are selling for about $30 more than normal batteries, so there is a price premium - though if you've ever gone through multiple batteries for your notebook, that $30 price premium vanishes immediately when you can keep using the same battery for several years. I was told that within a few weeks the HP Enviro batteries should be available as an option on HP.com for ordering customized notebooks. Obviously, HP and Boston Power want to get more of these batteries out for more notebooks, but that will take time.Will you see Boston Power batteries available from other notebook companies? Quite possibly. The Boston Power batteries are very price competitive with other batteries that the OEMs are currently using. Sony, Samsung, LG, and Sanyo have largely run the battery industry for the past 17 years, but it's within the realm of possibility that these big battery makers might license Boston Power technology to improve their own batteries. Boston Power's technology is definitely the biggest thing to happen to Lithium Ion batteries in the past five years, and I can't wait to see what they accomplish over the next couple of years.Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He was spoiled by the 11 hour battery life of his Fujitsu P7000 laptop.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fe...et_phenom_again"The production of a sequel typically implies that the original creation is worth revisiting. However, considering that the original Phenom was the hardware version of Ishtar, many enthusiasts didn’t think Phenom deserved to be revisited. AMD certainly thinks it does—and it hopes Phenom II is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn to Phenom’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And why shouldn’t AMD be able to pull off a reversal of fortune? Phenom II isn’t just Phenom joined by a Roman numeral—it’s a die shrink with a boatload of additional cache and an improved core. In short, AMD hopes to erase memories of the original Phenom and put smiles on the faces of disappointed overclockers with its reimagined Phenom II chip."Targeted towards mid-range PCs, the Phenom II is pretty much the original Phenom packaged in a 45nm process. MaximumPC puts the new CPU through its paces, but the results don't show anything worth noting. The Phenom II seems to be much more of an evolutionary than revolutionary step for AMD, with the new CPU using a bit less power while maintaining most of the compatibility with existing motherboards. Overall, I'm not impressed, but pleased to see AMD working to hold its ground against Intel, however, I think the company needs to put a magic rabbit out of its hat to push back the 800 pound gorilla that is Intel.

http://www.notebooks.com/2009/01/07...ry-sexy-design/"Freescale and Pegatron are ushering a new generation of netbooks that will combine excellent battery life, good looks and low cost. The two partners are hoping to bring the ARM-based netbook to market within the next few months under the flagship of a major OEM at a retail price of $199 to $299."We'll see if that price actually carries through. Compared to the current crop, a 10 inch device with an 8 hour battery life would be a winner. From the details, they will be Linux based and designed as a purely web device, so don't expect much in the way of horsepower or storage, although this probably will help with the 8 hour battery life.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fe...ontent_consoles"There are a bunch of solutions on the Internet today for streaming media from your PC to your console of choice. But that doesn't mean all of them are good. In fact, you'll never know whether a given tool works for you unless you spend the requisite half-hour installing it, configuring it for streaming, firing up your console, trying to connect to your PC, et cetera. It's a process. But at least allow us to do our part in reducing your streaming nightmare. We've rounded up a batch of our favorite freeware applications for streaming media from a PC to a console, as well as a handy encoding tool in case you still can't get your huge movies to work just right."While I've found the idea of transcoding all my DVD's for streaming across the network. I've frankly found the whole process a bit frustrating. There are just too many different formats and none of them work on everything. But if you are interested, this article covers the Combined Community Codec Pack, ps3mediaserver, orb (which I used for a while), TVersity (which I never seemed to be able to get to work), and GOTsent. The one I had the most success with (even though it is not listed here) is Handbrake. Any other tools you think are better?

http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/Pr...se.aspx?ID=4478"SanDisk Corporation today unveiled its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory technology, SanDisk's G3 Series establishes new benchmarks in performance and price-performance leadership in the SSD industry. Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5" and 1.8" form factors respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface. Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB*, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively."The press release goes on to say that the G3 series SSDs are more than five times faster than 7200rpm hard drives, and more than twice as fast as any of the SSDs that were shipping in 2008. What impresses me is the price: 60 GB for $149 USD is quite reasonable. No, you're not going to see these SSDs in any $599 notebooks this year, but SanDisk is offering a lot of performance for not too many dollars. I can't wait for this time next year when we'll likely see 500+ GB SSDs and, more importantly, average-priced computers start to ship with SSDs. I have yet to own a computer with an SSD in it, but I think that's going to happen in 2009...what about you?

A few days before leaving for CES 2009, I received an HP Mini 1000 for review - I'd been trying to get my hands on one of these since they were first announced, and was sadly unsuccessful. They say good things some to those who wait, and I was sent not only the HP Mini 1000 XP Edition, but also the HP Mini 1000 Vivian Tam edition. The Vivian Tam edition, which we posted some glorious photos of last year, was specifically for my wife to test out. I'll be doing another Real World Review to cover the Vivian Tam Mini 1000, but when it comes to the regular Mini 1000 I'll be doing the usual: videos![As a side note, it looks like they've managed to fix the full-screen code problem at Motionbox, so click full screen on the video below and check it out in glorious high bit-rate.]I managed to shoot and edit this unboxing and first impressions video the night before I left for CES. The unit they sent me is the high-end configuration: Windows XP SP3, and in the configuration I was sent, costs $489 USD directly from HP. It has an Intel 1.6 Ghz Atom CPU, 1 GB of RAM, a 60 GB 4500 RPM hard drive, an SDHC card reader, two USB ports, 802.11 b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 3-cell battery. The screen resolution is 1024 x 600, though HP strangely lists it was 1024 x 576 on the box. Enjoy the video, and if you have any questions, please post them here and I'll do my best to answer them. I'll be following up this first impressions video with a full review video once I've had some time to benchmark and really use the HP Mini 1000. First impressions are very solid though: this is a very nice device, easily once of the best netbooks out there.Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He's writing this while sitting in Las Vegas, having just carried a really heavy bag up to the CNTRSTG room. He really needs to find a way to carry less gear!

After a few minutes of beatboxing and a seemingly enthusiastic Gary Shapiro introducing Steve Ballmer on to the stage, Microsoft's keynote was under way. This was Ballmer's first keynote at CES since taking over from Bill Gates, who delivered it for the first time almost 15 years ago and has traditionally done so up until last year. The question on everyone's mind was whether this keynote would be as memorable as the last. In a time when the very word, "recession", strikes fear into both consumers and businesses, would Microsoft have enough up its sleeve to turn 2009 into a year of ambition, innovation, and prosperity?Ballmer kicked things off with some light humour. He had apparently received a deluge of messages and words of advice leading up to CES.One from Bill Gates: "There are always two conventions going on during CES - make sure you go to the right one." Apple fans know the other.And another from Jerry Yang: "Steve, why do you keep ignoring my Facebook requests?" Ouch.From there, Ballmer adopted a more serious tone and stressed that Microsoft had delivered many positive outcomes in the industry, helped lift many families to the middle class, and would continue to drive innovation and make a difference. He made clear that as the recession ripples across the globe, reduced expectations were a natural response and there would be a temptation to temper optimism and scale back ambition. Yet despite all that, he still believed that our digital lives would only get richer, and Microsoft would be there every step of the way. Just last year alone, the company channeled more than eight billion dollars into R&D.But just how rich can our digital lives become?The original vision was to have a PC on every desk and in every home. However, Ballmer recognized that today, only a billion or so have a PC. The aim now was to make computing more accessible and more affordable for the next billion or so people, which we are currently witnessing in the booming netbook market and OLPC initiative.Another vision centered on convergence - an amalgamation of displays, the phone, and the PC to deliver a seamless ecosystem for this idea of "anytime, anywhere" computing. Over one billion mobile phones are sold each year. Ballmer noted that in emerging markets, it is the phone that is often people's first experience with computing, and that smartphones will soon be ubiquitous to the point that they will make up over 50% of the mobile phone market. In the world of TVs, while resolutions have improved, capabilities have largely remained the same. Ballmer anticipated that TVs will soon become more sophisticated and connected, and that the boundary between the PC and TV will eventually dissolve.Ballmer then went on to discuss our interaction with computers and other devices. He believed that it would evolve in more natural ways. Natural user interfaces such as speech, gestures, and handwriting would become mainstream, although the keyboard and mouse would still have its uses. We're currently seeing examples of this in the upcoming Windows 7, Surface, and touch-enabled smartphones.Microsoft's last area of opportunity - at least in the short-term - would be in connected experiences. Until recently, we've been largely disconnected when moving from one device to another. But these barriers are slowly crumbling, thanks to the cloud. Ballmer believes that nailing this would deliver a huge breakthrough in computing.To help realize these visions and areas of opportunity, there is Windows, which Ballmer tagged as a linchpin and the centre of people's technological solar system. What was once simply a PC operating system for the masses would soon become a phone platform and cloud platform for the masses, but it would not be possible without the cooperation of hardware manufacturers. Ballmer recognized their efforts in delivering innovative hardware for Windows to run on.

http://gizmodo.com/5119861/best-buy...bration-service"A Consumerist tipster caught his local Best Buy running a display highlighting the difference between a calibrated and an un-calibrated HDTV. After further examination, the tipster noticed that the un-calibrated TV was hooked up with component cable while the calibrated TV had HDMI. As many of you know, component cable is output at analog, and some devices won't do 1080p without HDMI cables because of copy protection policies." "At a demo for their $300 Geek Squad calibration service in an NC store, they have two identical HDTVs showing ESPN—one calibrated, which looks fantastic, and one that's supposedly not, which looks like total ass. That would be because it's showing standard def ESPN next to the "calibrated" set's ESPN HD."Two separate incidents start to make me think this could be intentional rather than a fluke. But either way, this is bothersome. If the people that are supposed to be giving advice don't know the difference, that is bad. If they do know the difference are are intentionally trying to trick the customer, that is even worse. From the wider perspective, these are fairly obvious examples which point to how hard it is to comparison shop TVs. Given the above, I pretty much expect that when I go to any big box store and look at the wall of TVs that the ones with higher margins for the store, may very well have been given some extra TLC during setup and calibrated to best show off their value, whereas the cheaper models were at best just plugged in and at worst deliberately sabotaged. Any tips for the best way to comparison shop TVs short of bringing in your own calibration disk and spending hours recalibrating the displays?

http://jkontherun.com/2009/01/05/wh...now/#more-27215"Of course, all I can do is offer an opinion: that and a buck will get you cup of coffee at McDonald’s. But that’s what he asked me for, so here’s my opinion on the best netbook for the money right now. I ruled out any device with an 8.9-inch display in my thought process. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but the larger 10-inch screens represent nice “bang for buck”. You can always upgrade some components, like memory or storage capacity, but you’re generally stuck with a screen size for the life of a device. This pushed the current Acer Aspire One, the Dell Mini 9 and some of the Asus Eee PCs out of contention."Great article. I was looking at the HP 1035NR at $450 as a replacement computer for my wife. She currently has a 5 year old Compaq laptop, so about time for an upgrade. While not quite as sexy looking as the HP, the ASUS Eee PC 1000HA is quite the bang for the buck.

http://www.rahulsood.com/2009/01/ne...has-landed.html"What we’re bringing to the table is a performance PC that doesn’t suck energy, doesn’t dominate a room in terms of size, but does kick ass. The HP Firebird with Voodoo DNA strikes a balance that has never been struck before. It is deadly quiet, its innovations are truly revolutionary, and it brings energy efficiency to the performance PC space. We have effectively taken typical high performance PC hardware, shrunk it down, made it way more energy efficient, made it quieter (uhh, silent), kept it fully modular, and oh yeah, didn’t sacrifice performance or features that our customers demand. Basically, we took the gas-guzzling SUV and converted it into an energy efficient super car."An Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, Nvidia Hybrid SLI Graphics and a water cooled system makes the HP Firebird a drool worthy computer. However, VoodooPC has worked the PC over into a slick package focused on someone who wants a reasonably powerful computer that can switch to extremely low power usage when it isn't tasked with heavy duties. While Rahul Sood doesn't give out many more specifics on the internals of this beast, much of which is custom built for the Firebird, some tidbits that caught my attention is that it draws 107 watts idle, and peaks at 233 watts. With energy prices rising, power consumption has become an obsession of mine, and 233 watts is far lower than most of my computers at home! And it is quiet at 30db too. No more whine while I plod away on spreadsheets and code. While the base model does come in at a hefty $1799, that is a fair price considering how much it would cost to build my own powerhouse. Excuse me while I go check to see if my wallet can handle the expense!

http://www.sdcard.org/home/"The next-generation SDXC (eXtended Capacity) memory card specification, announced today at the 2009 International CES, dramatically improves consumers’ digital lifestyles by providing the portable storage and speed needed to store weeks of high-definition video, years of photo collections and months of music to mobile phones, cameras and camcorders, and other consumer electronic devices. The new SDXC specification provides up to 2 terabytes storage capacity and accelerates SD interface read/write speeds to 104 megabytes per second this year, with a road map to 300 megabytes per second."Don't get too excited, remember this is just the specification we are dealing with here. I'm imagining it will be many years before we actually see 2 TB of storage in something the size of an SD card.

Hey loyal Thoughts Media readers, I'm checking in with you all from Las Vegas where I'll be reporting on what I see at CES. I'm by my lonesome, so don't expect Engadget-like coverage, but I did bring my video camera so I'm hoping to get some cool interviews, product demos, and find everything that's new and exciting at CES. Stay tuned - I'm here until Sunday night.

http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/1...r-ex487-part-1/"As a result, as we look towards future versions of the platform, I think we’ll remember 2009 as the year that Windows Home Server began the transition from an excellent, if relatively worthy (read: slightly dull) file server, backup and remote access system to a sexier, more powerful home media hub - easier and more exciting to market both to the industry and end-users. That transition starts today with the announcement of two new HP MediaSmart Server models - the EX485 & EX487 (codenamed "Encore"). A home server design that will be familiar now to many but with new, powerful media sharing, streaming and management software built on top of the core OS that opens up the path to a new generation of home servers." Over at We Got Served is a great review of the new HP MediaSmart Server line, running Windows Home Server. The hardware has been upgraded with a faster processor, more RAM, and more drive space. But the major enhancements are all in software including better media sharing and streaming support, online backup to Amazon, and full Mac support. I'm particularly interested in a media collection tool that scans your network for pictures, music and video, and copies it to the server. I have one of the first generation MediaSmart Servers and it's been one of the best technology purchases I've ever made. These new servers look to deliver even more.

http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/Pr...se.aspx?ID=4457"SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today introduced an innovative new family of SanDisk® USB flash drives, including the world's first backup USB flash drive with simple backup software activation at the touch of a button. The SanDisk Ultra® Backup USB portable flash drive is the first offering of the company's new SanDisk Ultra USB product line. With capacities up to 64 gigabytes1 (GB), the SanDisk Ultra Backup USB flash drive is designed to protect computer users' photos, music, videos, personal and business documents, and other types of digital files, with the simple touch of a button. No software installation is needed. The drive protects onboard digital content with a dual layer of security, including password-protected access control and ultra-secure AES hardware-based encryption."The new SanDisk Ultra USB product line includes new encrypted flash drives designed for easy backup. It looks like an interesting solution with capacities up to 64GB. Personally, I backup to a Windows Home Server and online with Mozy, but if you want to keep your data with you at all times this might be a good option. It will be interesting to see how the release product actually performs.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/...es/default.mspxIn a little under nine hours, Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach will deliver the Microsoft keynote at CES. What's in store for Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows Live, Office, the Xbox 360, and Zune? You'll have to tune in at 6:30 PM (PST) to find out, or simply wait for our post-keynote report. Whatever tickles your fancy.Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle: Wednesday, 6:30 PMChicago, Houston: Wednesday, 8:30 PMNew York, Washington, D.C.: Wednesday, 9:30 PMLondon: Thursday, 2:30 AMParis, Berlin: Thursday, 3:30 AMMoscow: Thursday, 5:30 AMBeijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong: Thursday, 10:30 AMPerth, Tokyo: Thursday, 11:30 AMBrisbane: Thursday, 12:30 PMSydney, Melbourne: Thursday, 1:30 PMAuckland: Thursday, 3:30 PMLive Webcast: 100k, 300k, 750k

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10133425-38.html"As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer [Tom Perrelli] to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama's pick as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the Copyright Term Extension Act--the same law that Lessig and his allies unsuccessfully sued to overturn."This is one presidential appointment that is sure to affect many music and video lovers, directly or indirectly. This is the guy that tried to get Verizon to release names of purported file sharers to the RIAA without a judge reviewing the evidence first. It was the old "guilty until you are bankrupt from legal fees" ploy. You can read about more of his shenanigans at the article. Here is hoping that the Perrelli meets severe challenges by the confirmation process and backs out or is rejected.

http://gigaom.com/2009/01/06/netboo...-x86-computing/"Freescale said Monday it would offer an ARM-based chip that could lead to a $200 Linux-based netbook, offering about twice the amount of usage on a single battery charge as Intel’s Atom processor allows. Freescale’s efforts are nothing new (only AMD has so far stayed above the netbook fray), but it did get me thinking about how Intel’s endless pushing of netbooks has, ironically, helped destroy the hegemony of x86 machines for personal computing."Up until now, netbooks are powered by the x86 legacy. Gigaom notes that Freescale is looking to change that. I've seen hints of some manufacturers in China producing ARM based netbooks as well, this news might help push major manufacturers to join in. The lower power nature of ARM based CPUs is certainly welcome, I've yet to see any ARM based computing device provide a comparable browsing experience. This includes the iPhone, Nokia N810 and WinMo devices. The extra power that an x86 CPU uses, in the overall power consumption of a netbook, is more than offset by the speed at which it renders webpages. Still, I welcome the competition as I'm sure that ARM devices, netbooks or otherwise, will eventually catch up in speed to x86 netbooks.

http://www.cringely.com/2008/12/the-missing-link/"What’s missing here is a de facto wireless audio standard for televisions. Look on the back of any of these new TVs and you’ll find a forest of connections but none of the audio is wireless. There are RCA jacks, minijacks and optical, but no wireless. How much could it cost to add one more audio option? Not much – generally less than $10 in manufacturers’ cost."Robert Cringely is lameting the fact that there isn't a standard for wireless audio. While there are various ways to transmit audio wirelessly, there is no standard like there is for video cables and audio cables for inside the house. Having dealt with finding a way to stream music and audiobooks to my bedroom wirelessly, I can sympathize. While I settled for the "low-tech" solution that is an FM transmitter, that technology does not provide the fidelity or capability of what a home theater deserves. He does concede to comments that HomePlug may be a feasible solution, but dismisses it owing to cost. However, earlier in the article, he notes that even sophisticated audio solutions are high in cost, owing to economies of scale. If HomePlug were to be fully embraced, I'm quite sure it would drop in cost. There are possibilities like Shoutcast and other streaming that could use an existing wireless network as well. Has anyone found a cost effective solution to provide 5.1 or 7.1 audio for a home theater?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,281...,2337929,00.asp"The "Big Four"-Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI-all agreed that, effective today, they no longer need to encumber their artists' iTunes offerings with DRM. This means that you can give a friend a song you bought on iTunes-and it will actually play on his or her iPod!"Well I have to give Apple credit. At today's Macworld keynote, Apple announced that DRM would be removed from iTunes music files; effective immediately for 8 million files, with the rest to be DRM-free within a few months. This is huge for the digital music marketplace. It takes away most of Amazon's competitive advantage and means other stores like Zune Marketplace and Rhapsody will need to scramble to get DRM removed from their music files as well. Correction: Rhapsody's single-track download store is already all-MP3 and Microsoft signed agreements with Sony BMG and UMG last November. However, as of today, the Zune Marketplace still has a ways to go to get MP3s fully rolled out.

http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/Pr...se.aspx?ID=4460"SanDisk Corporation today unveiled its next-generation of flash memory-based solid-state drives to support the evolving needs of designers, manufacturers and users in the exploding netbook market - SanDisk® pSSD™. The new SanDisk pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2 SSDs have capacity and performance for more full-featured netbooks which require a robust operating system. Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives, SanDisk’s new second generation module has a SATA interface to meet new netbook design requirements. The SATA interface offers a significant boost in performance rendering these SSDs faster than HDDs in critical aspects. Booting and launching applications takes just half the time of an HDD." Good stuff. Some of the first generation netbook SSDs we geared for less than optimal performance, but it was a good way to ramp up production. As the netbook has become pretty mainstream, it is great to see some of the technology that goes along with it maturing.