Make your own solid-state hard drive and save

No moving parts, shock-resistant, and incredibly short seek time are some of many benefits you get from a solid-state hard drive. However, for now, the price for a SSD is so incredibly high that calling "insanely priced" might not be an over statement. It's hard to justify (or to afford for that matter) spending about US$1,000 for only 64GB when you can pay about 10 percent of that cost for a regular 200GB laptop hard drive.

So how about making our own SSD?

Sans Digital just released the CR2T CompactFlash card enclosure that might make this possible. The enclosure has the same form factor and works the same as a regular 2.5-inch SATA hard drive. It can hold two CF cards and can even configure them in either RAID 1 (mirroring) or nRAID (spanning), where the two CF cards are combined into one.

The enclosure costs US$99, and a 32GB CF card costs about US$150 that would make your homemade SSD's price about US$400, which is about half the price of regular 64GB SSD. Of course, you can choose to use smaller size CF cards for much cheaper.
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Seagate launches new FreeAgent drives

The main selling point of Seagate's FreeAgent drives lies in the bundled software for Windows, which provides an easy interface to backup and encrypt your data. Moreover, recognizing that most people have digital content stored on multiple machines, the Seagate Drive Manager automatically synchronizes the latest updates and, at the same time, stores up to 10 archived copies of the changed file, much like Apple's Time Capsule. New upgrades include an optional S$49 (US$32.79) docking station with case for the FreeAgent Go drives as well as the latest desktop drives that can hold up to 1.5TB of data.

Model	Capacity (GB)	Connector	Color options	Price
FreeAgent Go Drive (2.5-inch)	250	USB 2.0	Silver, black	S$159 (US$106.40)
	320		Silver, black, blue, red	S$189 (US$126.48)
	500		Silver, red	S$299 (US$200.09)
FreeAgent Desk Drive	500	USB 2.0	Silver	S$169 (US$113.10)
	1,000			S$279 (US$186.71)
	1,500			S$349 (US$233.55)
FreeAgent XTreme	1,000	USB 2.0, FireWire 400, eSATA	Black	S$319 (US$213.48)
	1,500			S$399 (US$267.01)

How about Mac users? Well, we have good news and bad news.
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What works: Five Web 2.0 products I still use

On most days, I put my hands on two to five new Web 2.0 products. I write up some of them, but pretty much forget about all of them by the time I wake up the next day. A few things do stick with me, though. Here's a list of products I am actually still using, weeks or months after the initial review:

Chrome
Google's new browser. Who needs it? If you have to ask, you haven't used it. (See all our Chrome coverage.)

Why I like it: Very fast. Very stable.

Areas for improvement: Extension support! I would use Chrome full time if I could import my favorite plug-ins, especially the password keeper Roboform. Also, Mac and Linux versions.

Evernote
This note-taking app has finally and completely replaced OneNote for me (it was a slow transition). It's a great place to store all your thoughts. It has a good search feature and it's good with photos--it even OCRs them in the background. Cool new feature: iPhone notes are now geo-encoded, and you can filter your display of notes by location.
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Lenovo machines simulate night race for AT&T Williams

Like all F1 teams, the partnership between Lenovo and AT&T Williams means that the Chinese company provides the PC hardware required for race analysis. Formula One has evolved to such a point that the skill of the driver is as important as the technology behind him. At the Fairmont hotel in Singapore, the AT&T Williams team explained the need for top-notch hardware for the race.



Instead of a key, each car is started by a laptop that instantly determines if the vehicle is operating at accepted parameters. During the race itself, telemetry readings ensure that the car is optimized for track conditions. Immediately after the last lap, the driver will compare his driving analysis with his teammates and see how he can shave a few more seconds off his time. All require immense computer power as up to 15GB of telemetry data can be accumulated over a race weekend. For this purpose, Lenovo has provided 71 ThinkPads, 47 ThinkCentres and 131 ThinkStations for the team, not to mention undisclosed numbers of servers as well.
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CherryPal PC still in the clouds, not ready for landing

The CherryPal PC is in a holding pattern. The US$249, 10-ounce, 2-watt-drawing, cloud-computing PC we first spied in July is still at least a couple weeks away from materializing. The company tells TG Daily that problems with the graphics hardware has pushed back its ship date at least two weeks. This follows on the heels of the company delaying the original August release due to a software conflict with the system's solid-state storage.

The irony here is that hardware and software issues have delayed this tiny PC that has only the bare minimum of hardware and software. The CherryPal C100 desktop has no moving parts--the company claims it "uses 80 percent fewer components than a traditional PC". There's not even an operating system; you're meant to store your data in the cloud, which you access via Firefox--the system's main interface.

On the company's Web site, its shopping page simply states that the CherryPal is "on hold" (from August 6) and offers a refund for those who have pre-ordered the system.

Via Crave CNET

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