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Intel Looks to Jet Engines for the Future of Notebook Cooling

Andy Salisbury — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:54:41 -0500

Straight out of the “not as awesome as it sounds” file, Intel is looking to cool your laptop with the exact same technology that a jet engine does. The issue of burning legs (that’s right, burning legs) has been an issue on the mind of Intel for some time now, and they’re looking to soothe that with their latest breakthrough.

Intel has been focusing on the increasing issue of hot thighs with something called Laminar Flow. Laminar Flow occurs when a fluid or gas/air flows in parallel layers, allowing a non-turbulent way to misdirect hot air away from the surface of a jet engine (or laptop). As demonstrated, this technology allows efficient cooling of temperatures upwards of 1,000 °C.

A demo of this technology was given at this week’s Intel developer forum in Taiwan by Mooly Eden, Intel’s head of Mobile Platforms Group. “We are licensing it to our customers so they can keep making thinner and thinner laptops,” said Eden.

SSDs Replacing Hard Disks? Not Anytime Soon (and Here's Why)

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:58:03 -0500

While SSDs are getting plenty of attention from us (and everyone else) these days, it's way too early to shovel the dirt over the classic spinning-disk hard disk drive technology, eWeek suggests. You already know a couple of reasons: capacity and price per GB.

While 2.5-inch drives from Western Digital and Seagate broke the 500GB barrier last week, the biggest SSDs on the portable market are the 128GB Samsung drives and the forthcoming 160GB SSDs from Intel. SSDs don't come cheap, either: expect to pay $500-600 more for a laptop with an SSD onboard compared with a standard hard disk.

However, even if you can afford to give up some storage capaciy and a lot more cash, there are other reasons to think twice before turning your existing hard disk drive into a paperweight. At last week's DiskCon 2008 storage conference, experts cited by eWeek pointed out that NAND flash memory, the most common type of flash memory in use today, drops in performance with use, and that data retention is much shorter than with traditional disk drives.

So who's really excited about SSDs? Corporate data centers. In one case study described at DiskCon, a data center replaced hard disks with SSDs. The installation used one SSD for read, the other for write, and realized a 10x improvement in read/write speed and 5x less power consumption.

So, how do you feel about SSDs? Are you ready to pony up the extra dough and trade off some capacity to give SSDs a try today, or are you waiting until SSDs' price per GB, capacity and long-term behavior more closely mirror what hard disks provide today? See us after the jump for your chance to put in your feedback.

Gateway P-7811 FX

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:00:00 -0500

Gateway struck a nerve with its original low-cost FX P-series notebook, which gave gamers an affordable way to get good frame rates from a portable PC. The company applied the same formula to its new P-7811 FX and again comes up with a winning combination of hardware that’s sure to please budget-minded gamers.

Read on after the jump!

No BS Podcast #74 The Summer in the City Edition

Tom Edwards — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:28:00 -0500

Will and Norm are preparing to jet away to Los Angeles to cover this year's E3 convention, but before they go, they join the podcast crew to provide a preview of what games to look forward to this year. We also answer a load of reader questions; topics this week include videocard selection and dual-booting XP and Vista.

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

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Fasten Your Laptop: Over 600,000 Laptops Lost at U.S Airports Annually

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:03:55 -0500

Ladies and gentlemen, please remember to fasten your Laptops every time you leave home for the airport. A fresh survey by the Ponemon Institute has corroborated a pretty obvious observation, that tons of laptops are lost in the twisty terminals of airports. In fact, the number of laptops lost at U.S airports annually is a truly stupefying 637,000 – about 12,000 laptops a week, according to the survey that encompassed 106 U.S airports.

But despite all the important information that might rest in displaced hard drives, 65% of the hapless travellers who misplace their notebooks don’t report the loss (out of shame, perhaps?). And apparently it is considered ignominious to loose a laptop in corporate circles, as only 1% of those polled admitted to having lost their laptop compared to the 84% people who claim to "know someone" who has. The survey was conducted at Dell’s behest to coincide with the launch of its new Laptop tracking and theft prevention service, Dell Mobility.

Those of you who have lost a laptop – or laptops – can commiserate in the comments section. And those of you haven’t lost one can discuss effective ways to maintain your impeccable track record.

Daily News Brief: OCZ Tries Hand at DIY Gaming Notebooks

Paul Lilly — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:08:08 -0500

OCZ to offer barebones gaming laptop, ClubIT shuts its doors, news of XPS's death greatly exaggerated, and much more!

No BS Podcast #64: The Online Safety Edition

Tom Edwards — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:50:25 -0500

Tom, Gordon, Dave, and Andy get together to talk about online security and Microsoft's latest marketing move. We also answer your tech questions and poke Gordon with a stick to get him extra angry for this week's rant.

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No BS Podcast #61: The Schadenfreude Edition

Tom Edwards — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:20:22 -0500

Today, Tom, Will, Dave, and Andy talk about the latest Facebook exploits and preview how to make your own Internet radio station. Later in the show, Gordon rages against our own website, lazy officemates, and bad vocabulary choices. As always, we answer a load of your tech questions.

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