Samsung has begun the execution of its roadmap towards 1TB hard drives embedded in laptops at this year’s CES in Las Vegas.
The South Korean company has announced the development of its new Spinpoint M6 500GB hard drive, the world’s first 500GB 2.5-inch hard drive that fits in the industry’s standard 9.5mm height dimension of laptops.
To be fair, Hitachi was the first to create a 500gb 2.5” hard drive. However, they did so by adding extra platters, which raised the height beyond the 9.5mm standard and therefore made them unusable in most laptops in production.
The news means that mainstream laptops, including those from Samsung can now support capacity of up to one terabyte of storage by installing two Spinpoint M6 500GB drives.
The Spinpoint M6 500GB hard drive features a 5400rpm spindle speed, a 8MB cache, and 3.0Gbps SATA interface.
With an immediate roadmap to 1TB in the future, desktop computers are starting to look more and more obsolete for the general consumer. It seems like a lot of our commenters here are of the mindset that their desktop computers are somehow superior to a laptop with the same specifications, but I digress.
When high end video solutions and quad core processors become more available for laptops, there will be very little room left for their stocky, screen less counterparts. No, I’m not saying that a laptop can ever replace the expandability and functionality of a workstation powerhouse. Making things small is always more expensive. The point I’m trying to make is that when John Doe is trying to pick a computer for college, there is almost no incentive to go with a desktop over a laptop with similar specifications.
Update 6/1 - These drives are now shipping from a number of locations.
jeez you people who think laptops are the worlds greatest invention are REALLY touchy about them.
such as “a” who cussed out the person who said why should he bother switching to an inferior piece of equipment.
btw making up statistics is a bad practice, saying 99% of ALL computer users are doing whatever is just stupid.
and whoever said “real computer users (e.g business men)” so are you saying that only people who do professional work with computers are REAL users? that would be another stupid claim by you who have wet dreams about your laptops.
I HAD a laptop but i burned the cooling system because i thought it could work about as well as my 6 year old pc that i leave on 24/7. laptops CANNOT be superior to desktops, you have to start working on something at a bigger size before you shrink it down.
And for the record, why would you bother using a bluetooth keyboard when oh lets see ALL laptops have a built in keyboard? it just takes up more desk space, if your concerned about space.
I have a lot of floor space but am constantly running out of desk space. so i guess whatever floats your boat then.
OH and for you people who are ALWAYS on the go and always outside and pretending you arnt big nerds at heart, yeah a laptops for you. but for someone like me who doesnt like socializing with strangers and who doesnt work for a business (since im still a high school student) then a desktop thats half the cost of your laptop with the same specs is perfectly fine for us.
i just dont get why there are still 2 manufacture streams still.
lappies and desktops both have their places but surely desktops can be made with laptop components but offering the space for upgrading etc? to my mind this would reduce the cost of going small ending in a win-win for all.
hell, when my parents were wanting a laptop recently - not for a laptop, more for a portable pc i was trying hard to get them to just get a shuttle. i still love my laptop but i do miss not being able to upgrade parts easily. such is life i guess.
Laptops replacing desktops, I do not think so. Laptops at the moment suffer in a single crucial regard when compared to desktops.
The ability to upgrade.
Laptops at the moment are hideous to upgrade with new parts, plus laptop parts are expensive and are normally impossible to swap between different laptop makes. Most laptops also require a specialist if you even plan on upgrading them.
compare that to desktops, which even my 55 year old father can upgrade with only a quick reference to a book he got from the local library.
Yes laptops have their uses, they are designed to be used while on the move. But when the laptop starts to become slow and obsolete you have to buy an entire new system. You cannot just swap out the parts that need replacing (RAM, CPU, Graphics, Mainboard) as you can in a desktop (My 55 years old father recently did this with a little help from a book and from me). With a desktop when it comes time to upgrade you do not need to replace HDD’s, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, case.
This makes Desktop PC’s “Future proof” while laptops will perennially become obsolete.
I am not a fan of laptops and have no interest in owning one. It is all very well sticking a 500gb HD in one but after two or so hours you have a useless piece of plastic and metal to carry around so unless you want to plug it into the mains, and thus losing the mobility benefit of laptops. It is pointless sticking loads of stuff on one that you won’t have time to access.
As for laptops seeing out budget desktops, I cannot ever see that happening as most PC sales are for budget desktops. I have seen desktops in PC World, including a flatscreen monitor, for well under £300 that would cost at least £600 if it were a laptop.
Laptops have their uses but they will never replace a desktop until they get many many more hours of life out of them and have a bit more flexibility in their design to enable the average user to upgrade at will.
There’s no way desktops will be obsolete anytime soon for one reason: expandability. Need more drives? Throw in another RAID card! More network interfaces? No problem, there’s even multiport NICs!
Sure you can say USB or Firewire is all the expandability you need, but you can’t beat the speed and reliability of the PCI bus. Ever clone a 500GB over USB2? It takes half a day! I converted all but one of my externals in to internals purely for speed considerations.
Upgradeability is also high on my list since desktop-class processors are dirt cheap compared to their mobile equivalents (likewise with all other components). It’s also very painless to swap out damaged parts in a desktop machine, especially keyboards or heaven forbid, a motherboard.
Mind you, I use a laptop for a workstation and the only desktop machine in my house is actually my server that just so happens to run a useful UI. I even control it with synergy from the laptop (shares the keyboard & mouse for graphical interfaces, I use ssh when I’m not home).
Some have said that all the speed & horsepower exists in desktops exist in laptops, which is quite true. However for a laptop to be worth anything to me it has to have more than a few hours of battery life. I have an Asus G1, and have no problems getting 3+ hours out of it. I can even game on it for at least an hour and a half before I have to start looking for a power outlet, and I can be quite leisurely about finding one. Suspend time is well over 24 hours too. You just can’t get those times with a quad core, SLI, RAID’d laptop, yaknow? Sure it’s a portable supercomputer but you’d be lucky to log in without having to plug in!
Mind you I plan on grabbing one of these 500GB drives when they come down in price and slapping it in my lappy. The external I lug around with all my porn is just too heavy!
LOL… it’s not so much “fitting” it, but more so cooling that would present a problem. You could easily mount four 9800 GPU’s to a laptop mobo, given that the thing would have to be massive in the first place to allow airflow, and you’d never want to put it on your lap since it would be so hot that the pr0n you were browsing right before you stumbled here would seem unappealing for the rest of your life.
Now that’s humour. =P
LOL, fit a nVidia Quad SLI into a laptop then we’ll talk.
“bob from accounting” - frankly, 99% of computer users are doing exactly that. What do you use your desktop computer for that you find your laptop can’t? I use a single computer (Macbook Pro) and with 4gb RAM, a 200gb 7200rpm (high density desktop speed) hard drive and a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo processor, I haven’t ever found myself thinking “boy, this would be faster if it took up floor space and sucked electricity.” I connect it to a 24″ LCD, and a bluetooth mouse and keyboard and it fits my needs very well, because I can pick it up and take it anywhere. With eSATA and external hard drives, you can have as much storage as you please, Sager laptops have quad core processors and you can put SLI 9800 graphics in a mobile now a days. Yeah, its going to cost two or three times as much as a comparable desktop would, but its not a giant, immobile box.