Preview of IBM Microdrive
agnhardware.com
Technology is moving at such a fast pace that it is getting harder and
harder for companies to impress us with their new products. After all we
are already using incredibly fast PCs, with large hard drives and lots of
memory, what more can they offer? IBM already has a lot to offer with
great PCs, laptops and the best hard drives on the planet. Their Deskstar
and Ultrastar hard drives have won accolades in every magazine and
website where they were reviewed. With
sizes up to 22 Gigabytes, they are setting
new standards in performance and overall
size. As hard as it may be to believe, I
think their upcoming Microdrive is going to
get the most attention, even though it
only has 340MB of storage space. After all
it is not the size that matters, it is how
you use it!
The Microdrive is IBM's solution to the lack of storage in portable devices,
offering the option for 170 or 340MB for a price of right around $1 per
Megabyte. Considering that I paid $185 for a 48MB SanDisk card, (About
$4 a Megabyte) the Microdrive sounds like the deal of the century. As
with the SanDisk, the Microdrive is built upon the Compactflash standard
that is used with many popular PDA's, digital cameras and more. Unlike
the SanDisk card the Microdrive uses actual hard drive technology rather
than the speedier flash memory technology of the SanDisk. The Microdrive
is able to store so much data in a small space using IBM's Giant
Magnetoresistive (GMR) head technology.
This technology was reverse engineered from alien technology that we
captured in… Hmmm, sorry I am going off on a tangent again. The
specifications of the Microdrive make it hard for me to tell the difference
between fantasy and reality. The drive is actually the result of many
years of work from the minds at IBM, making use of many of their
leading-edge technologies. The drive weighs only 17 grams, with a speed
of 4500RPM and a miniscule 3.3 volts of power of power consumption.
Because the drive is based upon moving parts, performance is not going
to be as fast as what we have currently with flash memory cards. Seek
times should be around 15ms, a speed that is equal to the 350MB Maxtor
that I had in my old 486 computer.
Transfer rates are also slower with
around a 250k/sec - 400k/sec
transfer speed depending on the
datas' location on the drive.
Compact Flash memory on the
other hand is three times as fast,
making it a better choice for those
people who are in a hurry.
Even though the Microdrive is going
to be too slow for running
Windows98, it should be just fine
for your PDA and digital camera
storage needs. Just imagine picking
up the new Creative Labs MP3 player with the ability to store 340MB of
your favorite MP3s! You would be the envy of all of your friends. On the
Digital camera front I am unsure of what benefits the extra storage will
add, since I have yet to even come close to filling the space of my 48MB
SanDisk using my Kodak DC260 camera on the maximum resolution setting.
My biggest problem with the digital camera is that the batteries run dead
far before I run out of storage space. PDA users will no doubt love the
Microdrive, because with 340MB of storage they could bring along their
entire outlook contact, calendar and notes list, without the worry of
running out of space.
The most exciting thing about the Microdrive is that the technology is
new, which means that there will be improvement. As time goes by, IBM
will perfect this technology and speeds will increase as well as capacity.
The future definitely looks good!
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