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To: Bruno Cipolla who wrote (32504)	6/14/2006 4:42:24 AM
From: Bruno Cipolla	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

16GB flash drive costs $400 to make Computex 2006 1GB of hard drive memory is $25 theinquirer.net By Theo Valich in Old Taipei: Saturday 10 June 2006, 22:32 THERE HAS BEEN a lot of reaction from our readers when it comes to wishes about flash memory. Most of you guys are wishing for a 40 gig hard drive for around 100 dollars, but that time is still a fair way away. However, the truth is rather disturbing, at least for now. We have talked with several engineers that are working on SSDs and we have been told that approximately, one 16GB SSD has a manufacturing price of $400 – amounting to around 25 dollars per gigabyte. The price of a "classical" hard drive is just beyond any comparison, since we're talking about a little under two dollars per GB. However, our two sources expect to see the prices of SSD hard drives falling really soon. A rough estimate is around $400 dollar for a 64GB hard drive with 20MB read and 20MB write speed by the next Computex. If the volume kicks in, the price would be halved, just down to a mere $200 for a 64GB hard drive instead. If the figure of 20 MB/s sounds a bit lowly, you're pretty much close to the truth, but only if you're talking desktop hard drives. At least one manufacturer is considering 48GB drives as an option.

To: Bruno Cipolla who wrote (32504)	6/14/2006 6:29:26 PM
From: inaflash	Respond to of 60323

Nigerians create 8.5 watt PC No moving parts theinquirer.net By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 13 June 2006, 06:40 THE NIGERIAN computer industry, which is unfortunately more famous for the distribution of money-making confidence tricks, has developed an 8.5 Watt PC with no moving parts. The Solo Computer has been developed by the Nigerian Fantsuam Foundation. It uses a 1GB flash drive for storage instead of a spinning hard disk, and an energy-efficient ARM processor. It does not have any graphics card, nor a colour screen either and runs on a 14.1-inch LCD screen. It is not cheap either. Owning one of these will set you back more than $1200. But the big idea is that it will work entirely on a solar powered collecting device and provide technology to villages. The fact it uses solar power means that it needs a low power consumption and 8.5 watts is a bit better than the 180 watts being eaten by the new generation of 'low power consumption' dual chips. There is a picture and more here. µ techtickerblog.com Interesting proposal, but I think the $100 laptop has a better chance at success. news.bbc.co.uk For another $100, you might be able to run the $100 laptop on solar power. The big missing part in these systems is communications. Wireless uses up modest power, but in these areas, getting hooked up to the internet is expected to be challeging. They're proposing sneakernet solutions which might be adequate for some situations, but I'm so removed, that I have trouble visioning it working. If these systems work out, and people find uses for them, it will be great, and we would likely find uses in this country as well for $100 computers (say a laptop for every student starting pre-k).