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To: patrick tang who wrote (14843)	9/9/1998 4:05:00 PM
From: Moonray	Respond to of 25814

IBM Announces World's Smallest Disk Drive 10:20 a.m. Sep 09, 1998 Eastern PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. will unveil today the world's smallest and lightest disk drive -- a potential boon to the digital camera market and other consumer electronics devices with increasing demands for data storage. Weighing less than an AA battery, the drive could be used in car-navigation systems to store maps, to pack addresses, schedules and phone numbers in handheld computers and could pose a threat to the most popular type of data storage now used in digital cameras, called flash memory. The announcement is the latest in a string of disk-drive technology breakthroughs from IBM's Almaden Research center at the southern end of California's Silicon Valley. In addition to disk drive advancements, the relational database -- a powerful software tool to store, organize and sort data -- came out of the research center. ''This should sell very well and it potentially revolutionizes the digital camera market,'' said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga Information Group. The drive can hold up to 340 megabytes of data, enough to hold about 340 200-page novels. The Microdrive also can store the equivalent of more than 200 floppy disks. Analysts said the biggest hurdle now facing digital cameras was the amount of data the flash memory chips hold. IBM, the No. 3 maker of disk drives, said the Microdrive would have lower storage costs than flash memory, now used in digital cameras. ''One of the disadvantages of flash is that it's slower to write data to a flash memory chip than it is to a disk,'' said Bob Katzvie, an analyst at Disk/Trend, a market research group in Mountain View, California. The drive, which will be available in the middle of 1999, could also be a threat to companies like SanDisk Corp., which makes memory modules based on flash technology, and Iomega Corp. , a maker of removable data storage devices. ''It could yank the rug out from underneath Iomega and others as a backup device'' for data, Enderle said. The technology, as with most breakthroughs, will be used in the most sophisticated and expensive applications, and trickle down to lower-priced devices. IBM said one of the Microdrive's first uses would likely be in high-end digital cameras, some of which cost more than $10,000. Enderle estimated that IBM would price the drives at about $1 per megabyte and that the price would fall as IBM geared up production to meet demand. ''We're going toward more personalized computer appliances and computer devices,'' Bill Healy, general manager for IBM's mobile storage products division. IBM, of Armonk, New York, said the drive would be compatible with devices that now use flash memory chips and modules, which should speed the acceptance of the Microdrive. Canon Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Hitachi LTD. and Minolta Co. were looking into using the Microdrive in future products, IBM said. Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication and redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. o~~~ O