The Tech Report takes a look at Super Talent’s upcoming flash based 2.5″ laptop disk drive.  With 3 sizes (4, 8 and 16 GBs), it won’t hold huge amounts of data but certainly enough to be useful.  With no moving parts, the power drain is in the neighbourhood of 10% of a normal drive’s requirements, this will extend your notebooks battery.
“IN AN ATTEMPT TO improve performance and extend battery life, mobile hard drive manufacturers are working on hybrid designs that combine flash memory with traditional platters. Flash memory’s fast access times, low weight and power consumption, and lack of moving parts make it ideal for mobile environments, which is perhaps why Microsoft has made hybrid drives a requirement for Windows Vista Premium certification starting in June of 2007.

Of course, the first hybrid hard drives aren’t even expected to become available until early next year. However, you don’t have to wait six months to get flash memory in a 2.5″ notebook hard drive; Super Talent’s 2.5″ IDE Flash drives are available today in sizes up to 16 GB. The prospect of a silent, lightweight notebook hard drive with frugal power consumption is certainly tantalizing, but what about performance? Join us as we run Super Talent’s IDE Flash drive through the wringer to determine whether it’s a worthy notebook upgrade.”

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