| Ultra Low-Power Toshiba: 8 hr Battery Life |
| Written by Hank Green | ||
| Monday, 13 August 2007 | ||
Toshiba's new Portégé R500 will be on sale soon with an option for the lowest-power laptop I've ever seen from a major manufacturer. The high-end laptop weighs less than two pounds and can operate for a whopping 8 hours on a single battery charge.But, of course, it's not a special battery that keeps the laptop alive, it's just that the laptop uses so little power. Two innovations make this possible. First, ultra-efficient LED back lighting which also makes the screen more crisp even in full sun. And second, the computer doesn't use a hard drive. Instead of the constant spinning up and down of a normal laptop, the Portégé R500 uses a 64 GB solid state flash drive. Solid state drives are not only more efficient, they're also faster and lighter, making the entire package more appealing. Of course, it has to be a LOT more appealing, as the flash drive ads $600 to the price of the Portégé R500 with a regular hard drive. It's quite a premium, but for the truly power-conscious, high-end consumer, there's finally a solid state option. And there's a lot of room for improvement, as flash drives are getting bigger and cheaper every day. Don't be surprised if Mac heads in this direction fairly soon. The increase in speed and efficiency alone are making this a really hot area for development right now. Via TreeHugger See Also: -Where Will All the Hard Drives Go?- -Flash Memory Poised to Save Power- -Solid State Vaio-
Comments
(7)
This is really cool, but...
written by Frank , August 13, 2007
...
written by Hi , August 14, 2007
I get 6 hours on my Dell D420 with wifi on. ULV Core Duo and brightness set at the minimum. Of course, that is with the 9 cell battery.
Sony VAIO TZ Series
written by GC , August 14, 2007
The newer Sony VAIO TZ series notebooks comes with flash based drive also, but comes with only 32GB flash disk.
...
written by Hun Boon , August 14, 2007
After reading this article, I realised that this product has nothing to do with being eco-friendly.
Longer battery life, solid state HD - they are there to make life easier for the road warrior. That's all isn't it?
wow
written by Kacey , August 14, 2007
sounds amazing, im purchasing a lap top in may, this sounds promising!
battery life
written by lory , August 22, 2007
Longer battery life, solid state HD - they are there to make life easier for the road warrior. That's all isn't it?
just a thought
written by oldtech1 , January 10, 2008
i have read where flash memory has a limit to thenumber of times it can be written to
some linux blogs refer to using store bought flash mem in a adapter only lasting 3 months before hitting max writes. i assume the flash memory they use is better but i would ask what is the maximum writes to a factory made solid state drive using flash memory as its media base of storage .. id hate to see a HD replacement after 1 1/2 to 2 yrs with loss of data .. | ||
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And over time, that gets worse. A solid 5 hours would be nice.