Hi Speed Flash

There is an underlying principle in the mad mad world of gadgets and technology. To be precise, it holds good for technologies that are commercial in nature and lead to products of mass appeal. The principle goes like this: "Whenever prices of a popular product bottom out, a technological breakthrough will make same product reach the highest prices in its class." This is true for any product that has held a mass appeal. The technological breakthroughs are achieved in nick of time for product to revive itself as darling of the masses. The same is true for ubiquitous Flash memories. The breakthrough in technology started with the arrival of "Ready Boost" technology in Microsoft Windows Vista. Next came commercial production of Solid State hybrid drives. The latest is what actually effects the Flash memory itself.

IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, has achieved a breakthrough of sorts by developing an 8Gb SLC (single-level cell) high-speed NAND chip that can reach read speeds up to 200MBps and write speeds of up to 100MBps, which could mean faster data transfer between devices such as solid-state drives and video cards. To put it in perspective, current speeds are limited to 40MBps and 20MBps in read and write operations. This new breakthrough provides a five fold increase in speeds. Just when I was going to invest in a Samsung Hybrid drive, this new development has made me put off my plans and see how things work out.

To be sure, products based on the new NAND structure are not going to be available till late 2008 and that too at a premium. So, my principle will hold good for it. By middle of 2009, we should see a stabilisation of prices and this technology creating products that will be darling of masses. The cycle is going to repeat itself.

WIndows 7

It is still under wraps. The hush hush release of Windows 7 M1 to the trusted family of testers. I do not really know if these are the trusted partners. The screenshots of Microsoft Windows 7 are available and by all accounts these look like nothing new from Windows Vista. Well, if they are just doctored screen captures of Vista, then I do not know how to classify them. By the available accounts, there seems to be wider support for hardware and the release bouquet remains the same like Vista, that means you will have Home Basic, Ultimate and business editions available when the OS is finally released. The estimated date is somewhere in end 2009.

Vista Successor

That era is upon us once again! I remember those endless days trying to get my hands on erstwhile Longhorn to see how the future OS from the MS stable was going to look. Well, as I said, That era is upon us once again! With the rumours of successor to Vista gaining strength, the time is not far off when the emulators and beta versions are going to flood the download scene. The rumours are that the successor to Microsoft Windows Vista, perhaps, code named as Windows 7, has already been handed out to trusted "key" partners. The release period, which was earlier set to be early 2010, has been recast as late or end 2009. That leaves almost two years of salivating , imagining and speculating what the new version is going to be like. If the rumours are to be believed, Microsoft is ready to release two versions known as M2 and M3 in April/may and second half of this year respectively. But going by the history of Microsoft, there would be just no point in settling for these date lines. We all would remember how the release dates for Microsoft Windows Vista kept slipping. Same is the case for the yet to be released SP1 for Vista. All I would say is, keep your fingers crossed.