Gadgets and Gizmos

Asus Terabyte Laptop

Asus will unveil a laptop that should satisfy the storage needs of all but the biggest of power users: the M70S comes with 1T byte of storage space. The Asus M70S includes two 500GB Hitachi Travelstar 5K50 hard drives, also announced today, and offers a digital/analogue TV tuner and video recording capability as an option to help users make the most of the extra storage space.

The M70S also includes a 17in widescreen display at either WXGA+ (1,440 by 900) or WUXGA (1,920 by 1,200) resolution, an Intel Core2 Duo processor (either the T7700, 7500, 7300 or 7100), an ATI 3650 graphics card, webcam, fingerprint reader and 1GB of memory. The Hitachi product that makes this possible is the new Travelstar 5K500 - available in 400GB and 500GB versions - that will debut at this month Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Hitachi will also offer an enhanced-availability (EA) version, called the Travelstar E5K500 - also available in both 400GB and 500GB capacities - which is designed for applications requiring 24x7 operation in lower transaction environments such as blade servers, network routers, point-of-sale terminals and video surveillance systems. Hitachi said a second version of the 12.5mm-high drive will be offered, this time with integrated automatic data encryption. However, this is limited to a 1.5Gb/s SATA link.

For its part, Asus said it would use the 5K500 in its upcoming M50 and M70 notebooks - the latter with a pair of the drives for a full 1TB of unformatted storage capacity. The Travelstar 5K500 will be available around the world in February, not only at 500GB The Asus M70 comes optionally equipped to make use of the extra storage space with a digital/analog TV tuner and video recording capability. An optional remote control is also available. The explosion in digital video is one of the main reasons why consumers are increasingly demanding as much storage space on their laptops as on desktop computers.

To watch all that video, the laptop comes with a 17-inch widescreen display at either WXGA+ (1,440 by 900 pixels) or WUXGA (1,920 by 1,200 pixels) resolution depending on the model. It should be noted that the former screen won’t be able to show a high-definition image, which is 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, at full resolution. An Intel Core2 Duo processor lies at the heart of the laptop and models will be available with the T7700, 7500, 7300 or 7100 versions of the chip. Other features include an ATI 3650 graphics card, web cam, fingerprint reader and 1G byte of memory.