SSDs have been coming down in price in recent years but are still quite a bit pricier than mechanical drives with equivalent storage capacity, the research firm noted. Currently, that means acquisition costs that add between £125 to £220 to the overall price of a commercial laptop or desktop when it’s equipped with an SSD instead of an HDD.

But over the typical three-year life span of such a machine, the productivity benefits of using an SSD-equipped PC deliver big-time ROI that more than outweighs that higher initial cost, J. Gold Associates principal analyst Jack Gold told PCMag—and the numbers are actually pretty stunning.

“Despite the increased acquisition cost, the ROI of an SSD-equipped PC will offer a payback of up to $30,000 (£18,550) in increased productivity benefits over the typical three-year life of a machine,” Gold wrote in an emailed statement accompanying the firm’s white paper.

What’s more, the analyst believes that the higher acquisition costs associated with SSDs will decline even further over the next couple of years “as drives become less expensive and capacity increases.”

Today, SSDs are used exclusively in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for performance, footprint, and dependability reasons, while also commonly appearing in the new wave of thin and light laptops which include Intel-promoted Ultrabooks and Apple’s MacBook Air lineup of products.

But aside from appearing in a few very high-end desktops and standard-sized laptops, SSDs still tend to give way to HDDs in mainstream PCs like those purchased in volume by businesses and other large organisations. Complicating matters somewhat is that major HDD makers, no doubt seeing the writing on the wall, have in recent months been pushing out hybrid drives that combine solid state and mechanical drive technology.

Such moves may only be putting off the inevitable, however. Many industry watchers believe hard disk drives will soon virtually disappear as the SSD takes over nearly all computing platforms.

If the new numbers from J. Gold Associates are accurate – and crucially, if procurement departments are paying attention – the death of the mechanical drive may come even sooner than expected.

by Damon Poeter, 01 November, 2012

Today saw the arrival of the NETGEAR MVBR1210C Mobile Broadband Voice Router, an exclusive new facility working in conjunction with mobile network operators in order to extend their voice services to the customers’ home phones.

Developed along with Sierra Wireless, the NETGEAR MVBR121C HSPA+ Mobile Broadband Voice Router is all set for immediate deployment.

The router works by extending the mobile voice service through their wired voice port, which will in turn allow mobile operators to deliver data as well as voice services to their customers – eliminating the need for a fixed line voice function.

Patrick Lo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at NETGEAR, explained: “The availability of the NETGEAR MVBR1210C represents an important milestone in extending mobile voice services into the home.” reported Sacramento Bee.

Expressing his delight of the collaboration, Patrick stated: “We are pleased to partner with Sierra Wireless, a world-class mobile technology leader, to integrate voice and high-speed wireless capabilities into our mobile broadband routers.”

IBM is ready to test a cloud-based EV charging app in Switzerland very soon. This new application will allow drivers to make the choice between fossil fuel or renewable energyI to recharge any electric vehicles.

This new service will help to integrate electric vehicles without straining power grids in the market by allowing drivers to schedule recharging at peak renewable energy producing time.

According to Swiss utility EKZ, the rapid growth of electric cars will require just a few more percent of electricity than what is already being produced. However, there is a danger of causing widespread blackouts if all the EVs plug into the grid to recharge at the same time.

IBM is testing service that will hopefully prevent this situation by simply informing drivers when the most energy is being produced.

This is a web-based app that communicates with both the vehicle and power companies to inform drivers when the most wind, solar or hydro electricity is being produced and also when to schedule charging during those times.

At present, Switzerland is generating approximately 55.6 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and to be specific primarily hydropower.

Source: Erica Thinesen

Windows 8 is expected to work more efficiently with multi-core central processing units (CPUs) as compared to Windows 7, reported Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). This will reflect in higher performance of the company’s FX-series chips with up to eight cores.

A slide spread by AMD recently showed that the new chips have a 10 percent performance advantage in Windows 8 as compared to the current performance in Windows 7.

In non-demanding video games, performance boost can be observed, but it is less noticeable in other applications or in game titles that require high performance from the central processing units.

AMD attributes this performance enhancement to the new scheduler of the next-gen operating system. The new scheduler manages microprocessors more efficiently and effectively with various cores.

An independent test conducted by X-bit labs showed that despite not having Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, Intel’s mainstream quad-core Core i5-2500 processor is barely beaten by the eight-core FX-8150 model which is one of the top FX chips.

No doubt AMD proved the eight core microprocessor has an advantage in the Windows 8 environment, but there is no information to indicate that other CPUs will also benefit from the next-gen OS.

Source: Erica Thinesen

Images of what appears to be the 7-inch Huawei Mediapad tablet have beel leaked online, with the device expected to go on sale as a 4G model on T-Mobile in the US.

News website TMOnews says that the Mediapad 4G could be unveiled as early as next month at CTIA in the US.

The handset was originally announced back in June and is likely to go on sale worldwide towards the end of the year.

It was the first tablet to feature Android 3.2 Honeycomb and packs a 7-inch 1280×800 pixel capacitive touchscreen, a dual core SoC clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, a microSD card slot, a 1.3-megapixel rear camera, a five megapixel front-facing camera with autofocus and HD video capture, support for Flash 10.3 and a rather thick bezel.

Taken in isolation, the Huawei Mediapad represents a decent deal even if it costs $299 with a two year contract. But when the Amazon Kindle Fire is added to the equation, there’s not much going for the former given that the Kindle will cost $199 without contract and will be the perfect companion for a 4G Wi-Fi dongle. Still, Huawei may decide to sell the Mediapad at cost price to grab market share instead.

Source: Desire Athow

Navigation services provider TomTom has launched the International Traffic Foundation aimed at dealing with traffic congestion.

In what seems like a marketing gimmick for its products, the company said that the TomTom International Traffic Foundation will bring together academics, industry experts and policy makers to help solve the problem of rising traffic.

The company said that the non-profit foundation will fund Phds and post-doctorate research into finding new methods of traffic management. The foundation will also be responsible for organising several traffic related events.

“The TomTom International Traffic Foundation is an important step towards our goal of reducing congestion for all, as set out in our Traffic Manifesto,” said chief executive officer of TomTom, Harold Goddijn.

“Traffic is a universal issue that impacts the individual, business and society as a whole. The Foundation will bring together the best global thinkers to look at traffic management from every angle,” he added.

The company said it will be funding two PhDs and two post doctorate research into traffic management technology per year as a part of its new initiative. The research topics for 2012 include traffic management and vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to server communication technology among others.

Source: Erica Thinesen

The Japanese company has used amorphous silicon-based TFT technology rather than the more expensive low temperature polysilicon or LTPS which requires extra wiring, making it bulkier and more fragile.

The new panel is also less power hungry as Hitachi has managed to tweak the amount of backlight needed, which means better battery life on larger screen devices.

Expect the new display, which follows up from the one showcased back in February, to offer up to 500 cd/m2 brightness and support 24-bit colour, a 1000:1 contrast ratio and a massive 160-degree horizontal and vertical viewing angle.

There have been only a few models on the market with an HD ready display, both of them from Samsung; the Note and the Samsung Galaxy S2 II HD LTE have a 5.3-inch and a 4.65-inch screen respectively.

PCs equipped with Intel’s Thunderbolt data transfer technology will be introduced next year, the chip maker has revealed.

Intel has revealed during its developers conference that Asus and Acer will release the first ultralight and sleek Ultrabook PCs with Thunderbolt technology – which is significantly faster than USB 3.0.

The technology, which is about 20 times faster than USB 3.0 with transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, is only available in Apple’s Mac desktops and laptops. But now, Windows compatible PCs will be able to offer the superior I/O technology as well.

Intel showed off an Ultrabook laptop running the Windows 8 platform as well as the new Haswell processor to be released in 2013. The new processor features a 20x reduction in power consumption which gives the Ultrabook a 10-hour battery life.

“Intel’s Thunderbolt controllers interconnect a PC and other devices, transmitting and receiving packetized traffic for both PCIe and DisplayPort protocols. Thunderbolt technology works on data streams in both directions, at the same time, so users get the benefit of full bandwidth in both directions, over a single cable,” Intel explains on the Thunderbolt page.