Systems That Boot in a Flash

Steve Fox

Contact PC World Contributing Editor Steve Fox at steve_fox@pcworld.com; click here to read additional Plugged In columns.

Flashy Notebook Hard Drives

Illustration by Gordon Studer

The Buzz: All of that schlepping and bouncing takes a toll on notebook hard drives, which break far more frequently than other laptop components. To improve reliability, Samsung and Microsoft have collaborated in designing a hybrid hard drive (HHD) that houses 1GB of flash memory along with the usual spinning platter. High-performance flash memory (which has no moving parts) caches data to be written to the drive, so that the fragile disk platter doesn't have to spin up nearly as often. This approach will shorten boot time, save wear and tear, and extend battery life by about 36 minutes on a 4-hour battery. Sound too good to be true? It is--at least for now. HHDs are designed to work specifically with Microsoft's Longhorn operating system, which isn't due until the second half of 2006. You can expect several vendors to offer the new drives then.

Bottom Line: Microsoft really wants you to buy Longhorn when it shows up. Here's one good reason to do so.

Grassroots News

The Buzz: Whether it comes from dissidents in Iran or activist bloggers in the United States, Net-based news from just-plain-folks reporters has emerged as a viable alternative to the standard news outlets. Instead of simply bashing the established media, citizen journalists are working to supplant--or at least supplement--them. For would-be journalists who'd rather not go it alone, grassroots sites like AFreePress.com and NowPublic.com lay the groundwork for communal news services.

Bottom Line: This old-media hack welcomes the competition. There's nothing sacred about traditional news sources (except Plugged In, natch).

Video a la Net

Illustration by Gordon Studer

The Buzz: Thanks to ubiquitous broadband and sophisticated production and delivery technologies, the amateur video you produce can now reach a mass audience. ParticipatoryCulture.org is building open-source tools that will allow anyone to publish video to a channel that users can subscribe to--sort of an ITunes for video. OurMedia.org has partnered with the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, and a hosting service called Bryght to offer free storage and bandwidth for video, photos, audio, and more. Users of Popcast.com's Flash-based "Open Access Internet TV" can broadcast video channels to Popcast, where people can subscribe to them. Meanwhile, Yahoo's Media RSS, a tool for self-publishing rich media, launched recently. And Google has a beta of a hosting service that will enable you to distribute--and even charge for--your videos.

Bottom Line: TV as we know it is dead. The networks just don't know it yet.

Coming Tech: Battling Game Consoles

Game machines are going hi-def as Microsoft and Sony get set to put their next-generation game consoles, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, respectively, into users' twitchy hands. Both devices are all about speed. The Xbox will be powered by a three-core IBM PowerPC-based chip running at 3.2 GHz per core; Sony is going with the "Cell" CPU, a "supercomputer on a chip" running at 3.2 GHz. Expect plenty of RAM and enhanced graphics on both boxes, and support for high-capacity Blu-ray discs on the PS3. The Xbox 360 should debut in time for the holiday season. The PS3, as well as Nintendo's Revolution, will arrive next year.

Here\Now

1. Ta-Da: Simple, RSS-ready, sharable to-do lists.

2. Rojo.com: This RSS reader possesses plenty of community-minded organizational skills.

3. Tech Buzz Game: Trade virtual shares in "high-tech products, concepts, and trends."

4. XM Connect-and-Play: XM-ready receivers can bring satellite radio into your home for the price of a $50 antenna--and a subscription, of course.

5. Yahoo Music Portable music subscription priced at $5 per month.