Hasta La Gadget!

There’s been a lot of nostalgia circulating around the PC world in the past year, but there’s only one element of early home computing history that everyone shares in common: the floppy drive. A guest writer posting at HP’s Input Output blog, Steve Vaughan-Nichols, is acknowledging our shared sentimentality with a rare retrospective of those skinny magnetic disks from their beginning to their (effective) end. Many of us are familiar with the floppies that fed our Amigas, early Macs and IBM PCs; Vaughan-Nichols goes beyond that to address the frustrations that led to the first 8-inch floppy at IBM in 1967, the esoteric reasons behind the 5.25-inch size and other tidbits that might normally escape our memory. Don’t be sad knowing that the floppy’s story ends with a whimper, rather than a bang. Instead, be glad for the look back at a technology that arguably greased the wheels of the PC era, even if it sometimes led to getting more disks than you could ever use. Sorry about that.

[Image credit: Al Pavangkanan, Flickr]

Filed under: Storage, Alt

Writer breaks down floppy drive history in detail, recalls the good sectors and the bad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There have been more than a few solar power efficiency records set in the past few months, let alone years. What makes IBM, DelSolar, Solar Frontier and Tokyo Ohka Kogyo think they can just waltz in and claim a record of their own? By using more commonplace elements in the periodic table, that’s how. The partnership’s new photovoltaic cell based on copper, zinc and tin (CZTS for short) can convert light rays to electric power with a 11.1 percent efficiency rate — still nothing to upset traditional silicon power, but a large 10 percent more efficient than anything else in the class. In its early form, CZTS can already be manufactured through ink printing and could be produced in quantities equivalent to about 500 gigawatts of power per year, or five times more than some of the next-closest alternatives. The group wants to improve CZTS’ efficiency over the course of the next several years, ideally reaching the point where it’s useful as a truly cheap, ubiquitous source of power. We’re looking forward to the day when there’s a little slice of solar energy in just about everything, hopefully including a few more hybrid cars and private aircraft.

Filed under: Science

IBM alliance sets efficiency record for solar power cells using common materials originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM is becoming serious about enterprise-grade computing in more ways than one. It just struck a deal to acquire Texas Memory Systems, best known these days for its extra-quick RamSan SSD cards. As you’d anticipate, that fast yet lean storage is the focus — IBM wants servers that aren’t limited by their drives, or which just use less power than old-fashioned spinning hard disks and tape machines. Neither side is talking about how much the deal is worth, but TMS’ product roster should stay on the market even as it’s folded into IBM’s Smarter Storage initiative. Expect that database at work to suddenly get faster sometime after the acquisition closes later this year.

Continue reading IBM buys Texas Memory Systems to bring on speedy storage

Filed under: Desktops, Storage

IBM buys Texas Memory Systems to bring on speedy storage originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A fundamental challenge of developing spintronics, or computing where the rotation of electrons carries instructions and other data rather than the charge, has been getting the electrons to spin for long enough to shuttle data to its destination in the first place. IBM and ETH Zurich claim to be the first achieving that feat by getting the electrons to dance to the same tune. Basing a semiconductor material on gallium arsenide and bringing the temperature to an extremely low -387F, the research duo have created a persistent spin helix that keeps the spin going for the 1.1 nanoseconds it would take a normal 1GHz processor to run through its full cycle, or 30 times longer than before. As impressive as it can be to stretch atomic physics that far, just remember that the theory is some distance from practice: unless you’re really keen on running a computer at temperatures just a few hops away from absolute zero, there’s work to be done on producing transistors (let alone processors) that safely run in the climate of the family den. Assuming that’s within the realm of possibility, though, we could eventually see computers that wring much more performance per watt out of one of the most basic elements of nature.

Continue reading IBM creates consistent electron spin inside semiconductors, takes spintronics one twirl closer

Filed under: Science

IBM creates consistent electron spin inside semiconductors, takes spintronics one twirl closer originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can you believe it? Word on the street has it that International Business Machines (IBM) did mull over the decision of purchasing Researcn In Motion’s (RIM) enterprise division. Bloomberg reported this based on a couple of unnamed sources, where IBM did slide in an informal inquiry for the enterprise division of RIM in the past, although at this point in time, there does not seem to be any talks that are happening between the two companies. There is a new CEO in town for RIM after all, and Mr. Thorsten Heins has steered RIM to put some bankers on their payroll to figure out a strategic review which might include a potential sale and partnerships for its technology.

So far, Bloomberg claims that there has not been any reports of offers for its phone business, and neither has anyone put in an enquiry for purchasing the entire company outright. Not even Samsung seems to want to touch them with a 10 foot pole – is RIM doomed to die a slow death then, never mind that they have BlackBerry 10 OS in the pipeline?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: RIM to cut 3,000 jobs next week, will be axing 2,000 more later this year, Samsung denies reports of licensing Blackberry 10,