Fujitsu has announced a world-record 320GB, 7200rpm 2.5-inch laptop hard disk, the MHZ2 BJ, to be available this June.

If you need the latest and greatest, or are simply running out of space on your current laptop HD and want one that works fast (very, very fast), this is the drive for you. The specs: 10.5 ms read and 12.5 ms write seek times, a 16MB cache, 2.3 W power consumption, and a 25 dB idle noise level.

That’s a lot of storage to fit into such a tiny drive running at these kinds of speeds. Hardware manufacturers are really pushing the limits of these devices, and laptops are quickly catching up to desktops in terms of speed and storage capacity. Advances such as Fujitsu’s new drive show why laptops are quickly beginning to outsell desktops. Hopefully we’ll see all of the major hard drive manufacturer’s follow suit, or even try to beat the new record. [via Engadget]

The one-size-fits-all security software installed by IT departments is often not the best possible solution as it can produce false positives as well as miss actual attacks. Researchers at Intel Research Berkeley have recognized that problem and are working on laptop-based security software that adjusts to the way an individual uses the internet to better detect malicious activity.

“One reason security breaches are so rampant is that most of our machines look the same,” says Nina Taft, a researcher with the program. “When a hacker breaks into one machine, he can break into all of them… We’re trying to inject diversity into computers.”

Traditional security software has a preset threshold. When internet activity goes above that level, the software triggers an alarm suggesting that the computer might be infected. These kinds of infections are mainly due to botnets, which are enormous quantities of infected computers acting together to send out spam and do other malicious deeds. However, users who use the internet more than average could have to deal with frequent false alarms, and users who barely use their connection might never know if their computer got infected. Read more »

The nice folks over at Thorn Micro Technologies have developed an awesome new laptop fan - the RSD5. It is a solid state fan (no moving parts!) that uses an electrical current to generate airflow. More airflow, in fact, than standard mechanical fans.

While typical mechanical fans generate a breeze of 0.7 - 1.7 meters per second, the RSD5 can output a cooler 2.7 meters per second. What’s more impressive is that it stays completely silent while cranking out this kind of airflow.

One of the best things about this fan is that it’s the size of a microchip. The researchers who developed it are hoping to one day build these solid state fans directly into other chips, creating self-cooling processors and other chips that stay cool on their own. The new fan is very cool (no pun intended), but it would be interesting to see what kind of effect this would have on laptop battery life.

DigiTimes is reporting that, according to several sources, Intel is planning on launching the world’s first quad-core CPU for laptops - the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 - in Q3 of 2008.

Starting at an initial price of $1,038 (yes, that’s probably more than the price of the average laptop today), Intel doesn’t expect quad-core CPUs to become standard in laptops until late 2009. Even that, we think, is a conservative estimate. Dual-core CPUs are more than enough for most applications today, and it will be hard to find applications that can utilize all four cores in the near future.

The Core 2 Extreme QX9300 will be manufactured in a 45nm process and will run at 2.53GHz. It will feature a 12MB L2 cache.

Tech jargon aside, this thing will be very fast for a laptop processor, assuming that operating systems and programs can utilize all of its power. At those prices though, don’t expect to see the processor from mainstream manufacturers such as HP and Dell any time soon.

3M has announced a partnership with a yet unnamed leading consumer electronics company to bring its ultra-portable projector to the market.

The company is hoping to become the first to release such a product, ahead of big names like Texas Instruments and Microvision.

This tiny projector will be able to attach to cell phones, cameras, and laptops to display an image up to 50 inches, diagonally. Although its not exactly a built-in pico projector, it’s capable of displaying a fairly large image and will work with other devices - not just a cell phone. It also looks portable enough, as we don’t know many people who would complain about carrying that tiny thing in their pockets.

The device is estimated to sell between $300 and $400, with prices dropping to $150 within five years. Count us in, we want one of these!

[About Projectors via Gizmodo]

Designer Hung Chih Wang has come up with what he thinks a portable printer should look like. His tiny device, called “Trak,” attaches to the back of a laptop screen to take up as little room as possible.

Trak is powered by USB, and comes complete with a detachable printer head for even more space savings when lugging the thing around.

Unfortunately, the concept has its downsides as well. You are probably already asking yourself if it’s even possible to fit a printer into such a small package, and we highly doubt it. The design also seems to be limited to laptops with the same width, although that could be easily fixed with some sort of extendable grips on the printer. The open nature of the design would probably lead to quick dirt and grime accumulation, causing poor-quality printouts.

Nevertheless, we applaud the designer for trying to tackle the problem of portable printers with such a stylish concept.

[Via yanko design]

Sony has unveiled a new technology that promises to greatly increase hard drive capacities, even in laptops. Instead of a traditional magnetic read/write head, Sony’s new drives will use a hybrid of magnetic and optical technology allowing for a much greater density of data on the disk.

Much of the hard drive will remain the same. The most significant change is that data will now be written to the disk using a laser. Lasers are much more precise than magnetic heads, allowing them to squeeze many more bits into a given area - 5 times more, Sony claims.

This development will result in some huge hard drive sizes. A 320GB drive today would turn into a 1.6TB drive using the new technology while the size and other factors remain the same. Sony’s development will be a relief to laptop users who are already running out of room on their hard drives. There is no timetable for release set as of now, but we hope Sony pushes this technology out soon. We’d love to see terabyte hard drives in our laptops.

Now that Sony’s Blu-ray has won the format war, rumors are flying that Dell and Apple want to incorporate these drives into their high-end laptops.

According to several reports, the two companies plan on releasing Blu-ray notebooks later this year. They say that since there is only one high-def format now, Dell and Apple will want to start moving into the next generation of media technology.

Unfortunately, drives like this would come at a price. Today’s laptop Blu-ray drives are power hungry, with some users reporting a completely drained battery after half of a movie. Of course, that would all change in the future as technology evolves, so hopefully we can see more efficient drives later this year.