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bad_fx writes:
It seems that the OLPC has shaken Microsoft a bit, as the beeb is now reporting that they will apparently be selling a package with "windows xp start, office 2007 and student 2007" for as little as $3. from the article:
Governments in developing countries can purchase the cut-price software, if they provide free PCs for schools.
and
"This is not a philanthropic effort, this is a business," Orlando Ayala of Microsoft told the Reuter's news agency.
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Ralph_19 writes:
Wired visited Seagate's R&D labs and learned we can expect 3.5-inch 300-terabit hard drives within a matter of years. Currently Seagate is using perpendicular recording but in the next decade we can expect heat-assisted magnetic recording (HARM), which will boost storage densities to as much as 50 terabits per square inch. The technology allows a smaller number of grains to be used for each bit of data, taking advantage of high-stability magnetic compounds such as iron platinum.
Other storage news is the new 32GB SSD from SanDisk. This is a 1.8-inch flash-based drive for notebooks. It's still quite expensive, in the first half of this year a 32GB SSD will add roughly $600 to the price of a notebook.
