News tagged with "ibm"

IBM has today cut the price of the Microdrive. The official prices are now: 1 GB - $379, 512 MB - $259, 340 MB - $199. This brings the Microdrive down to an unbelievable $0.37/MB. "As acceptance of Microdrive by both consumers and device makers grows, we're able to continue with dramatic price cuts," IBM spokesman Michael Kuptz said. IBM has lowered the cost per megabyte by 50 percent in each of the past two years, he added. Also worth noting is that with the Microdrive 1 GB really is 1048576 KB.

IBM Japan has today posted its own Microdrive compatibility chart for both MK 1 (170 MB / 340 MB) and MK 2 (512 MB / 1 GB) Microdrive Compact Flash Type II storage cards. The chart covers all sorts of devices from digital cameras to printers and PDA's. We've extracted and translated the portion covering digital cameras as a reference to our readers.

IBM has sent us a press release about the use of their 1GB microdrive on two shuttle missions to the International Space Station. The pictures were taken using the Kodak Professional DCS 660 and are available on the NASA gallery site for the missions STS98 and STS102, do a search for "digital".

Many thanks to forums contributor Matthew Williamson who recently acquired a 1 GB IBM Microdrive and has done some comparative Write Speed timing against a 340 MB Microdrive and a 160 MB Lexar 8X Compact Flash card using a Nikon D1. His results are interesting, especially if the introduction of the 1 GB pushes the price of the older 340 MB down it may be better to buy a few 340's...

Just two hours after publishing the "sneak preview" news story below, IBM have release an official announcement of their 1 GB MicroDrive. Full release and specifications inside. "Packing one gigabyte (GB) of data storage capacity on to a disk the size of an American quarter, IBM's newest Microdrive can hold up to 1,000 high-resolution photographs, a thousand 200-page novels or nearly 18 hours of high-quality digital audio music."

UPDATED: Specifications

Some sneak news here from NY Times, IBM are readying their next generation MicroDrive, weighing in at 1GB yet still the same small CF Type II package, increased shock resistance (now a claimed 1500G) it will be priced at US$ 499 ($0.48/MB) and said to go on sale in September. "The smaller size and accelerating density of magnetic storage systems are one of the remarkable stories of Silicon Valley. Disk storage is now increasing at a rate faster than the legendary Moore's Law improvement rate of the semiconductor industry. "