by CIO Staff

CES: Samsung to Launch Flash-Based Ultramobile PC

News
Jan 08, 20072 mins
MobileSmall and Medium Business

Samsung Electronics will launch the latest addition to its family of ultramobile PCs on Monday, a device that uses a 32GB solid-state flash memory-based hard drive (SSD) to store data instead of a conventional hard-disk drive (HDD).

The Q1P SSD is designed for users requiring speedier access to data. It also takes a beating better than devices using HDDs, Samsung said in a statement.

The boot-up time for the Q1P SSD is 25 percent to 50 percent faster than systems using a hard-disk drive, Samsung said. It is also capable of reading data 300 times faster than HDD, at 53MB per second, and writing data 150 times faster, at 28MB per second. The Q1P SSD can also withstand twice the impact of an ultramobile PC equipped with an HDD.

The company should know. It is offering both kinds of ultramobile PCs in the U.S. market immediately—the Q1P with an HDD for US$1,299 and the Q1P SSD for $1,999. The launch of the new ultramobiles prompted the company to lower the price of its first ultramobile PC, the Q1, to $999.

All earlier Samsung ultramobiles used 1.8-inch HDDs.

The spec sheet of the Q1P SDD shows that Samsung has returned to using Intel microprocessors after turning to microprocessors made by Taiwan’s Via Technologies microprocessors in the Q1B, a lower-priced ultramobile PC.

The Q1P SSD runs on an Intel Pentium M 1.0GHz microprocessor and carries 1GB of DDR2 (double data rate, second-generation) memory. It has a 7-inch screen, weighs 1.7 pounds and holds a rechargeable lithium ion battery that can last three hours.

-Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)

Related Links:

  • CES: Samsung to Launch New Blu-ray Disc Player

  • CES: Bill Gates Expands Microsoft’s Digital Home Strategy

  • CES Q&A: Bill Gates Talks Convergence, Why Tech Is Fun

  • CES: AMD Intros Notebook, Digital Home Systems

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.