We take a brief look at some of the major components in laptops and the direction that type of hardware is heading.
Storage
It's no secret hard drives have been rising steadily in capacity, and that trend has continued unabated with Hitachi's release of its 500GB TravelStar 5K500. While some have criticized the Hitachi drive because it simply adds a platter and increases the vertical size of the drive to a point where many standard 2.5-inch bays won't be able to accommodate it, that hasn't stopped OEMs like ASUS from putting two 5K500s in the new M70Sr, which Asus bills as the "world's first terabyte notebook." While terabyte capacities are certainly welcome, that's not even the most exciting trend in notebook hard drives.
The biggest development in HDDs is the shift toward Solid State Drives, or SSDs. Because they lack the moving parts found in a traditional hard drive, SSDs are incredibly fast, run much cooler and have a longer lifespan. The catch? Price. Solid state drives are expensive: a 2.5-inch 16GB SATA SSD hard drive retails for about $450, while a comparable 2.5-inch 250GB SATA traditional HDD can be had for $140. In other words, that's $28/GB for SSD and $0.56/GB for traditional HDD. Plus, the capacity of SSD drives – currently in the 64GB range – is still fairly limiting.
A good example of how SSD drives are being used in notebooks is the Sony VAIO TZ series (VGN-TZ298N/XC to be specific). This 11.1-inch ultraportable features a 64GB Solid State Drive in its default configuration. Being an ultraportable, most of the data will probably be stored elsewhere, so users might not mind the limited storage space. And with an SSD drive, bootup times and loading times are incredibly fast. There's also a large reduction in heat emissions and power consumption, since there are no platters spinning at 5400rpm.
Optical Drives
Most prognosticators believe the war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD ended when Warner Bros announced prior to CES it was siding with the Blu-ray camp, effectively putting 70% of the Hollywood studios in one corner. Early sales returns calculated since that announcement seem to back up that assumption. According to figures from NPD, in the week prior to Warner Bros' announcement Blu-Ray player sales and HD-DVD player sales were at about a 51-49 percent split, respectively. In the week after the announcement, 21,770 Blu-ray players were sold in comparison to just 1,758 HD-DVD units, a 92-8 split. If those numbers continue to hold, the war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD is over.
That's good news for consumers (at least, the ones who don't have large HD-DVD libraries) because it appears to be safe to take the plunge into HD. For high definition purists, the best way to take full advantage of a Blu-ray optical drive is by getting a monster 20.1-inch multimedia notebook, like the HP Pavilion HDX. The large display allows you to see movies in their full 1080p glory, the way they were meant to be shown. With the recent graphics update to the HDX, it's one of the most powerful laptops you can buy, perfect for gaming, video editing or just having a fast computer.
Processors
Intel has publicly discussed its next two successors to the current 45-nm Penryn chip, the 45-nm Nehalem and the 32-nm Westmere project. Details on the exact nature of these processors are scarce and most limited to what Intel offered at the most recent IDF, but allegedly Nehalem will come in versions in up to 8+ cores and include integrated memory controllers for DDR3 SDRAM. Other improvements include the QuickPath microarchitecture which will distribute memory to each processor and high speed point-to-point interconnects. Even less is known about the 32-nm Westmere, other than it's planned to feature 1.9 billion transistors and isn't scheduled for release until 2009.
Screen
Increased resolution and color depth has long been the guiding arc in the evolution of laptop screens, but one feature we'll start to see this year is OLED displays on laptops. Sony, one of the larger laptop OEMs, showed off several OLED monitors at CES, like the 11-inch XEL-1. Granted, the cost was astronomical ($2,500), but the mere fact that Sony is able to build and sell such a brightly lit screen with a mind-boggling contrast (1,000,000:1) in a razor-thin form factor is promising. If the cost ever comes down to realistic levels, you may one day see this kind of display in your notebook.
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