Asus D270NM10 IPC-I Motherboard Details, Dual Lan Cedar Trail
There's been a lot of rumors and gossip on Intel's Cedar Trail platform in the blogosphere but here's a new board from Asus that is coming out soon (picture from Computex).
Fanless, Dual Gb Lan, and powered by the D2700 (google to find specs). Onboard PSU (hopefully 12V) and RS232 Serial Port.
Would make for a nice server, to go alongside our mini-itx Xeon offering.
Aleutia Nano ITX T56N G-Series AMD Fusion Board Goes on Sale June 24
We'll be selling this as a development kit on our website starting Friday June 24th. We've been doing this for customers that email in but starting Friday, it's official.
Includes:
- Nano-ITX Board with T56N Fusion APU
- 5A 12V AC Adapter (Channel Well Technology)
- 2GB DDR3 RAM
- VGA Cable (to add second monitor)
- Serial Cable
- Driver CD
Intel DH61AG Apple Glen Half Height Sandy Bridge Board
We've been following this for some time and now that it's been details have been made public, we can confirm that Aleutia will be releasing a unique PC based around this Sandy Bridge board, the Intel DH61AG Apple Glen board.
As you can see this is a half-height mini-itx board, similar to the Intel D945GSEJT that we use on our T1, and has an onboard power supply. but with superior I/O including:
- DVI Port
- HDMI Port
- Pair of USB 3.0 Ports
- Pair of USB 2.0 Ports (High Current, Fast Charging)
Like the T1 this has two SATA Ports. Unlike the T1 it has:
- Full Height AND Half Height Mini PCIe (ideal for WLAN) slots
- Two DDR3 SO-DIMM Slots with support for up to 16GB of RAM.
We'll be releasing a PC based on this board (Project Vela) but for now we're selling the board itself through our sister site Mini ITX Stop for £84.95:
http://www.mini-itxstop.com/intel-dh61ag-apple-glen-ultra-flat-thin-itx-sandy-bridge-motherboard/
Aleutia at IPTV World Forum 2011, WES7C, and a Fanless Windows Embedded Set Top Box
Spent the day at IPTV in Kensington Olypmpia and most of the time at the Arrow-organized Windows Embedded 7 seminar. Fascinating presentation by Sylvain Ekel of Microsoft on the potential of Windows Embedded Standard 7 Consumer (or WES7C). Most of the contents were confidential but it echo'd the Engadget editorial from January on STBs as appliance computers and why an embedded media center just makes sense.
Aleutia's focus has always been on bringing fanless PCs and servers to market quickly and we're working on fanless consumer Set Top Boxes for Core i3 and AMD Fusion APUs. What do you guys think?
Aleutia M1 Sealed Fanless Marine PC
This is our best product yet and it offers the best performance per watt of anything we've done. It will succeed the existing P1. With a Dual Core Intel Atom D525 CPU (2 x 1.8GHz) and 4GB of DDR3 RAM it has peak power consumption of just 19W and idle power consumption of 13W. That's testing using a mains AC watt meter with power consumption on DC about 15% lower. This reduced power consumption is achieved by using an Intel embedded chipset (ICH8M) instead of the consumer-oriented Intel NM10 chipset we use on the similar T2 Pro.
It's based on a 3.5" mainboard and is smaller than any of our PCs and has a number of benefits for the marine market:
- Completely Fanless: the case serves as a heatsink, dissipating heat and removing the need for a fan.
- Solid State: available with a range of SSDs to provide a system with no moving parts
- Sealed: most competing marine PCs have ventilation holes but the M1 is fully sealed, protecting it against salty, corrosive air and humidity.
- 4 Com Ports: Boat PCs needs lots of serial RS232 ports to connect to GPS and no one wants to fiddle with USB to serial adapters. The M1 has 4 serial ports.
- -20 C to +45 C Operating Temperature Range: The advanced cooling technology and custom chassis allow for high operating temperature, meaning you can secure this in a cabinet without having to worry about cooling.
- 6-35V Wide Input Power Supply: you don't need a regulator since the M1 can handle your 12V or 24V battery fully charged and nearly empty.
Available later this month from £499 ex VAT.
Aleutia G-Series T56N Fanless Nano ITX AMD Fusion Board
There are AMD Brazos nettops coming out from Giada, Zotac, and I am sure others. For the DIY market, there are mini-itx AMD Brazos boards coming from a variety of major manufacturers (Gigabyte, Asrock, Asus, etc.).
Because so many of our customers are in the embedded market and design Digital Signage software that is based on the system spec, we've decided to go for a long-life cycle Bill of Materials and have switched the APU to a T56N (2 x 1.6GHz) from the E-350. These components have guaranteed availability through 2016 whereas Brazos could be phased out in a year.
It's still nano-itx and we'll have a VGA port as well as the HDMI port. There are pin headers for an RS232 Port as well. We've tested it with Win7 Home Premium, Win7 Embedded Standard, Ubuntu 10.10, and Android 2.2.
Fanless Set Top Box/Media PC in the works:
We're working with a partner to produce a sealed, black aluminium chassis that would serve us a heatsink and enable this system to be completely fanless.
The system will measure: W: 140mm x D:155mm x H:45mm.
With 4GB RAM and no drive, we'd expect to sell the system for approximately £350.
Board Available on Its Own:
The chief advantages over an Ion 2 Platform are:
- Radeon 6250 IGP: full HD
- Runs cool: 18W TDP, 2 x 1.6GHz CPU
- HDMI, VGA Port
- DDR3 RAM (faster, lower cost). The board has one DDR3 SO-DIMM Slot which can take up to 4GB of RAM.
- Long Life Cycle - available through 2016
- Low Cost
Aleutia Returns from Embedded World in Nuremberg
We spent March 1st and 2nd at Europe's largest Embedded PC show, looking at all sorts of low power, industrial grade components to help develop our product roadmap. A few of the highlights:
- AMD Embedded G-Series Technology: Full 1080p playback, low power consumption and fanless with either a passively cooled T56N Dual Core (2 x 1.6GHz) 18W APU or the single core T40N (1.2GHz) 9W APU. G-Series uses long life cycle chipset with availability through 2016. We'll post more about this soon.
- Intel Tunnel Creek: Intel basically sees their Tunnel Creek processors as a defensive move against ARM which is moving past 1GHz and getting more support. These are available through 2018, are super low power (5W system power consumption), and super low TDP (1-2W). You don't need a heatsink to passively cool them - just need some foam to connect them to an aluminium case. Plus the temperature range is ridiculous at -30 C to +85 C.
Aleutia AMD Zacate E-350 Nano-ITX Board
I think the picture says it all folks - this will form the smallest PC we'v ever done. The board is less than 5 inches on each side and we're having a custom aluminium enclosure built that measures 13.5 x 13.5 x 5.5 cm. Yes it has a fan and yes we may produce a larger fanless version but the performance with two AMD Bobcat cores (2 x 1.6GHz) and the Ati 6310 onboard GPU have exceeded Ion 2 performance.
This comes with 4 x USB 2.0 Ports, 2 x HDMI ports, Gb Lan, and onboard PSU.
We've now released this with the G-Series T56N APU and it's on sale:
http://www.aleutia.com/nano-itx-amd-fusion-motherboard-evaluation-kit
Flash 10.2 Hardware Acceleration in Ubuntu Linux
Flash 10.1 provided hardware acceleration on Windows and OS X which meant you could use the GPU and not the processor to do the heavy lifting on a 1080p Flash video. This was great for Ion and Ion 2 netbooks which had a basic Intel Atom CPU but a reasonably powerful onboard Nvidia chipset. It was available for Linux but hardware acceleration did not work.
We are releasing a new fanless, Ion 2-based PC (the H2) and I'm happy to report that hardware acceleration DOES work on Flash 10.2 and Ubuntu 10.10. It doesn't work out of the box and a few tweaks are required. You can use this tutorial as a starting point. As you can see in the screenshot of this 1080p BBC clip we had CPU utilization of 25% or less on an Atom D525 CPU (2 x 1.8GHz). Without hardware acceleration this CPU would completely maxed out and you would have about 2 frames per second. With hardware acceleration active, you get smooth 1080p flash playback. Click on the photo to see the full size screenshot.
New Aleutia Fanless D1 Nettop: D945GSEJT Motherboard with DVD-RW Drive.
A lot of our customers in remote areas still need a DVD drive to load software and media. These days it is no more expensive to get a DVD drive that can also write DVDs and so we have released a new product, the Aleutia D1, which uses our popular D-series chassis and combines a really low power Intel D945GSEJT mainboard (same as found in the T1) with a DVD-RW drive.
It also has space for two hard drives making it ideal as a lightweight RAID box.
The Aleutia X1: A Fanless, Low Power, Dual Gb Lan Server
Available Monday the 17th for £349 ex VAT the Fanless X1 Server combines an Intel Atom N550 Dual Core Notebook Processor (2 x 1.5GHz) with 2-4GB of RAM, a 2.5" SATA-II drive (up to 1TB) and either a Dual Gb Lan Configuration or 5 Gb LAN ports. With idle power consumption of 16W and peak power consumption of just 24 Watts, the X1 is ideal as an always-on proxy server. A fanless design ensures longevity in the field and the X1 is not only VESA/Wall mountable but small enough you can wrap your hands around it.
In the 5 Gb LAN option, 3 of the LAN ports support WoL (Wake-on-LAN) making this system ideal for server applications.
Dell Sandy Bridge Vostro 460 Goes on Sale for £1million
Dell has launched a dull, full size PC with a new Sandy Bridge i5 processor (the 95W 2400). Comes with spinning hard drive, and 5 fans (power supply, CPU, video card, and 2 case fans). Aleutia is using the i5-2400s in the relaunch of the D2 and it will be FANLESS (passively cooled CPU, case, and power supply).
SSDLife Benchmarking Tool
A lot of our customers are still nervous about using SSDs as their primary drive. They might be great to store the OS and Apps on but over time they will degrade. Indeed certain server processes can burn through an SSD in days. Better controller chip technology and Windows TRIM support has helped this but it's still a grey area. Intel estimates that at 5 hours per day, 7 days per week, you will get 5 years of use on Windows. One of the things we're looking at is configuring SSD systems with a separate SLC Flash Module (1-2GB) that would serve as a dedicated swap partition.
In the meantime, check out this Windows 7 Utility:
I ran it on the T2 I've used as a Desktop since November.
Google’s Nexus S Not Available from Carphone Warehouse on Google’s Chrome Browser
Considering swapping my iPhone 4 for the Gingerbread handset and something more open source. Given how appalling our BT broadband is at Aleutia's Office I really like the ability to share 3G connectivity over Wi-Fi (available in Android 2.2+). Carphone Warehouse is the exclusive UK retailer but their site for this new Google phone does not work on Google's own Chrome browser. Here's what the site should look like (complete with ability to select carrier and buy the phone):
That's in Safari. Now here is what it looks like in Chrome (on OS X):
Lilliput UM1010T 10″ Touchscreen USB Monitor Now In Stock with Aleutia
We've sold about 2500 computers this year and about 150 of these are running on solar power. Sometimes this is on a boat but usually it's in a remote part o f the world, whether rural Zambia or East Timor. The problem is always that you have to regulate each DC device. Since these PCs are never headless, you always have the challenge of regulating a 12V monitor or (far worse) running an AC monitor off an inverter.
USB monitors get around this dilemma because they are powered by USB . The 10" Lilliput model above takes up a pair of USB ports (each provides 2.5W) and draws only 5 Watts. Unlike the Samsung U70 7" monitor we used to sell it's actually usable as a primary display. At 1024 x 576 it's basically a netbook resolution but with a 16:9 ratio.
The only downside is that the Linux drivers are community ones and not easy to install so it's best on a Windows 7 equipped Aleutia PC.
Ideas on an Audiophile PC
We had an individual contact us yesterday with a particularly interesting request: a solid state PC with a Coaxial output. Now your average HTPC will have an SP/DIF Optical Audio output but a lot of people don't want to be stuck with a digital output. I'm not talking about the MP3 crowd of course but those who listen to music in FLAC format or even 24/192 (popular with classic music). This offers better quality audio than anything ever encoded onto a CD.
Our challenge is to produce a PC that's completely silent and can play back such high quality audio.
The main way to do this with a solid state drive instead of a hard drive and with a fanless motherboard.
The Single Core (Atom 230) Zotac Ion motherboard in our H3 chassis solves this and offers Optical audio (digital) and, more importantly, a Coaxial port for analogue audio. To this we can add an 80GB Intel Solid State Drive. Contact sales@aleutia.com for pricing.
Fanless Core i3 2100T PC
This is what a fanless Intel Core i3 PC would look like. The current crop has minimum TDP of 73 Watts - that is a lot of heat (though lower than the Core 2 Duo average of 95W). The new 1155 (Sandy Bridge) processors are going to be 65W. Still a challenge to cool without using a fan, especially in a small case.
However, the new Core i3 2300T has a TDP of just 35W, which is a remarkable accomplishment given it's performance of 2 x 2.5GHz and the 3MB of cache.
So using a custom heatpipe and chassis, that's a manageable amount of heat to dissipate out - you just need to maximize the surface area of the chassis. This is just link a human body maximizes surface area with your hands and head - which is why those parts get cold.
The best part is that the PC maintains a stable temperature - the PC doesn't get warm, the room does.
Solar Lighting Blows My Mind
I've already blogged about our upcoming Solar Classroom in a Crate project that we'll be rolling out in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria later this month for the outstanding NGO, Stepping Stones Nigeria. We were originally just providing a crate of 6 x T1s, 1 x X1 DRBL server (which doubles as the teacher's PC), 7 x 12V monitors and 6 x 80W panels (480 Watts in total) with a Morningstar Charge controller to run everything.
Since the PCs, server, switch, and monitor consume about 180 watts and this ICT centre will be organized around the local community (and so open at night) we thought we'd include some solar powered lights. There are cheap solar charged lanterns coming out of China for stand alone use, but if you are creating your own electric grid, we can do some more clever things.
In this case we bought some E27 lamps from CPC (£7), a big UK electric components company in the UK. You then snip off the UK mains socket splice away the cables. revealing a positive and negative lead.
For the picture above we just added some clips and connected it to a £10 7Ah battery although we will outfit them with a more permanent connection for the lab.
The best part is the LED bulb which is very bright and only 2 watts. It will run for 40 hours on that tiny battery and does not require a regulator (as the computer hardware does).
Connected to a 110Ah battery, that light will run for 600 hours.
You can do some pretty cools stuff with an iPhone on Ubuntu 10.04+
Just saw this on the Ubuntu community section, maybe I was wrong. If you're happy to use some simple commands you can do some pretty cool stuff with your iPhone and without needing to buy Mifi.
The Biggest Threat to Ubuntu isn’t Microsoft – it’s Apple
Linux users may look down at Apple fans for paying such gross markups on hardware and settling for a less pure implementation of Unix, but OS X is far more socially acceptable than anything Redmond produces and I know lots of people who run Ubuntu on their home-made desktop and use Mac laptops. Apple puts a lot of effort into battery life and for laptops a fully integrated approach of customized hardware, OS, and battery still makes some sense over a modular approach. In short, the two minority players in the OS market have co-existed.
As the personal computer experience becomes more web-based, the advantages of Windows start collapse. You can run Chrome or Firefox (and Flash) on any desktop OS and that lets you access just about anything you need. You can finally avoid the Microsoft tax and buy or build a much cheaper PC with Ubuntu on it, install Flash 10.1 and you can enjoy BBC iPlayer, Hulu, YouTube HD, etc. just like you did before. There's OpenOffice, Picasa (and a slew of Linux-only photo editing programs), all your standard accessories. If you want to play games, do them online or buy a console.
Most people I meet that have tried Ubuntu prefer it to Windows and would be happy to switch since they know OpenOffice and mainly use their PC for web stuff. They could stop closing stupid Windows pop-ups and avoid AV software.
The only problem is all these people own an iPod, iPhone, or iPad and need a mothership to sync it too. I own all three and have to run Win7 on a dual boot drive for this nonsense. I don't particularly like iTunes but Linux options (GTK pod) don't really work. If you want to keep Ubuntu and use Apple for super portable hardware you have to use things like DropBox.
Pundits have been saying it would be Adobe Photoshop for Linux that would bring the masses in, but the killer apps aren't high-end they are low-end. Ubuntu has great browsers, it has flash support, it has solitaire, and it has a much cleaner interface. All it needs is a way for users to sync up the 275 million iOS devices out there.
Sony is now to Google what Apple once was
Time was Eric Schmidt sat on Apple's board and Mr. Jobs on that of Google's. The acrimony engendered by Android's entrance onto the smartphone stage and Steve's megalomaniacal sense of victimhood ("we didn't enter the search business!") ended all that. And so the marriage of the sexiest hardware maker to the most beautiful software firm, joined from the first day by their greatest enemy, Microsoft, ended.
Enter Sony, whose last global product offering, the PSP Go, only underscored what a growing embarrassment Sony is to the industry. Samsung has eclipsed them in core markets and has the muscle to release an iPad competitor (if not killer).
Engadget broke the PSP Phone (code named Zeus) story this week and has confirmed it: Android 3, marketplace of serious games, nice design:
I'll assume 800 x 480 but it would be great if they came in higher, or could run 720p. Its unique but Sony has rarely been a leader in mobiles, while it is often owned the TV space.
While Apple TV is a "hobby" for Apple and essentially an iTunes shill, Google TV finally brings the browser to the sofa and the bed, plus Hulu for yanks and iPlayer for us. YouTube is the world's second largest search engine. This will be big. A partnership with Sony makes a lot of sense for both but the premium charged over an offline TV is exorbitant - $300-$400 more according to Engadget. You could buy a Logitech Revue for that price difference but the Revue is a joke - 1.2GHz Z-series Atom processor in a plastic box that's extra big to get rid of the heat from the passively cooled CPU.
We have a sliver of a fraction of their resources yet we could a) design a fanless set top box with custom heatpipe that dissipates heat into the room and not the PC case b) build a fanless board into a 26" or 32" TV for much less than a $300 premium.
Maybe we will.
Why Moore’s Law (our industry mantra) does not matter
Moore's law dictates that every 18 months, we get twice the transistors for the same price. That used to be great in the 90s when computers were slow and in the 80s when computers were really slow. It meant when you typed a letter on the keyboard you didn't have to wait for it to appear on the screen.
But today it means that you get a quad core for the price of a dual core. Some games and video encoding programs can utilize 4 cores but the vast majority of software can only take advantage of 2 or even 1 core. Software has always lagged behind hardware.
So you get all this performance but it long ago passed the point of being "good enough" and overshot the demands of many people, especially those in areas with little bandwidth where YouTube cannot be streamed in HD. (Personal Caveat: I have ridiculous levels of bandwidth and like watching things in 1080p so I am writing this on a Core i3-based Aleutia H3).
And the problem is AMD and Chipzilla (even VIA) do not bring the base cost of processors down.
We've built a product line on the Intel Atom 230 (1.6GHz) and Atom 330 (2 x 1.6GHz), which was replaced by the D410 (1.66GHz) and D510 (2 x 1.66GHz). At least these new entrants reduced heat and power consumption by building the NM10 Chipset into the CPU silicon. Now we have the D425 and D525 - pushed up to 1.8GHz and probably overclock'able to 2.0GHz. This does help with tasks and we are going to start selling them next week but the price of the boards and CPU is the same as the last generation.
We can make a computer for $150 but I'd like to make one for $50. RAM and SSDs are coming down in price but what the industry needs is cheaper silicon (or boards with less crap on them).
New Aleutia H1 Ion HTPC Now on Sale for £299 in Black and White
We've finally re-released the new H1 on our website. This tiny PC is about the size of a DVD case and weighs just 486 grams! It's less than an inch thick and comes with 2GB RAM and a 250GB hard drive with options for Intel or Corsair SSD or 500GB hard drive. We'll soon offer the new Corsair F40 SSD, the world's fastest. The H1 is available in black or white and we can install either Windows 7 Home Premium or Ubuntu 10.04.
I use one at home and love it. It's small and quiet enough that my girlfriend doesn't complain (it blends in with the DVDs beneath the TV). My 37" TV is only 720p but even at 1366 x 768 resolution Ubuntu is nice and sharp (as is Windows, I use Dual Boot). I can use Picasa or XBMC to run slideshows, and it's the ultimate bit torrent box. It uses so little power so you can have it downloading films all day and then play them back in the evening...on the same box! no need to copy stuff to a USB stick.
Aleutia H3 Relaunched with USB 3.0 Ports, Gigabyte Motherboard, and Tougher Chassis.
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| From ALEUTIA - New Product Shots |
We've relaunched our popular H3 today with a new Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 mini-itx motherboard. This board has received a great review from Anandtech.com and after personally soak testing it for the last week in our new galvanized steel case I can confirm it is a superior to the Intel DH57JG. Power consumption is just as low but the BIOS has far more features and the system includes a pair of USB 3.0 ports to further future proof the H3.
Aleutia H1 Ultra Small Ion HTPC: New Product Shots, Launching August 10
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| From ALEUTIA - New Product Shots |
Pictured with Stand and Front I/O. Also ships with VESA mounting kit.
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| From ALEUTIA - New Product Shots |
Rear I/O consists of: 4 x USB 2.0 Ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI (with Audio support), and DVI port (with DVI to VGA adapter included), 19V DC Input, Audio Input. There is an SMA socket for the 3db WLAN antenna (included). Of course the internal Mini PCIe WLAN card plays beautifully with Linux.
New Aleutia D100 PC, Designed for Web Middleware like Flash. A digital signage PC.
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| From ALEUTIA - New Product Shots |
W'e've been an Intel house for sometime but AMD has had some great offerings in 2010. We like the dual core D510 processor because it is fanless but the Intel boards only come with a VGA port. Zotac charges £30 more wholesale to give you a worse version of the board, albeit with an HDMI port. At the top end the Core i3 530 and Core i5 661 offer great performance and don't use much power but they are just 2 cores and they are expensive.
We've tested the i7 860 and it's a beast but it doesn't support iGP at the CPU so then you add more power and cost by putting in a video card.
There aren't many AMD mini-itx boards so we have opted for an Asrock mATX board (GeForce 8200 chipset) and combined it with an incredibly slim mATX case.
We really don't care about gaming but we do love web browsing. And the modern web contains so much middleware like Java Script and Adobe Flash that you need a better processor.
Just writing this blog on my single core AMD Neo 1.6GHz netbook CPU is frustratingly slow.
So we take a very cheap AMD single core processor (the Sempron 140) that's clocked at 2.7GHz. Most applications are still only designed to run off one core so what matters is a single fast core. It's 45W TDP so we only need one fan to cool it and of course it boasts a reasonable chipset and I/O like HDMI, DVI, VGA that makes it fine for playing 1080p content.
New Aleutia H1: World’s Smallest Ion PC
Later this month, Aleutia.com will release the new H1. It's a powder white HTPC that you can wrap your hands around. With Dual Core Atom 330 processor, and powerful Nvidia 9400 onboard graphics, it's a very capable PC for general use.
Plays Full HD 1080p content as well as Flash in HD, neither of which my notebook can handle.
19V DC Input. 2GB RAM, 40GB Intel X25-M SSD.
Aleutia N2 Laptop Coming in June
We've always been a desktop company. For schools and institutions, we still think desktops are better because you can match them with a full size keyboard and mouse and a big monitor. If one of those pieces fails it can be swapped out and it's easier for 2 students to share a 20" monitor than a notebook display.
But for individual consumers the story is different.
A notebook is the least expensive and most energy efficient way to combine a computer, display, and keyboard. And of course, it's more portable.
Right now, the budget notebook market is split between netbooks and desktop replacements. Netbooks offer great battery life but have 10" displays and cramped keyboards that make them unusable as a primary computer. They are great for "couch surfing" and as a secondary PC but too awkward for long term use.
Desktop Replacements usually have 15" displays but terrible battery life and are awkward to carry.
The N2 offers something between these options with a 12" display and a DVD-RW in a portable package with a 6-cell battery.
Complete specs are:
- 12.1" 1280 x 800 Matte Display (Glossy Displays are too reflective for use in sunny countries)
- T4400 Pentium Dual Core Processor (2 x 2.2GHz)...a powerful enough processor to play 720p videos or watch YouTube in High Definition.
- 2GB DDR2 800MHz RAM
- 250GB 5400RPM Hard Drive or 40GB Intel X25-V Solid State Drive
- 802.11 b/g/n WLAN
- 1.3 MP Webcam
- 3 x USB 2.0 Ports
- 1 x Gigabit LAN
- 8X DVD-RW Dual Layer Drive
- 1.792 KG
Dance-Off: Kingston 30GB SSDNow SSD vs. Western Digital WD2500BEKT (7200RPM) HDD
Update: The Kingston SSD is the most low-end consumer SSD we've come across so seemed a good idea to pit it against a 250GB 7200RPM 2.5" Western Digital HDD (WD2500BEKT) that goes for half the price.
Many of our customers need solid state drives because they are operating in difficult places. But they don't usually need much storage capacity. A school in Africa can't take the risk of a moving hard drive but because the bandwidth is so limited there isn't much that needs to be on the PC save for applications. A sailboat owner does not want a hard drive because it can't be expected to last but at the same time their navigation software (usually Sea Pro) only takes up a few GB.
That's why we are always on the lookout for smaller, less expensive SSDs that still offer fast performance. We used to sell the Pretec 8GB SSDs but because they were basically CF cards (and very slow ones) that became a bottleneck for the T1s in terms of performance.
Lately, we've shipped the Intel 40GB X25-V but it costs too much, so we were psyched to see Kingston release this 30GB SSD and immediately bought 20.
Block Output SSD: 45.306 MB/s
Block Output WD2500BEKT: 85.164 MB/s
Rewrite: 28.676 MB/s
Rewrite WD2500BEKT: 38.859 MB/s
Block Input: 126.98 MB/s
Block Input WD2500BEKT: 96.247 MB/s
Random Seeks Per Second: 1569
Random Seeks Per Second WD2500BEKT: 180.3
The Intel X25-V performed better than claimed (with read speeds of 211MB/s instead of 175MB/s). Kingston scores far lower than it claims to but it's actually quite snappy.