Two ARCHOS tablets revealed on Thursday sport Seagate's new Momentus Thin 9-mm hard drives.
Thursday Seagate officially launched its new Momentus Thin line of HDDs in conjunction with the introduction of the upcoming ARCHOS 80 G9 8-inch tablet and the ARCHOS 101 G9 10.1-inch tablet, both of which will feature a Momentus Thin drive. The company is promoting the new HDD line as the "world's first" ultra-thin 2.5-inch hard drives for ultra portables including tablets and slim laptops.
"Seagate continues to break new ground in the development of products and technologies that matter most to customers by delivering the Momentus Thin drive for these powerful ARCHOS tablets," said Rocky Pimentel, Seagate Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. "The Momentus Thin drive gives tablet buyers a compelling option, providing great storage capacity and performance that dovetail with the processing power of the new ARCHOS products for great Android and multimedia experiences."
According to Seagate, the Momentus Thin line is also ideal for entry-level to high-performance laptops, and slim consumer electronic devices (other than tablets and slim laptops). The list of features include a 7-mm profile, Seagate SmartAlign technology to smooth the transition to 4K sectors without the need for software utilities, 7200RPM and 5400RPM spin speeds with 16 MB of cache, optional government-grade encryption, and capacities of 320 GB, 250 GB and 160 GB.
As for the ARCHOS tablets, the company has chosen the 250 GB model for both tablets, offering an insane amount of storage when compared to other flash-based solutions installed in today's crop of tablets (iPad 2, Galaxy Tab etc). As revealed on Thursday, the upcoming ARCHOS tablets will also feature the 1.5 GHz dual-cre OMAP4 processor from Texas Instruments, Google's Android 3.1 "Honeycomb" OS, HDMI output, a microSD card slot, a USB port and more. Archos will also offer Flash-based versions as well for those who don't want to deal with the thicker, heavier HDD-based models.
ARCHOS 80 G9, the 8-inch product, and ARCHOS 101 G9, the 10-inch model, are scheduled to be available in late September. Estimated MSRPs for the ARCHOS 80 G9 and ARCHOS 101 G9 tablets are $279 and $349, respectively.
So are these Archos devices actually tablets, or slates? With only a 3-mm difference between the flash-based and HDD-based models, it seems that the line between tablet and slate is growing thinner and thinner... like mobile hard drives.
How about going on a 2-week vacation and leaving behind the movies, and even the tablet itself for that matter. If you need the media that bad, stay home.
How about going on a 2-week vacation and leaving behind the movies, and even the tablet itself for that matter. If you need the media that bad, stay home.
That's SSD money, so why pay SSD money for an HDD? This is like those ultra high capacity 3.5" disks that were to supersede 1.44MB but were replaced before they reached adoption by USB Flash drives.
Unless it is a 'stay-cation' it is precisely because you are traveling that you need the media in the 1st place. Until they invent teleportation devices, the car/plane ride takes time, and kids can get bored quick, particularly if they can't read yet or have their own music collections...
Personally, I consider the latter an improvement over the former (from oodles of experience being that kid without, and then with, including the progression of Detroit-Daytona Beach drives before and after the invention of the affordable PMP) and I therefore choose the latter for my self and eventually my family...
Nobody is forcing you to do it, and if you think that there is little to no value in large capacity PMPs, you are under no obligation to buy or use them.
It is just an additional option in the marketplace, and I appreciate having the option...
Of course, I'd rather use a simple inexpensive laptop rather than a 'slate', but hey, that is just me... And the advantage of an inexpensive laptop is I can quickly swap out HHD/SSDs, so that I can have the best of what I need when I need it...
More options is 'more better' for consumers.
Also, by creating more drives with higher capacities, this puts more pressure on SSD manufacturers to keep pushing the capacity envelope.
They already messed up the netbook market by equipping them with super slow harddrives!
Please, not the tablet market too!
Besides, android OS takes up less than 200MB in size, and all you can download in a day (even on a fast connection) would fit on one or two SD cards!
Also, what 'cheap' SSDs are people referring to? Yes the performance is 10 times that of HDDs, but they are 20 times more expensive per gig. HDDs have still far more than adequate performance for streaming media.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! You are obviously not a parent! Children with no entertainment ruin vacations faster than a tornado ruins a trailer park! Cries of "I'm BORED!" are a buzzkill from hell! These little buggers are going to be a blessing for parents going on long roadtrips, flights and to family gatherings of the sort where anyone under 18 is pretty much ignored in favor of seeing people you haven't seen in ages, that happens to be at an elderly family member's home that doesn't have cable or the 600 channels the little blaggard's are used to having at home. Or during Granddad's slideshow of he and Grandma's latest trip to where ever!
Technology evolves because children can no longer be disciplined in the ways that worked for... Ohh... roughly 10,000 years prior to the late 20th century. Ain't it grand?
lets see here, what would i do with a tablet... id put video on it, lots of movies. id put pictures on it, porn and what i take.
movies, lets say i put 10 on there, that is about 15-20gb of sapce already, and picutes i take would be another 30 gb of space, and top it off with porn euqaling another 100gb of space.
i would want it to last at least 5 years, so lets say 10 movies a year, and another 50gb total or images and porn. so 100gb more for movies, and 50 for pics ant it all comes to about 300gb drive is needed.
show me the tablet that has 300gb of space and ill show you the most overpriced thing on the planet.
these hdds are GREAT for what i want to use a tablet for.
you have a 4-7 year old kid, they complain constantly when they are board, and cant do #$&^. car rides over 1 hour long are an absolute nightmare without some form of entertainment.
unless you have a kid in that age range, you dont have a say in this conversation. what can you do to talk to them for more than 1 hour? come on, do they have life experience that can lead to a conversation? do they know about pop culture and can say something worth hearing? no it would last maybe 10-20 minutes of how their day/week was, and maybe another 10-20 about a cartoon they watch, and thats it.
give them a movie, or something to do, thats all you are able to do, because you cant win an argument with a kid SCREAMING because they are board and there is NOTHING you can do because they always think there is SOMETHING and if they scream loud enough someone will give it to them.
I have multiple of my own, and loving it. You, though, seem to have them, but hate it/them. I'm so sorry. Manic parents are the worst. Seek some assistance.
How about when Windows 8 Tablets hit the market next year? For the same price as that "cheap" 60GB SSD I can get 750GB 7200RPM drive.