Solid state drives (SSDs) are used instead of hard disk drives in select high-end notebook PCs today such as the Apple MacBook Air and Toshiba Portege R500.

The next generation of SSDs will use multilevel cell (MLC) technology, which will require a more sophisticated controller–a crucial component in solid state drives. These drives will have capacities ranging up to 128GB, 160GB, and later, 256GB. MLC drives are expected to appear in a wider selection of notebooks later this year.

Speaking during SanDisk’s second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari said that Windows Vista will present a special challenge for solid state drive makers. “As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk,” he said.

This is due to Vista’s design. “The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls,” he said. (link)

Super Talent sprinkles fairy dust on its “budget” SSD lineup

The solid state disk (SSD) market is really starting to heat up. Super Talent threw down the gauntlet with its low-priced MX series SSDs. OCZ then returned the favor with its Core Series SSDs.

OCZ held the upper hand with not only lower pricing for its Core Series SSDs, but also the advantage of faster read/write performance. Super Talent’s MX SSDs clocked in with read speeds of 120MB/sec and write speeds of 40MB/sec. OCZ’s Core SSDs feature read speeds of 120 to 143 MB/sec and write speeds of 80 to 93 MB/sec depending on the capacity of the drive in question.

With OCZ breathing down its neck, Super Talent worked a little magic on its MX drives. The 15GB and 30GB models now feature read speeds of 120MB/sec and write speeds of 60MB/sec. The 60GB and 120GB have the same read speeds, but now have write speeds of 80MB/sec. (link)

Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled “Jail Bird.”

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton’s drunken-driving case. (link)

Almost everyone hates spam. The only people that don’t hate it are the ones that make vast amounts of money from sending it. The profits they turn are so large that regardless of what spam fighters do, the amount of spam keeps increasing. According to web security firm MessageLabs, spam accounted for 81.5 percent of all e-mail traffic in June.

This number, which is calculated based on 3 billion e-mail connections that MessageLabs scans every single day, more or less corresponds with US-specific data. An analysis of year-to-date spam rates for individual US states shows that the percentage of e-mails that were spam range from 77 (Montana) to 91 percent (Illinois). In other words, in every single state in the US, over three quarters of e-mails sent are junk. The average spam level in the US was 86 percent in June. (link)

The U.S. video-game industry remains on track to achieve a record year of more than $22 billion in revenue, as people are apparently turning to in-home entertainment to weather the shaky economy.

Store sales of video games and consoles in June soared 53% and 54%, respectively, from the same month last year, while revenue from software and accessories rose 61% and 25%, the NPD Group said Thursday. So far this year, retailers have sold $16.6 billion in video games, consoles, and related products, compared with $12.2 billion during the same period a year ago.

“The videogames industry continues to perform in the face of an ever-increasingly difficult economic environment as many turn to more in-home entertainment,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier, said in an e-mailed statement. “Even if growth slows over the back half of 2008, the industry is poised to achieve record-breaking revenues of over $22 billion for the year.” (link)

Introducing the all-new iPhoneck Backup Battery for iPhone 3G, a uniquely designed and rechargeable battery. Our previous BBONE Backup Battery for iPhone was only 850 mAh, however our new Backup Battery for iPhone 3G holds an amazing 1400 mAh battery cell allowing to recharge your iPhone 3G full in no time.

Save the Hassle and cut the cords!
Ever used backup battery systems that required cables or cords? If yes, you must know how troublesome and hassle it is to upkeep tangled or misplaced cables. With our backup battery, you simply clip it on continue use you iPhone. (link)

Although it’s anybody’s guess whether Apple will release an iPod with integrated Bluetooth wireless capabilities, Logitech has stepped up to the plate with its Wireless Headphones for the iPod ($150), the first set of Bluetooth headphones for Apple’s MP3 player. The well-designed product includes white neckband-style headphones with foam-covered ear pads and built-in controls, a low-profile Bluetooth 1.2 wireless transmitter (measuring 1.25 by 2.5 by 0.75 inches) that attaches to any dockable iPod, and a charger cable. (If you want wireless headphones for another MP3 player, check out Logitech’s Wireless Headphones for MP3.) The transmission range of up to 30 feet lets you conveniently stash your iPod in a messenger bag or a purse, for instance, while listening untethered.

At just 3.2 ounces, the surprisingly light headset was comfortable throughout mostly sedentary, multihour listening sessions and didn’t dislodge once during a 40-minute jog. However, you should note that the headband is not adjustable, so the ‘phones won’t fit everyone as well as they fit us. Although you wouldn’t want to regularly run while holding the bulky iPod, the wireless capability lets you stash it in a treadmill’s accessory holder or even leave it in a nearby gym bag during your workout. The headset is appropriately easy to operate without requiring you to look at its controls. The outside of the right earpiece hosts four keys (volume up, volume down, next track, and previous track) that are intuitively arrayed around a large, circular play/pause button, and the volume controls have slight indents so that you can distinguish them by feel from the track-skip keys. (link)

Virtually every Bluetooth headphone kit we’ve tested so far has struggled to make its headphones smaller than earlier competitors. JBL’s Reference Series 610 ($200) doesn’t. Instead, 610 uses traditionally larger over-the-ear cup designs with soft leather side and top padding, and sleek styling taken from the company’s popular multimedia speakers — it actually looks like you’re wearing a pair of Creature II satellites on your ears. That’s not a bad thing; by traditional headphone standards, 610 looks as modern and clean as the iPods it’s designed to connect with. (link)

Ever since the first Bluetooth headset for cell phones came out, plenty of folks have been eager to see the day when Bluetooth audio made the transition to stereo sound, so you could ditch that wire connected to your iPod–or other portable music device–and feel, well, a bit more liberated. That finally happened last year, and now several new Bluetooth stereo headphones are trickling their way onto the market. The only problem is, most of them don’t sound all that good, which is why we were pretty excited to hear that Etymotic, which is known for its high-performance wired earbuds, was getting into the wireless game.

With a rather hefty price tag of $300, the company’s Ety8s can only be described as premium Bluetooth headphones. They come in two models: the model reviewed here comes with a Bluetooth transmitter/dongle that attaches to the bottom of your iPod, while a second package contains only the wireless ‘buds themselves (if you already have a device with built-in Bluetooth) for $100 less. Etymotic says the Ety8s are compatible with devices “supporting Bluetooth specification 1.1 and higher, as well as A2DP and AVRCP for profiles for stereo listening,” and have a wireless range of about 30 feet. They come with a leather storage case and custom USB cable to juice up the headphones’ internal rechargeable battery, which delivers about seven hours of power. (link)

Security researcher and author Kris Kaspersky plans to demonstrate how an attacker can target flaws in Intel’s microprocessors to remotely attack a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP packets, regardless of what operating system the computer is running.

Kaspersky will demonstrate how such an attack can be made in a presentation at the upcoming Hack In The Box (HITB) Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during October. The proof-of-concept attacks will show how processor bugs, called errata, can be exploited using certain instruction sequences and a knowledge of how Java compilers work, allowing an attacker to take control of the compiler.

“I’m going to show real working code…and make it publicly available,” Kaspersky said, adding that CPU bugs are a growing threat and malware is being written that targets these vulnerabilities.

Different bugs will allow hackers to do different things on the attacked computers. “Some bugs just crash the system, some allow a hacker to gain full control on the kernel level. Some just help to attack Vista, disabling security protections,” he said. (link)