The G3 Series, which represent SanDisk’s third generation of SSDs, was unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. Where most SSDs used in mobile PCs are low-capacity devices often found in mini-notebooks, the latest drives have enough capacity and a low enough price to make them a more attractive alternative to hard-disk drives in mainstream business notebooks, the vendor said.

SanDisk launched the series with a 2.5-inch model, the C25-G3, and a 1.8-inch version, the C18-G3. Both devices are designed as drop-in replacements for HDDs in laptops.

Both SSDs will be available in capacities of 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB. The manufacturer suggested retail price is $149, $249 and $499, respectively. The products are scheduled to be available in the middle of this year.

While the price per gigabyte is still far more expensive than for HDDs, the SanDisk drives are more affordable than previous generations, making them more attractive to businesses looking for a faster, more reliable alternative to HDDs.

SanDisk claims the SSDs are more than five times faster than the fastest 7,200 revolutions per minute hard-disk drives used in laptops. The vendor also claims its devices are more than twice as fast as SSDs that shipped last year.

Read more from informationweek.com

There are two ways of talking about a phone that very, very few people have gotten even to hold to their year, much less used and gotten to know. We can talk about the features we’re promised and the characteristics we saw, and there’s plenty to say on that front (and there’ll be more in the days ahead — I hope to have my “hands-on time” tomorrow).

And we can talk too about the very nearly irresistible story, or stories, of the birth of the Pre. Some people are excited to see Palm, a company that defined a genre, refusing to go gentle into irrelevance. Many liked seeing a beautifully designed gadget at a show that generally suffers from being The Show That’s Held The Same Week As That One With The Really Well-Designed Stuff. Those actually in the room heard Jon Rubenstein’s tale of coming out of hammock-on-beach-in-Mexico retirement to be part of the project and want to know if it was worth it. And who doesn’t love an underdog story?

But let’s go with the tech, or what we know of the tech so far. The Pre gives us both hardware and software to discuss. The handset is a combination multitouch-QWERTY handset, and it’s curved more or less everywhere a phone can decently be curvy. Many on the scene compared it to a pebble — an appropriately Zen visual for a phone that makes a central design point of being smooth and simple.

I’m not a huge fan of shiny and/or black surfaces for electronics. My Current Loathed Sprint Smartphone (which I used to shoot photos at the unveiling; it thanked me by freezing solid, and I briefly considered throwing the rotten thing at visiting Sprint CEO Dan Hesse’s head) suffers from an excess of shine and smudging, and it’s not even a multitouch. Pre’s work surface, however, is well-done — a pleasant, not overlarge screen and, below that, a ‘gesture area’ that’s multitouch-competent without really drawing one’s attention to the inevitable smudges.

(I’m also awarding a bonus point for being the first phone in world history to have a pretty charger — another smooth black object that operates on the principle of magnetic induction. I know of very few desks that are sufficiently beautiful; this charger may help.)

Read more from betanews.com

Yesterday at CES, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the public availability of the Windows 7 beta release. At PC World we’ve been running our own evaluations of the forthcoming replacement to Microsoft’s much-derided Windows Vista for some time now, and we just couldn’t wait to take this new version for a spin. Here’s one editor’s take on the latest Windows 7 user experience.

This being an early beta release, I won’t get persnickety about the performance issues and minor functionality glitches I experienced during my first day with Windows 7. Let there be no doubt, however, that in the weeks and months to come the PC World Test Center will continue to put the new OS through its paces to see what it’s made of.

Back in late October of 2008, PCW senior editor Yardena Arar and former PCW editor in chief Harry McCracken took an early look at some of the new features you can look forward to in Windows 7. Rather than reprising their excellent coverage here, I’ll delve into the question of how 7’s new features work, and I’ll take a look at some other enhancements that struck me during my early hours with the OS.

For more great PC World coverage of Windows 7 news as it emerges, visit our Windows 7 infocenter.

Interface Enhancements

As Yardena and Harry noted in their earlier preview of Windows 7, the new OS’s Desktop interface is even glassier than Vista’s. So if you’re not a fan of Aero, prepare yourself for Aero overload. That said, the new glassy Taskbar simplifies your view of running apps by using a unique icon–instead of the program’s name–to represent each one. The revamped System Tray is as unhelpful as ever, unfortunately, but having the option to hide some icons and turn off notifications from apps and utilities that you don’t care about certainly reduces the aggravation factor.

One interface tweak I already love is the elimination of Windows Sidebar–a a resource-hogging nuisance that I routinely disabled on every new Vista machine I encountered. Without more-extensive performance testing, I can’t say for sure that the Sidebar-free gadgets in Windows 7 will be less detrimental to system performance than Sidebar was, but my first impression is that they’re not quite as bad. Of course, they’re no more useful than the old gadgets were, either. In fact, they’re the same.

One striking interface update comes in the included Paint and Word Pad apps, both of which now sport a Ribbon interface à la Office 2007. Though the jury is still out on whether the Office ‘07 Ribbon menus constitute an improvement over previous menu layouts, the Ribbon format works exceedingly well for minimalist apps like these, putting all of the most useful features within easy view. For instance as I was grabbing and snipping screen shots for this article, I found Paint infinitely easier than Snipping Tool to work in because the selection, resizing, and cropping tools were readily accessible from the Home menu bar. Thanks to the Ribbon, many users may discover that these two throw-away apps have gained a new lease on life. Go figure.

A feature that we noticed during our earlier trial of the beta but weren’t able to try out first-hand was the Jump List. Fully functional in the public beta, jump lists add a handy submenu to many applications, so you can see items that you recently worked with in a given app, or look at further options you have for starting new documents or accessing often-used features. In my trials, the jump lists helped me get more out of the apps I worked with. But if this feature is to become even more useful, developers must embrace them in upcoming versions of new programs.

Another improvement in Windows 7’s interface compared to Vista’s is the simplified Shutdown control on the Start Menu. Gone is the unhelpful icon; in its place are clear, concise textual menus that tell you exactly what will happen when you click on them. So you no longer have to reconfigure your Start Menu to determine whether your PC will shut down entirely or merely go into hibernation when you click the button.

Read more at washingtonpost.com