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5 Things to Know About

Written by Shiv Prasad on 7:50 AM


1. Small Physical Size
Laptop hard drives are obviously smaller than their desktop counterparts. This is needed for mobility and you usually find laptop hard drives of thicknesses around 10 to 12 mm. That is extremely thin and suits lightweight and portable laptop models.
The smaller size reduces the capacity of laptop hard drives as well (see Point 3 below).

2. Lower Disk Speeds
Now, how does laptop hard drive speed measure up? Well, compared to their desktop and enterprise counterparts, laptop hard drives tend to be slower. You will usually find that a mobile hard drive spins at 5,400 rpm (although others spin with 7,200 rpm).

3. Hard Drive Capacity
Typical laptop hard drive capacities these days come at 100 to 200 GB. That's a lot of storage space compared to the days when you could only squeeze maybe 20 GB in laptop hard drive. Interestingly, Samsung has just released a 500 GB hard disk drive for laptops. That is amazing storage that you usually only get in desktops. Things are clearly progressing in the laptop world.

4. Solid State Drives
An important trend in laptop hard drives is the increasing use of solid state drives. What is a solid state drive? Well, a solid state storage device is like the thing that stores the music in your iPod nano or pen drive. It has no moving parts like a traditional hard drive, and is hence not subjected to damage due to jumps and shocks. Technology has progressed to the point where solid state drives are increasingly more popular and also more affordable. Some examples of laptops with solid state technology options are the Apple MacBook Air, the ASUS Eee PC and the Toshiba Portege R500.

5. Shock-Resistant Technology
One of the more recent innovations in laptop hard drives is that of shock-resistant technology. If you own an Lenovo ThinkPad, you will notice that there is an icon on the lower right corner of your screen that changes when you suddenly move the laptop.

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Eye-Phone

Written by Shiv Prasad on 8:43 AM


Communications, whose clever networking connectivity and infrastructure products we've long admired, this week announced a video camera unlike any other we've heard of.

The ZyXEL V750W is an IP-networked device using IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) connectivity that is also an IP telephone. Each one comes with its own embedded phone number.

This development will add a new dimension, to say the least, to the rapidly growing popularity of remote video monitoring for security, safety, and myriads of other applications.

The V750W uses SIP signaling to actuate controls on the camera, allowing an owner or manager to call the camera and pan, tilt, or zoom the lens to change or fine-tune the image and/or actuate the device's embedded LED lamps for illumination in poor lighting conditions-all from a remote location "anywhere in the world," as the company's marketing materials put it.

Moreover, the phone/camera can initiate calls itself-notifying the owner/manager or perhaps the local police when it detects an intrusion or other event worthy of concern.

But the V750W also functions as a regular two-way VoIP phone.

"Now it's possible to not only keep on eye on your child or elderly parent using your Web-enabled phone, you can also talk to the nanny or nurse using the same device," explained ZyXEL vice president of sales and marketing, Munira Brooks. "The applications for a two-way communication device like this are unlimited, and so are the opportunities of new value-added services for service providers."

Indeed, ZyXEL seems to strongly feel that the V750W camera/phone will catch on as a service offering in the ITSP world, and plans to actively market it to carriers, cable providers, and other VoIP providers.

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Liquid Crystal Display

Written by Shiv Prasad on 10:28 AM

A thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) is a variant of liquid crystal display (LCD) which uses thin film transistor (TFT) technology to improve image quality. TFT LCD is one type of active matrix LCD, though it is usually synonymous with LCD. It is used in televisions, flat panel displays and projectors.

Small liquid crystal displays as used in calculators and other devices have direct driven image elements – a voltage can be applied across one segment without interfering with other segments of the display. This is impractical for a large display with a large number of picture elements (pixels), since it would require millions of connections - top and bottom connections for each one of the three colors (red, green and blue) of every pixel. To avoid this issue, the pixels are addressed in rows and columns which reduce the connection count from millions to thousands. If all the pixels in one row are driven with a positive voltage and all the pixels in one column are driven with a negative voltage, then the pixel at the intersection has the largest applied voltage and is switched. The problem with this solution is that all the pixels in the same column see a fraction of the applied voltage as do all the pixels in the same row, so although they are not switched completely, they do tend to darken. The solution to the problem is to supply each pixel with its own transistor switch which allows each pixel to be individually controlled. The low leakage current of the transistor prevents the voltage applied to the pixel from leaking away between refreshes to the display image. Each pixel is a small capacitor with a layer of insulating liquid crystal sandwiched between transparent conductive ITO layers.

The circuit layout of a TFT-LCD is very similar to that of a DRAM memory. However, rather than fabricating the transistors from silicon formed into a crystalline wafer, they are made from a thin film of silicon deposited on a glass panel. Transistors take up only a small fraction of the area of each pixel; the rest of the silicon film is etched away to allow light to pass through.

The silicon layer for TFT-LCDs is typically deposited using the PECVD process from a silane gas precursor to produce an amorphous silicon film. Polycrystalline silicon (frequently LTPS, low-temperature poly-Si) is sometimes used in displays requiring higher TFT performance. Examples include high-resolution displays, high-frequency displays or displays where performing some data processing on the display itself is desirable. Amorphous silicon-based TFTs have the lowest performance, polycrystalline silicon TFTs have higher performance (notably mobility), and single-crystal silicon transistors are the best performers.

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