from Engadget by
Darren Murph Filed under: Laptops
If you'd been pinching your pennies waiting for
Apple to unleash an update to the
MacBook side of things, your wait was
ended last week, but if you've been wondering just how much difference the increase from 2MB to 4MB of L2 cache (and the 0.17MHz bump, too) made, here's your sign. MacLife was able to get its hands around a $1,099 base unit, and rather than carefully coaxing into the world, it broke out the
whipping stick and put this bad boy to work. The new machine was pit against the old base MacBook (at 1.83GHz) and the
previous 2GHz BlackBook, and while increases in efficiency weren't exactly considerable, reviewers found them at least noticeable. The latest machine shaved seconds off here and there from iMovie exporting and Photoshopping, and while most tests showed just single digit improvements, the iPhoto test did display a 22-percent gain compared to the previous 1.83GHz MacBook. Of course, these preliminary tests aren't anything out of the ordinary, but keep an eye on the read link for more fleshed out testing (including the refreshed BlackBook) in the coming days.
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Summary only...
Just days after Fujitsu tooted its own horn and suggested that it could increase hard drive capacity by 500-percent in a mere two years comes word that Toshiba coincidentally has a similarly grandiose claim. Aside from the obvious leapfrog game that's being played here, Tosh has apparently been working hand-in-hand with Tohoku University to develop "a phenomenon" dubbed Nanocontact Magnetic Resistance, or NC-MR, in which an "enormous difference in magnetoresistance is achieved when two magnetic materials are situated close together and connected by a contact point that narrows to around 1-nanometer." Put simply, the prototype NC-MR structure is twice as large as today's read heads, and elements based on the NC-MR structure would have a "lower resistance than existing TMR elements, enabling the read heads to be miniaturized and still operate quickly." Of course, these sensational claims have yet to make it beyond the drawing board, and while you may be anxious to get one of these in your rig, you'll be waiting about five years or so if things continue as planned. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]
Pfff, 10 megapixels is for sissies. Casio, like 
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