Just as we did with CES Unveiled earlier this week, the Futurelooks crew made its way over to Digital Experience for another all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of the latest and greatest technology this industry has to offer. Many notable names were in attendance, showing off their most treasured products and innovations. Here are a few things we keyed in on that you might find interesting.
More Flash Memory in the Same Sized Card
From digital cameras to music phones, portable media players to digital photo frames, we have a lot of consumer electronics that make use of the standard Secure Digital memory card. The regular SD card standard tops out at a mere 2GB of storage capacity and this doesn’t really cut the mustard if you need the extra space for high-definition videos or a reasonably-sized music collection.
For now, we’re making do with the SDHC (high capacity) memory card format, because it can take us as far as 16GB on a single drive. Not surprisingly, the SD Association is gearing up to the next generation with the introduction of the SDXC memory card standard. The XC part of the name does not stand for anything eXtreme. Instead, it stands for eXtended capacity, pushing the postage stamp sized card to a theoretical maximum of 2TB. Yes, two terabytes.
Data transfer speeds will be at 104MB/sec at launch with plans to push it to 300MB/sec in the future. The first SDXC memory cards won’t be two terabytes either. The first ones, which won’t launch until some time next year, will likely be offered in 32GB and 64GB capacities, along with their microSDXC counterparts. Naturally, you’ll have to wait for devices that support SDXC too.
OQO Model 2+ UMPC Ups the Ante
Everyone else may be pretty excited about the rising popularity of netbooks like the Asus Eee PC and MSI Wind, there are still proponents of the UMPC (ultra mobile PC) format, like OQO. These are smaller than netbooks, but offer nearly the same functionality as a full-fledged PC.
The newly announced OQO Model 2+ is probably one of the best UMPCs available today… when it hits retail channels in May 2009. The more affordable $999 model gets a 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, XP Home, 60GB HDD, 1GB RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a 5-inch WVGA LCD touchscreen. The real star, however, is the more expensive $1,499 model. That one bumps up the Atom to 1.86GHz, increases RAM to 2GB, adds a 120GB HDD (or 60GB SSD), and Windows Vista Business.
Oh, and it has an incredible 5-inch WVGA OLED touchscreen. Yes, OLED. This offers some of the most amazing contrast ratios, power efficiency, and vibrant colors available today. While the native resolution is only WVGA, OQO has outfitted the OQO Model 2+ UMPC with interpolation technology for a higher resolution.