Micro hard drive, meet Mikey

Hitachi home_md3k8_569x240

The race to get hard drives into cell phones and PDAs may result in drives that really lend themselves to tough marine environments. Hitachi just announced a 1”, 8 gigabyte drive with ESP (“Extra Sensory Protection”). It uses a 3-axis accelerometer to detect a fall in as short as four inches and switch into non-operational mode, which according to Hitachi can handle 2000 Gs of shock. It’s hard to imagine where such tiny, rugged drives will take us… or to fathom what it means about the future when tech companies name a hard drive “Mikey” and promote it as “the new bling!” Is it politically incorrect to laugh, imagining a roomful of Asian marketing execs discussing “bling”?

Update 9/7: How timely; today Apple announced a new iPod “nano” that obviously uses a drive like “Mikey”. Walt Mossberg, the gadget guy at The Wall Street Journal, is in love with it.



Ben Ellison

Ben Ellison

Panbo editor, publisher & chief bottlewasher from 4/2005 until 8/2018, and now pleased to have Ben Stein as a very able publisher, webmaster, and editing colleague. Please don't regard him as an "expert"; he's getting quite old and thinks that "fadiddling fumble-putz" is a more accurate description.

1 Response

  1. loic says:

    “Apple announced a new iPod �nano� that obviously uses a drive like “Mikey”
    In fact the iPod Nano don’t use hard drive but flash memory.
    First time I take time to comment but I read your blog every day. Great blog !

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