OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Deals and Great Z Buys => Topic started by: maslovsky on October 14, 2004, 04:03:42 am
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Amazon sells HITACHI 4Gb Microdrive retail package for about $219 + $5 shipping. There is a $50 rebate available (link to the rebate comes with the shipment confirmation), which makes a total of about $175. This is a very good price for a retail package, which includes PC Card Type II adapter...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...g=UTF8&v=glance (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000VP1WQ/103-0197609-6091005?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance)
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I couldn't get to it with your link, but running a search brought up this (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000VP1WQ/qid=1097769440/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl23/102-2393279-8784915?v=glance&s=photo&n=507846).
Looks like a good deal, even better than ripping one out of a muvo.
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It looks like there's a $50 rebate (http://www.jr.com/images/pdf/rebates/HIT1_20041231.pdf) out there for the Hitachi 4GB microdrive. JR.com has it for $219.88, minus $50 is $169.98!
Other sites might have it for less, but here is the JR.com link (http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=3948722).
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https://www.oesf.org/forums/inde...?showtopic=7631 (https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=7631)
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Thanks to the mods for merging my post into the right thread and forgiving my stupidity.
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How about $155 (after rebate)?
BananaPC (http://www.bananapc.com/products/productInfo.aspx?category_id=1208&product_id=14340) has it for $205 with free shipping.
Plus sales tax in California, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey.
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Sweet, if I could scrape together the money, I'd buy one from there.
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Thanks to the mods for merging my post into the right thread and forgiving my stupidity.
anytime! I figured it was easier than just getting pissed off and shutting down the whole site
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Fry's has the 4Gb Hitachi for $179.99. I don't know if it is oem so the rebate may not apply. Not a bad deal if you want to buy one right now!
Robert
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A little off topic, but is there any ill effects of using a 4GB drive? I mean does a search for installable files lockup/run really slow?
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Fry's has the 4Gb Hitachi for $179.99. I don't know if it is oem so the rebate may not apply. Not a bad deal if you want to buy one right now!
Robert
For anyone interested, here (http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4207384?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG) is the link. That would be sweet if you could get the $50 rebate, making it just $129.99!
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does a search for installable files lockup/run really slow?
No worse than it would with a similar size CF card. Read speeds for the 4GB microdrives aren't any worse than they are for CF cards (at least in the Zaurus), so it simply boils down to how many files you keep on there.
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Fry's has the 4Gb Hitachi for $179.99. I don't know if it is oem so the rebate may not apply. Not a bad deal if you want to buy one right now!
Robert
For anyone interested, here (http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4207384?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG) is the link. That would be sweet if you could get the $50 rebate, making it just $129.99!
The rebate is for the packaged "travel kit" version which includes the cf -> pcmcia adapter. This looks like the non-travel-kit packaging that I've seen for around the price they're offering it at.
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does a search for installable files lockup/run really slow?
No worse than it would with a similar size CF card. Read speeds for the 4GB microdrives aren't any worse than they are for CF cards (at least in the Zaurus), so it simply boils down to how many files you keep on there.
Actually, don't all microdrives pull significantly more power than flash cards?
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Actually, don't all microdrives pull significantly more power than flash cards?
Though the new generation of microdrives (4GB+) is much better than the first generation (<4GB), peak current draw for all microdrives is significantly higher than their typical flash counterparts. But when you consider typical usage patterns, the difference becomes pretty inconsequential. Most Zaurus software makes very little use of storage when running. In fact the only category of applications I can think of that makes continuous use of storage when operating is a media player. And when you factor in caching and buffering, the number of physical reads from storage per unit time remains realatively low even in that case.
When the microdrive is not being actively read or written, it goes into a power saving mode where it spins down and draws very little current. CF cards are supposed to do the same but in my experience many have very poorly implemented "sleep" modes (and some are just completely broken). But because their idle power requirements are fairly modest, most people don't notice.
Now, if you decide to put an active swapfile on the microdrive or you use an app that does some continuous data logging, you may see some battery life impact. But I'm willing to bet that those types of activity are the exception rather than the norm. Most folks use microdrives for carrying large amounts of data (multimedia, documents, ebooks, etc.) that isn't continuously accessed.
As I've said before, I keep a 4GB Hitachi drive in my C760 95% of the time (the other 5% there's a WiFi or Bluetooth card in there). I used a 512MB Sandisk CF card before that in exactly the same manner and I've noticed no difference in overall battery life -- even when playing AVI and MP3 files.