Hitachi, Seagate offer 1TB drives

Hitachi and Seagate have both kick-started the tera-era in PC storage, unveiling 1TB hard drives, according to The Hindu.

Hitachi announced its Deskstar 7 K 1000 in April and Seagate revealed its Barracuda 7200.11 last month.

The disks have harnessed a new technique called 'perpendicular recording', which allows for more data per disk. Both companies have priced the disk at $399.

With prices of notebooks lowering to desktop levels, PC makers in India expect every second computer sold to be a laptop in the next four to five years, says The Economic Times.

At present, the ratio of laptops to desktops in India is 20/80. In West Europe, Middle East and Singapore, the ratio is 60/40, in favour of laptops.

HP India director of consumer products, Rajiev Grover, says: "The ratio will become 50/50 in the next few years, with more and more users preferring laptops for increased portability."

According to the latest data from NPD Group, Apple now ranks fourth in laptop sales, behind HP, Toshiba and Gateway, says Newsfactor.com.

An industry research report indicates Apple's share of laptop sales in the US retail consumer market jumped nearly two points in May to 14.3% from 12.5% the previous month.

Sales of Apple notebooks grew by 65%, while Windows-based notebooks had a 37% increase compared to a year ago.