[tlug] Hardware

["Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com>]

Just a quick hardware note:

When I last went to Akihabara (on Tuesday, May 10th), T-Zone had Hitachi 
80GB HDD's for Y5,649 (120GB was about Y3,000 more); Janbara had (used) 
PC133 CL3 256MB memory boards for Y3,381.  The 80GB drive I bought was 
made in China (earlier Hitachi/IBM drives were made in... um... either 
the Philippines or Malaysia - Malaysia I think.  The new one has a very 
different sound from the old ones and looks quite different externally 
as well.  I think there are only a handful of factories churning out 
hard drives now... regardless of the label slapped on them?  Not sure 
about that, but there was an article I read about it awhile back.  
Hopefully this 80GB Hitachi will have a longer lifespan than that poorly 
designed Seagate I earlier posted about.  (Certainly the circuit board 
is actually attached to the rest of the drive with a proper plug and is 
not relying on simple physical touch with no proper connection!)

Lyle

PS  I also saw 1GB flash memory (Compact Flash) cards for Y10,000 (but 
didn't have enough change left over after SuSE 9.3, 80GB & 512MB (2x256) 
to buy one....