If you think of erasable optical drives as super-capacity floppy drives they don’t seem to slow, and Fujitsu Ltd’s Computer Products arm in San Jose is claiming the world’s smallest magneto-optical drive for use with laptops and notebooks. The DynaMO 230 Portable Model 2541 stores 230Mb on a 3.5 platter and measures 4 by 5.5 by 0.67 high, and weighs 8.8 oz. The internal version is specifically designed for integration into notebooks, and claims to be the first erasable optical drive with Enhanced IDE interface; the external version will connect via PCMCIA, parallel port or SCSI. The seek time is 65mS, and it transfers data at up to 1.6M-bytes per second. It draws 4.2W reading and writing, and has a 200mW sleep mode. List prices start at $500.
