Cornice announces new low power 3GB hard disk

Cornice Enables New Generation of Low-Cost High-Durability Consumer Electronics Devices; Low-Cost Storage Element Based on Crash Guard Technology

The company has announced what it believes is the first 3.0-gigabyte storage solution that will allow consumer electronics manufacturers to offer significantly lower consumer price points for devices like MP3 players, cell phones, personal video recorders and GPS devices. The new Cornice 3.0-gigabyte Storage Element will appear in several new MP3 products that are being launched this week at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Cornice says that Storage is the single most expensive component in most consumer electronics devices. Based on Cornice's Crash Guard technology, the new 3.0-gigabyte Storage Element addresses the ruggedness and durability issues that plague many of the most popular MP3 players and cell phones on the market today. Consumer products built with Cornice can sustain much wider ranges of movement and shock than competitive products, aligning them perfectly with the active lifestyle of today's consumer. The 3.0-gigabyte Storage Element includes a new Active Latch mechanism to prevent the kind of damaging drive head movement that can occur when a device is dropped.

The Cornice 3.0-gigabyte Storage Element is the highest capacity single-head one-inch storage solution available today. It supports the storage demands of people using most low-cost "pocket-able" digital entertainment devices, including:

Songs - 1,800 titles in WMA at 64Kbits/second or 900 songs at 128Kbits/second

Movies - Nine full-length films or 13 hours of video playback on a 3.5-inch screen, or 12 full-length movies or 20 hours of video playback on 1.5-inch screen

Video recording - 5.25 hours of recorded material at VHS-quality for television monitor playback

Photos - 42,000 pictures on a 3.5-inch display or 3,750 pictures from a three mega-pixel camera

The 3.0-gigabyte Storage Element with Crash Guard technology is available for $65 per unit in quantities of 50,000.