Is that a terabyte in your lap,or are you just happy to see me?

It was just last year when desktop PCs and external storage devices first offered 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabyte) drives.

Soon laptops will take a giant leap forward when Asus releases the world's first laptops with 1 terabyte capacity, using two new 500-gigabyte (half terabyte) drives from Hitachi.

The 500 GB drive is the biggest one yet for laptops -- big enough to hold up to 500 hours of digital video, 178 standard-def movies, 250 games or 125,000 four-minute songs.

The 500 GB drive should be available to computer manufacturers in February. Currently, the largest laptop drive on the market is a 320 GB model from Western Digital. (info from The Associated Press)

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Notes from your Old Fart Editor:

It was not all that long ago, when the "standard corporate PC" used an 80-megabyte hard drive.

I can remember the earth-shattering news when 1-gigabyte drives first dropped below $1,000. Now you can get FIVE HUNDRED GIGS for well under $200!

I can remember debating whether to spend an extra $200 to get a 40-meg hard drive instead of a 20-meg, and the RatShack salesman told me, "If you get the 40-meg, it will last you the rest of your life, because you'll never fill it up."

I can remember being laughed at when someone asked me how big a hard drive to get and I said, "think gigs, not megs."

Oh, well -- at least I still can remember.

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