Storage capacities are growing for both desktop and portable computers. Notebooks still can’t match the storage capacity available in many desktop computers, but the gap is closing. Hitachi announced its latest notebook HDD today that offers lots of storage and green features built-in.

The hard drive is called the Travelstar 5K500.B and has 500GB of storage space wile consuming only 1.4W during read/write operations. The drives are also halogen free making them more environmentally friendly.

The Japanese are ahead of us in everything, even Fridge tech. Not only do they like to spray snow to deodorize things, they also like their fridges to emit vitamin C. Hitachi fridges, that is. The idea behind their new fridges seems sound enough. The R-Y6000 releases Vitamin C into the air inside to keep your food fresher.

Apparently this is possible because Vitamin C helps meat keep it’s color longer and also slows down nutrient loss in vegetables and fish. The wonder fridge also has a filter to help prevent mold. And six drawers. We typically have two here. It has a volume of 602 liters and will cost $3,100. 3,000 units will be produced on a monthly basis, until they run out of vitamin C and have to resort to squeezing oranges inside.

Hitachi’s annouced it’s tri-format Blu-ray camcorder, the DZ-BD10HA, along with a list-price. It uses a 7-megapixel CMOS sensor that’s capable of both full 1920 x 1080 High Definition images and video. It can record directly onto either 8cm Blu-ray discs, the 30GB hard-drive, or onto an SDHC memory card.

One nice feature is that footage on the hard-drive or SDHC card can be re-dubbed to the Blu-ray drive without having to hook up to a computer, if you want to split, splice, delete, merge, and transition etc. It will also convert footage into standard definition and burn to a DVD if that’s what you want. There’s a lot to like here. Including the price which is a surprisingly reasonable $999. It will be available in September 2008.

Hard drive capacities are growing all the time, which is great news for computer users with lots of stuff to store. More storage capacity is also great news for DVR users looking to be able to record more programming before their hard drive fills up.

Today Hitachi announced a pair of new hard drives in its CinemaStar line. The flagship product is the CinemaStar 7K1000.B with up to 1TB of storage space. Hitachi previously announced a 1TB desktop drive a few weeks back. Other capacities are available for the 7K1000.B in addition to the 1TB version. Hitachi also announced the CinemaStar 5K320 with 320GB of storage space. The 1TB drive can store 247 hours of MPEG-4 HD video.

We’ve seen E ink used on watch faces, but did you expect to see it on your phone? E Ink is thinking about introducing it’s E Ink Vixplex Imaging Film for the outer display in future clamshell handsets. Pretty cool idea and very easily done since e-ink only consumes power when the image changes.

The first two handsets that will feature the technology are the Hitachi W61 and the Casio Model G’zOne. The displays are said to be clearly visible even under direct sunlight, which gives the user a viewing angle of up to 180-degrees. It’s sure to be a big hit as users love to personalize their phones.

If you were excited when Hitachi came out with the first 1TB internal hard drive early last year then be prepared to be just slightly more excited. Hitachi today introduced that same 1TB Deskstar drive but now using 43% less power consumption, naming it the Deskstar 7K1000.B.

The “.B” means that you can buy this whopping internal hard drive with less concern that it’s going to sit there and suck loads more power than your old 80GB drive, which it will, but not as much as it used to according to Hitachi. The drive is actually available in sizes from 160GB up to the largest 1TB capacity.

Hitachi has announced a new Blu-ray burner that can create discs from the latest camcorders with eSATA ports. The DZ-WR90 plugs straight into the camcorder and automatically creates discs from the footage that you select. So, you don’t need a computer. It even finalises the discs automatically, making it an easy complete one-step process.

The drive will also work with DVD-R discs, and even supports double-sided media as long as you’re willing to flip them yourself. They’re claiming that a Blu-ray disc will fit around three hours of full 1920 × 1080 footage and burn in 1.5hrs; or up to six hours in 1440 × 1080 resolution. A DVD can store up to one hour of 720 × 480 footage. This should make it easy for anyone who wants a simple way to share their video.

Today Hitachi has announced that it will be the industries first in the world to offer a 1 terabyte hard drive. The 1,000 GB drive (for those having trouble with the metric system) will be available to retail consumers in the first quarter of this year, and will come under the name ‘Deskstar 7K1000′ retailing for $399. Hitachi states that the 40 cents per gig (for those having trouble with the math) will make the larger capacity an accessible price for more customers.

This announcement comes within hours of …