Samsung's 60GB 1.8-inch hard disk now shipping -- PSP2, you listening?

While everyone is waiting for the price of 128GB SSDs or hell, the 32GB variety to bottom-out, Samsung and others have been quietly beefing up their slim, 1.8-inch N-Series hard drives from 20 to 30 to 40 and now... 60GB using perpendicular recording techniques. Better yet, Sammy's drives are just 5-mm thin, spin at 4,200rpm, and feature a (relatively) quick 7.14-millisecond average seek time and a 2MB data buffer. It's not silent like an SSD but they do squeeze the noise down to 1.8 dB -- just above the human threshold for healthy ears (read: not yours). Of course, Sammy calls it a world's first even though Seagate began shipping their 5-mm, 60GB, single platter 1.8-inch hard drive more than two weeks ago. Ah well, so goes the hyperbole. While we're waiting for Tosh's chubby (8-mm thick) 100GB cousin to get an iPod fitting, the skids are now greased for a 60GB PSP on the quick... or not.