Jul 24, 2010

Storage-n-Harddrives. Where are we and where are we going?

Grab a fifth or your favorite 70 proof or higher beverage and read on

Recently hard drives and the storage industry in general has been a tough thing to write about, because frankly, nobody really cares!  It’s much more fun and exciting to get caught up in the hype surrounding the latest multi-core CPUs running at orgasmic clock speeds, or exotic video cards that need their own power reactors but have enough FLOPs under the hood to calculate the single precision meaning of life.  In fact the only time we give our trusty storage things a second thought (and exhaust our dictionaries of naughty words) is when they die and take our data along with them.  Well, to help remedy this journalistic conundrum, we’ve developed a drinking game to aid in your consumption of this article.  Every time you see a storage related suffix (MB, GB, TB, etc.) you take a shot.  Ready?  Good, because you’re up to three already.
UPDATED
 
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Jul 23, 2010

Intel to limit Sandy Bridge overclocking?

At least according to leaked slides

IF WE’RE TO believe what is meant to be Intel presentation slides of its upcoming Sandy Bridge processors that were embedded in a video posted on YouTube by HKEPC, it looks like Intel’s LGA-1155 processors will have very limited overclocking potential. The reason for this is because Intel decided to “help” with the cost cutting by implementing a clock generator built into the chipset, rather than relying on an additional chip on the motherboard.
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Jul 23, 2010

Hands on with the Toshiba Libretto W100

Dual display notebook in a tiny form factor

THERE HAVE BEEN a lot of demos of dual screen notebooks over the past couple of years by several different companies, least not by the Taiwanese notebook manufacturers, but as things turns out; Toshiba is set to be the first company to actually offer a retail product in the shape of the Libretto W100.
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Jul 23, 2010

Seagate’s Quarter Results Noted

cloudy skies ahead

Seagate just reported its best annual results ever, with $2.66 billion in revenues and $387 million in net profits and if you exclude stock repurchases, the company would have generated $1.4 billion in cash after repaying creditors.   Seagate has now more than $2 billion in cash and only a small portion of its debt is in the short term, everything else is long term. With such a bright picture why is the market hitting so hard their stock after showing those numbers?
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Jul 22, 2010

Hands on with the Toshiba Portege R700

A light but sufficiently feature packed notebook

EARLIER TODAY WE attended a Toshiba event where the company was showing off its new Portégé R700 13.3-inch notebook. We wrote about it before, but as the RX3W which it is known as in the Japanese market. Their Portégé range of notebooks has always been one of Toshiba’s flagship models which have made a good compromise between portability and performance.
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Jul 21, 2010

Corsair outs 40, 80 and 160GB SSDs

To take on Intel?

CORSAIR HAS ANNOUNCED a couple of additions to its Force series of solid state drives which, at least in terms of capacity, are competing directly with Intel’s offerings. The new drives are the F40, F80 and F160, all of which offer impressive performance figures, although the pricing is quite competitive considering all things.
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Jul 21, 2010

Samsung starts mass production of 2Gbit 32nm DDR3 memory

Calls it green just because it can

DDR3 IS SLOWLY but surely starting to take over from DDR2 as the mainstream memory type and this means that the memory manufacturers are shifting more and more of their production to DDR3. Samsung has announced that it has begun mass production of its new 32nm DDR3 memory in capacities of up to 2Gbit, or 256MB per chip.
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Jul 20, 2010

MSI launches low-profile Radeon HD 5670

Unusual card with peculiar features

LOW-PROFILE GRAPHICS CARDS are usually based on entry level GPU’s, but there are exceptions from this rule of course. MSI has launched its latest low-profile card today and it is a peculiar beast that doesn’t seem to fit in. The idea of a low-profile card is usually that they take up less space, but this card appears to take up more space.
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Jul 20, 2010

Microsoft announces Kinect pricing

Outs 4GB slim Xbox 360 Arcade

THE MUCH ANTICIPIATED pricing for Microsoft’s “casual gamer” accessory – Kinect – for the Xbox 360 has been announced today and, as predicted, the motion controller will retail for $149.99 on its own. However, that’s only half of today’s news as Microsoft also announced the new slim Xbox 360 Arcade which was leaked by Amazon.de a few days ago.
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Jul 19, 2010

Intel Core i UM notebooks appearing all-over

We try to clear up the differences between all the models

IF YOU’VE BEEN waiting for a more powerful replacement of Intel’s CULV platform, then you’ll be glad to know that its partners have started to launch Core i UM based notebooks en masse. This is a couple of months later than expected and we wrote a little piece about this before Computex. Various markets seem to be getting models from different manufacturers at the moment, although this is most likely a business strategy more than a supply issue.
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Jul 19, 2010

Intel drops a few CPU prices

And adds a few new CPUs to boot

ALTHOUGH IT’S ABOUT a month since we reported Intel’s price drop and new processor launch, it has finally happened. We’ve got a few new processors in the market and Intel has dropped the price on some of its models by as much as 47.6 percent. So if you’re looking for a bargain deal on a new CPU, then there might be something that’ll fit your needs.
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Jul 16, 2010

Taiwan isn’t ready for centenary bug

Yes, you read it correctly, centenary bug

THIS IS ONE of those things that you almost have to be a local to grasp, but Taiwan is about to be hit by an equivalent to the so called millennium bug, but in the case of Taiwan, it’s a centenary bug. What many people don’t know is that Taiwan has its own calendar and this year it’s the year 99 in Taiwan and next year it’s 100 years since the Republic of China (ROC) was formed.
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Jul 16, 2010

TSMC to invest $9.34 billion in Fab 15

Set to produce in excess of 100,000 12-inch wafers a month

THERE HAVE BEEN some concerns over TSMC’s manufacturing capacity of 12-inch 40nm wafers and it seems like the company is set on solving this problem, although it won’t happen overnight. TSMC broke ground for its new Fab 15 earlier today in Taichung, Taiwan and the new fabrication plant is set to be ready to start mass production in the first quarter of 2012.
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Jul 15, 2010
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AMD releases Q2 financial results, and Ontario details galore

40nm supply problems persist

Another day, another quarterly earnings conference call.  AMD came in with their latest and greatest batch of numbers, tidbits of product information, and future guidance for the company.  While your man was unable to squeeze any questions in this time around, (and apparently vuvuzelas are frowned upon during these conference calls for some reason) there were still plenty of interesting nuggets of information dropped along the way, so let’s begin.
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