SlashGear has been hanging out with Google this week, at the I/O 2009 conference. You can read our first day and second day highlights for the full details, but perhaps the most interesting news was Google’s Wave demo for iPhone and Android, and Andy Rubin’s confirmation that there should be 18-20 Android handsets on the market by the end of the year. One of those is expected to be the HTC Hero; make sure to check out the promo video for the chin-heavy smartphone.
In the rush to grab “world’s best” titles, companies will do just about anything. If you’re OWC, you’ll grab a Seagate 500GB 7,200rpm hard-drive, slap it into a cheap looking acrylic caddy and brand it “the largest capacity, fastest bus powered portable storage solution on the market.” Heady words indeed, but once you’re past the hyperbole you’ll probably be more interested in the fact that the OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro offers a choice of USB 2.0, FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 interfaces.
As more and more Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) offer the choice of recording in high-definition, and more consumers decide to prioritize picture quality, the standard storage in most models simply can’t keep up. Into that fray steps the DVR Expander, a straightforward way of adding recording capacity; today it’s the turn of the Seagate Showcase DVR Storage Expander, a full 1TB of storage.
Seagate and AMD will be demonstrating the world’s first SATA 6Gbps hard-drive today, theoretically offering twice the throughput of the existing SATA 3Gbps standard. The demo will compare an existing Barracuda 7200.12 HDD and a SATA 6Gbps HDD that uses a prototype AMD chipset to offer 5.5Gigabits per second performance.
Seagate’s largest 1.5TB bare drives have had it share of random freeze and raid array dropping problems in the past. Solution was provided with firmware issued to resolve the problematic drives, according to the tech Report last week. That was not the end of an epic that’ve been plaguing globally. Recent report are much critical. Drives manufactured from December 2008, which includes few members of the 7200.11, ES.2 SATA and Diamond Max 22 series storage are having a much serious data lock-up glitch. Affected disk drive becomes inaccessible to user when the host system is powered. A lengthy 30 plus pages of the much-heated topic is being discussed at company’s community forum here. The manufacture has today responded to the issue, a potential firmware related bugs were isolated, offering free firmware updates and data recovery services to calm the angry mob.
It’s not a good day for a career in the tech industry, as multiple job cuts and proposed cuts are reported, including some from big names like Google. According to the search giant’s own blog, positions in both recruiting and engineering are at risk, with the former seeing 100 jobs cut outright, while the latter involves the closure (and potential for relocation) of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden. Google are hoping that the 70 engineers involved will be able to relocate rather than leave the company.
Meanwhile, Motorola have scythed 4,000 jobs, three-quarters of which are from the company’s handset division, for a total of 6-percent of their global operations. It’s part of an attempt to staunch the company’s gushing cash reserves; the Q4 estimates suggest a 7 to 8 cent per share loss. Overall, Motorola has now shed 7,000 staff.
If you’re an HDTV owner who creates media, whether it’s photos or videos, you might be unsure of how to display them on your set. If that’s the case, Seagate has unveiled a product that makes it super easy to share your content.
If you’re looking for a great way to store your information but don’t want to spend a fortune and maybe want something that looks stylish, you might wish to consider the new FreeAgent Go drives from Seagate, now available in a vast array of color options, just in time for the holidays.
While shopping for a large single drive to backup my images, I came across this giant 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 Barracuda at newegg with an irresistible price of $149. As usual, before placing an order, I read all the user reviews I could and that has stop me from getting one due to the volume of negative comments. Apparently, there are more stories to the unconstructive remarks; further research on hardware forums- including the company’s own discussion forum- has revealed the Barracuda is having serious problems with drive freezing and raid-array dropping with OS from Linux, Windows to OSX.
SlashGear Japan
