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Western Digital Goes Red
Western Digital has announced a completely new WD Red line of hard disk drives designed specifically for home and small office network attached storage (NAS) devices.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with WD’s Blue, Green, and Black series, the Red series offers 3.5-inch HDDs available in 1, 2 and 3TB capacities and are designed for NAS systems with one to five drive bays. As noted, all three models will be packed in a standard 3.5-inch form factor and feature SATA 6Gbps interface and 64MB of cache.
According to WD, these HDDs have been compatibility tested with top NAS box manufacturers and optimized for both power and performance, which is, at least according to WD, a much better way to go considering that consumers had to choose between desktop or high-end server drives for their NAS devices, with neither being cost effective or fully NAS compatible.
According to WD, the new Red line feature 3D Active Balance Plus enhanced balance control technology feature that should significantly improve overall drive performance and reliability.
Dell Buys Quest Software
Dell is set to buy Quest software for $2.5 billion. The move trumps the bid by Insight Venture Partners and was done on the quiet.
The No. 2 U.S. personal computer maker kept its name out of the limelight when Quest disclosed on Thursday that it had received an offer from a “strategic bidder” of $25.50 per share. Quest’s shares rose more than 9 percent to finish at $26.06 on Thursday.
Dell has been actively buying companies to expand its offerings to business and diversify away from personal computers. It told investors its focus on the hardware and software needs of corporate customers was gaining momentum. Quest could help Dell’s businesses in data management and protection and Windows server management.
Western Digital Debuts 2TB Passbook HD
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Western Digital is about to introduce a 2TB My Passport Essential series external drive. According to some early listings, the new 2.5-inch drive should set you back just over $200.00, more important is that it seems like a pretty interesting external drive.
It measures 110x83x18mm, so we assuming this is a 12.5mm drive and as such it won’t fit into most notebooks. However, as an external drive it is second to none. It features USB 3.0, but it won’t be the fastest thing around, as it is a 5400rpm unit.
Windows Phone 7 Roadmap Leaked?
January 6, 2012 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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A purported Microsoft slide showing the 2012 Windows Phone roadmap seems to indicate that we could see the next major update by mid-2012.
The Tango update is scheduled for the second quarter of 2012, but it won’t be aimed at high-end phones. Instead, Tango is supposed to bring Windows Phone to dirt cheap devices, or “products with the best prices” as Microsoft calls them. This seems to indicate that it will be even better at resource management than Mango, which is already far ahead of iOS and Android in terms of its OS footprint.
The big new, of course, is Apollo. The new OS is scheduled to appear in Q4 and it should enable Microsoft to offer competitive superphones. Currently Windows Phone devices max out at WVGA resolutions and single-core Qualcomm chips. Apollo could change all this and pave the way for dual-core designs with high resolution screens, probably 720p.
Nokia Drops Luxury Brand Vertu
December 16, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Nokia’s Vertu mobile phones sell for thousands but the firm is looking to unload this relatively low volume part of its business as it tries to focus on producing Windows Phones. According to the Financial Times (FT), Nokia has appointed Goldman Sachs to oversee the sale of its UK subsidiary.
Vertu’s market value is not known but the firm makes between 300 to 400 millionin annual sales and, according to the FT, private equity groups have expressed interest. The brand is fairly well known as a maker of expensive mobile phones and it might attract high-end ‘designer’ brands that want to break into the mobile phone market.