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- Hard Disks
In October 2004, Fujitsu and TDK signed a business alliance agreement on the HDD head business. In order to build a structure for technological cooperation, the two companies established the joint-venture TFPC in December 2004 to process and assemble HDD heads. Recently, however, Fujitsu decided to exit the HDD head and HDD businesses, and therefore the two companies have agreed to terminate the business alliance and dissolve the joint-venture agreement.
The TFPC joint-venture agreement will be dissolved, and the company will become a wholly owned subsidiary of TDK.
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- Other
Storage Appliance Corp., developers of Clickfree, the easiest-to-use PC backup solutions on the market, today announced two new products, the Clickfree Traveler and Clickfree DVD Transformer. Available May 7, 2009, both devices are PC and Mac compatible, and eliminate the confusing and time-consuming hassle associated with backing up irreplaceable digital data.
As light as a pen and the size of a credit card, the flash-based Traveler slips easily into a wallet, allowing business travelers, photographers, music lovers and others to carry up to 64GBs of data in their hip pocket or purse. The Clickfree DVD Transformer enables consumers to quickly and easily back up important data to optical discs, bypassing tricky CD and DVD burning software. Coupled with recordable CDs and/or DVDs, it’s an inexpensive yet foolproof way to back up important files.
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- Home Entertainment
Fujitsu Microelectronics Limited today announced 2 new transcoder ICs that can convert between Full HD (1920dots x 1080lines) MPEG-2 video data and H.264 video data, as well as transcoding between audio formats while featuring a low power consumption of only 1.0Watt(W) including the in-package memory. These new ICs are targeted to support the growing number of electronic equipment that can record digital broadcasts. By employing Fujitsu’s proprietary transcode technology, Fujitsu Microelectronics realized industry-leading low power consumption. Combined with the small form-factor packaging, these ICs can be used not only for non-mobile fixed electronic equipment – such as digital video recorders (DVRs) - but also in such mobile products such as notebook PCs. In addition to the transcode function, security functions are included on a single chip to make it easy for customers to create their systems. Sample shipment of the new transcoder ICs, the MB86H57 and MB86H58, will begin from late July, 2009., will begin from late July, 2009.
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- Home Entertainment
While Blu-ray still has a long ways to go before it overtakes the DVD, a new report issued by The NPD Group shows that the format is moving further into the mainstream. According to NPD's latest point-of-sale tracking data, first quarter sales of stand-alone Blu-ray players in the U.S. grew to more than 400,000 units, an increase of 72 percent over Q1 2008. Consumer awareness also reached 90 percent with 6 percent of those surveyed stating that they would be “extremely or very likely” to buy a Blu-ray player in the next six months.
According to the latest point-of-sale (POS) tracking data from The NPD Group, a leading market research company, Blu-ray Disc (BD) video technology is moving further into the mainstream. First quarter (Q1) sales of stand-alone Blu-ray players in the U.S. grew to more than 400,000 units, an increase of 72 percent over Q1 2008. Dollar sales increased 14 percent, to reach $107.2 million according to NPD’s retail tracking service.
"The rising penetration of high-definition televisions and lower Blu-ray player prices are broadening the format’s market opportunity," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD. "Even as options expand for accessing movies digitally, Blu-ray is carrying forward the widespread appeal of DVD into the high-definition marketplace."
NPD’s “Blu-ray Report” March 2009 update revealed that overall consumer awareness of the BD format in the United States has reached 90 percent awareness in the past six months. Purchase intent for Blu-ray set-top boxes also rose slightly in NPD’s most recent tracking surveys, with 6 percent of respondents saying they would be “extremely or very likely” to buy in the next six months, compared with 5 percent who responded similarly in the August report. Despite these high awareness levels, more than half of adults (58 percent) continue to report that they were still “not very familiar” with BD.
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- Network Storage
QNAP Systems, Inc. today launches the 2-bay Intel Atom-based TS-239 Pro Turbo NAS with iSCSI target service for SMB and SOHO users. Adopting the low power Intel 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB DDRII memory, and DOM (Disk on Module) architecture, the TS-239 Pro delivers outstanding system performance in data intensive business environment. The NetBench test result shows the TS-239 Pro delivers an extremely high throughput of over 350MBit/s when 20 clients are accessing the NAS simultaneously, which is 3 times faster than other NAS brands in the same class. With the support for two 2TB hard drives, hot-swappable disk trays with locks, two Giga LAN ports, three USB 2.0 ports, and two eSATA ports, the NAS has become the top-class 2-bay NAS model with the best specifications and of the highest scalability, redundancy, storage capacity, and stability in the current market.
The TS-239 Pro supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX OS. Advanced features such as built-in iSCSI target service (max 8 iSCSI devices) with Thin Provisioning, Online RAID Capacity Expansion, Online RAID Level Migration, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, Wake on LAN, automatic policy-based IP blocking, instant SMS and email alert, BT and EMule download, schedule power on and power off, two IP cameras for network surveillance are also available.
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- Optical Storage
Optical disc drive manufacturers are facing yet another shortage of pick-up heads (PUHs). According to DigiTimes, the latest shortage is because Sanyo Electric, Hitachi, Sony and Sharp have not expanded the production of ODD PUHs to meet the growing demand for notebooks and desktops.
The global supply of pick-up heads (PUHs) used in optical disc drives (ODDs) has fallen into considerable short supply, which will not ease until the end of the second quarter, according to Taiwan ODD industry sources. The short supply is because Japan-based Sanyo Electric, Hitachi, Sony and Sharp, which together account for almost all of the global production of ODD PUHs, have not expanded output to meet the growing global demand for notebooks and desktops since early 2009, the sources said.
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- Network Storage
LaCie announced today the availability of two new high capacity Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions – Big Disk Network and d2 Network. These professional file servers are optimized for users to instantly store, share, and back up files, from any PC or Mac on a wired or wireless network. LaCie’s new NAS solutions deliver high-performance and professional-class reliability, in an easy-to-use network solution for the home or small office.
The d2 Network supports up to 1.5TB capacity, while the Big Disk Network combines two drives in a RAID 0 setting, for up to 3TBs of storage. Both NAS solutions are perfect for advanced users or small to medium sized offices that want to develop workgroup environments for up to 50 users (15 at one time). Network administrators can choose from various security levels for user profiles, groups, and public or guest access. Users can connect an external USB drive to increase security through scheduled backups, or even expand capacity. The d2 Network also includes an eSATA connection for storage expansion.
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Alienware M17 CrossfireX 17" Gaming Laptop @ BCCHardware
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution X58 Motherboard @ TweakTown
ATI Radeon HD 4770 Graphics Card @ InsideHW
AZZA Fantom 900 ATX Midi Tower Case @ TweakTown
G.Skill Falcon FM-25S2S-128GBF1 Solid State Disk @ TweakTown
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MSI N285GTX Videocard SuperPipe OC @ Rbmods
Nanovision Mimo UM-710 USB Secondary Monitor @ Futurelooks
Razer Arctosa Keyboard @ Phoronix
Seagate FreeAgent Theater Media Player @ Bigbruin.com
Spire SP331CB CombiPod USB Hub/Card Reader @ Tweaknews
SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse @ OCModShop
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750W Modular Power Supply @ ThinkComputers.org
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- Software
Roxio Burn is part of a new generation of applications and services from Roxio that are the result of a design-led development initiative. The elegantly designed products, which are based on extensive usability testing, make digital media tasks extremely accessible and provide consumers a fun and intuitive environment in which to work.
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- Flash Memory
DDRdrive LLC introduces the DDRdrive X1, a PCI Express expansion card featuring a complete solid-state storage system. The DDRdrive X1’s breakthrough architecture integrates both DRAM and NAND to transform direct-attached enterprise storage. Singularly designed to target IOPS intensive applications while setting a new standard in performance, power, and price. The DDRdrive X1 is “The drive for speed”.
