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- Hard Disks
Seagate Technology, the world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions, and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in digital consumer electronics and information technology, today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Seagate and Samsung will significantly expand and strengthen their strategic relationship by further aligning their respective ownership, investments and key technologies. Major elements of the agreement include:
- Samsung combining its hard disk drive (HDD) operations into Seagate
- Extending and enhancing the existing patent cross-license agreement between the companies
- A NAND flash memory supply agreement under which Samsung will provide Seagate with its market-leading semiconductor products for use in Seagate’s enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid state hybrid drives and other products
- A disk drive supply agreement under which Seagate will supply disk drives to Samsung for PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics
- Expanded cooperation between the companies to co-develop enterprise storage solutions
- Samsung receiving significant equity ownership in Seagate
- A shareholder agreement under which an executive of Samsung will be nominated to join Seagate’s Board of Directors
The combined value of these transactions and agreements is approximately $1.375 billion USD, which will be paid by Seagate to Samsung in the form of 50% stock and 50% cash.
These transactions and related strategic agreements will enable both companies to better align their current and future product development efforts and roadmaps, accelerate time-to-market for new products and position the companies to better address rapidly evolving opportunities in markets including, but not limited to, mobile computing, cloud computing and solid state storage. In connection with its strategic alliance with Samsung, Seagate expects also to strengthen its relationship with TDK Corporation/SAE Magnetics (H.K.) Ltd. Together, these transactions and agreements broaden a strategic relationship between Seagate and Samsung that began with a joint development agreement announced in August 2010.
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Delivering solutions that better fit your increasing mobile and connected lifestyles, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) is expanding its family of external storage and backup solutions with its new line of Hitachi Touro Pro desktop and mobile external hard drives. Delivering two levels of protection--local backup and cloud storage, the Touro Pro line is an all-in-one solution to help protect, transport and store your photos, music, videos and documents for easy access from anywhere.
Coupling online storage and local personal storage is vital in today’s mobile world. Your personal content and the public cloud are converging. Right in the middle of this is you. Your content. Your personal cloud – the stuff you want access to, from anywhere – online and from your tablet, smartphone, laptop or external drive.
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AMD Radeon HD 6450 and 6570 Graphics Cards @ InsideHW.com
ASUS O!Play HD2 HD Media Player @ ThinkComputers.org
ASUS RT-N56U Wireless-N Gigabit Router @ Benchmark Reviews
Evercool Transformer 4+ Plus CPU Cooler @ Tweaknews
GIGABYTE Aivia M8600 Wireless Gaming Mouse @ Techgage
GIGABYTE GA-E350N-USB3 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo @ OCIA.net
GIGABYTE T1125N-CF1 11.6-inch Tablet Convertible Notebook @ TweakTown
HTC Thunderbolt Android Smartphone @ HotHardware
Razer Nostromo Gaming Keypad @ Metku.net
Thermaltake Frio - CLP0564 @ Computing on Demand
Thermaltake Max 5G USB Drive Enclosure @ Bigbruin.com
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- Home Entertainment
According to The NPD Group, a leading market research company, consumers are still using DVDs and Blu-ray Disc (BD) to watch movies more than all digital-video options combined. Over the past three months, 77 percent of consumers reported watching a movie on a DVD or BD, which is unchanged from last year. Those who viewed movies from physical discs reported watching an average of four hours per week, which is also unchanged from the prior year. By comparison 68 percent watched a movie on a TV or cable network channel, 49 percent at a theater, and 21 percent used paid video on demand through their TVs.
According to data from NPD’s “Entertainment Trends in America” report, when asked about their recent spending on home video, consumers reported that 78 percent of their home video budgets went to the purchase and rental of DVD and BD, including online and in-store retail purchases and rentals, while 15 percent was spent on video subscription services like Netflix that offer a mix of physical and streaming rentals. Digital video downloads, paid streaming, paid transactional video on demand (VOD), and pay per view (PPV) comprised the remaining 8 percent. Overall per-capita spending on home video fell by 2 percent.
“With the well publicized struggles of Blockbuster and retail video stores closing around the country, and with media attention increasingly focused on the newest digital home-video offerings, the value and importance of physical formats to the home video industry and to consumers is often overlooked,” said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group. “Even though DVD sales and rentals are slowing, there is no evidence that consumers are abandoning physical discs for watching movies, even as the choices for viewing are expanding.”
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- Duplicators
MF Digital, an industry leader in disc duplicator equipment has announced the release of its latest product – The Asynchronous Cougar 6600.
Cougar is a high volume, high speed, industrial standalone production duplicator. With 600 disc capacity and 6 CD / DVD drives, Cougar delivers fast operation with its full Asynchronous mode. By eliminating the need to wait for all drives to load as used in limited technology Synchronous systems, Cougar outperforms most 8 drive synchronous mode competitors.
Cougar has been built on our industrial light-weight cast aluminium chassis. Cougar offers easy to use intuitive front panel keypad operation, high capacity, high speed operation and provides the key ability for the system to be expanded for high volume operational requirements.
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ASUS has launched WAVI, the world’s first wireless HDMI kit to feature innovative two-way wireless USB control designed to stream PC content to the big screen TV. WAVI (Wireless Audio Video Interaction) is offered as a pair of devices that bridges the gap between the home office and living room. Watch movies, play the latest PC games, enjoy social networking or even do online shopping, all on the big screen TV from the comfort of a couch.
The WAVI HDMI streaming kit consists of a transmitter and receiver for two-way input and streaming. Unlike other wireless HDMI kits, the WAVI allows users to control the PC content in the living room with a wireless keyboard and mouse, thanks to wireless USB support. The WAVI operates at the wireless 5GHz band and provides up to 25 meters of coverage. Additionally, under the Extend Mode, users can continue working on the PC screen while streaming multimedia content to the living room TV – maximizing the use of a single home PC while also providing home entertainment experiences.
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- Flash Memory
Intel Corporation and Micron Technology Inc. today introduced a new, finer 20-nanometer (nm) process technology for manufacturing NAND flash memory. The new 20nm process produces an 8-gigabyte (GB) multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash device, providing a high-capacity, small form factor storage option for saving music, video, books and other data on smartphones, tablets and computing solutions such as solid-state drives (SSDs).
The growth in data storage combined with feature enhancements for tablets and smartphones is creating new demands for NAND flash technology, especially greater capacity in smaller designs. The new 20nm 8GB device measures just 118mm2 and enables a 30 to 40 percent reduction in board space (depending on package type) compared to the companies' existing 25nm 8GB NAND device. A reduction in the flash storage layout provides greater system level efficiency as it enables tablet and smartphone manufacturers to use the extra space for end-product improvements such as a bigger battery, larger screen or adding another chip to handle new features.
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- Hard Disks
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, announced today its new family of hard disk drives, including two portable drives and a desktop storage station. Supporting the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, the new external hard drives can provide data transfer speeds of up to 5 gigabits per second, delivering a maximum 10-fold higher data transfer rate over the USB 2.0, allowing users to transfer a 25-gigabyte full HD movie in just four minutes.
Samsung's portable drives come in two designs, the entry-level M2 Portable and the premium C2 Portable 3.0. The M2 Portable comes with a wave-like matte finish that covers scratches and fingerprints, with curved sides for a comfortable grip. The drives are available in densities of up to 1 terabyte, USB 2.0/3.0 interface, and four colors: Brown Black, Noble Beige, Mist Gray and Clay Orange.
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- Optical Storage
Today, Aleratec Inc. added two new types of 6x Blu-ray BD-R media to its existing lineup of duplicator grade media. The new lineup consists of a 25-pack of white inkjet printable BD-R 6x media and a 10-pack of traditional silver BD-R 6x media.
"Our customers look to us for the latest technology in hardware and media," said Perry Solomon, President and CEO of Aleratec. "We are pleased to offer 6x BD-R in both inkjet printable and standard silver formats for faster disc burning. In fact, we've gone a step further and optimized our Aleratec Stand Alone Blu-ray Duplicators (part #260201 and 260202) to burn at speeds up to an amazing 10x with this new media!"
Unlike other Blu-ray media, Aleratec's new 6x BD-R media is designed for use in demanding professional duplication applications, resulting in fewer bad copies due to poor disc quality. Additionally, the white surface of the inkjet printable 6x BD-R media produces professional quality labels and supports high-resolution color graphics. The company also offers a wide assortment of duplicator-grade LightScribe and traditional blank media, which have all been optimized for maximum reliability when used with Aleratec duplicators.
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- Hard Disks
Toshiba Corporation today announced the launch of the world's first series of Self-Encrypting Drives (SED) equipped with Wipe Technology, Toshiba's proprietary suite of security functions that bring an unsurpassed level of data protection to IT equipment. Wipe Technology allows users to determine a range of security settings, including invalidation of encryption keys and data invalidation when a drive is removed from its housing or connected to an unauthorized host system.
The five models in the 2.5-type MK6461GSYG family range from 160 gigabytes (GB) to 640GB and are designed for use in copiers, printers, POS systems, PCs and other IT devices. Sampling will start from the end of April with mass production following at the end of June.
IT departments must contend with various security risks, from lost and stolen PC through to compliance with increasingly strict privacy laws and regulations governing data security. These concerns also go beyond PCs. Today, most office copier and printing systems utilize HDD capacity and performance to support productivity and the security of recorded document image data that must be maintained. Furthermore, data invalidation required overwriting for hours or physically disrupting until now.
