Friday, November 21, 2008

ChangeWave Survey Shows Historic Collapse in U.S. Corporate IT Spending
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 06:32 PM
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Rockville, Maryland, November 21, 2008 – A new ChangeWave corporate IT purchasing survey shows an accelerating collapse in U.S. business spending that has now reached historic proportions – with record pullbacks occurring both in the current 4th Quarter and going forward.

In one of the survey’s few upbeat findings, the corporate smart phone market continues to show growth – with Research In Motion (RIMM) maintaining its huge lead, and Apple (AAPL) continuing to make inroads into small to medium-sized businesses.

A total of 1,926 respondents involved with IT spending in their organization participated in the survey, conducted November 6-12, 2008.

IT Spending Breakdown

The results show IT spending projections for 1st Quarter 2009 to be the worst ever for a ChangeWave survey, dating back to 2001. An unprecedented 45% of respondents say their company’s IT spending will decrease (or there will be no spending at all) in the 1st Quarter – 16-pts worse than our previous survey.

Applelinks Tech Web Reader - Friday, November 21, 2008
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 11:03 AM
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Picking the Right Apple: A Guide to Apple's Mac Lineup
Snow Leopard Endangers Vista
Microsoft Was Worried About Mac Besting Vista in '05
How Apple Gained The Upper Hand On Microsoft
Samsung Mass-produces Fast 256GB SSD
Virtualization Shootout: VMWare Fusion 2 vs. Parallels Desktop 4
MacBook Buyers Bite Apple Over Copy Protection
Mini DisplayPort to Dual-DVI Delayed Until December 23
Apple Bends to Studios, Adds Copyright Protection to MacBooks
MacBook Owners Up In Arms About New Copyright Software
Apple Cripples MacBooks With Hollywood-Mandated DRM
The Perfect Storm Of Data Loss: a Cautionary Tale
Shootout: Sonnet Tech ExpressCard/34 CF Reader versus FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 Readers
PC Mag: Microsoft Lowers Zune Prices, Tweaks Zune Pass
IBM Buys Transitive
The Mac Night Owl: Apple Always Finds a Way to Annoy Customers

Computers tend to be one of those big-ticket items that make it on to many holiday shopping lists. With the current state of the economy, choosing the best machine for your money is probably a bigger concern for would-be computer shoppers this year than in the past.

If you're thinking about buying a Mac for your family (or even yourself), understanding Apple's product line can be important to making that right choice, whether you're a longtime Mac fan or someone just considering switching from a PC.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and Steve Jobs feels fine. With the U.S. Federal Reserve now predicting a recession that will last well into next year--and others predicting much worse--sales of ammunition, spam and gold coins are surging.

Oh yeah, so are sales of the Apple chief's Macintosh computers.
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Apple owned 9.5% of the U.S. PC market during the third quarter, according to tech tracker Gartner. Look at where beleaguered consumers are putting their dollars, however, and Apple's performance is even more impressive: The company grabbed 20.1% of the U.S. retail market in October, according to NPD Group.....

Microsoft's Vista, meanwhile, is tottering. Operating income for Microsoft's mighty client division actually declined to $3.3 billion for the quarter ending in September from $3.4 billion during the year-ago period.....

Apple, meanwhile, is preparing to release an operating system focused on Vista user's biggest gripes: speed and stability....

According to some newly released court documents in the "Vista Capable" class-action lawsuit, Microsoft was worried about comparisons between its newest OS and the Mac OS before Vista was even out, and before Apple starting joking about it ("Redmond, start your photocopiers.")

In fact, what really got Redmond going was the WSJ's Walt Mossberg, who told his readers on October 13 2005: "You also won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows. Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and much more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista."

I've just been working my way through hundreds of emails released as part of the Vista Capable lawsuit (if you want to read along at home with me, you can download them from here) and there's one phrase that keep coming across that might explain why Apple got the upper hand on Microsoft with Vista.

The phrase is "Good Better Best" and it's used by Microsoft engineers and executives to describe the different different Windows Vista experience that users would get depending on the level of hardware available.....

Enter Apple and the Mac. Having handled a number of Macs one thing stands out - the Mac experience on one model is pretty much the same as the Mac experience you get on another model. In fact, you can take an old Mac and upgrade the OS and get pretty much the same experience as buying a new Mac. Sure, the speed won't be the same, and how much you can store on the disk might be less, but the Mac experience doesn't vary that much from system to system.

Bottom line, the Mac experience removes uncertainty. You can be totally oblivious to GPUs, MHz, Intel, AMD, SATA, ATI, NVIDIA....

Samsung on Wednesday night said it has started manufacturing the 256GB Flash SSD. The 2.5-inch solid-state drive stands both as the company's largest-capacity drive and also its fastest. Its sequential read speed is slightly lower than for its Intel rival at a still fast 220MB per second but is faster for sequential writes, recording data at a very high 200MB per second.....

Parallels, the company behind the first ever virtualization program for the Intel Mac, has recently updated its software to its fourth version. I decided to pit it against VMware's recently released second version of its Mac virtualization product, Fusion.

For those searching for buying advice, there was a clear winner.

Apple's decision to adopt the DisplayPort digital monitor connector is pissing off punters, all thanks to the technology's incorporation of a copyright protection mechanism.

DisplayPort, like HDMI, mandates copy prevention technology. DisplayPort's system is called DisplayPort Content Protection (DPCP), but it's essentially the same as the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) mechanism used by HDMI.

Both systems were designed to ensure that digital video streams are not tapped and duplicated once they've been decoded and transmitted to a screen....

It will only be a problem if you connect a DisplayPort connector via an adaptor to a VGA or DVI monitor. Right now, no one's doing this but Mac users because, firstly, hardly anyone has a DisplayPort monitor and, secondly, with the other connectors available, no one needs to use an adaptor.

The only people who do are folk who own a new MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Apple's one-port strategy for monitors has come to bite it on the bum, big time.

As if it wasn't aggravating enough that new MacBook owners had to go out and replace all of their video adapters since Mini-DVI has been phased out and Mini DisplayPort introduced, today those lucky enough to have a 30-inch external monitor are now out of luck…again.

In an email to customers who'd purchased the Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-DVI adapter, which is required to get full-resolution support on 30-inch external monitors, Apple regrettably informed those affected that they wouldn't see delivery of their items until December 23. At least it's before Christmas, right? Still leaves you time to wrap it and stuff it in that stocking.....

Appearing to cave to Hollywood demands, Apple has quietly added a restrictive copyright protection mechanism to its new MacBooks that is preventing customers from watching movies on external displays.

Apple has secretly included a copy protection scheme called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) in the external display ports on the latest models of it MacBooks, released in the middle of October.

Apple has not disclosed the new anti-copying mechanism, and now increasing numbers of customers are discovering that they cannot play movies bought from the iTunes online store on many external monitors, TVs or projectors.

Apple is bundling a form of copyright protection software into new MacBooks that has some buyers up in arms. Called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), the technology prevents MacBook owners from playing movies they've purchased through iTunes on many external monitors, TVs or projectors—meaning they're stuck watching flicks they've paid for on much smaller screens....

Wired says *Intel* bowed the technology back in 2001, but Apple began quietly embedding it in new MacBooks this year as a way to appease Hollywood studios wary of licensing content to iTunes.....

Users of brand-new aluminum MacBooks are being blocked from playing movies on some external displays because of DRM built into the devices at the behest of Hollywood, according to reports. External displays used to play the movies need to be compliant with the High Definition Content Protection standard....

Apple plans to adopt the technology across its entire product line, meaning buyers of future Macs will likely experience the same problems, according to Sam Oliver at AppleInsider, who provides more background on the technologies.

Even monitors and TVs that support HDCP might not work, apparently due to buggy implementations, according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog's Michael Rose. Apple TV users have been struggling with these problems for a while.

As the old saying goes, you learn something new everyday. But sometimes you learn something and forget something. Yesterday was one of those days. While writing up VoodooPad 4, I thought I'd open up some of my VoodooPad files to check out the new features.

....I open up the VoodooPad files on my iDisk only to find they won't open. And when I check them out in the Finder, I discover that's because they register as 0KB in size.

So despite feeling secure in the knowledge that I had multiple copies of these valuable files, the truth ended up being that I had multiple copies of one corrupt version of the same file.....

....don't rely on your iDisk for backups of critical data. Make sure that you have a copy on a local disk at all times, lest you end up crushed and bereft, like me. I imagine the chances that you'll be in this exact same scenario are probably slim: I seem to have an encountered a perfect storm of data loss, certainly at least partially of my own making.

How Fast Can You Transfer Digital Photos?

Sonnet Technology has released a new ExpressCard/34 that mounts two CompactFlash cards at a time. It's called the "Pro Dual CompactFlash (CF) Adapter ExpressCard/34." It's significant in that it uses uses the 2.5Gbps PCIe interface standard (instead of the USB 2.0 standard) so it doesn't run out of bandwidth when you use the fastest 300X CF cards (or the future 886X CF cards). It supports UDMA6 transfer modes up to 133MB/s.

We tested in with a fast CF card, the Lexar Professional UDMA 300X, and compared the transfer speeds to the San Disk Extreme FireWire 400/800 CF Reader and the SanDisk Extreme USB 2.0 CF Reader.

Microsoft is making all sorts of Zune-related announcements this week. First came theprice-drops on the Flash-memory-based Zunes (more on that later in the post), as well as minor upgrades to the Zune marketplace software and Zune firmware, which includes new games and the ability to play Texas Hold 'Em against other Zune owners via Wi-Fi.

The big news today, however, is that Microsoft is making its $14.99-a-month Zune Pass subscriptions - which you don't even need a Zune to use - a little more interesting.

On a monthly basis, subscribers can now download 10 songs from the Marketplace and keep them forever.

IBM is going to buy Transitive, the British cross-platform virtualization firm that salvaged legacy Macintosh programs and made Apple's move from IBM to Intel chips as graceful as a prima ballerina's pirouette.

Transitive is clever at running applications written for one kind of microprocessor and operating system on multiple platforms with little or no modification and could probably be made to run all legacy apps in virtualized form on a single hardware platform.

Aside from Apple's Rosetta technology, Transitive has also helped move SGI from Mips to Itanium as well Spark/Solaris to Intel/Linux.

You love them, you hate them. The products are great, but some of the marketing and product initiatives are inscrutable. Even though Apple is supposedly doing surprisingly well during this holiday season, despite the economic downtown that may have not bottomed out, I'm sure they've also done plenty to upset customers in one way or another.

Applelinks iPhone News Reader - Friday, November 21, 2008
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 10:51 AM
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Apple shares lose 'iPhone premium'
The Next Generation Touch Does Almost Everything An iPhone Does
BlackBerry Storm 9500 review
The BlackBerry Storm Challenges the iPhone
Nine Ways That The Storm Beats The iPhone (updated)
PC Mag: The BlackBerry Storm: Your Top 20 Questions, Answered
PC Mag: BlackBerry Storm Rains on My Typing Parade
PC Mag: Bargain Hunt: Unlocked Cell Phones

For nearly two years, since the introduction of the iPhone at the 2007 Macworld show, Apple Inc.'s stock had been on a tear that was impressive even for a company that was used to being one of the top investments in the tech sector.

However, it can be argued that the iPhone premium officially came to an end Thursday, as Apple's shares fell below $85 for the first time since January 9, 2007, the day Chief Executive Steve Jobs showed off the first version of the iPhone.

They say sequels often fail to live up to the original. That's not so with the second generation of Apple's iPod touch. Apple has managed to make the touch look better, work better, and deliver more features—all for a $229 starting price, significantly cheaper than the previous entry-level $299 version. The changes, while subtle, are so significant that I give the second-generation touch a rare perfect score.

The touch, while an iPod, is close to the iPhone in lineage. It has the same touchscreen, plays music and videos the same way, and includes a wireless Internet connection that lets you access the Web from your home network and wireless hotspots, such as those set up by AT&T in Starbucks.

It's been nearly two years since Steve Jobs first demonstrated the iPhone, a move that shocked the mobile phone industry. The iPhone wasn't just a "bit better" but a completely different approach. In the 18 months that the iPhone, and then the iPhone 3G have been on sale we honestly couldn't even consider another phone; now we have two to look at. The first is this one, RIM's BlackBerry Storm< 9500 available from Vodafone (the second is the T-Mobile G1, or Google phone as it's better known).

Is it us or has the smartphone market just got a little bit crowded?

The new touchscreen BlackBerry Storm looks a little like an iPhone and behaves a bit like one, too. So its release is sure to spark a furious debate over which is better. That's the wrong question. Each is an outstanding product - and distinct, despite a few similar design flourishes. The correct question is, which is right for you?

Although the Storm was clearly inspired by Apple's success with the iPhone, the two phones were conceived with different goals in mind. Research In Motion has removed its signature physical keyboard to make room for a 312-inch display, but it didn't compromise the BlackBerry mission: The Storm is first and foremost a text-centric device built around RIM's celebrated e-mail services. This makes it the hands-down winner for messaging tasks, particularly if you work for an organization that uses the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to relay corporate mail.

I got to play with a Blackberry Storm earlier this week and a couple of features immediately jumped out at me that beat the iPhone hands down....

While it's true that several of the [listed] features are software based and easily implemented by Apple, it doesn't look like it plans to address these shortcomings in iPhone firmware 2.2 which could arrive as soon as tomorrow.

Is Apple giving a giant gift to RIM/VZW on a silver platter?....

On Monday, I asked Gearlog readers to ask me everything they wanted to know about the new BlackBerry Storm 9530 for Verizon Wireless. Now I have the answers. Here's the original thread on Gearlog.com.

I re-ordered the questions by theme, and eliminated a few duplicates and a few that I still can't answer. (Battery life tests can take days.) Hopefully, this will answer some of your questions, too.

Speck SeeThru Satin Soft-Touch Hard Shell Case For MacBook Pro
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 01:18 AM
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Silky-soft to the touch with the same protection as our trusted SeeThru line; introducing SeeThru Satin. Give your MacBook Pro a smooth, semi-translucent frosted finish that easily slips in and out your bag while retaining a grippy edge for your peace of mind. Allows you access to all your important plugs and drives while highlighting the unique look of your MacBook Pro 15" (unibody/black keyboard.)

• Silky-smooth soft-touch hard shell protection


• Protects your MacBook Pro from scrapes and scratches


• Smooth yet grippy rubberized exterior texture


• Allows MacBook to be open all the way


• Fully vented for safe heat disbursement


• Totally removable -- easy to put on and take off


• Built-in rubberized feet keep your notebook stable and secure


• Access to all ports, battery check button and CD/DVD drive


• Includes soft cleaning cloth

Speck SeeThru Satin Soft-Touch Hard Shell Case For MacBook
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 01:17 AM
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Silky-soft to the touch with the same protection as the trusted SeeThru line; introducing SeeThru Satin. Give your MacBook a smooth, semi-translucent frosted finish that easily slips in and out your bag while retaining a grippy edge. Allows you access to all your important plugs and drives while highlighting the unique look of your new MacBook 13" (aluminum unibody/black keyboard.)

• Protects your MacBook from scrapes and scratches


• Smooth yet grippy rubberized exterior texture


• Allows MacBook to be open all the way


• Fully vented for safe heat disbursement


• Access to all ports, battery check button and CD/DVD drive


• Totally removable -- easy to put on and take off


• Built-in rubberized feet keep your notebook stable and secure


• Includes soft cleaning cloth

The New Fusion Canvas/Leather Solar Messenger Bag by Eclipse Solar Gear
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 01:11 AM
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Keeping your batteries charged and ready to go is an obsession for many consumers of personal electronics. The original patented Eclipse Solar Gear product line is designed to trickle charge the batteries of many types and brands of electronics including cell phones, smart phones, hand-held GPS units, and MP3 players with a convenient solar charging solution. Basically anything you can plug into your car using a 12V auto adapter can be trickle charged using solar bags by Eclipse Solar Gear.

Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 Email Client Released
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 01:10 AM
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Mozilla's Thunderbird 2 email application is more powerful than ever. Its now even easier to organize, secure and customize your mail.

Thunderbird is a full featured stand-alone email client based on the design of the mail module in the Mozilla suite browser, which in turn was derived from the old Netscape Communicator Messenger module.

Mozilla.org has released Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 for Mac OS X.

Security Update - Security issues have been fixed:
http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/thunderbird20.html#thunderbird2.0.0.18

For information about previous changes, see the Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 Release Notes:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/2.0.0.17/releasenotes/

The Thunderbird developers' mission objective is to produce a cross platform standalone mail application using the XUL user interface language. The intended customer is someone who uses Mozilla Firebird (or another standalone browser) as their primary browser and wants a good, solid email client to go with it.

OWC Exclusive Rebates on featured Hitachi Hard Drives
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 01:03 AM
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Other World Computing (OWC) http://www.macsales.com has partnered with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies to offer consumers up to $120 in rebates on select bundles featuring OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro, OWC Mercury On-The-Go, OWC Mercury Rack Pro, OWC Neptune, NewerTech miniStack, NewerTech Guardian MAXimus FireWire and NewerTech Voyager Docking Station storage solutions featuring Hitachi hard drives. Rebates of up to $30 are also available on select Hitachi bare hard drives, DIY "Add a Drive" Upgrade Kits, and on Hitachi hard drive/NewerTech Voyager hard drive dock bundles.

Qualifying storage products must be purchased from OWC between November 11 and November 30 at http://www.macsales.com and customers must download individual Hitachi rebate forms to check for purchase date deadlines and rebate submission guidelines. Rebates up to $120 are available for these select solutions and drives purchased before Nov. 30:

* Up to $120 back on OWC Mercury Rack Pro Solutions for select 3.0TB and 4.0TB Solutions. Options include RAID-0, RAID 0+1, RAID-0 Stripe and RAID READY JBOD Solutions with FireWire 800, USB 2.0, and/or eSATA interface options. http://eshop.macsales.com/search/rack+rebate

* Up to $120 back on OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Single and Dual-Drive RAID Solutions with available FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and/or eSATA for select 750GB, 1.0TB, 1.5TB, and 2.0TB Solutions.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/elite+rebate

* Up to $60 back on NewerTech Guardian MAXimus RAID-1 Mirror FireWire 800/400+USB2 Solutions for select 750GB x 2 and 1.0TB x 2 Models.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/guardian+rebate

* Up to $30 back on NewerTech miniStack Solutions with available FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and/or eSATA for select 750GB and 1.0TB Solutions.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/miniStack+REBATE

* Up to $20 back on select OWC Mercury 320GB On-The-Go Bus Powered Portable Solutions and DIY Kits with available FireWire 800, Firewire 400, and/or USB 2.0 Interface options.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/On-The-Go+Rebate

* Up to $30 back on select OWC Neptune FireWire 400 External Storage Solutions http://eshop.macsales.com/search/neptune+rebate

* Get up to $30 Back on NewerTech Voyager FireWire 800/400+USB2+eSATA Docking Station Bundles
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/voyager

* Up to $20 back on Hitachi 2.5" SATA 320GB 7200RPM and 5400RPM Notebook HDD and DIY Mercury On-The-Go Enclosure Kits
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/travelstar+rebate

* Up to $30 back on Hitachi 7K1000 DeskStar 3.5" 7200RPM SATA 32MB 750GB and 1.0TB HDD
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/HIT0A3515

For a complete list of all OWC and NewerTech Storage Solutions covered by this rebate program, as well as Hitachi bare drives covered by the rebate program, see:
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/hitachi+rebate

For a complete list of current OWC rebate offers, see:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/rebates

OWC and NewerTech storage solutions are currently available in single drive solutions of up to 1.5TB and multi-drive solutions of up to 4.0TB. From Desktop to Rack, from performance RAID to bus-powered performance portable - OWC and NewerTech solutions provide a wide array of options ideal for Audio/Video, Backup (Apple Time Machine Ready), Media Center, Music and Photography. In addition to industry leading warranty coverage, OWC and NewerTech storage solutions offer further value added features including all interface connecting cables for Plug and Play operation straight from the box, free lifetime US-based technical support, and a $200 retail value utility software bundle consisting of award winning Prosoft Engineering Data Backup 3, NovaStor NovaBACKUP, and Intech SpeedTools Utilities(tm) software.

For more information on OWC and NewerTech storage solutions lines, see:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/

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LaCie SilverKeeper 2.0.1 Freeware Automates External Backups
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 01:02 AM
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SilverKeeper V2.0 is a new release of LaCie's free backup application. It has been designed to support Apple's OS X operating system for Intel and PowerPC based Macintosh computers.

It is now compatible with OS X 10.3.9 through 10.5.x. This includes the current version 10.5.5 of OS X. SilverKeeper is a freeware application from LaCie that automates backups to external storage devices like hard drives, network drives, and other removable storage devices that have IDE, SATA, eSATA, IDE/ATA/ATAPI, SCSI, USB, or FireWire interfaces.

Almost any read/write device that can mount a writeable volume on the Macintosh Desktop can be used with SilverKeeper.

SilverKeeper requires OS X 10.3.9, 10.4.11, or 10.5.x.

This version of SilverKeeper is not recommended for older versions of the Mac OS. Click here for previous version of SilverKeeper.

Documentation is provided as a set of SilverKeeper Help and ReadMe files that are installed with the application. If you would like to preview the SilverKeeper documentation before installing, please download from these links. These are PDF files that can be opened with either Preview or Adobe Reader.

New in version 2.0.1:

• Re-implemented in X-Code for OS X. No longer uses CarbonLib. No longer compatible with OS 9.


• Compatible with Intel and PowerPC Macintosh computers.


• Compatible with OS X 10.3.9, 10.4.x, 10.5.x. For OS 9 users, v1.1.4 will still be available.


• SilverKeeper now can run in the dock or in the background.


• SilverKeeper can be minimized. We still recommend that you do not run other applications or use your computer while backups are being performed. There is a preference setting to sound an alert when the backup is complete.


• Setup wizard added to assist users with common setup tasks.

Clone X 3.2 Creates A Copy Of Your System Installation
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 01:01 AM
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Clone X is dedicated to the duplication of your hard disk. You can create useable copies of your disk (including the startup disk) as well as special copies, such as the creation of bootable DVD or minimum System disks.

With Mac OS X, the system is a very complex construction with multiple folders, most of them being inaccessible (invisible, protected or permission denied). Moreover, any copy or installation must preserve permissions and ownership of each file.

Samsung Now Producing 256GB Solid State Drive
Posted by Staff on 11/21 at 12:59 AM
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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives for use in notebooks and desktop PCs. With the addition of the high-speed 256GB drive, Samsung now offers the most extensive line of SSDs in the industry with 8, 16, and 32GB SSDs for low-density designs and 64, 128 and 256GB alternatives for the higher densities.

The new 256GB SSD more than doubles the performance rates of Samsung 64GB and 128GB SSDs to become the SSD with the highest overall performance in the personal computer industry, combining sequential read rates of 220MB/s (megabytes per second) with sequential write rates of 200MB/s. This sharply narrows the performance gap between read and write operations to only 10 percent, compared to a read-write speed difference of between 20 and 70 percent for other SSDs. In addition, erase cycles are a rapid 100GBs per minute, allowing the entire drive to be re-written much faster, when needed.

"While SSD's have always been touted for their performance, Samsung is turning the storage industry upside down now with an SSD that delivers truly disruptive performance," said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. "Getting our exceptionally high performing 256GB SSD in a notebook is analogous to having a 15,000rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power and heating drawbacks."

The Samsung 256GB SSD expedites data transfer when large multimedia files are simultaneously read and stored. It can store 25 high-definition movies* in just 21 minutes, a significant advancement over a 7200rpm hard disk drive (HDD), which takes about 70 minutes. Furthermore, the 256GB SSD launches applications 10 times faster than the fastest 7200rpm notebook HDD.

The 256GB SSD's advanced performance can be attributed to a new, optimized, single platform design consisting of a chip controller, NAND flash and special drive firmware all developed by Samsung. This single platform is designed to easily adapt to Samsung's 40nm class NAND flash memory.

Also offering a high degree of energy efficiency, the new drive consumes 1.1 watts of power versus two or more watts for a comparable HDD, while delivering outstanding reliability and durability. The high operating speed of the 256GB SSD translates into longer periods in either stand-by or idle mode resulting in up to 40 minutes of extended operation on a single battery charge.

Similar in weight to a 128GB SSD (81 grams), the 2.5-inch multi-level cell (MLC) 256GB SSD retains the standard 9.5 millimeter (mm) drive thickness.

Samsung's 256GB SSD is also available with optional proprietary encryption programming that provides full disk encryption, a key feature for many corporate users.

For more information, visit:
http://www.samsung.com

* Each HD movie has approximately 10GB of data storage.

1 Based on PC Mark05 test results

OWC Announces Rebates Up To $120 on FireWire, USB2, eSATA, and Internal Hard Drive Options
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