The Momentus XT is trying to bridge the gap between the blazing speed of a Solid State Drive (SSD) and a typical mechanical platter Hard Disc Drive (HDD).  It does this buy having a 7200rpm platter,  4GB of onboard solid state flash, and Seagate’s Adaptive Memory technology.  WTF is Adaptive Memory technology you ask? According to the guys at Seagate it is, “a groundbreaking Seagate technology that moves frequently used information into flash memory for faster access.”  The Seagate Adaptive Memory algorithm works by identifying patterns in how often certain digital data is used. It then moves the most frequently retrieved information to flash memory for faster access than from the spinning disks – effectively tailoring hard drive performance to the user and applications.   Well 4GB isn’t a very big hard drive you say, and you would be correct.  The Momentus XT currently comes in capacities of up to 500GB (250GB and 320GB are the other options).  As you may have also already figured out because of the name, the Momentus XT is a 2.5″ drive.  The final gap between SSDs and HDDs that the Momentus XT fills is price, the 500GB unit should hit the street with a MRSP of $156 (250GB – $113, 320GB – $132). A 500GB SSD would nearly require a new mortgage to be drawn on the house.

Key Features and Benefits
• Boots 40 percent faster than traditional 7200-RPM drives (for overall system performance, that’s
within 1% of an SSD*)
• Cuts costs by 75 percent compared to SSDs by combining solid state and hard drive technologies
• Delivers the perfect balance of speed and capacity
• Uses Adaptive Memory technology to optimize performance in real time by storing frequently used
files and data on the solid state drive component
• Ensures compatibility with any operating system or application with a standard 9.5mm notebook
drive form factor and the characteristics of a traditional 7200RPM drive
• Offers all the benefits of SSD performance with the high capacity, storage, battery life, power
consumption and heat generation of a traditional hard drive
*Per Seagate benchmark data, using SysMark07 combined with 4GB of RAM on the system side

- 500GB, 320GB, 250GB hard drive capacities – Sweet spot capacity points that performance enthusiasts are looking for
Ensures that you will have the capacity you need for any type of application or digital hobby—ample digital play room
- 4GB solid state flash Speeds bootup and application response time
- 7200RPM spin speed Performance that won’t increase the noise, heat or power consumption of your hard drive—speed without the excess baggage.
- Seagate Adaptive Memory Technology – Customizes system performance to the user. Usage patterns are constantly monitored and updated for dynamically improved response times.
- 32 MB cache

On to the performance of the drive.  Our test drive arrived on Friday, unfortunately this is also a holiday weekend here in Canada (where I live) and we had a ton of stuff scheduled, so I was a bit limited to what I was able to do testing wise.  All tests were done in my slightly aging desktop PC after a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium x64, plus several apps that I typically use regularly (WoW, Firefox, utorrent, Ventrilo, Dropbox, KeePass, DisplayFusion). For comparison to another HDD I used a Barracuda 7200.10 750GB drive and is really only included for reference since it is an older drive and certainly not the speediest of drives currently available.  Since it generally takes running a program three times for the algorithm to put the necessary data into the flash each test was run three time and then the average of the following three runs was taken. For example the first time I ran PCMark Vantage the HDD Suite scored 5278 before jumping up several hundred points to the final average of 5806.

Intel C2D E8500 @ 4GHz
Asus P5Q-Pro
4GB G.Skill PC2-8500
BFG 9800GTX
Razer Barracuda AC-1

I started off with a good old fashioned, “How long does my PC take to start up?” test. Using a web based stopwatch on my wife’s PC I timed from pressing the power button until I saw the Windows background. No modifications were made to Windows to prevent anything from loading on start up. After half a dozen cold boots I took an average of the last 3 and came up with 47 seconds.

Next up was a HDTach running in windows XP compatibility mode.

To finish up a quick round of tests I ran PCMark Vantage full test suite.

Since I have only ran this drive for a weekend I haven’t had an opportunity to really see it perform.  However, just playing the little bit that I have with it I have seen improvements with load times for games like World of Warcraft and just an overall snappier system.  Seagate hit the spot with this drive and I think this kind of technology is going to really help bridge the gap to SSD performance without breaking the bank.  I am really looking forward to spending more time with this drive and see what else it can help improve. This would be an ideal hard drive for a performance laptop or even a netbook that you wanted to squeeze out some more performance without losing all the storage space that switching to a SSD would cause.  Overall this little drive is getting highly recommended to any user looking to get some more performance without paying the big bucks for a solid state drive.

For anyone that is interested in getting some more information, the following webcast is open to anyone.

ASUS and Seagate Unveil the Momentus XT and the ROG G73JH with a live webcast

On Wednesday, May 26, at 11 a.m. PST, Seagate and OEM customer ASUS will co-sponsor a live webcast unveiling not only the new Seagate Solid State Hybrid drive, Momentus XT, but also featuring the new ASUS ROG G73JH system with two Momentus XT drives.   Three lucky attendees of this webcast will win a new G73 system just for attending. In addition, special guest speaker and famous gaming reviewer N’Gai Croal will provide an in-depth review of the new G73 powered by Momentus XT and how this system will transform high-performance computing.

To register for this live webcast:

https://seagate-events.webex.com/seagate-events/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=644000350

Receiving the VMware^® Ready certified logo means that these Thecus^® NAS products have passed all relevant laboratory testing and met all the integration and interoperability criteria outlined by VMware^®. VMware^® Ready certification also means that these products are fully compatible with VMware^® ESX 4.0 and are ready to run in a production environment to carry out mission critical business applications and operations.

Besides VMware^® support, Thecus^® enterprise NAS servers are packed with all the essential technologies for modern businesses. Together with 10GbE or SAS HDD support, businesses have the speed and technology required to create a storage network that is able to efficiently and effectively manage their data, enabling them to provide timely services to their customers.

Users can now find these products listed on the VMware^® Compatibility Guide.

For more information on Thecus^® products, please go to:

http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=198

For more information on VMware^®, please go to:

http://www.vmware.com/

For more information on Thecus^®, please go to:

http://www.thecus.com

About Thecus®
Thecus® Technology Corp. specializes in IP Storage Server solutions, including Network Attached Storage (NAS), DAS, External Storage and Wireless Media NAS (Bank) products. The company was established in 2004 with the mission to make technology as transparent and easy-to-use as possible, and to make products that are not only the best on the market, but are accessible to experts and novices alike. With a best-in-class R&D team highly experienced in storage hardware and Linux software and with a keen customer focus, Thecus® stays close to the market to develop high-quality products to fulfill the storage Server needs of today’s world.

Super Talent CFast storage card is an evolution of the traditional CompactFlashTM card which has been in the industry for over 14 years, satisfying storage needs for mobile digital devices such as PDAs, digital cameras, etc. CFast has a bandwidth of 375MB/s which is four times more than the fastest High Speed 600x (90MB/s) CompactFlash card while still keeping the small original CF mechanical form factor. The new CFast storage card breaks the speed bottleneck between the SSD and the device by using a SATA interface. Super Talent has clocked these CFast cards at up to 200MB/sec read speeds. With Super a Talent CFast storage card installed, there will be no waiting time for the camera to catch up, and it will be much swifter to view pictures on a camera or to copy them to computer.

Measuring 36.4 x 42.8 x 3.3mm for Type I CFast storage cards and 36.4 x 42.8 x 5.0mm for Type II, the same physical dimensions as the CompactFlash card, the CFast Storage Card has a single-chip controller and flash memory module. The SATA interface consists of a 7-pin signal connector and a 17-pin power and control connector. The card operates at 3.3V.

Super Talent is offering five different CFast storage cards, 8GB and 16GB based on SLC (Single Level Cell) flash and 8GB, 16GB and 32GB based on MLC (Multi Level Cell) flash. The first generation of CFast storage cards supports transfer speeds up to 200MB/s.

About Super Talent Technology

Super Talent Technology Corporation based in San Jose, California, designs and manufactures a full range of DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 memory modules and Flash based storage devices for computers and consumer electronics. An ISO 9001 certified company, Super Talent utilizes its state-of-the-art factories and leading-edge components to produce award winning products with outstanding reliability. Super Talent is an active member of the JEDEC and ONFI standards bodies. With over 250 patents, the company was ranked 38th in the 2008 Wall Street Journal’s Patent ScorecardTM for the IT industry.

In business, users have to be ready for the unexpected, which is why the i8500 was engineered with total data security in mind. It begins by giving the system administrator a bevy of RAID modes, including RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60 and JBOD for ultimate flexibility and data protection. The eight SATA II hard disk bays of the i8500 can accommodate up to 16TB of storage, and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports allow users to access stored data quickly. To further ensure data integrity, the i8500 can also be configured with an optional battery backup module (BBM), a Li-ion battery that retains unwritten data inside RAM for up to 72 hours. Once power is restored, this data is automatically written to the disks for safe keeping. The i8500 can even take up to 32 snapshot versions, allowing admins to easily rollback any changes made to the system. With features like these, the i8500 is a digital stronghold for the corporate network.

But the i8500 is also built for flexibility. With online disk roaming, admins can easily remove the hard disks and install them into another i8500 unit while retaining all stored data. Got a large organization? The i8500 can also support 32 host cluster connections per volume, which means that up to 32 users can access a particular volume simultaneously and offers a centralized data storage pool for even large organizations. The flexibility continues with support for Windows, MAC OS and Linux, as well as online volume expansion and migration, auto-rebuilding, and support for up to 256 logical volumes. Snappy system response is delivered by the onboard Intel® Xscale IOP Processor and 1GB of DDR RAM, which provides transfer speeds of up to 150MB/s with a single port and 190MB/s with dual ports.

“The i8500 raises the bar once again for enterprise-class storage,” said Florence Shih, Thecus General Manager. “With massive storage capacity, iron-clad data protection, and nearly infinite flexibility, the i8500 is ideal for corporate environments where data security and availability are paramount.”

For more information about the i8500 click here.

With a Thecus® NAS device, users have everything they need to efficiently manage their data infrastructure with a single device. Use your Thecus® NAS to seamlessly share files between office computers – both online and remotely. Keep critical business data safe by scheduling automatic backups of all clients on the network, and easily expand storage capacity without complicated procedures or costly service interruptions. With a Thecus® NAS, you can centralize your company’s documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and marketing materials, so that employees have instant access to the tools they need. And with Intel® processor technology, multiple clients can access and write data simultaneously, hiccup-free. Any way you slice it, Thecus® NAS devices with Intel Inside® are the ultimate NAS solution for the small offices and Sohos.

Thecus® NAS appliances come in a wide variety of configurations to suit any business environment. Larger organizations can select from one of Thecus®’ seven-bay models, including the feature-packed N7700, the versatile N7700SAS with SAS hard disk compatibility, and the powerful N7700PRO, or opt for an eight-bay rackmount solution like the N8800 and N8800SAS. Small to medium-sized businesses can choose a five-bay solution like the N5500, N5200PRO and the innovative N0503 ComboNAS™. No matter what your business needs, Thecus® has the right solution for you.

“Our enterprise-class NAS units are renowned for their overall performance, stability, and feature sets that are tailored for businesses of all shapes and sizes,” said Thecus® General Manager Florence Shih. “Discover the many benefits of secure centralized data storage with a world-class NAS device from Thecus® Technology!”

For more information on Thecus® NAS solutions with Intel Inside®, go to:

http://www.thecus.com/intel_series/

For more information on Thecus, go to:

http://www.thecus.com

HP and 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) (“3Com”) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase 3Com, a leading provider of networking switching, routing and security solutions, at a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion. The terms of the transaction have been approved by the HP and 3Com boards of directors.

This combination will transform the networking industry and underscore HP’s next-generation data center strategy built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services. The resulting business outcome will help customers simplify the network, deploy a unique and innovative edge-to-core network fabric for the enterprise and improve IT service delivery capabilities, all delivered with best-in-class price-performance.

“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP. “By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.”

“Our extensive product line and innovative technology together with HP’s breadth and scale will expand our global opportunity,” said Bob Mao, chief executive officer, 3Com. “3Com’s networking products are based on a modern architecture which has been designed to offer better performance, require less power and eliminate administrative complexity when compared against current network offerings. Our products are enterprise proven and widely deployed in the world’s largest banks, manufacturers, Internet service providers, public utilities and retailers.”

The acquisition of 3Com will dramatically expand HP’s Ethernet switching offerings, add routing solutions and significantly strengthen the company’s position in China – one of the world’s fastest-growing markets – via the H3C offerings. In addition, the combination will add a large and talented research and development team in China that will drive the acceleration of innovations to HP’s networking solutions.

3Com also brings to HP best-of-breed network security capabilities through its TippingPoint portfolio. For the past four years, TippingPoint has been the leader in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” in its evaluation of leading network security products. Approximately 30 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have already deployed TippingPoint intrusion prevention systems.

“We are confident that we can run our entire global business of 300,000-plus employees, including our next-generation data centers, entirely on the new HP networking solutions,” said Randy Mott, executive vice president and chief information officer, HP. “Based on our experience and extensive testing of 3Com’s products, we are planning to undertake a global rollout within HP as soon as possible after the completion of the acquisition.”

Under the terms of the merger agreement, 3Com stockholders will receive $7.90 for each share of 3Com common stock that they hold at the closing of the merger. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of domestic and foreign regulatory approvals and the approval of 3Com’s stockholders. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of calendar 2010.

HP anticipates that the transaction will be slightly dilutive to fiscal 2010 non-GAAP earnings.

“iTunes 9 is a great iTunes release, with innovative features that make using iTunes better than ever and iTunes content richer than ever,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iTunes LP, for example, lets artists share more of their creativity with fans and gives music lovers the feeling of being immersed in an entire album with art, lyrics, liner notes, photos and videos.”

iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more. iTunes LP debuts today with albums including Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Norah Jones’ “Come Away With Me,” The Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty” and Dave Matthews Band’s “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King: iTunes Pass.” The new iTunes Extras provides a similar experience for movies on iTunes with features including documentaries, deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes Extras is now available for select movies including “Twilight,” “Batman Begins,” “WALL-E,” “Iron Man” and “The Da Vinci Code.” Customers can enjoy iTunes LP and iTunes Extras on a Mac® or PC.

iTunes 9 also introduces Home Sharing, which lets you easily transfer music, movies and TV shows among up to five authorized computers in your home. Family members can now view up to five iTunes libraries on their home network, see only the portion of these libraries they don’t already have, import their favorite content directly to their own libraries, and automatically add new purchases from other computers into their library.

The incredibly popular Genius feature gets even better with Genius Mixes which are created using the results of over 27 million music libraries with over 54 billion songs that have been submitted and analyzed by Genius. The new Genius Mixes feature is like having a “Genius” DJ that automatically generates up to 12 endless mixes of songs from your iTunes library that go great together.

With improved syncing in iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1, you can now organize your iPhone apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone with the same layout. Plus, syncing music, photos, movies and TV shows is easier than ever with the added ability to sync music by artist and genre and sync photos by Events and Faces. The iTunes Store on iPhone now features precut ringtone downloads with over 20,000 ringtones priced at just $1.29.

iTunes 9 is available immediately as a free download at www.itunes.com.

The iTunes Store is the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over 11 million songs, over 50,000 TV episodes and over 7,500 films including over 2,000 in stunning high definition video. With Apple’s legendary ease of use, pioneering features such as iTunes Movie Rentals, integrated podcasting support, the ability to turn previously purchased tracks into complete albums at a reduced price, and seamless integration with iPod® and iPhone, the iTunes Store is the best way for Mac and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music and video online.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

© 2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, iTunes, iPhone, iPod touch and iPod are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Just when I thought I had seen everything comes this little marketing tie-in. Symantec has releases the “Yo Joe!” Edition of Norton Antivirus 2009. Apparently, Cobra is the source of all viral code. I wonder if elite counter-terrorist agents are dispatched when a virus is detected?

08/03/2009 – Thecus® Technology is always pushing the boundaries of what people expect in NAS storage. Constantly innovating, Thecus® has released a number of world firsts, and today, Thecus® is proud to announce another one: the N8800SAS – the world’s first rackmount NAS to feature SAS hard disk support for blistering data performance.

Engineered for businesses looking for a high performance yet cost-effective storage platform, the N8800SAS is a 2U rackmount NAS that features a bevy of cutting-edge technologies. Headlining is its ability to accommodate up to eight SATA or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) hard disks. With the N8800SAS, enterprise users can enjoy the speed and reliability of SAS at a fraction of the cost of competing rackmount solutions. At its core, th

e N8800SAS features an Intel® Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of DDR2 memory for snappy system response and more concurrent connecti

ons. And for even more storage capacity, the N8800SAS is stackable with other N8800SAS units, allowing companies to easy expand their storage at any time.

Of course, performance is just one side of the equation. In a corporate environment, reliability and uptime are para

mount. To keep data secure, the N8800SAS offers multiple RAID modes, including RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 and JBOD, and even allows administrators to configure multiple RAID volumes on the sa

me unit for added flexibility. Should changes need to be made, the N8800SAS comes with online R

AID migration and expansion, as well as auto-rebuild, hot-swap and hot spare for uninterrupted service. For maximum uptime, the N8800SAS comes with a unique Dual DOM design, a 450W redundant power supply, and dual Gigabit Ethernet port

s with 802.3ad link aggregation, load balance, and failover. Data can be backed up via FarStone Drive Clone PRO 5.0 or Thecus® proprietary Nsync remote replication, and to ensu

re total data security, the N8800SAS even features AES 256 bit RAID volume encryption.

Finally, the N8800SAS offers unrivalled flexibility. Multiple selectable file systems, including Ext3, XFS and ZFS, and compatibil

ity with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, make the N8800SAS easy to integrate into virtually any corporate network. What’s more, the N8800SAS comes equipped with a multitude of useful features, including a media server, a download manager, web server functionality, CD/DVD ISO image sharing, and even can be used as an IP cam surveillance server.

“With support for the latest SAS hard disk technology, the N8800SAS once again pushes the envelope for corporate NAS units,” said Florence Shih, Thecus® Technology General Manager. “Brimming with cutting-edge features, blazing performance, and rock-solid reliability

, the N8800SAS is ready for business.”

For more information on the N8800SAS, check out:

http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=177&set_language=english

For more information on Thecus, go to:

http://www.thecus.com

− $4.2 billion state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing facility expected to create up to 6,400 new jobs and provide foundation for building AMD’s future technology innovations –

− Sen. Schumer, U.S. Rep. Murphy and Gov. Paterson participate in event −

Malta, N.Y. – July 24, 2009 – AMD (NYSE: AMD) today joined GLOBALFOUNDRIES and federal, state and local government leaders to mark and celebrate the official start of construction of Fab 2, a state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing facility at the Luther Forest Technology Campus (LFTC) in Upstate New York. Representing the largest public-private sector industrial investment in New York State history, the project is expected to be the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility in the world when it begins production, currently scheduled for 2012.

“Fab 2 represents the culmination of AMD’s multi-year vision to bring a leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing facility to the United States. This is an important opportunity to create thousands of jobs and strengthen U.S. competiveness in the high-tech industry,” said Dirk Meyer, president and CEO, AMD. “GLOBALFOUNDRIES is expected to be an ideal technology partner for the entire semiconductor design industry, providing cost-effective access to manufacturing capacity on an unprecedented scale. The multi-billion dollar investments in research and development and capacity expansion that GLOBALFOUNDRIES is planning, strengthen its position as a premier leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing foundry and make it the ideal AMD technology partner to help in bringing our innovative products to market.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES was created as a joint venture by AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) on March 2, 2009 and marks the culmination of AMD’s Asset Smart strategy.

Supporting Resources

· Factsheet on AMD and GLOBALFOUNDRIES relationship
· GLOBALFOUNDRIES website with additional details on Fab 2
· Official timeline for Fab 2 construction

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.