Flash isn’t living up to the hype
Not so far Flash drives have been rocketing up the hype cycle for the last year, helped along by credulous gadget sites and misleading performance numbers. But the free ride is coming to an end. Over on Storage Bits (see Flash gets a fight from disks and Hybrid...
Build a $50 DVD burner
Tired of your slow notebook burner? Want to rip a lot of CDs - as I have in the last week? Or maybe you've decided that, really and truly, you are going to get serious about backing up important data. Adding an external burner - especially for notebooks - is a good...
EMC’s coming strategic shift
I'm always curious about the context of the communications as well as the content. The Bush administration, for example, has been very disciplined in releasing bad news late Friday in the reasonable expectation that most people won't ever hear about it. Why some...
NetApp tilts at windmills – and ZFS
Or maybe shoots self in foot NetApp announced on Wednesday that it was suing Sun for patent infringement for ZFS. Sun immediately announced it would indemnify customers against NetApp's claims, so there is no reason for, let's say, Apple to stop work on ZFS. I'm a fan...
The Google power perspective
The CEO of a startup told me yesterday that their data mining software is so efficient that it cuts the processing time of a terabyte of data by 75-80%. Surely, he said hopefully, the energy savings alone would drive customer adoption. I don't think so He got me...
Massive price list update
I've updated the price lists for these companies. ADIC Avamar Brocade Documentum EMC EqualLogic Falconstor Finisar Hitachi HP IBM Isilon Lefthand McData NetApp Nexsan Omneon Oracle Pillar Riverbed RSA Sun Texas Memory Systems VMware Many are called but few(er) are...
World’s most beautiful supercomputer
Granted, Thinking Machines built a very striking machine of very limited utility. But leave it to the sophisticated Spanish in the cultural powerhouse of Barcelona to create a beautiful supercomputer - in a Modernist, Glass House esthetic - and meld it with a old...
Can integrators be trusted?
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports on a federal whistle-blower suit that shines light on a high-tech industry practice that I'll bet most customers don't know about. Here's the deal. Tech companies sign agreements to cooperate with major...
The 1 Terabyte CD
Ever since the HAL 9000 was decommissioned by pulling out its clear plastic storage modules in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey every storage geek has been jonesing for 3D storage. Holographic, multi-layer, whatever. I want capacity and I want it now! "I'm sorry Dave,...
The coming boom in SSD’s
Solid state disks have been around for decades and failed to make the IT mainstream. Why is that about to change? I did a stint of SSD marketing at DEC in the early 90's. Then, as now, SSDs offered low I/O latency and high IOPS capacity at an astronomical $/GB. I'm...
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