Posts in PC & Peripherals
Hitachi turns to external storage, acquires Fabrik
Dong Ngo | Feb 25, 2009
Fabrik's (re)drive, the first external drive made partially of bamboo.
(Credit: Fabrik)
When I reviewed Fabrik's SimpleTech Signature Mini and SimpleTech (re)drive external hard drives a while ago, I liked its tasteful designs. As it turns out, my taste wasn't so peculiar.
Hitachi on Monday announced its decision to acquire Fabrik, a privately held supplier of personal and professional storage solutions.
If you haven't heard of Fabrik, this is because it has been selling external storage under two better-known brands: G-Technology and SimpleTech. CNET has reviewed several products launched under each brand.
Although the financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, Hitachi made it clear that Fabrik's business will remain intact and form the core of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies' new external-storage business.
Going forward, you will still find Fabrik external storage in both G-Technology and SimpleTech brands. The combined company plans to offer external-storage solutions based on both regular hard drives and solid-state drives.
The acquisition seems a natural move for Hitachi. For the Japanese company, it means an expansion into a market for external-storage hardware currently dominated by Seagate and Western Digital. For California-based Fabrik, it means broadening its market horizons, though it probably also means limiting the internal hard drives for its external storage solution to those of Hitachi.
Via CNET Crave
Having a cow over Gmail just misses the point
Charles Cooper | Feb 25, 2009
A big outage at Google Tuesday. Things go dark early while most of the US
is sleeping. Still, the Internet is without borders and so the glitch leaves
millions of people who use Google Web mail and Google Apps, high and dry.
It was mild melodrama for a few hours but things returned to normal after a few hours. It's still unclear what happened, though Google says it's investigating the problem.
Truth be told, the walls of Jericho did not crumble, though the outage nonetheless triggered the (now thoroughly predictable) hand-wringing and bloviating from the usual cast of characters. Amusing to watch, but after this incident, there's also the wider context to consider.
Any outages are embarrassing. But while Gmail did crash a few times in 2008, this is the first time the service has gone down in quite a while. (As my colleague Stephen Shankland noted, Google extends a guarantee to corporate customers paying for any of its business Apps services, which rely on the cloud. The promise: they will be able to access Gmail at least 99.9 percent of the time every month. If not, Google pays them a penalty fee. So far Google says it hasn't fallen below that mark.)
Read more »
Waste time on your browser with Quake Live
John Chan | Feb 24, 2009
(Credit: id Software)
For those who have been playing first-person shooter (FPS) games, Quake III Arena (Q3A) will be familiar to you. For years since its launch in late 1999, it was the game by which your FPS skills were judged on. It was used by many professional gaming competitions and leagues and still holds a place in many top gamers' hearts.
Q3A's developer, id Software, is bringing back those good old days with Quake Live which is based on its 1999 hit title but played entirely on your browser. In-browser FPS games are not new but these are usually developed by small-time developers with limited online support. Quake Live is a commercial project which is supposed to earn money for id Software through advertising, which means the company has to try all it can to keep players (who play for free) coming back. So instead of wasting time in the office playing flash-based word games, you can now procrastinate with a full-featured multiplayer shooter.
The open beta starts on February 24 in the US (some time tonight or early tomorrow for us in Asia) and anyone can sign up for free at the official Web site. We don't expect system requirements to be very high, but we don't have those details at the moment. The best thing to do is to check out the site and game when it goes live soon.
Apple to stop micro-USB from becoming standard?
David Carnoy | Feb 24, 2009
(Credit: Motorola)
Geardiary.com has a interesting post up about how more devices, especially cell phones, are using Micro-USB instead of Mini-USB, and how it's partially a ploy to get you to buy more overpriced charging adapters.
It's a good conspiracy theory that's hard to argue with, but it also seems clear that the shift to Micro-USB is about saving space in building the device.
Read more »
The disappearing Apple 20-inch display
Eric Franklin | Feb 24, 2009
This is the back of the 24-inch LED Cinema Display. I thought showing the back would be appropriate to represent the 20-incher leaving the Apple Store...not as effective as I was hoping, it seems. (Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET Networks)
MacRumors speculates that Apple is gearing up for a refresh of its 20-inch Cinema Display in the form of a new LED-based 20-incher with a Mini DisplayPort connection like the 24-inch LED Cinema Display released last year.
No official word from Apple yet, of course, but here's hoping that if this is true, the company at least includes a DVI to Mini DisplayPort adapter with the 20-incher so more than just MacBook owners will get some use out of it.
Via Crave CNET
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