Desktop and notebook hard drive capacities continue to reach new heights as Seagate announced three new drives last week including the world’s first 1.5 terabyte desktop PC drive and 500GB notebook PC hard drive.

On the desktop front, Seagate announced the 1.5 terabyte Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive which is their eleventh generation drive for desktop PCs. This also marks the largest jump in drive capacities ever - 500GB from the previous mark of 1 terabyte. Features of the 7200.11 include:

• Four platters and PMR technology
• SATA 3Gb/second interface
• Up to 120MB/second data rate
• Also available in 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB, and 160GB capacities

On the notebook front, Seagate introduced two new Momentus drives - the 5400 RPM Momentus 5400.6 2.5 inch drive and the 7200 RPM Momentus 7200.4 2.5 inch drive. These Momentus drives are fourth generation notebook drives from Seagate and feature:

• SATA 3Gb/second interface
• PMR technology
• Capable of withstanding up to 1,000 G’s of non-operating shock and 350G’s of operating shock
• G-force Protection - free fall sensor technology  that helps prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact

The Momentus 5400.6 is available in sizes from 120GB to 500GB with an 8MB cache. The Momentus 7200.4 is available in 250GB to 500GB capacities with a 16MB cache.

The Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB desktop drive will be available in August and the two Momentus drives will begin shipping in Q4.

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Technorati Tags: Seagate, Barracuda 7200.11, Momentus 5400.6, Momentus 7200.4

DivX announced that the upcoming byd:sign LCD HDTV’s (models DC-1902DWB and DC-1902DWW) have received their official DivX certification making them the first LCDs to achieve this in Japan. Features of the byd:sign DC-1902DW displays include:

• 1440 x 900 resolution
• 300 cd/m2 brightness
• 500:1 contrast ratio
• Integrated DVD player
• USB ports
• SD/MemoryStick/MMC reader
• 8 ms response time
• HDMI v. 1.2 support
• Measures 494 x 412 x 130 mm
• 19 inch display

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Technorati Tags: byd:sign, DC-1902DWB, DC-1902DWW, DivX Certification

Today’s the big day of course.. the day Steve Jobs takes the keynote stage at WWDC 2008 and declares… well umm… we assume the new iPhone and probably other things.. So, if you’re like me and you’re not actually there, then your best bet is to follow the live notes that are being posted on a variety of websites out there. Here’s a short summary of links for you to peruse:

• CNET
• PC World
• Engadget
• Appleinsider
• Gizmodo
• Ubergizmo
• Gear Live

That should be enough right? Live blogging used to be really “cool” but gee.. nearly every major website does this nowadays.. Kinda takes the “coolness” out of it doesn’t it?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Steve Jobs, WWDC 2008

Looking for a way to reduce the clutter on your desktop? Try combining a few things into one unit. That’s what iHome is trying to do with their new iH69 and iH70 computer speakers - the first to integrate an iPod dock. Both models support docking iPod models and both can charge, play, and sync iPods while they are docked at the base of the speaker. The iH69 and iH70 feature iHome’s Reson8 speaker chambers and come with a sync switch, volume controls, and a headphone jack for private listening. The iH70 adds higher wattage and a full function remote control. You can purchase the iH69 for $99.99 and the iH70 for $129.99.

Technorati Tags: iHome Audio, iH69, iH70, Apple iPod

Some big news on the Microsoft/Yahoo! saga today. Microsoft formally withdrew their offer to acquire Yahoo! today, despite raising their offer by $5 billion dollars to $33 dollars a share or a 70 percent premium compared to the closing price of Yahoo! stock on January 31st. Microosft originally offered 31 dollars a share back on January 31st which at the time was a 62 percent premium. According to Microsoft, Yahoo! wanted at least another $4 dollars per share above the $33 dollar increased offer from Microsoft. In a Microsoft press release, Steve Ballmer states “After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,”.

The press release also contains an open letter to Jerry Wang, CEO and Chief Yahoo! of Yahoo!. In the open letter, Microsoft not only outlined why they were abandoning the offer, but they laid out the points as to why they were not going forward with a hostile takeover attempt of Yahoo!.

If Microsoft moved on a hostile takeover attempt, they believed Yahoo! would take steps to make the company “undersirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.” In short - Yahoo! would get in bed with Google which we’ve seen over the last few months - especially in the area of paid search ads.

What became clear from all of this was how critical a piece online advertising was to Microsoft. Microsoft was worried about Yahoo’s idea of using Google paid-search ads on Yahoo!’s own search engine. Doing this would trump the use of Yahoo!’s own Panama ad engine which would eventually result in the possible loss of valuable software engineers from Yahoo! This is made evident in the second bullet outlined in the open letter - “Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.” While Microsoft has spent time and money to develop their own ad system, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Microsoft was interested in Yahoo’s Panama system and its engineers. This really shouldn’t be too surprising given how strong online advertising has been over the last several years and in particular, how strong Google has been in the overall market. Microsoft has struggled to keep pace with Google in the search arena but has definitely failed to keep pace with Google in the advertising market. Acquiring Yahoo would certainly help Microsoft draw closer to Google - at least in terms of technology and advertising clients.

So is this the end of the Microsoft-Yahoo! saga? Perhaps for now.. but you can be sure that if Yahoo’s stock price continues to sag, many shareholders will certainly be peeved that Yahoo did not accept Microsoft’s offer.

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