According to recent reports, our desire for storage continues to grow by leaps and bounds -- good thing we are storing 0's and 1's (digital data), not physical goods or we would all have to live in castles! (or at least very big houses).
(Look at that big analog storge pile!)
Hard drive manufacturers such as Seagate Technology, Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies as well as flash memory providers, such as Samsung, are beefing up the technical capabilities of their products to meet consumers' growing storage needs.
Incredibly, flash memory capacity is doubling about every nine months, according to anaylst firm IDC (as captured by and the Associated Press), which forecasts that hard drive shipments will reach $41.5 billion in 2010.
Everybody wants to be a market leader in their product category -- yes, saying you are #1 is important!
Now, after nearly a year of declining market share and the loss of its leadership in the plasma display panel (PDP) industry, South Korea’s LG Electronics has reclaimed the top position in the first quarter of 2006. (This is according to iSuppli Corp.)
LG’s share of worldwide PDP unit production rose to 31.1% in the first quarter of this from 27.5% in the fourth quarter of 2005; LG is now 1 point ahead of Matsushita, which we know much better as Panasonic.
(Anybody remember when we manufactured high-tech stuff like this is the U.S.?)
(In fact, anybody remember the last TV company with a U.S. manufacturing presence?)
Well, take a look at the top five companies in this category:
While everybody hears about CES and MacWorld, another tech focused show is happening in Las Vegas -- StorageVisions 2007.
Not to be outdone by those two shows, we have some news from this one, too.
In a move to give the growing number of notebook PC users faster, more durable systems that run longer on a battery charge, Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Toshiba have formed a new organization called the Hybrid Storage Alliance.
With market research firm IDC predicting that hybrid hard disk drives will constitute 35% of all hard disk drives shipped with portable PCs by 2010, this technology is seen as the industry's answer to the growing demand for notebook PCs that deliver the speed and durability of desktop PCs.
The goals of the industry group are actually very simple:
Illustrate how flash memory/hard drive hybrid technology can extend the capabilities of today's notebook computers
Accelerate market adoption of the technology
According to the organization, hybrid technology combines the unmatched capacity and cost-effectiveness of hard drives with the responsiveness, power-efficiency and durability of flash memory.
Microsoft Windows Vista will be the first operating system capable of taking full advantage of the performance, power and durability benefits of hybrid technology. Hybrid drives will leverage the "Windows ReadyDrive" features in Windows Vista to enable a new generation of mobile PCs that boot up and resume from hibernation faster, optimize battery life, outperform standard hard disk drives and are more reliable and robust.
Love the battle of the firsts and why should computer storage not leverage key features when one company has them and no one else does.
Well, today we have two separate reports -- one about Seagate and the other about Hitachi-- hitting the magical 1TBmilestone for storing data on a hard disk drive for consumer use.
You can check out the speeds and feeds on both drives, but no matter how you slice it, 1TB of data is a heck of a lot of data to store.
Remember when 1GB seemed like more storage than anyone could possibly use?
According to recent reports, our desire for storage continues to grow by leaps and bounds -- good thing we are storing 0's and 1's (digital data), not physical goods or we would all have to live in castles! (or at least very big houses).
Everybody wants to be a market leader in their product category -- yes, saying you are #1 is important! 
Not to be outdone by those two shows, we have some news from this one, too.
Love the battle of the firsts and why should computer stora
ge not leverage key features when one company has them and no one else does.
