Seagate Technology, one of the oldest hard drive companies still in business, is apparently working on getting an internal 4TB drive for desktop PCs on store shelves by November of this year. The company recently released a new GoFlex external drive with that capacity a few weeks ago; it is likely that both the drive within the GoFlex case and this upcoming internal model will be the essentially the same, perhaps with improved firmware.
Under the hood, it looks like we will have five 800GB platters rotating at 7200 RPM, a 64MB cache and, most likely, a standard SATA 6Gb/s interface. You can probably bet that Seagate will put these in its premium Barracuda XT series, meaning a nice five year warranty and (hopefully) outstanding performance.
Of course, high performance or not, these are probably better to be used as storage drives, particularly for those looking to store hundreds of gigabytes worth of high-definition video or photos. Be sure to keep regular backups, though – 4TB is an awful lot of data to lose in the event of a drive failure (as if 3TB wasn’t enough!)
Pricing is currently unknown, and Seagate doesn’t have a product page up yet. However, given that the aforementioned GoFlex drive has a suggested price tag of $250 (somewhat lower at some retailers), it is likely that the internal model will go for a little bit cheaper.
Are you wondering what Microsoft’s got going for Windows 8? Well, a very early build of it has leaked to the internet, and it sure looks a lot like Windows 7.
That’s likely because the build is so very early; any really serious changes probably have yet to be implemented. But there are some peeks at what’s in store, such as: “Windows App Marketplace (check this out [here]), SmartScreen Security Filter, Aero Auto-Colorization (Auto color-changing theme colors, and more customization options), the ability to mount ISOs, and a Built-in AppX PDF Reader and IE9 Tile-based Metro UI.” So that’s fun!
If you’re curious enough, you can find copies of this early build out there on torrent sites to install yourself. But you probably don’t want to, as the likelihood of it just killing your computer due to instability and insecurity is very high. You are better off just waiting.
It seems like yesterday since France’s Evigroup upgraded its “Paddle” tablet the Paddle Pro, but it’s now another model is here: the SmartPaddle. It has the same Atom N450 processor as before, along with an 11.6-inch capacitive screen, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB SSD, WiFI and 3G connectivity, and Windows 7 for an OS — plus a Microsoft Arc keyboard, apparently. You’ll also get the same head-tracking capabilities seen on the Paddle Pro, as well as a new 3D interface for Windows dubbed “Scale,” which promises to make things a bit more tablet-friendly. The tablet itself will cost $1820.
If you are old enough to remember DOS, you will remember these upgrades. An interesting and quite entertaining video showed up depicting a series of windows upgrades from the early days of DOS to the current windows 7 operating system. It is a cool video. They forgot win ME, but it’s still a cool video to watch. Prepare for a blast from the past.
