Working at Yahoo is getting riskier by the day. Even before merger-minded Microsoft could lay off some of the stars within its acquisition target, Yahoo executives beat them to it.
But there are some key Yahoo employees who are so indispensible for their experience, skill or leadership, that Microsoft would be crazy to let them go in the event of a merger, observers, insiders, and former Yahoo employees say.
Several of those mentioned by sources as vital to Yahoo were among the casualties of Tuesday's layoffs, which totaled an estimated 1,100. The layoffs are the latest black spot for Yahoo, which has been struggling to redefine itself in the shadow of Google's dominance in both search and online advertising. In an attempt to better compete with Google, Microsoft has made a $31-a-share offer for Yahoo, but Yahoo's board has rejected it as too low.
"The company was significantly overstaffed and with a coming consolidation with Microsoft there is going to be pretty dramatic overlap," said Jim Barnett, who left Yahoo in 2003 and is now chief executive of Turn, an automated targeting ad marketplace.
One of the main reasons Microsoft is aiming to buy Yahoo is to improve its expertise on the Web--a market the software giant has yet to dominate despite its best efforts. Even though Yahoo has been struggling, the Internet company is viewed as rich with valuable online brands and talented people. Microsoft will likely want to keep Yahoo employees in a host of areas, including online advertising, social media, and Web search.
"Microsoft needs assistance in the Internet business so they're going to be looking to bring in some Internet-based talent. Yahoo's a step up for them," said Steve Weinstein, research analyst at Pacific Crest Securities.
Still, many talented people departed Yahoo with the layoffs. Casualties include Randy Farmer, who was a community strategy analyst at Yahoo and a virtual worlds pioneer, and Bradley Horowitz, who headed up Yahoo's Advanced Technology Division and oversaw Brickhouse. Horowitz, who could not be reached for comment, may have taken a voluntary severance package and is reported to be joining Google. Salim Ismail, one of his top managers at Brickhouse--a program dedicated to launching innovative products--left voluntarily.
The departures of Brickhouse executives seem to undermine a need at Yahoo to focus on innovative, community-based Web services.
Who to keep
Among the talent pool at Yahoo, several executives stand out in divisions such as social media and search. Those include Jeff Weiner, who oversees Yahoo's consumer Web products. Several sources said he would be a must-hire for Microsoft. "He's a brilliant guy with tremendous insights," said Brian Bowman, who left Yahoo in 2006 as vice president of community and is now chief marketing officer at Reply.com.
Flickr co-founder Katarina Fake is also revered for creating one of the most popular social-media applications, at Yahoo and on the Web. "It would be absurd to lose anyone from Flickr or Delicious," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land.
Several sources also praised Tapan Bhat, vice president of front doors at Yahoo; Scott Moore, who left MSN and is head of Yahoo News; and Brad Garlinghouse, head of communications and community at Yahoo, who bravely wrote the famous "Peanut Butter Manifesto" in 2006 that foreshadowed Yahoo's current problems and suggested layoffs, management changes, and a refocusing on core products.
Feb 13, 2008
Memo to Microsoft: Yahoo's A-list
Feb 11, 2008
Nvidia dialing into mobile phones
Nvidia wants a piece of the exploding smartphone market, with its first major applications processor scheduled to arrive in phones next year.
The graphics chip company is showing off the fruits of its $357 million PortalPlayer acquisition with the APX 2500, its first attempt at building a true computing processor for mobile phones, said Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile business unit. The APX 2500 is designed as a standalone application processor for multimedia phones where talking takes a back seat to watching videos and browsing the Web.
The applications processor in a mobile phone is akin to the Intel or Advanced Micro Devices CPU in a PC. Once a fairly basic part, these chips are getting more and more complex as mobile phones evolve from simple call-and-text devices to small handheld computers.
Right now, the market is dominated by companies like Texas Instruments, Samsung, Freescale Semiconductor, and Marvell, which will make it hard for Nvidia to break into this area. Unlike a PC, most people have no idea what kind of chip is in their mobile phone, so any brand recognition Nvidia might have with consumers really doesn't matter when it comes to making a decision about a phone.
But the company thinks it has two major selling points to push before handset makers and carriers: it knows how to make chips that process video and graphics, and it is throwing its hat in with Microsoft's Windows Mobile development path, Rayfield said.
The 300 or so engineers that came to Nvidia from PortalPlayer had developed a chip that could power music players like SanDisk's Sansa View, but that wasn't really suitable for mobile phones and navigation devices. Nvidia added another 300 engineers of its own to the project after the acquisition closed, and came up with the APX 2500.
The chip is based on the ARM11 core, and can run at up to 750MHz. It can encode and decode 720p high-definition video, meaning you could use a phone based on the APX 2500 as both a high-definition player and camcorder. Nvidia also added some of its GeForce graphics technology that was designed for low-power devices, which allows 3D user interfaces to run on the chip, Rayfield said.
Nvidia is pushing the APX 2500 as the fastest way for handset makers to build a smartphone based on Windows Mobile. Right now, Windows Mobile appeals more to corporate smartphone users, but according to Rayfield, Microsoft is planning to make the next version of the operating system much more consumer-friendly. Nvidia designed its chip in collaboration with Microsoft, and the next version of the operating system will be able to exploit technology within Nvidia's chip, he said.
Still, this approach limits Nvidia's early prospects, as it blocks out both Symbian, the dominant smartphone operating system, and Linux, perhaps the most promising future operating system. Nvidia is a member of Google's Open Handset Alliance, but it's taking a "wait-and-see" attitude toward Android, Rayfield said.
Nvidia has some customers lined up for the APX 2500, but it's not saying who's on board. The company is playing up the mobile phone prospects for the chip, being that it's the week of MWC, but it will also try to sell the chip to companies that make portable navigation systems and personal media players.
Rayfield and his team have their work cut out for them, trying to crack a market like this where they have little to no experience. It's still early days in the smartphone market, but it does seem like there is room for a host of players right now, unlike the PC market's early consolidation around Intel and grudging acceptance of AMD as a second source.
What's Behind Yahoo's Rejection of Microsoft Bid?
Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft's acquisition bid is likely a negotiating strategy to elicit a higher offer and shouldn't be seen as an attempt to resist a deal at all costs, according to analysts.
Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo has many options to improve their position in online services and advertising, and combining forces is their best bet against common rival Google, analysts said.
"It's part of a larger negotiation that's occurring. Clearly, Yahoo should be and is seeking a higher bid, and this is part of that process," said Clayton Moran, a financial analyst with Stanford Group.
Yahoo is unlikely to find a company willing to bid as much as Microsoft for it, while Microsoft will not be able to attain its Internet goals by acquiring a company other than Yahoo. "While they need to negotiate and go through the process, at the end of the day this deal will happen," Moran said.
Yahoo today rejected Microsoft's bid, saying it undervalues the company. Microsoft offered to pay $31 per share for half of Yahoo's outstanding shares and 0.9509 of a Microsoft share for the other half.
At the time of the offer, Microsoft's stock stood at $32.60 and the bid was valued at $44.6 billion, a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's stock price at the time. However, the bid's value has dropped with Microsoft's sliding stock price, which at press time was $28.10. At the same time, Yahoo's stock price has risen from a close of $19.18 on the day before the bid to $29.75 at press time.
Bid Predictions
Moran predicted that Microsoft will adjust its offer so that it ends up at $35 per share, probably increasing the fixed cash portion and reducing the variable stock portion so that value is less vulnerable to Microsoft stock fluctuations. A $35-per-share offer would be a midpoint between the original bid and the $40 per share Yahoo is reportedly seeking.
"We continue to view a Yahoo sale to Microsoft as the most likely outcome," Citigroup financial analysts wrote in a note published Sunday after press reports over the weekend that Yahoo would reject the Microsoft bid. The rejection isn't surprising, but rather consistent with Yahoo's board job to "extract maximum value" for shareholders, the Citigroup analysts wrote.
Yahoo has reportedly held talks with Google and AOL to explore alternatives to a Microsoft acquisition. One scenario being floated would be for Yahoo to outsource its search advertising business to Google, while another, reported Monday by The Times of London, has Yahoo and Time Warner's AOL discussing a possible merger.
However, neither option would match the potential benefits of an acquisition by Microsoft, Moran said. "A combined Yahoo-AOL wouldn't be particularly strong, and Yahoo's stock wouldn't react favorably to that deal," Moran said. A search partnership with Google would boost Yahoo's revenue but it wouldn't address larger problems within the company, he said.
For Moran, if Yahoo has approached AOL, it has done so probably to send a message to Microsoft that it has other options and that Microsoft has to sweeten its offer. Meanwhile, Google's intervention is probably directed at complicating and lengthening the negotiation process between Microsoft and Yahoo, and thus delaying the formation of a stronger rival, Moran said.
While merging with AOL is unlikely to give Yahoo the boost it needs, such a deal would probably be more palatable to Yahoo's management, because Yahoo would be the strongest party in the fusion, according to industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence.
"Yahoo sees its own demise in a Microsoft acquisition. My sense is that Yahoo's management believes that Yahoo's soul wouldn't survive as part of Microsoft," Sterling said.
At this point, the situation is very complicated for both Microsoft and Yahoo. If Yahoo is intent on fending off Microsoft's advances at all costs, Microsoft could opt to walk away empty-handed and face a public embarrassment, or attempt a hostile takeover, which could alienate and scare away Yahoo employees it would want to retain, Sterling said.
At the same time, Yahoo can't simply wave away a generous Microsoft offer if it doesn't have an alternative to it, Sterling said. "There is a great deal at stake for both sides, and it's very complicated," he said.
Microsoft declined to comment about Yahoo's rejection. AOL didn't immediately reply to a request for comment about its reported merger talks with Yahoo.
ASUS P5N-T Deluxe
The new nForce 780i chipset, provided by ASUS, based on the newest Nvidia motherboard solution which should provide quite some novelties for gamers. Before we deal with the motherboard itself, let's see what those are. This is a chipset comprising the nForce 780i SLI SPP, 780i SLI MCP and nForce 200 chips. The SPP chip is in charge of communication between other motherboard parts, communicating with the CPU via the QPB bus, and via HyperTransport link with others.
The SPP also contains the memory controller which supports SLI certified memory kits with speeds as high as DDR2-1200, as well as two PCI-E 1x links. The MCP is more of a multi-purpose controller, i.e. controls the largest number of functions. It supports 10 USB 2.0 ports, has two separate Gbit LAN controllers, the Azalia audio codec, six SATAII rails, one PATA rail, five PCI lines supported, one PCI-E 8x line, four 1x and one 16x line (first gen). Beside all that, it also has the ESA (Enthusiast System Architecture) certificate, which enables real-time monitoring of all vital system info (CPU temperature and voltage, same chipset properties etc.). Finally, we have the nForce 200 chip, which only has the task of managing two remaining PCI-E 16x (second gen) lines.
With this chipset, Nvidia officially supported Penryn processors (Intel's codename for the 45 nm dual- and quad-core CPUs) and, most of all, promoted the 3-way SLI. The new SLI is the most important feature, since some 680i-based mobos can actually work with Penryn after a BIOS update. This SLI regime requires three separate graphics cards and provides performance boosts of up to 280%, which is great (if true). So far, only 8800GTX and 8800 Ultra can be connected into a three-way SLI, since they are the only ones to have the SLI connectors doubled (which is necessary to connect each card to the other two, naturally). These kinds of systems are targeting only the most hardcore gamers, who opt for the highest possible resolutions and detail levels, not giving a single thought as to how much such an option costs.
In the classic “Deluxe” packaging, recognisably one of ASUS's, we received this premium board. Before we took it out of the box, we took a moment to read the specs on the box itself. The back clearly states that this board has 8-phase voltage filtering, perfected by ASUS's engineers, as shown on the diagram curve in the associated picture. Also, the front cover reminds you that you should register on ASUS's member site as a VIP member. Inside the box, there are loads of equipment: six SATA cables, one SATA power cable, one IDE and FDD cable, a bracket with a couple of USB and a single FireWire port, a PSU-mountable fan for a water-cooling system, the driver disc, the manual, and finally, the SLI bridge connector.
Upon extraction of the mobo, we first had a look at the massive cooling system, one with flawless looks. By the way, the board is covered by copper cooling bodies all connected by a single heatpipe, whereas the only separately cooled part is a part of the voltage unit above the CPU socket. In the upper left corner, right next to the voltage unit, an 8-pin EPS 12V connector is situated, which has become quite a trend lately. The voltage unit is 8-phase, as stated on the box, and it gives a very stable voltage while staying cool most of the time. On the right edge of the PCB, in the best possible place, one finds the 24-pin power connector, with the FDD connector located right above it, and the IDE connector following.
Three USB connectors are located on the standard lower spot, as well as the FireWire connector. One USB connector is, however, located on the top of the board, which will certainly be greeted by owners of enclosures with the front panel on top of the case, as there will be less cabling required. The processor socket has enough room around itself to provide easy installation of even the biggest coolers. The six SATA connectors are rotated by 90°, which makes the cabling procedure easier for meticulous users. The back panel is very neat and contains two PS/2 ports (strangely enough, as ASUS cut this number down to 1 on all their motherboards long ago), a coaxial and optical I/O, four USB ports, LAN connectors, audio card connectors and the red-dyed FireWire and eSATA connectors.
The soft part of the motherboard – BIOS, is, again, classic ASUS, which means that it is very neat and descriptive. As far as overclocking is concerned, we remind you that nForce-based motherboards enable clocks for memory and FSB bus, which is present here as well. The FSB can be set in the 533-3000 MHz range (QPB, which is equivalent to 133-750 MHz). Memory settings allow for values of 400-2600 MHz, of which the latter is unattainable, of course. No components will be lacking in voltage either – the processor has the 0.83125-1.9 V range at disposal, with steps of 0.00625 V. Memory was also grewardedh with a large range, 1.85-3.11 V in 0.02 V steps. The CPU VTT can be set in between 1.2 V and 1.55 V in just the same step values, and the NB chip goes from 1.2 V to 2.46 V, again in the same step values. The HT bus has a 1.2-2 V range, and finally, the SB chip with its 1.35-1.85 V range.
We must note that there are two different chipset revisions, the newer one being much cooler and more stable. We tried both of them and were frankly surprised by the differences. While the first revision (probably the initial “press” samples not to be found on the market) was very hot and almost non-overclockable, the second revision was working just as we expected, so both the board and the chipset left a most positive impression on us, as it pushed our sample quad-core processor to 3 GHz and remained quite cool. With all of the advanced technology it brings us, we mark it “approved”, no doubts about that.
Feb 8, 2008
Microsoft Slashes Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-On to $130
It was fun while it lasted, HD-DVD, but that mournful dirge you can almost hear accompanying the Xbox 360 HD DVD player's price plummeting from $180 to $130 isn't played at parties for a reason. Call it a fire sale? With five free HD DVDs in the blender, I can't see why not. Dare I suggest it's now just a matter of time before Microsoft completes the circle (more of spiral, really) by announcing an external Xbox 360 Blu-ray part?
Hold your breath, because I think we could see it happen this year, especially if the PlayStation 3 makes inroads with videophiles who purchase the system as a Blu-ray player first. Watch that happen in an even bigger hurry if Sony drops the price of the PlayStation 3 by another $50 or $100 in time for the holidays.
The Xbox 360 HD DVD drive launched in November 2006 for $200, dropped to $180 by last summer, and saw online resellers independently cut the price to $130 a month ago. Today's announcement is simply Microsoft clearing its inventory catching up.
What would it take to save HD DVD at this point? No less than...
...PlayStation 3 sales spiraling into the toilet. Whatever Sony's faults, that's simply not going to happen. Some analysts and publishers in fact see 2008 as the year Sony gets its mojo back.
...Sony, Fox, Disney, and Liongate issuing a press release that reads "About that exclusive to Blu-ray thing? Kidding!"
...Massive unrepentant international brainwashing. Hey, have you checked what's in your drinking water lately?
Why Users Hate Vista
You rarely hear about a new OS causing people to panic. But IT consultant Scott Pam says that's exactly what his small-business clients are doing when they install Windows Vista on new PCs and run smack into compatibility or usability roadblocks.
Pam's clients are not alone : Since InfoWorld launched its petition drive on Jan. 14 to ask Microsoft to continue selling new XP licenses indefinitely alongside its Vista licenses, more than 75,000 people have signed on. And hundreds of people have commented -- many with ferocious, sometimes unprintable passion. "Right now I have a laptop with crap Vista and I'm going to downgrade to XP because Vista sucks," reads one such comment.
Where does all the vitriol come from?
IT managers and analysts suggest a range of reasons, some based on irrational fears and others based on rational reactions to disruptive changes.
Emotional Effects
"When we first deployed Vista, people told us it sucks, that it's not as good as XP," recalled Sumeeth Evans, IT director at Collegiate Housing Services, an 80-person college facilities management firm.
A month later, he surveyed the staff to see if their views had changed, and they had: "They said it was very good, that they were getting used to it. We asked what was different, and they said they originally didn't like Vista because it was a change. That's human nature."
Microsoft's overzealous schedule in replacing XP with Vista has exacerbated resistance to change, said Michael Silver , a research vice president at Gartner. The company had originally planned to discontinue XP sales on Dec. 31, 2007, just 11 months after Vista was made available to consumers and 14 months after it was made available to enterprises. The date for new license sales to end is now June 30.
In practice, XP's consumer availability ended for many users even sooner -- just six months after Vista's release -- since storefront retailers Best Buy and Circuit City and most computer manufacturers' Web sites stopped selling XP-equipped computers in July 2007. Typically, Microsoft has given customers two years to make such a transition, Silver noted.
Burton Group executive strategist Ken Anderson suggested that the strong emotional identification with XP represented a fundamental shift in how people, including IT staff, now think of operating systems. They have become a familiar extension of what we do and how we work, thus not something want to change often. "When technology becomes part of you, you don't want people to mess with it," he said.
Anderson likened the reaction to XP's impending demise to what happened in the 1980s when Coca-Cola replaced its classic Coke formula with New Coke, causing massive protests by customers who had no reason to change what they drank. The protests forced the company to bring back what we now call Coke Classic. "XP has come to the point of being Coke Classic," he said, with Vista playing the role of New Coke.
The Further the Better
The Englewood (N.J.) Hospital Medical Center switched to Vista shortly after its enterprise release, since it had been in Microsoft's early adopter program. Most users -- mainly nurses and other medical staff -- didn't really notice the upgrade and had few complaints, noted Gary Wilhelm, the business and systems financial manager (a combination of CTO and CFO) at the 2,500-employee facility. That's because they don't really use the OS, but instead work directly in familiar applications that load when they sign in using their ID.
Capacitor manufacturer Kemet saw a similar ho-hum reaction from most of its staff, says Jeff Padgett, the global infrastructure manager. And for the same reason: Users have little direct interaction with the OS. But the staff did push back on Office 2007, whose ribbon interface is a departure from the previous versions. They rebelled to the degree that Padgett has delayed Office 2007 deployment and may not install it at all.
Back at the Englewood hospital, Wilhelm did hear anti-Vista grumbling from people in the administration department, who work more closely with the OS itself for file management and so on. And at Kemet, another group of hands-on users complained about the switch to Vista, noted Padgett: "The people who suffered the most were engineers and IT people."
The phenomenon of hands-on users being the most resistant explains why so many small-business users and consultants have reacted so strongly against Vista, noted Gartner's Silver.
Conversely, those enamored of the latest technology tend to be Vista enthusiasts, said David Fritzke, IT director at the YMCA Milwaukee, which has been adding Vista to its workforce as it buys new computers. "Some users bought Vista for home and then wanted it more quickly at work than we had initially planned to deploy it," he said. Fritzke also found that younger users adapted to Vista more easily.
An introduction to Windows Vista Codec Packs
As many users of Windows Vista have found out, videos downloaded from the internet will not always play. This is often due to the lack of appropriate codec, which decodes the data in to something that you can watch in a media player.
There are hundreds of codecs available, often presented in codec packs to download. Not all of these are stable or present the best possible playback options. This article will show you the best codec packs available for Windows Vista, as well as an easy alternative that can play almost any media file. Many of the packs will also allow DVD playback, which some Windows Vista versions cannot do out of the box.
K-Lite Codec Pack
The K-Lite Codec pack is the most popular codec pack available at the moment and works flawlessly on Windows Vista. The main benefit of this package is that you can choose the broad type of pack you wish to install (either Basic, Standard or Full). Most users will want to install the standard package, as this should play almost any video file available. If you find a video format that is not supported, it is easy to re-install the full pack at a later date. The full pack is primarily designed for people that need to encode as well as decode (for example, in a movie making package), so is overkill for the vast majority of users.
Something that will appeal to many internet users is the built in support for Quicktime and Realmedia videos. Normally you would be required to install separate players from each company to play these formats, both of which are known to include unnecessary bloat! Instead, K-Lite installs only the plugins required to play these filetypes online.
Media Player Classic is installed alongside the codecs, which provides a simple yet functional media viewer for video files. This is a "lite" version of the usual windows media player which may be better suited to some users. This is one of the most comprehensive and well tested codec packs, and updates are frequently released so it is likely that this package will continue to remain the most popular and best supported package for some time yet.
Download K-Lite from Softpedia. Please note that this software includes the option to install the Yahoo toolbar.
Vista Codec Pack
The Vista Codec pack was designed to include a selection of codecs that will play most media files both 32 and 64 Bit versions of Vista. No media playing application is included, however any installed media player should be able to take advantage of the codecs.
Quicktime and Realmedia formats are also supported in this release, allowing video to be streamed in most cases. Although not as comprehensive as the K-Lite codec pack, this may be suited to users looking for a lighter option that will allow more flexibility of the codecs installed.
Download Vista Codec Pack from Softpedia.
Feb 5, 2008
Apple Doubles Storage Capacity of iPhone, iPod Touch
Apple has doubled the capacity of both its iPhone and iPod Touch allowing new customers to spend $100 more and get twice the storage for music, movies, pictures, and podcasts than available with previous models. Introduced today, the 32GB iPod Touch sells for $499 and the 16GB iPhone goes for $499.
Pricing on existing iPod and iPhone models stays the same. But if you're in the market for a new iPhone or iPod Touch, spending $100 more to double your capacity is a pretty good deal.
Of course the larger capacities may rile some existing iPhone and iPod Touch users as was the case when Apple dropped the price of the iPhone.
Could this be seen as another stab at the early adopters? Of course that was not Apple's intentions, but that is an obvious consequence of an upgrade of this magnitude less than a year after the initial release. But it's okay, early adopters, pull that knife out of your back and listen to what Apple has to say is the reason for the upgrade.
Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod and iPhone product marketing said in the release, "For some users, there's never enough memory." This is definitely true, especially with music collections shifting completely digital, but Greg, it still stings for those of us picked up a 16GB iPod Touch merely months ago to have a new bigger and better model become available.
It's kind of funny to think about it, but who would have thought the world would get so upset over a product improvement? Isn't that what companies are supposed to be doing?
The high cost of e-mail autocomplete
I've always been leery of Microsoft Outlook's autocomplete feature. That's the one that guesses who you want to send the e-mail to by looking at the first few letters you type.
It's right most of the time. 
But with e-mail used to send everything from jokes, to family photos to corporate secrets, "most of the time" seems like far too low a bar.
Eli Lilly and its outside lawyers found out this the hard way this week when one of the esquires sent a note intended for a colleague to a New York Times writer with the same last name. (Note: I'm not certain which e-mail program the lawyer was using, and it's supposition, though a seemingly safe bet, that some sort of autocomplete was to blame.)
The result was that confidential negotiations with the government involving as much as $1 billion quickly became nonconfidential. The Times, doing what it does, got a big scoop.
A representative for Pepper Hamilton, the law firm whose barrister sent the note, was not immediately available for comment. But, in good news for the firm, an Eli Lilly representative told Portfolio that the firm is not immediately getting the boot.
Still, that's some pretty big consequences for a feature that saves a few seconds' time. Sure, those seconds add up over time. But I imagine the lawyer in question would give any amount of time to have that e-mail back.
I try to always give my address bar a second look before hitting send, but once or twice have found my note to a colleague going to an outside contact with a similar name. Maybe Microsoft should get rid of the feature.
Then again, in a world where businesses and governments are increasingly secretive, maybe the typo has become the greatest opportunity for openness and democracy. On second thought, leave it in there.
Update: A Microsoft representative said the feature can be turned off. Here's how:
• Under the Tools menu, click Options.
• On the Preferences tab, click E-mail Options, and then click Advanced E-mail Options.
• Select or clear the "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields" check box.
Another suggestion comes from ClearContext VP Brad Meador, who recommends people tweak Outlook settings to delay sending e-mail for a matter of minutes. That way there's a chance to catch a broad array of mistakes before they go out forever.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB Hard
If it isn't already obvious, storage space is getting to be more and more important. High definition content is using much more space than previous forms of media, and the smallish quarter terabyte drives we've been using a mere 2 years ago really won't cut it these days. In a recent review, we've pointed out that a 10 second OTA HD signal consumes about 25MB. That's 9GB gone for just one hour of recording. Despite not watching much "live" TV, I do like to record a lot of television to catch up on later and it's clear that if I want to record in HD, I'll need a lot of space.
Enough of that banter, since if you're here reading this article now, you're already aware of all of this. One terabyte drives are in full force now, and today we'll be looking at the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11. While this series of Barracudas come in a variety of capacities, we're focusing on their 1TB model.
The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
Like all of their consumer drives, the Barracuda 7200.11 is a standard sized 3.5" hard drive, so it should fit just fine in any internal drive bay that follows the usual IDE specifications. Below is a quick cheat sheet comparing the 7200.11 to the 7200.10 which we've looked at in the past:
The biggest change from the 7200.10 to the 7200.11 is the increase in platter size. We mentioned there will be a few capacities offered, but we can sum it up by saying that there will be 3; 500GB, 750GB and 1TB. If you're shopping for the 1TB version, another change from the previous model is the doubling of cache from 16MB to 32MB. The 500GB and 750GB will only ship with 16MB. As the name implies, the Barracuda spins its drives at 7200rpm, allowing for a sustained transfer rate of 105MB per second. Keep in mind that this is a number provided by Seagate, and we have no numbers officially regarding their earlier products.
Going back to the platter size increase we mentioned last paragraph, the easiest way to create bigger hard drives is to increase the areal density. Seagate was able to cram a lot of space into their previous 7200.10 through the use of Perpendicular Recording Technology. Perpendicular recording addresses the shortcomings of longitudinal recording by aligning the bit magnetization in a "standing" position. Seagate has already introduced this technology earlier with the Barracuda 7200.10, their Momentus 5400.3 and their Cheetah 15000.5 Enterprise drives. The Barracuda 7200.11 introduces the second generation of Perpendicular Recording where we now jump to 250GB platters.
To explain Perpendicular Recording, you can think of it this way. Magnetic recording is a lot like sewing. Think of the magnetic field from a write head as a needle, and the recording layer of a disc as the cloth you are trying to sew. The fabric is the magnetic strength of the disc and the needle is the strength of the write head (the write field) Your data is the seam in the fabric. The more stitches per inch, the more data you store. To make your data durable, you want to use a thick fabric, and a long needle, but this gets in the way of making many stitches to the inch.
In longitudinal recording, the magnetic layer (the cloth) is laid directly onto the aluminum substrate. When data is written, it is like sewing with the cloth laid flat on a table. Going flat along the table, the needle can only make stitches far apart. If you use a shorter needle, and thinner cloth, the stitches get closer together, but the seam gets weaker and weaker. When the material gets too thin, the seam tears, and the data is lost.
In perpendicular recording, a soft underlayer is put down between the substrate and the recording layer. The soft underlayer lifts the cloth off the table, letting the needle go into the cloth straight up and down. Now you can put stitches very close together, and still use a long needle, and thick cloth. Your data seam has more stitches, and it is stronger as well.
As the larger platters increase areal density, it allows Seagate to build large capacity drives with fewer platters. Few platters mean less power consumed (about 1W at idle and load according to Seagate's specs comparing the 7200.11 to the 7200.10) as well as increased performance given that the data is more tightly packed. With Seagate's SoftSonic motor and fewer platters (when compared against competitor's equivalent capacity drives), the Barracuda should be quieter as well.
The Barracuda 7200.11 is a native SATA product and supports speeds of SATA 3.0Gb/s. Unlike some of the first batches of SATA drives, a native drive will bypass the legacy Task File reads and writes, as well as avoiding the limitation of 133 Mbytes/sec for Ultra DMA Mode 6 transfers. While the 7200.11 supports SATA 3Gb/s transfer speeds, it is backwards compatible with SATA 1.5GB/s hosts. SATAII mode is also supported by the drive and it is enabled by default. Provided your motherboard supports it, it would be a good idea to leave it this way, but be sure to flip the jumper position if not. One of our forum readers in the past had an issue with a MSI P4N Diamond (no SATAII support) and a Seagate drive and changing the jumper corrected his problem of the drive not being detected.
As with all Barracudas starting with the 7200.7 series, the Barracuda 7200.11 fully supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Introduced with the Serial ATA II spec, this is a feature that can only be found in native SATA hard drives. Unlike LCQ, NCQ works by allowing a drive to process multiple commands at the same time. These commands can be rescheduled or reordered on a whim, and can also issue new requests while the drive is retrieving data from the previous request. While NCQ support is present on the drive, the controller used will also need to support NCQ in order to take advantage of it. As with the previous NCQ enabled Barracudas, the drive will work fine without an NCQ controller.
Intel's Silverthorne, Tukwila Updates and More
Silverthorne Shapes Up
At the International Solid State Circuits Conference held at San Francisco, Intel presented 14 new technical papers that revolved around ultra mobile wireless computing, wireless radio technology standards and Tera-scale computing project. In this article, we'll be summarizing the most significant updates presented.
First up, Intel revealed more information on its processor technologies. Designed for ultra mobile computing, Intel spent a good deal of time relating how Silverthorne processors on the "Menlow" Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform are going to usher in a whole new segment of devices. Silverthorne is a low-powered Intel-Architecture (IA) processor that's derived from the Core 2 Duo desktop processor, thus conforming to the full C2D Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), but it consumes far lower power than even the ultra-low-voltage (ULV) Core Solo/Duo processor. Based on the same 45m high-K metal-gate CMOS transistor design as was the desktop Penryn processors, this 47-million transistor chip is designed for sub-1W to 2W operation - something that even the lowest powered ULV Core Solo processor cannot attain as it has trouble hitting the 5W barrier. To further conserve power, the processor uses a split I/O power supply to allow certain sections of the chip to shut down when not required. Other power management techniques incorporated is a Deep Power Down (C6) state, clock gating and power optimized register file to further curb dynamic and leakage power.
The Silverthorne is a dual-issue in-order 16-stage pipeline architecture with Hyper-threading (HT) support. Note that all current mainstream Intel processors are using out-of-order architectures, but on a processor of its scale/use and its limited resources, Intel opted for a more streamlined approach with lower analysis overhead. In case you're wondering why Hyper-threading is again making a comeback, the Silverthorne is a single-core processor and the best way to utilize its already limited resources effectively is via SMT type of Hyper-threading. Another reason HT was incorporated was because it required very little more silicon/logic to greatly increase efficiency. When HT first came to the consumer level several years ago, we've already seen its benefits of resource optimization through parallelism. This worked marvelously on single-core processors but has lost its advantage in the current multi-core processor era. As such, the Silverthorne is a single-core processor with dual-thread handling capability.
As for the status of the Silverthorne processors, Intel is already sampling them for production and their schedules are on track for introduction in the first half of this year. While Intel can't yet comment on the exact specifics of the chip details, performance at the moment is estimated to be around the same class as that of the first generation Pentium M processor (Banias core). This is based on Silverthorne's single-thread operation and it should fare slightly better with HT. Considering that Silverthorne processors are destined for ultra mobile computing devices such as UMPC-type devices and perhaps even Smartphones, that sounds like a lot of juice for very decent power draw. One of its most formidable opponents is none other than Samsung's ARM processor series, but we'll reserve true judgment when appropriate gadgets are made available utilizing the Silverthorne processor. Currently, the Intel A100 and A110 ultra mobile processors are using the Stealey core that's derived off the original Pentium M core. Silverthorne and its Menlow platform will replace them once they debut.
