Moving and Storage Business News

The News Review:

- Solid-State Drives May Be Trendy, But Consumers Aren’t Buying It
- HP Introduces Thin Client Disguised as a Laptop
- OTCPicks.com Daily Market Movers Digest Midday Report for Friday,…
- Xasax touts trading systems with homegrown HPC

Solid-State Drives May Be Trendy, But Consumers Aren’t Buying It
Wired News – Jan 25, 2008
hard disk drives are still going to be your traditional drive in laptops for many years to come. SSDs store data on nonvolatile memory chips, also known as flash memory chips, which are similar to the RAM chips used for computer memory except that they don’t lose data when the power goes off. Compared with more traditional hard disk drives, or HDDs, which store data on spinning platters, SSDs are faster and less susceptible to damage from shock or vibration, because SSDs have no moving parts. They’re also much more expensive than hard drives. For instance, for the price you pay to switch from the MacBook Air’s standard 80-GB hard drive to the 64-GB solid-state option ($1,300), you could buy a whole new MacBook. It’s the same story for other notebook manufacturers. Adding a 64-GB SSD to a Dell laptop that normally comes with a 128-GB disk drive costs an extra $1,000…
And while solid-state drives do offer superior power savings — an important metric for laptops — the exorbitant prices for the drives mean that their popularity in notebooks will be muted. “We look at ourselves as very much a consumer-focused storage company,” Clark says of Seagate’s philosophy. “For us, it’s more about areal densities and meeting the needs of the consumer. Right now, the best way to do that is with rotating discs. The bottom line is that consumers are voting for storage space: The more the better, and the cheaper the better. In other words, solid state has a ways to go before posing any legitimate threat to hard disk drives.

HP Introduces Thin Client Disguised as a Laptop
PC World – Jan 25, 2008
The HP Compaq 6720T Mobile Thin Client has 1G byte of internal flash storage and will be more of a terminal than a full-blown PC, with data storage and system management handled from a remote server, the company said Thursday. The laptop boots off Windows XP Embedded OS in the flash module. Because data isn’t stored on the laptop, there is less risk of a company losing data, said Thai Nguyen, HP worldwide product marketing manager for thin clients. The thin-client laptop is also managed from a server, diminishing management challenges such as issuing software updates, Nguyen said. Along with better security and easier system management, thin-client architecture uses less power than traditional PCs, said Klaus Besier, vice president for thin clients at HP…
The laptop boots off Windows XP Embedded OS in the flash module. Because data isn’t stored on the laptop, there is less risk of a company losing data, said Thai Nguyen, HP worldwide product marketing manager for thin clients. The thin-client laptop is also managed from a server, diminishing management challenges such as issuing software updates, Nguyen said. Along with better security and easier system management, thin-client architecture uses less power than traditional PCs, said Klaus Besier, vice president for thin clients at HP. The thin-client laptop does not have a fan or moving parts such as a hard drive. The product is targeted at vertical industries such as health care and insurance, Nguyen said.

OTCPicks.com Daily Market Movers Digest Midday Report for Friday,…
Free with registration – M2 Presswire – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jan 25, 2008
The company’s Intelligent Rapid Delivery System (IRDS) overcomes many of the roadblocks that have previously prevented widespread adoption of high quality streaming video. Through IRDS and their video-on-demand services, they deliver full-screen DVD quality movie experiences to broadband customers nationwide while implementing security measures to combat the threat of piracy. The company currently provides direct-to-desktop progressive downloading for broadband users, utilizing a proprietary player to deliver full-length films and television shows for viewing by the next generation of media viewers. We strongly believe in ReelTimes future and see unlimited potential beyond the PC into other media platforms, including set top boxes and handheld devices. ReelTime’s end-to-end delivery system (IRDS) has significant advantages in cost and structure over other systems in current use and the revolutionary nature of the system should allow ReelTime to quickly become a dominant player in the video-on-demand marketplace. RLTR News: January 23 – New Content Pact With Sony and ReelTime ReelTime Rentals, Inc. (OTC: RLTR) announced that the Company has executed an agreement with Sony Pictures Television, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment, to provide select motion picture film content to ReelTime’s existing content roster.

Xasax touts trading systems with homegrown HPC
Computer Business Review – Jan 25, 2008
“I spent a lot of time looking at enterprise storage systems. They all cost anything between $5,000 and $10,000 per TB. We’ve built this for just $1,500 per TB,” Lieske said. “That’s what allowing us to under-cut the bigger players. “Xasax keeps track of “tick” or trading data including futures options for over 250,000 trading symbols on US stock exchanges…
“Xasax keeps track of “tick” or trading data including futures options for over 250,000 trading symbols on US stock exchanges. The start-up says its aim is to provide trading and data storage systems access to traders, hedge funds and other organizations that previously couldn’t afford such services. For traders making large six-figure trades based on moving prices, even millisecond delays can cut into profits. “The whole play is about low latency. So far only the big bulge-bracket investment banks have been able to afford the systems you need to deliver that,” Lieske said. “But our system was much less expensive to create, so we can provide our customers a service for thousands of dollars per month, instead of the tens or hundreds of thousands that it would cost them to run their own systems. We’re giving the small guys a chance.