Seagate announced today that it is the first company to have shipped 1 Billion hard drives. This would equate to about 79 million terabytes or 158 billion hours of digital video or 1.2 trillion hours of tunes. Seagate has said it took 29 years to reach the 1 billion milestone, however its next billion in less than five years away. Digital content has exploded in recent years creating a huge growth in demand for storage.

Well its patch Tuesday, so if you will excuse us we have to download the latest XP updates.

News Release

Flash based hard drives are being offered on a regular basis now from the top tier notebook manufacturers. There have been lots of recent reports saying that the failure rates have been extremely high with a 20 to 30% return rate.

Stealth has been providing flash based solid state drive solutions for more than 10 years. It has been our experience that the drives we have used have had extremely low failure rates. In fact it is rare that we ever see any returns at all.

So what is happening?

Although we don’t have actual manufacturing data regarding the failures, it is our opinion that the returns are a result of performance versus costs issues. SSD options are not cheap and if your expectation is that your OS will boot up in a few seconds then you are in for a huge disappointment.

Over the years Stealth Computer has supplied many customers with solutions utilizing integrated solid state drive technology. SSD’s are always chosen based on the actual needs and demands of the application itself. Extreme shock and vibration, extended temperature ranges and the ability to operate in strong magnetic fields are ideal reasons on why a Solid State Drives should be specified and deployed. Not because they have become the latest gadget to have.

See the Stealth Computer FAQ on SSD

Microsoft releases SP1 and here are the release notes – that have been anticipated for while now.

They are mostly bug fixes and performance tweaks, but the sheer volume of them is certainly something to behold.

SP1 includes 23 security updates and 550 hotfixes resulting in a 434.5MB download (726.5MB for the 64-bit version).

SP1 is available for download now via Microsoft’s sites, with an auto-update rollout scheduled for next month

Intel says it will ship quad-core chips designed specifically for laptops later this year.

The quad-core chips, most likely for desktop replacement laptops, will be based on the Core 2 Duo architecture and will ship in the third quarter, Intel officials said.

The initial quad-core processors will strain battery life and may first make their way to the high-end gaming and workstation notebooks that require heavy processing power, said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager, Intel Mobile Platforms Group, earlier this year.

Intel was keen on making this chip consume less battery. In fact, Intel officials had declared that users expecting quad-core mobile processors may have to wait until issues surrounding power consumption are resolved.

Here’s an interesting application using our Stealth Rackmount computers.

The Ontario Science Centre, a science based museum in Toronto, Canada opened a new facility aimed at getting youth and young adults interested in science and technology. Over 50 different multi-media experiences were designed to inspire visitors to take on and find practical solutions to current world problems; merge art with science; and work with a variety of materials. Visitors are challenged to think differently about themselves and the world.

A quantity of 77 Stealth 2U rackmount computer systems were deployed in rack cabinets conserving space without jeopardizing processing power or system reliability. Stealth built custom rack servers that were only 3.5″ in height (2U) and featured internal hot swappable thermal cooling fans for easy maintenance and reduced downtime.

The IT staff involved in implementing the project has commented “The Stealth hardware has been Rock Solid”. Since the opening there has been many thousands of children and young adults who have experienced technology like never before.

Stealth received a nomination from Microsoft’s Impact Awards for this inspiring application.

The Ontario Science Centre is also a leading developer of interactive exhibitions for science centers around the world.