robin harris

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Apple's new Macbooks: flop or fiasco?

The news that Apple has cut Macbook production by 20-30% may not be surprising given the world economy. But when HP reports that their Q3 notebook revenue grew 26% and Mac resellers are offering rebates on the new 'books things have gone very wrong in Cupertino. Looking,...

Tags: Revenue, Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., NeXTCube, iMac G4, Steve, Netbooks, Notebooks, Desktops, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-11-24

Where flash belongs

Putting flash into disk packaging, while convenient, is sub-optimal. Disk latency is so great that no one worries about adding a few hundred microseconds to an I/O. But once you've got low-latency storage those microseconds start to add up. But I didn't really get the underlying advantage...

Tags: Disk, Latency, I/O, Disk Latency, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-11-10

Blu-ray is dead: the sequel

Bill Hunt, Blu-ray defender? Over on The Digital Bits blogger Bill Hunt rebukes me for calling Blu-ray dead. Then he goes on to agree with almost everything I said - except for the conclusion. With friends like that, Blu-ray doesn't need me! Industry...

Tags: HD, Storage Price, Blu-Ray, Corporate Communications, DVD, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Marketing, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-10-31

Blu-ray is dead - heckuva job, Sony!

Blu-ray is in a death spiral. 12 months from now Blu-ray will be a videophile niche, not a mass market product. With only a 4% share of US movie disc sales and HD download capability arriving, the Blu-ray disc Association BDA is still smoking dope. Even $150...

Tags: Job, Sony Corp., Time Warner Inc., Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray Disc Association, Blu-Ray, DVD, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-10-28

Learn to love a 10 foot HDTV

When it comes to watching DVDs and HD video, bigger is a lot better. Moving from a 50" LCD to a 120" front projector has made me a believer. And it cost less than an LCD or rear projector of half the size. I spent 8 weeks...

Tags: Screen, DLP, HDTV, LCD, Basement Room, Projector Quality, DLP Projector, Projectors, Hardware, Components, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-10-27

Apple notebook hits and misses

The Apple product transition mentioned by Apple's CFO has arrived. Like other industry watchers, Storage Bits looked into its crystal ball to predict what it would look like. Overall, Apple did OK, with some surprising omissions and changes. Hits: Product = notebook In the first...

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Quad-core, Apple MacBook, Battery, Apple Inc., Apple MacBook Pro, Steve, Notebooks, Engineering, Tablets, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-10-14

Techies choose Obama - by a landslide

If techies could choose the next President, Obama would win in a landslide. Checking donors from 10 large tech companies, including Apple, Dell, Google and Microsoft, over 90% of the donations support the senator from Illinois. Why does high-tech love Obama? First the numbers The...

Tags: Landslide, Broadband, Obama, McCain, Telecommunications, Broadband Internet, Network Technology, Telecom & Utilities, Networking, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-10-05

How to read your FBI file

As part of the occasional series Life in post-Constitutional America I'm pleased to offer a brief primer on How to read your FBI file. It isn't as easy as you'd think, since the FBI has failed several times to create a modern data management system - which may not be...

Tags: FBI, File, Mistakes, Federal Government, Government, Data Management, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-10-01

Blu-ray ix-nay?

Nielsen's VideoScan service found Blu-ray's video disk market share dropped 13.4% the week of September 14. Is this the beginning of the end for Blu-ray? No, the Blu-ray problem is fixable. The question is, will Sony have the guts to do what it must? Sadly, that...

Tags: Blu-ray, Nielsen, Current Pricing, DVD, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-09-29

Fast, tough pocket storage

I've owned a couple of dozen flash drives starting back when they were a dollar a megabyte. Several of them have broken - usually when most needed. But I've found a flash drive that not only handles the rigors of my car-keys-and-change pocket, but has also...

Tags: Storage, USB Flash Drive, CVGT, Flash Memory, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-09-23

SanDisk's music-on-flash gamble - will it work?

SanDisk and several record companies are announcing a new way to buy MP3s: slotMusic. They are loading the music on flash memory - micro-SD cards it looks like. Will this work? Compared with downloadable MP3s, there are a couple of advantages. First, you get...

Tags: Record Company, SanDisk Corp., Media, MP3, Apple iTunes, Music, Digital Music, Digital Media, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-09-22

Your capacity will vary

By an increasing amount Why is your storage capacity always less, sometimes a lot less, then what you see advertised on the box? There is only one rule: you will never get the capacity the vendor advertises. Storage vendors don't mean to be lying. They just...

Tags: Disk, Capacity, Disk Capacity, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-09-16

2 platter, 500GB, 2.5" drive

Western Digital is announcing - and commencing volume shipments of - their first 2.5" 500 GB drive. Hey, didn't Hitachi and Samsung get there first? Not really. The 12.5mm Hitachi drive was too big to fit in most notebooks. Samsung's 9.5mm drive fits -...

Tags: Hitachi Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Head, WD, MSRP, Notebooks, Storage, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-09-12

How to archive on disk drives

Archiving on hard drives? Now that disk drives are cheaper per gigabyte than tape cartridges, you might be tempted to archive data on disk drives and stick them on a shelf. Don't do it! Your data won't last. The reason: the bits on the...

Tags: Disk, Disk Drive, Archiving, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-09-09

IDF and the new Mac notebooks

The Intel Developer Forum makes it clear what Apple's new notebooks - which I predict will be announced Tuesday, September 16 - will offer. Will it be worth the wait? If longer battery life and higher performance are important to you - yes. And if you weren't...

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Apple Inc., Graphics, IDF, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-08-25

3D HD cellphone video: a killer app for next decade storage

Terabyte notebooks are coming in a couple of years. But what will we fill them with? Glad you asked. How about 3D HDTV cell phone footage? Don't laugh. It's coming. Flashback When I bought my first external hard drive - 30 MB for $300 - I...

Tags: 3D, Phone, Killer Application, Storage, Cell Phone, Video, Terabyte Notebook, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-08-14

HGST demos 600Gbit/in² disk density

Disk vendors have a rough idea of how other to reach 10 TB drives within 10 years. But what about 2 years? Hitachi global storage technologies has announced that they have achieved 2 1/2 times the current commercial recording density in a laboratory demonstration. What does that...

Tags: Disk, Density, HGST, Current Recording Density, Parity Code, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-08-04

Why there's no Mac tablet this quarter

The Mac blogosphere wants a tablet Mac for this quarter's "product transition." Here's why they won't get it. Good news: the Internet isn't making us stupid Apple's CFO mentioned a product transition driving gross margins down. Most commentators don't seem know what gross margin means, and...

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Margin, Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., Tablet, Product Transition, Mac Blogosphere, Bits, Slab, Sales Strategy, Desktops, Notebooks, Research & Development, Sales Force Management, Sales, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Business Operations, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-07-30

Apple's coming notebook transition

Apple is readying a major product transition. We know because they told us so. In the quarterly financial crime call chief financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer referred several times to a "...future product transition which I can't discuss today". That was interesting for two reasons. First, the...

Tags: Notebook, Apple Macintosh, Apple Inc., Blu-ray, Product Transition, Portable Growth, Desktops, Hardware, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-07-24

Super flash, hyper flash

Samsung has announced a new SLC flash part with 5x the write/erase cycle spec over standard single-level cell SLC NAND flash. They call it server grade flash. Is this the flash promised land or marketing hype? 5x what? The press release doesn't mention any numbers, but...

Tags: Sun Microsystems Inc., Storage Pyramid, Marketing Research, Storage, Marketing, Hardware, Robin Harris

Blog posts 2008-07-17