Update : New chart included Starhub consumer plans can be read here.

Today, 3 telcos announced their Fibre broadband plans which runs on the Opennet fibre to the home infrastructure. With new telcos jumping onto the bandwagon, prices will be pushed down for end consumers.

So far, Singtel is the first to release it’s price plans and M1 followed just hours ago. Singtel does not have low speed plans  (<100Mbps) but focus more on bundling tv and video services to their plans. Their plans starts from 150Mbps priced at S$85.90 which is similar to Starhub’s 100Mbps cable broadband plan. M1 will offer a 3-month free trial of the fibre broadband service at 100Mbps to residential customers whose homes are ready for service. Customers can sign up for the free trial only on 1 September at any M1 Shop.

The other plans offer a speed of 200Mbps which are quite similar as they’re bundled with tv and video services. Prices range from $95.90 to $109.90. If you are a football fan, the exPlore Home Sports Package might interest you. Of course, you would also get some discount with your singtel mobile line.

M1, the new comer has more variety ranging from 25Mbps to 1Gbps. 1Gbps would be too costly at S$399 per month. The more affordable plans would be the 25Mbps at S$39, 50Mbps at S$49 and 100Mbps at S$59. Just like Singtel, M1 also offer a Fixed Line thrown in for free incoming and outgoing calls.

Starhub has yet to offer their pricing structure. LGA telecoms has revealed on straits times that they do have a S$50 for 50Mbps plan in line. The other operator SuperInternet is prepared but yet to reveal pricing information of their services.

We have consolidated a chart which comprises of the existing data we gathered from various press releases and news over the internet for your easy reference.

M1 offers free trial and Singapore’s first

1Gbps plan on the new national fibre network

A range of other competitive tariff plans for high speed

services also available for homes and businesses

SINGAPORE, 31 August 2010 – M1 will launch its high-speed fibre broadband service with speeds of up to 1Gbps and fixed voice service on 1 September 2010. A range of new tariff plans, including Singapore’s first 1Gbps plan for homes and businesses will be available.

Four new broadband plans for residential customers with downlink speeds of 1Gbps, 100Mbps, 50Mbps and 25Mbps will be offered on the new fibre network. They will also provide maximum uplink speeds of up to 500Mbps to ensure the best streaming and gaming experience for customers.

These plans cost from S$39 per month for 25Mbps to S$399 per month for 1Gbps. The 100Mbps plan, at $59 per month, is the lowest in the market. Students who sign up for any M1 mobile plan will enjoy a special subscription rate of only S$39 for the 100Mbps broadband plan.

Residential broadband customers also have the option of signing up for free incoming and outgoing calls on M1 Fixed Voice, which is M1’s new fixed line service.

To mark the launch, M1 will offer a 3-month free trial of the fibre broadband service at 100Mbps to residential customers whose homes are ready for service. Customers can sign up for the free trial only on 1 September at any M1 Shop.

Residential customers whose homes are ready for service can sign up for the broadband and fixed voice services from 2 September at any M1 Shop.

For corporate customers, M1 will offer complete business solutions with customized offerings on the fibre network, including fixed voice, IP Centrex and managed services. A range of corporate plans with speeds from 10Mbps to 1Gbps based on GPON and Active Ethernet technology will be offered. Corporate customers can call 6655 5588 or contact their M1 account managers for the range of available services and plans.

To check the fibre readiness status of their homes or businesses, customers should go to www.opennet.com.sg

“M1 has been gearing up for the launch of the fibre network which will open up a new world of innovative applications and rich content for homes and businesses. We are now ready to offer an enriched broadband experience at ultra high speeds to our customers and at the most competitive prices,” said Ms Karen Kooi, M1’s Chief Executive Officer.

“Our customers are invited to sign up for the free trial on 1 September to experience first-hand our services on the new fibre network,” she added.

Student Benefits :

^ To enjoy the benefit, customer is required to show a valid student pass and sign up or

recontract a mobile line.

* All prices inclusive of 7% GST

M1, Singapore’s most exciting and innovative integrated communications service provider, was launched in April 1997. It provides a full range of voice and data as well as fixed and mobile broadband services. M1 aims to be the leader in the communications business, focusing on value, quality and customer service. More information on M1 is available at www.m1.com.sg

From 1 September 2010, customers can register their interest for the high-speed fibre services at www.singtel.com/exstream.

Businesses to exploit full potential of Managed Services and Cloud Solutions

SingTel will introduce eVolve, a new fibre solution for businesses. Built on SingTel’s wholly owned and managed infrastructure, eVolve will only carry business traffic for quality and performance that businesses rely on. eVolve complements SingTel’s existing suite of fibre services, providing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with unprecedented price performance.

Businesses can leverage SingTel’s high-speed fibre services to access its suite of Managed Services and Cloud Solutions. These services open up new possibilities for companies to improve productivity and scale their operations cost effectively to meet changing business demands.

SingTel’s Cloud Solutions include on-demand computing services and productivity software such as SingTel ONEOffice, online storage and real-time back-up capabilities, and high quality video and data collaboration services.  These services offer the benefits of ICT on a subscription basis, without heavy upfront investments in infrastructure.

With SingTel as their trusted business partner, businesses can have peace of mind and enjoy a one-stop ICT experience.

SingTel To Offer TV Apps Store
Singapore – Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) is pleased to announce today that it will be offering a comprehensive suite of affordable consumer and business applications on its high-speed fibre services to retail customers. SingTel will also offer carriage-based high-speed fibre services on a wholesale basis to retail service providers (RSPs).

SingTel harnesses capabilities of NGNBN and its own fibre networks

Leveraging the Next Generation National Broadband Network (NGNBN) deployed by OpenNet and SingTel’s own extensive fibre infrastructure, SingTel will provide unparalleled service quality and speeds to both retail customers and wholesale to RSPs. Customers can look forward to a range of high-speed fibre services with downlink speeds of up to 200Mbps, uplink speeds of up to 100Mbps and international bandwidth of up to 25Mbps. SingTel’s fibre network is scalable and capable of providing even higher speeds in the future to meet the needs of our retail and wholesale customers.

Mr Allen Lew, CEO Singapore, SingTel, said: “The availability of an ultra high-speed fibre network through the NGNBN and our own fibre infrastructure presents SingTel with significant opportunities to break new grounds in terms of service innovation and value creation. We will leverage our reputation of a reliable network operator, astute customer insights and an effective partner ecosystem to deliver personalised customer-centric applications, which will pique the imagination of consumers and increase the productivity of businesses.

“These distinctive applications which focus on entertainment, convergence and productivity enhancement will ensure that SingTel continues to not only lead but shape the digital media and ICT market in Singapore.”

In the retail space, SingTel will also further its transformation into a leading multimedia and ICT services provider, with a suite of breakthrough services for its consumer and business customers to be introduced later in September this year.

Consumers stay connected and entertained 24/7

SingTel will launch a high-speed fibre service, known as exStream, with downlink speeds of up to 200Mbps. Customers can choose from three new packages which are designed with relevant applications, and with consumers’ needs in mind to enhance their lifestyles at work, at home and at play.

With the exPress portal, customers can freely express their personalities as well as stay closer to their loved ones anytime, anywhere. They will enjoy features like unified messaging, online storage and sharing of multimedia content and high quality multi-party video chat.

With unified messaging, customers have single access to multiple social networking sites and enjoy chat aggregation. They can customise their exPress homescreen for easy access to their favourite multimedia content like news, videos, music etc – all on a single online web portal.

With the exCite service, customers can experience the world’s best video search engine allowing customers to find the widest range of online video content and stream them smoothly from sites like YouTube and Tudou. Customers can create their own entertainment channel and experience limitless internet content, right from their TV screen. exCite also gives customers access to Singapore’s first TV Apps Store, starting with a catalogue of over 30 TV games. The Store is based on an open TV platform enabling developers to easily create exciting applications. A gesture-based remote control and predictive text searches in English and Chinese offer easier navigation.

With exCite Home and exPlore Home bundled plans, customers will be the first in Singapore to watch pay TV programmes through fibre, while enjoying the benefits of the high-speed fibre services like the exPress portal. exPlore Home Sports also combines the best of mio TV Sports package, including the interactive applications with the high-speed fibre access as an integrated plan.

From 1 September 2010, customers can register their interest for the high-speed fibre services at www.singtel.com/exstream.

Businesses to exploit full potential of Managed Services and Cloud Solutions

SingTel will introduce eVolve, a new fibre solution for businesses. Built on SingTel’s wholly owned and managed infrastructure, eVolve will only carry business traffic for quality and performance that businesses rely on. eVolve complements SingTel’s existing suite of fibre services, providing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with unprecedented price performance.

Businesses can leverage SingTel’s high-speed fibre services to access its suite of Managed Services and Cloud Solutions. These services open up new possibilities for companies to improve productivity and scale their operations cost effectively to meet changing business demands.

SingTel’s Cloud Solutions include on-demand computing services and productivity software such as SingTel ONEOffice, online storage and real-time back-up capabilities, and high quality video and data collaboration services. These services offer the benefits of ICT on a subscription basis, without heavy upfront investments in infrastructure.

With SingTel as their trusted business partner, businesses can have peace of mind and enjoy a one-stop ICT experience.

Enjoy Ultimate Shopping Fun at COMEX 2010

Hottest Sales and Great Prizes of the Summer Only in Kingston

Singapore – (August 26, 2010) – IT shoppers, watch out! Numerous premium prizes including digital cameras are waiting for those who are planning to get their desired Kingston products at COMEX 2010. COMEX, as Singapore’s biggest IT and Consumer Electronics Exhibition, will be held from 2^nd to 5^th September at the Suntec City this year and Kingston, the world leader in memory products, is ready to let you enjoy the shopping fun during the 4-day event. Furthermore, end users can also check out Kingston’s new-launched water-cooled HyperX H2O kit and experience the incredibly high-speed that Kingston SSDNow performs through the on-site live demonstration. Come to COMEX 2010 and get your desired Kingston memory products. Then grab all amazing prizes home at Kingston’s redemption booth (Booth No. #6435, Level 6, Suntec City). For more detailed information, please visit www.kingston.com/asia/sgcomex.

Draw Your Luck with Simple Purchase

Anyone who purchases Kingston’s memory products at COMEX 2010 will be entitled to join the lucky draw and stand a chance to take a digital camera home! The valuable prizes include digital cameras, CK Tangs voucher at value of S$ 50, and many more Kingston premium gifts. There will be over 3,000 prizes waiting to be won at Kingston’s redemption booth during the 4-day exhibition!

Buy and Be Rewarded Full-handed

What is more, to show Kingston’s appreciation to its loyal consumers for their full support, anyone who purchases any capacity of HyperX or Branded memory will be immediately rewarded by a Starbucks coupon worth of S$ 5. Consumers who purchase any Kingston SSDNow products will get an exclusive Kingston laptop sleeve. For those who purchase Kingston’s products worth of S$100 or above will instantly get a Kingston HyperX LoVo show bag. First come, first serve; with your good luck, you will be able to win great prizes at Kingston’s redemption booth!

Don’t walk away empty-handed! To win these premium prizes is way too easy! Just come and explore by yourself! You will surely enjoy the Summer Fun with Kingston! For more detailed information, please visit the Kingston web site at www.kingston.com/asia.

Looking for a cheap mid range symbian phone with silder qwerty keyboard. The Nokia C6 might just suit your basic needs as a phone, social use with 5 mega pixel camera. Check out our unboxing video and upcoming review of this phone.

Firebox 4.0 beta 4 is now available for download

Firefox 4 Beta 4 is available in 39 languages.
Firefox Sync is now included by default.
A new feature gives users a visual overview of all open tabs, allowing them to be sorted and grouped.
An experimental API is included to provide more efficient Javascript animations.
Firefox now supports the HTML5 video “buffered” property.
See the complete changelist from the previous beta.

As well as these features from previous Firefox 4 Betas:

Tabs are now on top by default on Windows and OSX – Linux will be changing when the theme has been modified to support the change.
You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu.
Web developers can animate content using CSS Transitions.
Responsiveness and scrolling improvements from the new retained layers layout system.
JavaScript speed improvements due to engine optimizations.
Changes to how XPCOM components are registered in order to help startup time and process separation.
You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar.
New Addons Manager and extension management API (UI will be changed before final release).
Significant API improvements are available for JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions.
The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac and Linux.
The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default (you can switch it back if you’d like).
Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.
CSS Transitions are partially supported.
Full WebGL support is included but disabled by default at this time.
Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently.
Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.
An experimental Direct2D rendering backend is available on Windows, turned off by default.
Web developers can use Websockets for a low complexity, low latency, bidirectional communications API.
Web developers can update the URL field without reloading the page using HTML History APIs.
More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction.
Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload.
CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user’s browsing history.
New HTML5 parser.
Support for more HTML5 form controls.
Web authors can now get touch events from Firefox users on Windows 7 machines.
A new way of representing values in JavaScript that allows Firefox to execute heavy, numeric code (used for things like graphics and animations) more efficiently.

Developers can find out about all the changes and new features at the Mozilla Developer Center.

Huawei will launch own brand Google Android 2.2 phone Huawei U8150 in September 2010

The device comes pre-installed with Android 2.2 (one of the first to come out of the box with 2.2), with the hardware designed to be 100% compatible with 2.2.

The product was jointly planned and developed with Google and brings a wealth of Google options, downlink speeds of more than 7.2Mb/s, ubiquitous mobile broadband services. It also functions as a Wi-Fi router.

This new smartphone will be announced on September 2nd, 2010 in Germany. The product will be launched in Hong Kong early September.

It will be highly competitive price-wise and comes in 4 colours -  Black, purple, blue and yellow targeting the youth.

From our sources, this phone intends to be a mass market phone, it will be priced quite competitively at around HKD 2000 (USD 258, SGD 350, Euro 203, UKP 166) without contract.

* Specifications

Dimensions 104×54.8×13.5mm
Frequency UMTS Radio Interface:
EDGE/GSM/GPRS: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
UMTS 900/AWS/2100MHz or UMTS 850/1700/1900/2100MHz
HSDPA 7.2Mbps
Display 2.8” QVGA (320×240) TFT Capacitive Touch
262K colors
Auto rotate (G-sensor)
Camera 3.2 Megapixel Camera FF
Sensor Proximity Sensor
Ambient light sensor
Color Black, purple, blue and yellow

Features
Home Screen: Android Home screen
Local Search: Google Search
Tools: Key Lock / Alarm clock / Calculator / Settings / Note pad
Call service: Voice call
Supplementary Service: Voice mail
Google Mobile Suite:
Google Search, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Google sync and Android
Market
Digital Compass: Support digital compass base on Android
Sound Recording: Audio format: AMR
Other
Applications
Google Maps, Google Search, Gmail etc.

Not to mention, most of the geeks prefer stock Android over the Sense. Stock is eveolving since its launch but the Sense is nearly the same as it was in the days of Windows Mobile. Well, if you have the hot phone of the era – the Samsung Galaxy S in your hands, you’d definitely love Stock Android on it. I rate Samsung’s TouchWiz a lot lower than the Sense. But that’s just me, you can differ.

Apparently, some Android modders/hackers also prefer Stock Android over TouchWiz. So they decided to run stock Android 2.1 on Samsung Galaxy S and they did! Just imagine the neat default Android interface. Makes life much easier. See the demo for yourself:

Looks cool eh? Really, I love it. There are some issues, as mentioned in the video. Camera isn’t working as yet. But they have achieved major milestones. Camera is not too far away. You’ll have to wait until all the bugs are fixed. You’ll then be treated with the fresh out of the oven Eclair for your Galaxy S

Link

Sunbeamtech USB 3.0 HDDPAL docking station Review
Bluetooth 20 Aug 2010

Ever since NEC USB 3.0 becomes the defacto chipset for USB 3.0 support, USB 3.0 enclosures are beginning to flood the market as a replacement for the aging USB 2.0 and an alternative to eSATA.

While enclosure is still a hard plastic with electronics that connect your USB port to SATA HDD, it would be quite troublesome to change HDD or SSD as and when you like it.

Powered by the Jmciron  JMS539 SATAII<->USB 3 chipset, this plug-n-play ready, high speed USB3.0 HDDPAL provides the user with flexibility, portability and performance. The unit supports both 2.5” and 3.5” SATA drives up to 2TB in size. The docking station is hot-swappable and comes with two high performance interface, USB3.0 with a maximum transfer rate of 5Gbps, so it can be moved from computer to computer with ease for all your backup needs.

The package consists of the unit, USB 3.0 cable, 12V/2A DC adapter and a user manual.

Below is a video showing what is inside the package.

If you’ve enjoyed mucking around with the beta builds of Firefox 4, you might want to pay close attention to the next release. Slated to drop on Monday, Firefox 4 beta 4 will enable hardware-accelerated graphics for some Windows users. As CNET explains, “Hardware acceleration is designed to shift some tasks from a computer’s main processor to its graphics processor. One way Firefox is tackling the technology is by using Windows’ Direct2D interface, which can speed up the display of text and graphics on newer versions of Windows.” The feature will be off by default, but you can enable it by:

1.Entering about:config in the Firefox Awesome Bar
2.Accept warning asking you to “be careful.”
3.Search for mozilla.widget.render-mode and set its value to 6
4.Search for gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled and set its value to true.
The ability to group tabs into “tab sets” is also scheduled to be available in beta 4. Anyone out there using Firefox 4 beta as their primary browser?

G.Skill launches new Phoenix Pro series Solid State Drives in 40GB, 80GB and 160GB capacities.

Taipei, Taiwan?19th August 2010?G.Skill International Co. Ltd., manufacturer of extreme performance memory and solid-state storage with solid quality, has today added three new capacities to its ultra-high performance Phoenix Pro series SSD, including 40GB, 80GB and 160GB models.

Based on the popular SandForce SF-1200 SSD controller that has been tuned to deliver an unparalleled performance in 4k random write speed up to 50,000 IOPS,
G.Skill’s Phoenix pro SSD family has been the international award winning drive of choice since its recent debut at Computex 2010.

G.Skill Phoenix Pro 40GB drive provides PC enthusiasts an extremely affordable MLC SSD solution while maintaining its ultra-high performance. .G.Skill’s Phoenix Pro 40GB SSD is the perfect boot drive or game storage for desktop and PC gaming enthusiasts.

” After impressing the G.Skill engineering team, the extremely high performance of the Phoenix Pro 40GB drives in RAID 0 offers the ultimate price : performance package, along with the additional benefits of SSDs. ” said Benson Chun, Senior Product Manager at G.Skill. The benchmark result shows the impressive performance of two Phoenix Pro 40GB drives in RAID 0.

All G.Skill Phoenix series SSD solutions come with a three year warranty and the G.Skill Technical team is always ready to provide consumers with complete technical support via online forums, telephone and email.

We have seen the ASRock X58 Extreme with USB 3.0 support. ASRock up it’s ante by introducing yet another high end board, the ASRock X58 Extreme6. The most important changes to this board is that it now supports 6 USB 3.0 ports, 6 SATA 6Gbps ports. it also supports 6 core CPU. That is why it is known as Extreme 6!

Below are the specs:

ASRock DuraCap (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan-made
high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors
- Six-Core CPU Ready
- Supports Triple Channel DDR3 2000(OC)
- Supports ATITM Quad CrossFireXTM,3-Way CrossFireXTM and
CrossFireXTM
- Supports NVIDIA® Quad SLITM,3-Way SLITM and SLITM
- 2 x Front USB 3.0 ports, 4 x Rear USB 3.0 ports, 6 x SATA3 6.0
Gb/s connectors, 2 x IEEE1394 ports
- Dr. Debug, Smart Swith Design: Power/Reset/Clear CMOS
Switch with LED
- Supports ASRock Instant Boot, Instant Flash, OC Tuner, IES,
OC DNA, Good Night LED, Multi-Speed Fan Control, AIWI,
APP Charger
- Combo Cooler Option (C.C.O.)
- 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892
Audio Codec), THX TruStudio PROTM and Premium Blu-ray
audio support
- Free Software : CyberLink DVD Suite – OEM and Trial
- Free Bundle: 1 x Front USB 3.0 Panel, 1 x ASRock SLI_Bridge_
2S Card, 1 x ASRock 3-Way SLI-2S2S Bridge Card
- ErP / EuP 2.0 Ready

Nokia debuts ‘Touch and Type’ design with the latest Nokia X3

Espoo, Finland – In a move to continue driving innovation in its market leading mobile phone range, Nokia today unveils the super slim Nokia X3 Touch and Type, with a unique combination of a touch screen and traditional 12 button phone keypad.  As Nokia’s first ‘Touch and Type’ phone, the Nokia X3 allows people to tap quickly on the bright color touch screen, as well as enjoy the familiarity of the full keypad for quick fire text messages and phone calls.  Expected to be on sale in the third quarter, the Nokia X3 is expected to retail for approximately EUR 125, excluding taxes and subsidies.

“Innovation is not just a high-end game. The Nokia X3 is a great example of bringing new consumer value to lower price points,” said Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President of Mobile Phones at Nokia.

“With the Nokia X3 we are giving consumers the best of both worlds by combining a touch screen and a keypad in an affordable device. We have given people a larger screen with clear icons and menus plus kept critical keys such as the send and end keys. We’ve also added dedicated function keys for important links like music and text messaging,” she said.

“We have designed the Nokia X3 to be a touch and type device because typing is ideal for SMS and social networking where fast and frequent input is needed, while touch is ideal for functions such as setting alarms, smooth browsing and controlling applications like music and games.

“Our research tells us consumers who have invested years in becoming fast one-handed, one-thumb texters want to maintain their speedy edge for SMS, chat and instant messaging – yet enjoy the benefits of touch as well,” continued McDowell.

With its sleek and modern design coming in at a very thin 9.6mm – making it one of the slimmest Nokia phones ever – the Nokia X3 slips easily into the purse or the pocket, and looks the part with its brushed aluminum back cover which will come in five vibrant colors designed to suit any mood or wardrobe.

Despite its size, the Nokia X3 is jam-packed with features including 3G, WLAN, a music player and an FM radio.

Lovers of the snapshot and social networks will enjoy a great 5 megapixel camera with 4X digital zoom that can take both still and video images.

The Nokia X3 also features dedicated music and messaging keys allowing fast access to important Ovi services including social and entertainment applications.  In addition to Ovi Mail, people’s favorite consumer email and chat accounts can be pushed direct to the phone via Nokia Messaging. 

With a gentle glide over the touch screen people can go online and get access to many services including thousands of apps from Ovi Store. In certain markets, the new phone will also be available with Ovi Music Unlimited, enabling the owner to access a virtually limitless range of the latest hit music that can be stored on the available 16GB memory card.

The Nokia X3 – affordable and accessible touch and type which is simple-to-use and beautifully designed. The Nokia X3 Touch and Type sits alongside the Nokia X3-00, a slider with strong music functionality, which was launched in September 2009.

The Nokia Mini Speaker MD-11. Pocket-sized speakers for big sound

Music lovers can boost the Nokia X3’s inbuilt speaker with some extra ‘oomph’ with the new MD-11, a light pocket-size speaker with great audio quality.   For even more fun, you can connect two for stereo sound – a great way to get the music out of your phone and enjoy with friends.  The Nokia Mini Speaker MD-11 is estimated to retail for EUR 25 excluding taxes and subsidies.

Seagate and Samsung, the two major makers of hard drives and system memory, announced Thursday that they have entered into a joint development and licensing agreement.

 Under this agreement, the two companies will develop and cross-license related controller technologies for solid state drives.

This is interesting; Samsung has released many consumer-grade SSDs, whereas Seagate has recently taken the route of hybrid drive with the release of the Seagate Momentus XT (500GB). The company’s first attempt into the SSD market with the Pulsar drive didn’t make much of a splash.

According to Seagate, however, the two companies aim to develop new SSDs for the enterprise storage market, of which Seagate has been a strong player with traditional platter-based hard drives.

Steve Luczo, Seagate’s chairman, president, and CEO said, “Today’s agreement with Samsung will help us bring a compelling set of SSD innovations to the enterprise storage market, with benefits that range from enhanced performance, endurance, and reliability to cost and capacity improvements.”

Seagate says that the joint development will build on the existing SSD capabilities of each company while combining Seagate’s enterprise storage technology with Samsung’s 30 nanometer-class MLC NAND flash memory technology. Seagate will then use the jointly developed controller for its enterprise-class SSDs.

The first SSDs based on this joint development is expected to be available by the middle of 2012.

Source CNET

OCZ Vertex 2 E 60GB OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G Review
bluetooth 15 Aug 2010

HDD used to be the bottleneck for performance. This has been partially solved with higher SATA interface speed. As HDD goes speedier, it is still unable to saturate the interface.  SSD came and slowly take over as the preferred choice as storage media as it is speedy and could take advantage of the higher speed SATA II interface. As not all SSD are made equal, some SSD gives amazing read speeds but bad write speeds. OCZ Vertex II 60GB, the extended version inherits the original version with a bigger capacity and push the limits in both sequential and random read/write. As spec, it is able to do a max read and write up to 285MB/s and 275MB/s respectively. 4K random write (aligned) should be able to attain 50,000 IOPS. by virtue of the SandForce controller.

Built with SATA 3Gb/s, the Vertex 2 Series easily integrates into today’s mobile and desktop platforms and features TRIM support to optimize performance over the drive’s lifespan as the ultimate Windows 7 notebook or desktop upgrade.

The OCZ Vertex II 60GB comes with a metal bracketl 2.5” to 3.5” adapter so you can stick the SSD into a standard hard drive bay. Below is a video showing the package and the SSD.

Specifications

Max Read: up to 285MB/s
Max Write: up to 275MB/s
Sustained Write: up to 250MB/s
4k Random Write (Aligned): 50,000 IOPS
Seek Time: 0.1 MS
Power Consumption: Idle: 0.5Watts Active: 2Watt
Performance Optimization: TRIM (requires OS support)

We have expanded the existing graphics card discussion section of the forum to include more areas of discussions. You can now comment or give suggestions on the latest Graphics cards, SSD, HDD, RAM, LAN right here at this URL

Singapore Service providers to offer next gen fiber broadband network services as early as September 2010

While not all homes and offices are connected to the nation wide fiber network Opennet, Channel News Asia has a report indicating that one such retail service provider has confirmed that they are ready to sell services to home and offices by 1st September 2010. Currently only about 64 per cent of Singapore homes will be fibre-optic ready by the end of the year. By 2012, all Singapore homes and offices will be connected to Singapore’s ultra high-speed broadband network.

SuperInternet is gearing up to roll out interactive services by October. Other players like StarHub will likely be concentrating on enterprise solutions.

Source