It seemed that some serious issue has come back and haunt Seagate yet again. Apparently owners of Seagate’s Momentus XT are facing serious issues with their drives — despite glowing initial reviews, a number of long-term users claim that the drives chirp, crash, stutter, and freeze with alarming regularity, particularly when installed in a Mac. W00t!

Some users have speculated that these issues are caused by the XT’s magnetic platters spinning down inappropriately, due to an overzealous power management scheme. Good thing is, Seagate is actively involved in getting them fixed, instead of dismissing the issue like what they did last time around. So far, pair of new firmware updates has addressed some symptoms, a third is on the way, and a Seagate engineer known only as STX_NB is proactively chatting with affected customers about possible fixes. Nice customer services there.

SOURCE via Computer World

It seemed that Samsung is on a super roll. Rumours have it that Apple is inking a super mega big deal with them on the purchase of screens and NAND and some others, and Samsung has been hoping their new Galaxy S II will outsell their previous Galaxy S, which has been sold millions. Now, they’re planning to sell 10 million 3D TVs this year, up five times from the two million it sold last year. LG, its domestic rival, is planning to sell some 5 million. Now, it’s unclear whether this increase in sales will come as a result of consumer demand for 3D or simply because almost all new TVs will be 3D-capable, but we’re hoping that pesky 3D content problem will get a lot better once more people can actually view it, but how many people actually wants to wear a glass every time they watch some movies at home?

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It seemed that the GAEMS console-carrying case has gone through some diet after the last time we saw it, back when it’s still a huge box that looks like a nuclear control centre. If you’re a on-the-go Xbox warrior, then this news will be good to you. The company has redesigned the case and it now supports the fat and slim versions of the 360 and even the PS3-skinny. What’s new in this compact carrying case is the fact there’s actually room to store the console, controllers and power brick. It comes bundled with a remote, HDMI cable and power supply to power the speakers and LED screen. If you’re road trippin’ any time soon and want this beast, you can save yourself 20 bones by pre-ordering before April 20th and you’ll receive the $300 case come June. Sounds like a good deal to me, unless you like to bring your 32-inch TV along with you wherever you go.

SOURCE via projectgaems.com

It seemed that the recall of Cougar Point didn’t hit Intel by a single bit. After welcoming Barack Obama to their Oregon facility, they’ve treated the president to the happy news that Intel will invest $5 billion back into the US economy by building its most advanced fab yet

This new fab will venture into the crazily small 14nm production process, and will be in Arizona. Operation is believed to start in 2013. Construction starts in the middle of this year and is expected to create “thousands” of jobs, both temporary and permanent. Aside from that, Otellini has disclosed Intel’s intention to create 4,000 new jobs in the US, mostly in R&D and product development.

SOURCE via Intel

We kept on getting teaser pics of the BlackBerry Bold Touch, and the journey continues with no sign of ever coming into the market. The phone comes with some sweet carbon fiber weave this time around, and it’s confirmed to have a 640 x 480 VGA screen, though the publication says it’s also gained storage space (6.5GB flash) and lost memory (512MB of RAM) since the last time we heard its specs. Now that’s weird news. Can’t make up your mind RIM? There’s apparently still a 5 megapixel camera to be had, as well as a magnetometer, accelerometer and proximity sensor, and — as the rumor mill whispered in January — integrated NFC. Just in time for 2011 standard eh? Still no horsepower, price, and launch date info this time.

SOURCE via n4bb.com

Funny thing Amazon is doing here. It seemed that their upcoming Appstore for Android, which has been in the works for some time, will allow you to purchase apps even before you receive the device you intend to install them on, presumably so that you’re stocked up and ready to go by the time the phone (or tablet, or whatever miscellaneous gizmo) arrives on your doorstep. Sounds like something very convenient, though I don’t really see the importance of this. Apparently, the concept appears to go partway toward mimicking Amazon’s Kindle business model, which does a decent job of decoupling content (which is associated with your Amazon account) from the actual hardware you’ve got it installed on. Thus far there’s been no announcement of when it’ll be available, yet, but it does seem to stand a chance at cutting into the Android Market’s revenue by some noticeable margin.

SOURCE via All Things D

All these while we’ve been thinking that Archos is into tablets, but all of a sudden they’ve thrown in a new fancy digital clock radio into the market. Well, you can say that there’s a miniature tablet in it, as there’s a 3.5-inch touchscreen in the middle plus the ability to connect to 12,000 streaming radio stations and 1,500 “web TV” channels make it more than just a ‘clock n radio’.

It seemed that you can play media directly from an SD card or pull it over your local network via uPNP, besides viewing pictures on there. Sadly there’s no mention of price or availability.

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More and more rumours related to Apple are coming around, are we expecting an Apple event very soon? We’ve heard that the white iPhone 4 will be coming very soon, as well as the next iPad. What’s more Apple is expected to refresh their MacBook Pro with new Sandy Bridge processors too. Now, Apple is expected to announce a new high-speed interconnect. But when, and where? An Apple event is imminent.

CNET reports that Apple will announce “a new high-speed connection technology” soon — and Intel’s Light Peak seems to be the only perfect match, unless Apple comes up with a super twist of a new FireWire standard. Or will Apple flop this announcement by just saying that it’s the USB 3.0? We’ve been knowing for quite some time that Apple’s been secretly backing the 10Gbps interconnect project of Intel, but with a likely MacBook Pro refresh right around the corner and Light Peak allegedly due for a 1H 2011 launch, it seems the time for action could be right around now. It also doesn’t hurt that this latest rumor comes from CNET, actually, as we’re pretty sure the publication has an inside source. The very same reporter wrote that Light Peak would be downgraded to copper, a full month before Intel would admit anything of the sort.

SOURCE via CNET

And what can that mean? Well, it usually means that a refresh of Apple’s laptop is coming soon. Apple has yet to announce a MacBook Pro refresh, but more and more rumours are showing up which points directly towards this possibility of the refresh coming as soon as next week. Thus far, it’s only said to affect these $1,199, $1,499, $1,799, and $2,199 price points MBP, but there is an additional $2,499 sticker for a laptop identified only as “New SKU I,” which presumably points to an upgrade to Apple’s 17-incher. Sadly there’s no mention of the base-line MacBook getting an upgrade though, so we’ll have to wait until next week ‘at least’ to know what Apple will be offering this time around.

SOURCE via BestBuy