Immediate obsolescence is an age old problem in the computer industry, but it doesn’t look like the upcoming Core i9 “Gulftown” processor is going to do anything to solve it. Word is from early benchmarks of the upcoming Intel processor is that it bests the current Core i7 at the top of the heap with speed gains as large as 50% — directly in line with its addition of two cores on top of the Core i7’s existing four. Of course, six 2.8GHz cores aren’t quite as exponentially helpful when applied to non-optimized tasks, but with most major modern software development aimed at better utilizing multiple cores, the core overkill of Core i9 will likely prove increasingly useful over time. At the start, however, Core i9’s improvements will come at a premium: 130W power consumption instead of 95W in Core i7, and of course a high-end only price tag to match. Word is we’ll be seeing these chips hit the market in early 2010, possibly as soon as January.

Early Core i9 benchmarks promising, make you wonder why you even bothered with Core i7 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve had a sneak peak at NewEgg’s Black Friday deals and now we’ve got more on the offers along with a listing of the pre-Black Friday specials (which you can get right now).

Pre-Black Friday (Active Now)

HP MediaSmart LX195 1.6GHz Atom 640GB Home Server $199.99 (list: $399.99)
Microsoft SideWinder X5 Gaming Mouse $24.99 (list: $49.99)
Creative Fatal1ty Gaming USB Headset $34.99 (list: $69.99)
Antec Three Hundred Illusion ATX Mid Tower Case $49.95 (list $69.95)
Seagate 2TB External Hard Drive $149.99 (list: $179.99)
Intel SS4200-E 1.6GHz Network Storage Server $149.99 (list: $219.99)
ViewSonic VFD810-50 8-inch Digital Photo Frame $49.99 (list: $69.99)
Logitech RX1500 3-Button Laser Mouse $12.99 (list $39.99)
Samsung S2 640GB Portable USB 2.0 Hard Drive $99.99 (list: $129.99)
Sparkle GeForce 8400GS PCI-E Low-Profile Video Card $19.99 (list $34.99)
Creative GigaWorks T40 Series II Speakers $69.99 ($149.99)
Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard $43.99 (list $63.99)
Monster 16ft High Speed HDMI Cable $29.99 (list: $54.99)
Canon DC410 DVD Camcorder $199.99 (list: $279.99)
Seagate Barracuda 2TB ST32000542A 3.5″ Hard Drive $139.99 (list $179.99)

Black Friday (starts 11/25 at 3PM PST)

10% Cash Back starts at 3PM PST on all products on NewEgg.com
7″ Digital Photo Frame $29.99
HDMI Cable – 6 FEET $1.99 after MIR
46″ 1080P 120Hz LCD TV $699.99
430W ATX 12V Power Supply $16.99
Acer Aspire One Black Intel Atom N270(1.60GHz) Netbook $189.99 Starts 6AM Friday
LITE-ON Black 4X BD-ROM SATA Internal 4X Blu-ray Disc Reader $49.99
Logitech Black Cordless Ergonomic Desktop Wave Keyboard/Mouse Combo $46.99
Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive $97.99 Starts Tuesday, 11/24
YAMAHA 5.1-Channel Digital Home Theater Receiver plus Energy 5CH Home Theater Speaker System $299.99

Hit up the link to Logic Buy for the direct links to the pre-Black Friday offers. [Logic Buy]

View original here:
NewEgg Black Friday Deal Update [Black Friday]

Never before has it been so apparent that a power tower—pretty much the laziest design in the computer industry—is being sold by a design-centric company with neither design nor power.

And I’m not sure that the solution is just a refresh away.

The Mac Pro was once the only viable option for a OS X lover in need of serious horsepower for tasks like editing media. Now, with the new iMac? I think it’s straight up stupid to buy a Mac Pro.

The $2,500 Mac Pro, desperately in need of a refresh, gives you a 2.66GHz Quad-Core Xeon (essentially an i7), 3GB of RAM (triple channel, but seriously?), 640GB hard drive (again, seriously?) and a nominal graphics card. Spend $800 more and you’ll get a another processor and 3GB more RAM.

The $2200, 27-inch iMac obviously includes a screen, plus you get a 2.8GHz Quad-Core (i7), 1TB drive, 4GB of RAM and a nominal graphics card.

But beyond those clock speeds, the Mac Pro’s i7 processor is the more premium Bloomfield edition, while the iMac uses the Lynnfield. (More on those differences here.)

Still, the bottom line is that the iMac’s Lynnfield processor is newer, and it shows in performance.

Macworld benched the new iMacs against the latest Mac Pros. And, you know what? The i7 iMac more than held its own. It basically defeated the 4-core Mac Pro across the board.

And other than a few specific tasks in which the most expensive Mac Pro’s 8 cores proved beneficial (Handbrake, Cinebench, etc), the iMac outperformed the competition or kept things close enough not to be relevant, plus it straight-up won in the eyes of Speedmark 6.

Performance-wise, the base Mac Pro makes no sense at all. The 8-core Mac Pro offers a touch more power, sometimes, and other times (in many day to day tasks) even it is outgunned.

Of course, any Mac Pro still allows multiple internal hard drives, three PCI slots, more FireWire ports (four vs one) and more room for RAM expansion (32GB vs 16GB). But once again, even in the worlds of professional media creation, that’s a pretty questionable upsell, especially with external storage solutions and the fact that most high, high end media pros (like special effects artists) turn to dedicated render farms to do their heavy number crunching anyway.

With the new iMac, Apple has shrunk the Mac-Pro-needing niche even smaller. And I can’t tell anyone with a straight face that a handful of expandability is worth $300-$1100 with no monitor, no matter how deep their pockets are.

Apple needs to reexamine their pricing model. Even with an inevitable processor refresh (i9, anyone?), it’s time for a price drop and/or some free with purchase displays. Just because you’re a pro doesn’t mean you’re a sucker.

See original here:
Why It’s Gotten Straight Stupid to Buy a Mac Pro [Rant]

ASUS UL30Vt available for pre-order at Amazon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On paper, the Core i9 might not sound that exciting: It’s a lot like the Core i7, except built with a 32nm fabrication process and two extra cores, for a total of six. Early benchmarks, though, say it flies. Sometimes.

The i9 doesn’t extract significant advantages from its pumped core count (which brings processing thread count up to 12) in a lot of day to day tasks, so don’t expect to see an increase in game performance, Windows startup speed or other single-core optimized tasks. It’s when you start rendering video or doing 3D modeling—tasks that are suited to parallelization—that the i9 flexes its muscles.

That’s roughly a 50% increase in video encoding performance over a similarly clocked i7—already no slouch by any existing standards.

The i9 processors won’t ship until sometime in early to mid 2010, and when they do, expect them to be a bit on the expensive side. But man, 50%. I think I can stand to save up a few more bucks, honestly. [PCLab via Electronista]

View post:
Intel Core i9 Benched: Six Cores of Pure Joy [Intel]

Google’s on a bit of a shopping spree this holiday season. The search giant just acquired AdMob for $750 million a few weeks ago. Today, Google has acquired display advertising company Teracent for an undisclosed amount of money. The deal is expected to close this quarter.

Teracent’s Intelligent Display Advertising technology creates display ads entirely customized to the specific consumer and site. The startup’s proprietary alogirthims automatically pick the creative parts of a display ad (images, colors, text) in real-time determined by like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

To date, Teracent has only raised $5.8 million in funding. Google says that Teracent’s technology will now be offered to its display advertising clients who run campaigns in Google’s Content Network and to DoubleClick clients. Google had been rumored to be in talks with Teracent about a possible acquisition a few weeks ago. Earlier this year, Yahoo announced a partnership with Teracent as part of its “Smart Ads” program for PC and mobile advertisers. With Teracent’s acquisition by Google, I’m assuming this partnership is nullified.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

View original post here:
Google Acquires Teracent To Apply Machine Smarts To Display Ads

jQuery is a Javascript library that is used in a large number of web applications and is popular amongst web application developers. It was launched in 2006 by John Resig, and immediately gained a large following due to its lightweight nature and design philosophy. jQuery allows developers to build Javascript web applications easily by abstracting many of the complexities and difficulties. A developer with knowledge of CSS selectors and HTML would easily find their way around jQuery and be able to implement Ajax queries, effects and other tasks with a few lines of code.

A new commercial company called appendTo has launched recently with the goal of providing commercial support, training and development solutions exclusively around jQuery. The company was founded by members of the jQuery development team, and is lead by co-founder and CEO Mike Hostetler, who is both a jQuery core team member and previously a freelance developer/consultant. John Resig is not involved or affiliated with the company, and is employed by Mozilla as a developer.

The website for the new company does not reveal much other than the announcement press release and a contact form. What is more interesting is that the fast-paced rise in popularity of Javascript and frameworks such as jQuery has now lead to companies being setup to support them. It wasn’t too long ago, before Ajax and before the tidal wave of rich internet applications, that Javascript was considered nothing more than a hackish scripting environment for web pages. Frameworks such as jQuery solve many of the traditional pain-points with Javascript development – issues such as cross-browser support and separating code from markup and style. The growing popularity of web based applications and the rising number of web application developers owe a lot to Javascript frameworks and to jQuery. They provide an abstract layer and drastically lower the barrier of entry for developers to build rich web applications.

jQuery is well known because of its simple yet elegant approach to Javascript development. The library is small and modular, and has a very active developer community providing support, plugins and other resources online. JQuery is MIT licensed, meaning that it can be applied in commercial environments and within commercial applications with no intellectual property implications. It was for these reasons that Microsoft decided to support jQuery within the .NET MVC framework – a huge vote of confidence in both the framework and its community (Scott Guthrie, VP of the Microsoft Dev division, was full of praise for jQuery in his blog post announcing the support).

appendTo has sensed the opportunity with jQuery, and with the rising number of rich web applications being built are looking to capitalize on supporting and implementing one of the best and most popular Javascript libraries. It is the first company, that we know of, specifically setup around supporting and commercializing a single Javascript library.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Read more: 
appendTo Aims To Commercialize jQuery Javascript Library

While many scoffed at the idea of Nokia building a netbook, the idea does have its share of merits. After all, the Finnish company knows a few things about eking out runtimes from compact batteries, and with netbooks being perhaps the most likely of computing devices to be in search of mobile connectivity, stuffing them with the sort of wireless access your high-end Nokia boasts certainly makes sense. Throw in eye-catching design and you’re onto a winner, right? Unfortunately, we’ve found the Nokia Booklet 3G falls short in other areas; check out the full SlashGear review after the cut.

Physically, the Booklet 3G is bordering on Apple-levels of attractiveness. The brushed aluminum chassis is solid and the plastic side-inserts feel high quality. We’re still not convinced by the plastic top plate on the outside of the lid, and would prefer plain metal, but that’s a minor aesthetic issue with a generally very good looking netbook. As you can see in our unboxing video, ports include power, one USB 2.0, SIM and SD along the right-hand side, together with power and a speaker, and HDMI, two USB 2.0 and a headset socket along the left-hand side, together with the second speaker. Underneath there’s the large removable battery and four rubber feet, with Nokia showing admirable restraint in their labelling.

Nokia Booklet 3G unboxing video:

Open it up, and there’s a 10.1-inch 1,280 x 720 LED-backlit display behind a glass panel. There’s no anti-glare coating to the glass, but it does have – on our review unit at least – a slightly fuzzy finish that’s absent on other glass-fronted laptop displays. Given the size of the lid and the aspect ratio of the LCD – which Nokia tell us is specially made for them – the panel does look a little dwarfed by the black surround; there’s a little too much blank space underneath it for our liking.

Above the display is a 1.3-megapixel webcam, while below it is a moderately cramped keyboard. The chiclet keys aren’t the most comfortable on a netbook that we’ve tried, but are still usable for pecking out emails and editing documents. The trackpad feels unnecessarily cramped, however, and the mouse buttons feel cheap and overly clicky. Integrated into the screen hinge is a row of status LEDs indicating – left to right – Bluetooth, WiFi and 3G activity, together with sleep, battery and mains-power status. Nokia have also been pleasantly lavish with their shortcut buttons, with the F-keys doubling as music track controls, volume, brightness and wireless connectivity toggles.

OS is Windows 7 – either Starter or Home Premium – and Nokia have tried to bring a little cellphone magic across too. The Ovi Suite app download store and Social Hub networking app are both available (though you need to download them separately) while tapping the power button while the Booklet 3G is powered on brings up a status window showing battery level, performance mode and shortcuts to standby, restart and power-down. An accelerometer is also embedded inside, though the most we’ve observed it doing is throwing up shake-warnings and parking the hard-drive.

You can’t knock the Booklet 3G’s connectivity. There’s the usual WiFi b/g/n together with Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, as well as GPS/A-GPS and a standard 3G modem. This last element is key to Nokia’s sales strategy, as it means they can tap into carrier subsidies; without it the Booklet 3G is around $600. Opt for a data-plan commitment, however, and in the US you can have the netbook for more like $300, assuming you’re content paying around $60 to AT&T every month for two years for their wireless data package. On the upside you can hot-swap the SIM (i.e. take it out or reinsert it without shutting down the netbook) between phones and other devices.

It’s one of the reasons the Booklet 3G is reasonably contentious, and another is Nokia’s choice of processor. Since they want to promise all-day battery life, Nokia have had to choose an especially frugal CPU, and so have picked Intel’s Atom Z530. While it runs at the same 1.6GHz as the more common Atom N270 it does promise lower power draw, hence the company claiming up to 12 hours use from the 56.8Wh battery. Unfortunately Nokia have paired it with just 1GB of DDR2 memory and a meagre 120GB 4,200rpm hard-drive, both of which fall well short of what we’d like to see on even an entry-level netbook.

It adds up to particularly uninspiring performance, and perhaps the biggest disappointment of the Booklet 3G. Out of the box, running only the 30-day trial of F-Secure Internet Security 2010, Internet Explorer 8 (which is preloaded with Windows 7) is sluggish and frustrating. Navigating even a few tabs is slow, and moving between apps in general is ponderous. Simple things – like adjusting the screen brightness with the shortcut keys – see the backlight respond and then, seconds later, the on-screen meter belatedly pop up. Trying to copy music across from another system highlighted the hard-drive’s woeful lack of speed, while 720p video could – bitrate depending – prove juddery. Considering Nokia bill the Booklet 3G’s display as ideal for 720p HD content, that’s a significant issue. We plugged in a 1080p HDTV via the HDMI connection and were impressed to see the netbook could support (with its own display shut off) Full HD; however 1080p video was a different matter, being pretty much unwatchable.

GeekBench faired no better, with the Nokia Booklet 3G’s raw benchmarking being less than impressive. The netbook managed 773 points overall, over 100 points behind Atom N270 based year-old netbooks such as the ASUS Eee PC 1000H or the MSI Wind U100.

As for battery life, that’s the Booklet 3G’s saving grace. Unsurprisingly we never saw Nokia’s 12 hours, but with WiFi switched on and the display at medium – and comfortable – brightness we saw around 8 to 8.5 hours use before needing to reach for the compact AC adapter. Media playback (with wireless turned off) varied depending on how much CPU crunching was required (there’s no discrete GPU); watch solely lightweight clips and you might see closer to 10 hours. However Flash video – even standard resolution YouTube clips – was tardy to load and chugged through power.

The subset of users to whom the Nokia Booklet 3G is suited is relatively narrow, then. While the wireless connectivity is certainly there in spades, the actual browsing experience is slower than on some smartphones we’ve tested. Meanwhile video playback is acceptable only with certain clips, which is the sort of suck-it-and-see limiting factor that makes low-power devices particularly frustrating. If you do little more than browse with one or two tabs open at most and generally need your notebook to churn out text and emails then the Booklet 3G certainly has the battery life for you; however then it’s the keyboard that rankles.

We want to love the Booklet 3G, if only because it looks so good. Problem is, once you turn it on you’re stuck with performance that even the first-gen netbooks generally exceeded, and if that’s frustrating when the Nokia is box-fresh then imagine how you’ll feel when you’re into the second year of your data contract. The downside to that clean, unspoilt chassis is that doing some DIY upgrading is almost certain to invalidate your warranty; no core part of the Booklet 3G is intended to be user-accessible. It’s tough to imagine a user who would be satisfied for the next 24 months with the Booklet 3G’s abilities, and we’re left hoping Nokia sell just enough of them to green-light the next-gen model that will hopefully up the performance.

Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• Nokia Booklet 3G hits Best Buy stock system with price
• Nokia Booklet 3G priced: €575 pre-subsidies
• Best Buy scoop Nokia Booklet 3G US exclusive
• Nokia Booklet 3G on sale this week (in Europe at least)
• Nokia Booklet 3G unboxed

See the rest here:
Nokia Booklet 3G review

Data Robotics have doubled their range of so-called intelligent backup systems with the launch of two new models, the Drobo S and the DroboElite.  The Drobo S takes the original four-bay Drobo and adds in not only an extra drive bay but an eSATA port and enhanced FireWire 800 performance, meaning that the backup system now boasts hardware redundancy against up to two simultaneous hard-drive failures.  Meanwhile the DroboElite has a full eight drive bays and dual iSCSI ports and is, unsurprisingly, targeted at small and medium businesses who want 16TB or more of backup space.

The Drobo S also has a faster ARM processor than its Drobo predecessor (that will remain on sale alongside it) and overall Data Robotics are saying it’s offering 150-percent the performance of that earlier model.  Storage is up to 10TB (depending on redundancy) and as before the system is self-healing and automatically sets itself up when you throw in a new drive (or replace an existing one).  However it’s not compatible with the DroboShare network adapter.  The Drobo S is available now, priced at $799 sans-drives or up to $1,799 with five 2TB drives in place.

The DroboElite, meanwhile, drops the FireWire and USB 2.0 connectivity of the DroboPro in the pursuit of absolute speed.  Up to 255 Smart Volumes can be addressed, together with up to 16 simultaneous hosts, and a choice between single- or dual-drive redundancy (i.e. a choice between space or data safety).  The DroboElite will kick off at $3,499 sans-drives.

Press Release:

DATA ROBOTICS LAUNCHES NEW DROBO WITH eSATA

Drobo S Delivers High Performance Desktop Data Storage

SANTA CLARA, CA – November 23, 2009 – Data Robotics, Inc., the company that delivers the best data storage experience ever, today introduced Drobo S, a professional-class storage solution designed for Windows, Mac, and Linux users who require high-speed data transfers and reliable data storage. With the introduction of eSATA and a fifth drive bay, as well as enhancements to FireWire 800 throughput, the Drobo S offers 150 percent of the performance of the current four-bay Drobo, making it an ideal storage solution for creative professionals, small offices, and home office users.

Built on the company’s award-winning BeyondRAID virtualized storage platform, which eliminates the lock-in of traditional RAID configurations, Drobo S features a one-click toggle between single- and dual-drive redundancy and provides protection against up to two concurrent drive failures. Drobo S supports on-the-fly capacity expansion along with the flexibility to replace failed drives, add drives, and swap out drives from disparate vendors and of varying sizes without ever losing access to data.

“Data Robotics’ Drobo S is an important addition to the company’s product line because it offers professional users a larger, faster, more reliable data storage solution with all of the automation and simplicity that Drobo fans are accustomed to,” said Brian Babineau, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Small offices and creative professionals generate large quantities of data that need to be kept secure for both short and long term storage. With its automatic capacity expansion and self-healing technology, Drobo S is an ideal way for customers to manage explosive data growth without becoming or hiring storage experts.”

Drobo S Features and Benefits:

5-Drive Capacity and Instant Expansion to 10TB – Customers with growing storage requirements can easily add data capacity with minimal effort. To add capacity, customers simply insert a new hard drive or replace the smallest drive with a larger one, even when all five drive bays are full. With Drobo S, expansion is automatic and instantaneous, and access to data is always maintained.
Single- and Dual-Drive Redundancy – The Drobo S dual drive redundancy option protects against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard drives. Customers can engage this option with a single click without ever losing access to their data.
Self-Healing Technology – With BeyondRAID, the Drobo S continually examines data blocks and sectors on each drive to flag potential issues. The preemptive “scrubbing” helps ensure data is being written only to healthy drive areas and automatically keeps data in the safest state possible – even when a drive fails.
Interface Options – Users can take advantage of eSATA, FireWire 800, and USB 2.0 connections for ultimate flexibility.
“Drobo S represents our continued commitment to our customer base of professionals and small and home office users,” said Dr. Geoff Barrall, CEO and founder of Data Robotics. “Significant performance enhancements, the addition of eSATA, increased capacity, and the flexibility of single- or dual-drive redundancy make the Drobo S an ideal solution for this increasingly sophisticated set of users.”

Price and Availability Drobo S is currently available starting at a price of $799 MSRP, with multiple configurations to $1,799 for a 10TB (5x 2TB) solution. Drobo S is available now from authorized partners worldwide and on www.drobostore.com. For a list of partners or to learn more about Drobo S, please visit www.drobo.com/drobo-s.

Press Release:

DATA ROBOTICS INTRODUCES FIRST iSCSI SAN THAT MANAGES ITSELF

Fastest Drobo Ever, DroboElite, Brings BeyondRAID with Multi-host Support to SMBs

SANTA CLARA, CA – November 23, 2009 – Data Robotics, Inc., the company that delivers the best data storage experience ever, today announced DroboElite, the first iSCSI SAN storage that manages itself. DroboElite is a powerful and flexible business class data storage solution that brings Data Robotics’ award-winning BeyondRAID technology to a broader range of small and medium businesses (SMBs). The fastest Drobo to date, DroboElite features a new hardware architecture that includes an enhanced processing engine and dual high-speed iSCSI interfaces for 150 percent of the performance of previous Drobo models. True multi-host support with LUN affinity allows small and medium businesses with limited IT resources to simplify management and reduce costs by consolidating storage across multiple servers.

“We’ve been using Data Robotics storage for several years because it is so simple to use and keeps our data safe. The new DroboElite solution takes Data Robotics’ technology to the next level. It enables us to pool storage capacity across several servers and the Smart Volume technology makes it easy to efficiently provision, reclaim, and re-provision storage across our business environment,” said Tarun Chachra, CTO at KSL Media.

DroboElite delivers automated capacity expansion and one-click single- or dual-drive redundancy for optimal data protection for Windows, Mac and Linux machines. The new system extends the number of Smart Volumes – Data Robotics’ unique thin provisioning that pulls storage from a common pool of drives – so that users can now create up to 255 virtual storage volumes, making DroboElite an ideal solution for companies that require storage solutions that can scale with their infrastructure.

“As SMBs mature they typically deploy multiple servers in both virtualized and non-virtualized configurations, creating a need for storage that is easy to manage but has the flexibility to continually grow as the server mix becomes increasingly complex,” said Benjamin S. Woo, vice president, enterprise storage systems, at industry analyst firm, IDC. “A unique thin provisioning approach like the Data Robotics’ Smart Volume technology gives companies optimal use of their existing storage and allows IT managers to more effectively manage their entire IT network without wasting time and money on storage management.”

DroboElite Features and Benefits

Multi-host Support – Companies with multiple servers can easily add or consolidate storage by connecting the DroboElite into their existing TCP/IP network and utilizing the industry-standard iSCSI protocol.
Fastest Throughput of any Drobo Solution – Enhancements such as multiple stream optimization and dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces for high-speed iSCSI deliver best-in-class performance.
Tested VMware-ready Features – With dual iSCSI ports and the ability to create up to 255 Smart Volumes, DroboElite can support growing VMware environments and advanced functionality including VMotion, Storage VMotion, snapshots, and high availability.
8-Drive Capacity with Instant Capacity Expansion to 16TB and Beyond – DroboElite ensures continuous data access by automatically expanding data capacity and enabling IT managers to efficiently mix and match drive brands, capacities, and speeds.
Advanced Thin Provisioning – Smart Volumes allow companies to create new volumes in seconds and manage them over time by pulling storage from a common pool rather than a specific physical drive allocation. Smart Volumes are also file system aware which allows deleted data blocks to be immediately returned to the pool for future use.
Simplified Dual-Drive Redundancy – Companies are protected against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard drives without losing access to their data. With a single click, companies can switch back to single disk redundancy if capacity runs out without losing access to their data.
“Data Robotics’ continued success is a testament to our providing the best data storage experience ever. Our products are exceedingly simple and straightforward to use while providing all of the features that SMBs need to keep their data safe and accessible,” said Dr. Geoff Barrall, CEO and founder of Data Robotics. “We can deliver cost savings up to 90 percent compared to other iSCSI solutions by combining cost-effective hardware with robust iSCSI features. The new DroboElite takes our solutions to a significantly higher level of performance and supports our mission of bringing the benefits of BeyondRAID technology to a much greater range of businesses.”

Price and Availability
DroboElite is currently available starting at a price of $3,499 MSRP, with multiple configurations to $5,899 for a 16TB (8x 2TB) solution. DroboElite is available now from select partners worldwide and on www.drobostore.com. For a list of partners or to learn more about DroboElite, please visit www.drobo.com/products/droboelite.php.

Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• Drobo NAS gets SDK for UPnP, Linux support and other tweaking
• Drobo 2 sports Firewire 800 ports
• DroboShare – Turns your Drobo into NAS
• SlashGear Review: Data Robotics Drobo intelligent data robot
• Drobo drops 2TB & 4TB NAS prices; adds $50 holiday discount

Read more: 
Data Robotics unveil new Drobo S and DroboElite backup systems

This is a great offer girls not only because of the colour, but because this version is almost identical to the black UMID M1, but the pink one is $50 cheaper!

Processor

Intel Atom 1.2 GHz (Z515)

Intel Atom 1.3 GHz (Z520)

Memory

DDR2 512MB

Storage

8GB (NAND Flash memory on-board)

Display (Internal)

4.8″ (1024