Hasta La Gadget!

The cloud locker behemoth that is Dropbox has taken to Twitter to announce it’s now allowing users to “easily” print documents at FedEx Office stores, both retail and online. But just how “easy” is it, really? Well, the physical deal’s fairly simple: head over to the nearest FedEx Office shop and self-serve yourself to a friendly three-step method, which includes picking Dropbox as the service of choice (there’s also Box and Google Docs), entering the appropriate credentials and, naturally, selecting whatever doc you’re looking to print out. Unfortunately, both companies failed to mention how much the handy service will cost, but we can’t imagine it’d be much different than the fees you’re accustomed to now.

Filed under: Storage, Software

Dropbox now lets you print documents at FedEx Office retail stores, online too originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 02:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Plextor’s newly launched M5 Pro is angling to be the top dot on the SATA III SSD spec charts — and looks like it will mostly succeed. The Marvell Monet controller lets the unit hit a continuous 540 MB/s read and 450 MB/s write speeds for the larger models, as well as a hefty 94,000 read and 86,000 write IOPS. Those figures would put it ahead of or alongside most of its competitors except in steady write speeds, but Plextor claims that hustle is not the model’s only trick. It also makes use of “True Speed” tech to minimize performance drops with age, uses 128-bit error correction to eliminate data inaccuracy and offers 256-bit full-drive encryption. The 128GB, 256GB or 512GB drives will be available mid-August for prices that have yet to be determined, but it’s likely to be well north of its budget namesake, the M5S. You’ll find the full PR after the break.

Continue reading Plextor M5 Pro bulges SSD envelope with 94K IOPS and 540MB/s

Filed under: Storage

Plextor M5 Pro bulges SSD envelope with 94K IOPS and 540MB/s originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple co-founder and technology celebrity Steve Wozniak spoke last night at a monologue show by Mike Daisey, saying that he thought the next few years of cloud computing will be “horrendous.” Letting the crowd of the show “The Agony and the Ecstacy of Steve Jobs” know how he felt about the cloud trend in everything from music streaming to content storage, Woz wasn’t shy about noting how worried he was about the future. Woz noted that considering what we’ve got in the so-called cloud already “there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.”

With many of the top hardware and software manufacturing groups working with “cloud-based” services now, Woz let it be known that he’s not entirely happy with how the idea of ownership has transformed very recently. “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away. I want to feel that I own things.”

Woz is a notorious owner of things, that’s for certain. Speaking onstage where Robert MacPherson of the AFP could hear him, the wise one continued:

“A lot of people feel, ‘Oh, everything is really on my computer,’ but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it. … I really worry about everything going to the cloud.” – Steve Wozniak

This “cloud” movement, for those of you unfamiliar, is the move away from hard disks that are able to be accessed from one’s own immediate area toward a model with remote servers. Once you’ve got your information “in the cloud,” you still do have it on someone’s computer somewhere (a server, that is to say), but you’ll need the internet or some other network connection to get at it.

Steve Wozniak is worried about the massive break-down that always has the potential to happen when massive amounts of information is stored remotely in any given situation.

What do you think, SlashGear readers?

Woz speaks: “With the cloud, you don’t own anything” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Logitec Japan has announced the availability of the LHR-8BREU3. It is a USB 3.0 and eSATA external enclosure that can hold up to 8 SATA HDDs. The Logitec LHR-8BREU3 supports RAID 0/5/10/50 with auto-rebuild. Folks in Japan are able to buy the Logitec LHR-8BREU3 USB 3.0 and eSATA external enclosure for 39,800 Yen ($505). [Akihabara]

The final price may end up being more than the initially proposed $186 million, but Seagate has successfully acquired a controlling share of LaCie stocks. The provisional price of €4.05 per share could increase to €4.17 if Seagate manages to accumulate 95 percent of the company’s stocks in the next six months. As of now, however, it hold just shy of 65 percent, enough to take control of the French manufacturer. With LaCie and its valuable consumer business under its belt and Samsung’s SSD expertise, the move to reject a Western Digital take over is looking better and better. After all, consumer choice is the engine of capitalism and now Seagate has more than enough ammunition to take on WD and its Hitachi properties. Check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading Seagate completes purchase of LaCie in quest to become king of the hard drive hill

Filed under: Storage

Seagate completes purchase of LaCie in quest to become king of the hard drive hill originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 23:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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