Hasta La Gadget!

All’s not well in hybrid solid state storage land, as 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. Seagate forumgoers speculate these are symptoms of the XT’s magnetic platters spinning down inappropriately, due to an overzealous power management scheme. That’s the bad news — and it sounds pretty bad — but the good news is this: Seagate’s owning up to the issues, and is actively involved in getting them fixed. So far, a pair of new firmware updates have 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. That’s what we call technical support — take notes, tech companies.

Momentus XT hybrid drive causing headaches, Seagate working to fix originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lots of people have lots of problems with lots of things, but to say that we’ve been getting lots of complaints about Nexus S issues would be an understatement. Hundreds have chimed in on the Google Mobile Help forum indicating that their handsets are frequently losing data signal and, once lost, a reboot is required to reconnect. It’s been said this could be related to an issue that’s been around since 2009 (issue 2845), but a new issue in the Android bug tracker has been created, 14672, which specifically deals with the Nexus S. You might want to star ’em both if you’re affected — or feeling charitable. Finally, and perhaps even more troubling, is the phone rebooting. By itself. In the middle of a call. You can imagine how this might be a little annoying. That issue is number 13674 and it’s linked down there too.

Update: Huzzah! Just got a note from Google saying: “All of the issues described in the post are resolved and will be fixed with an OTA that will go out soon.” Feel free to start mashing that “system updates” menu item.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Nexus S suffering from random data loss, reboots? (updated: fixes coming!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Issue 14672, Issue 13674, Issue 2845  | Email this | Comments

Yahoo! Mail is widely available on tens of millions of mobile phones, including those running on Apple iOS, Android, Nokia Symbian, and RIM. The issue on the Windows Phones is specific to how Microsoft chose to implement IMAP for Yahoo! Mail and does not impact Yahoo! Mail on these other mobile devices. Yahoo! has offered to provide Microsoft a near-term solution for the implementation they chose, and is encouraging Microsoft to change to a standard way of integrating with Yahoo! Mail, which would result in a permanent fix.

Yahoo: nonstandard IMAP implementation to blame for Windows Phone 7 data leak originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every time we write about Intel’s flawed Sandy Bridge chipset and the need for it to be physically replaced, the financial costs go up. First Intel projected a $300 million hit to its bottom line, then it set aside $700 million to cover repairs and replacements, and now it’s estimating a round $1 billion loss in “missed sales and higher costs.” Those missed sales will be coming directly from guys like MSI and Gigabyte, two of the major motherboard makers, who have stopped selling their Sandy Bridge-compatible models until Intel delivers untainted stock, and also Dell, who has nixed availability of its Alienware M17x R3 gaming laptop. CNET did spot that HP and Dell were still selling laptops with the offending chipset in them yesterday, but we imagine both will get their online stores straightened out in due course. For its part, HP says it’s pushing back a business notebook announcement due to this news, much like NEC has had to do. Moral of the story? Don’t let faulty chips out of the oven.

Update: Dell says the M17x R3 is just the tip of the iceberg here: “This affects four currently-available Dell products, the XPS 8300, the Vostro 460, the Alienware M17x R.3 and the Alienware Aurora R.3, as well as several other planned products including XPS 17 with 3D. We’re committed to addressing this with customers who have already purchased one of the four products and will provide further details on this as it becomes available.”

[Thanks, geller]

Dell, Gigabyte and MSI pull products in wake of Sandy Bridge chipset flaw, HP faces delays (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 04:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Alienware, PC & Tech Authority, BusinessWeek  | Email this | Comments

Intel raised quite a few eyebrows yesterday by disclosing that its Cougar Point chipsets suffer from an incurable design issue that would potentially degrade Serial ATA transfers over time. AnandTech has gone to the trouble of getting in touch with Intel to seek more information and the problem, as it turns out, is a single transistor that’s prone to a higher current leakage than tolerable. This can not only diminish performance over the 3Gbps SATA ports, it can actually make them fail altogether. There is more comforting news, however, in that the pair of 6Gbps SATA ports on the chipset are untroubled by this ailment, so devices and users that never plug into the 3Gbps connections can just carry on as if nothing’s ever happened. For everyone else, a repair and replacement service is taking place now, with Intel’s budget for dealing with this problem said to be a generous $700 million.

Intel Sandy Bridge chipset flaw identified as a rogue transistor affecting SATA ports originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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