Baru 2 Bulan, Galaxy Note Sudah Laku 1 Juta Unit

SAMSUNG

Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung Electronics mengumumkan bahwa penjualan global smartphone Galaxy Note, hingga Kamis (29/12/2011), sudah melampaui 1 juta unit hanya dalam waktu dua bulan.

Galaxy Note baru mulai dipasarkan oleh Samsung pada akhir Oktober 2011. Samsung mengklaim, Galaxy Note merupakan perpaduan dari smartphone dan tablet. Samsung membekali produk ini dengan prosesor Dual Core 1.5GHz, layar 5,3 inci dengan teknologi layar AMOLED HD, dan menggunakan sistem operasi Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Keunikan tersendiri dari produk ini adalah, tersedianya pena digital atau disebut S Pen, yang memungkinkan penggunanya menulis atau menggambar di layar.

Pada kuartal pertama 2012, Samsung telah mengumumkan akan melakukan upgrade sistem operasi untuk Galaxy Note menggunakan Android 4.0 yang biasa disebut Ice Cream Sandwich.

Galaxy Note mendapat pangsa pasar yang baik di Perancis dan Jerman. Jika tahun depan Galaxy Note mulai dipasarkan di Amerika Serikat, diperkirakan angka penjualannya akan meningkat pesat.

Penjualan produk smartphone Samsung di  tahun 2011 ini telah mencapai 60 juta unit, atau naik tiga kali lipat dibandingkan tahun 2010. Jumlah penjualan smartphone Samsung ini telah melampaui angka penjualan Apple Inc.

sumber:kompas

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Thecus Unveils Cavium-Powered N4100 EVO NAS Device

The folks at Thecus have just unveiled their latest low-power Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, the N4100 EVO. This new N4100 looks just like previous iterations of this 4-bay NAS, and sports Thecus’ useful LCD and front panel buttons (among many other features), but this latest device is powered by a new, lower-power dual-core SoC from Cavium. The full scoop is available in the PR below...

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Thecus N4100EVO: The First Dual-core Cavium-based 4-bay NAS 
Intelligent design: Evolve your digital office

12/12/2011 – Taipei (Taiwan): Thecus is well known in the market for always putting innovative hardware and state of the art technology on the table for a fair price in order to guarantee our customers the best value. Thecus’s new N4100EVO NAS offer a broad range of advanced features and differentiate themselves with low-energy hardware for those who place strong value on cutting down their electricity costs and carbon footprint. This cost-effective hardware is the first four-bay NAS on the market to feature the speedy and efficient dual-core Cavium CPU to get the quick transfer speeds necessary for large backups and heavy use. The N4100EVO is designed to change the way you run your office, at home or at work.

Dual Core CPU The N4100EVO doesn't bust your budget and still has plenty of power to throw around. It integrates a Cavium dual-core processor, making file sharing, web hosting, and even heavy data backups easy and fast. This four bay NAS will also have 2 USB 2.0 ports for easy data backup to and from external hard drives and an LCD screen for more convenient administration.

Hardware RAID and the Powerful XOR Engine
The XOR Engine makes the N4100EVO the first SMB/home NAS on the market to use dedicated hardware to lighten the load of building RAID and free up the CPU to keep your NAS running fast. The N4100EVO embeds a dedicated XOR engine in order to speed up all RAID 5 computations and minimize one of the main drawbacks of RAID protection: rebuilding time!

A Well Rounded Software Bundle
It is important to give users the support and applications they need to take full advantage of storing and networking their data. That’s why Thecus provides a lot of useful tools to be sure their NAS can be pushed to the fullest extent. If you feel you are a tinkerer, you can also develop your own modules and share them with the community.

• Thecus Firmware includes support for all the newest advances: XFS, 3TB HDD, SATAIII HDD, iSCSI, an open source module system, and more.
• The powerful Acronis Backup software makes backups easy and keeps your data safe!
• More than a dozen free modules are available on the Thecus website, including:
  • A download manager for BitTorrent, eMule and HTTP. You don’t even need to switch on your computer!
  • The brand new Piczza! photo server, which allows you to share your pictures with friends and family in a smart and easy-to-use interface.
  • A Web Disk module to upload and download data simply and easily to and from your NAS.

"As the demand for storage capacity continues to grow, SMB/home users are requiring greater integration of storage into their environments,” said Florence Shih, Thecus Technology General Manager. “The N4100EVO is designed to deliver performance, features, and reliability at an affordable price to satisfy these needs.”

“Cavium is delighted to be working with Thecus in introducing the revolutionary 4-Bay NAS product to the market,” says Douglas Cheung, Director of Marketing for Consumer and Home Networking at Cavium. “Our ECONA family of dual-core System-On-Chips (SoCs) deliver best–in-class NAS performance with the lowest power consumption. N4100EVO leverages these attributes of ECONA SoC to deliver an energy efficient 4-bay solution without compromising the performance or cost targets.”

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Hitachi GST Ships High Performance 10K Hard Drive

Hitachi GST introduced its new Ultrastar C10K900 enterprise drive family. The Ultrastar C10K900 features a high-performance SAS 6Gb/s interface and a 64MB cache buffer to optimize the read/write response time. The new Ultrastar drives feature average seek times as low as 3.8 milliseconds, and a reduced average latency time below 3.0 milliseconds. In addition to performance, the drive also offers power efficiency by consuming up to 65 percent less power than similar 3.5-inch enterprise drives. The Ultrastar C10K900 family is available in 900GB, 600GB, 450GB and 300GB capacities. Hitachi GST is now shipping Ultrastar C10K900 qualification units and expects to offer volume shipments in Q1 2012.

Hitachi GST Ships the Fastest 10K Hard Drive

Company Ships New 900GB Ultrastar C10K900 2.5-inch Enterprise Hard Drive Family, the Highest Performance, Most Power Efficient 10K HDD for Tier 1 Enterprise Networked Storage Arrays, Blades and Other Rack-mounted Servers

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced that it is now shipping its new Ultrastar C10K900 enterprise drive family. Continuing its quality and performance leadership, the Ultrastar C10K900 leads the industry with 18 percent faster sequential and up to 17 percent faster random performance than the nearest competitor¹. It also features a high-performance SAS 6Gb/s interface for reliable data throughput and packs a 64MB cache buffer to optimize the read/write response time. The new Ultrastar drives feature average seek times as low as 3.8 milliseconds, and its fast rotational speed reduces average latency time to below 3.0 milliseconds, enabling customers to access data more quickly and efficiently.

As the company’s fourth-generation, small form factor enterprise hard drive, the Ultrastar C10K900 also hits the industry’s highest 10K capacity point at 900GB, delivering more capacity for less space for greater configuration flexibility. The new Ultrastar C10K900 family is available in 900GB, 600GB, 450GB and 300GB capacities.

Built using proven Hitachi power management technology, the Ultrastar C10K900 continues to deliver industry-leading low power specifications, up to 28 percent lower than competing drives. This is of primary importance in today’s data centers, which translates into reduced power requirements and lower cooling costs. Hitachi Advanced Power Management technology, with multi-state idle modes, maintains compatibility with the INCITS T10 Technical Committee industry standards and can be pre-programmed or manually initiated in the system. The Advanced Power Management implementation in the Ultrastar C10K900 delivers superior random read/write operating power specification of 5.8 watts and idle mode of 3.0 watts. Ultrastar C10K900 continues Hitachi’s tradition of environmental leadership with its halogen-reduced components and focus on low power consumption, and carries the Hitachi EcoTrac™ classification.

“When combining the drive’s capacity, leading performance, low power and proven quality design, the Ultrastar C10K900 is the ideal choice for today’s enterprise-class servers and networked storage arrays,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, Hitachi GST. “Because of our quality reputation and commitment, we are thrilled to report that our enterprise drives continue to be recognized as a leader in quality and reliability by OEM customers worldwide. We are confident that with our new Ultrastar C10K900 drive family, Hitachi customers will continue to benefit from our field-proven platform, industry-leading technology, performance and high reliability.”

The Ultrastar C10K900 is designed to provide higher server/storage density through a compact 2.5-inch design, a low-power profile and improved thermal characteristics. The small form factor drive occupies 70 percent less physical space and consumes up to 65 percent less power than similar 3.5-inch enterprise drives. The Ultrastar C10K900 also delivers capacity parity with 3.5-inch 10K drives, providing massive 900GB of storage space in a smaller footprint. When faced with space and power limitations, the resulting higher density servers and storage arrays help reduce space requirements, lower cooling costs and improve total cost of ownership.

The Ultrastar C10K900 family features a Bulk Data Encryption option for hard drive-level data security. These self-encrypting models are designed to the Trusted Computing Group’s Enterprise A Security Subsystem Class encryption specification and allow customers to reduce costs associated with drive retirement and extend drive life by enabling swift and secure repurposing of drives.

Hitachi GST is now shipping Ultrastar C10K900 qualification units with volume shipments in Q1 2012.

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Brace Yourself for Higher RAM Prices, Adata Says

If you spot a good deal on DRAM and could use an upgrade, you may want to pull the trigger rather than wait and hope prices will fall even further. According to Adata CEO Simon Chen, DRAM prices are likely to rebound in January 2012, mostly because of cuts in DRAM output made earlier in the year. The effects of those cuts are about to take effect, especially as PC makers get ready to replenish their inventories, Chen warns.

Chen was also quick to point that Adata is one of two companies that kept a steady focus on DRAM modules (Kingston is the other), while most other companies shifted the bulk of their operations away from system memory in order to focus on NAND flash memory for SSDs and other more stable markets.

Adata might also be making a mountain out of a mole hill here. DRAM is almost as inexpensive as tap water, so even if prices go up next month, it probably won't be enough to sway most users out of making a purchase. On the flip side, the timing is crummy, as hard drive prices are also higher these days, though for a different reason (flooding in Thailand).

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AMD Radeon HD 7970: 28nm Tahiti GPU Review

We have been hearing about AMD’s “Southern Island” family of graphics processors for quite some time. Even during briefings for the Northern Island series of products which ultimately became the Radeon HD 6000 series, news about Southern Islands was already trickling out. Rumors about these parts have been rampant for what seems like ages, but now, just in time to get all you hardcore gamers fired up this holiday season, AMD is officially taking the wraps of Southern Islands. More specifically, today AMD is announcing their latest flagship single-GPU, the Radeon HD 7970.

As you may suspect, if you paid attention to Eric Demer’s excellent keynote address at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit and the resulting onslaught of news that followed, the top-of-the-line GPU in the Southern Islands family—codenamed Tahiti—features AMD’s totally new Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. In addition to being the firstGPU to feature GCN, Tahiti is also AMD’s first GPU to be manufactured at 28nm, their first with PCI Express 3.0 connectivity, the first with DirectX 11.1 support, and the first to sport a few other new technologies we’ll cover a little later (ZeroCore, PRT, multi-point audio).

There’s a lot to cover, so we’re not going to take up any more bandwidth telling the backstory. Up next are some preliminary details regarding the Radeon HD 7970 and other GPUs in the Southern Islands family, followed by a deep dive into the technology and a full performance profile of the fastest single-GPU money can (almost) buy...

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Graphics Card

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Specifications & Features

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We’re going to go into much more detail a little later, but here are some preliminary details regarding the Tahiti-based Radeon HD 7970. The GPU is outfitted with 2,048 stream processors featuring AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture and is paired to 3GB of GDDR5 memory connected over a 384-bit wide memory bus. The maximum number of displays supported per GPU is six, just like the previous generation Radeons, but the display output configuration has changed; one of the DVI outputs has been nixed.

The "Southern Islands" Family of AMD GPUs

The Tahiti GPU isn’t the only memory of the Southern Islands family slated for release, however. It is the only one to feature GCN, but new mainstream and “sweet spot” 28nm GPUs are coming too. The Pitcairn core will power the Radeon HD 7800 series, while Cape Verde will be the foundation of the Radeon HD 7700 series. We’ll have more details regarding those parts in the coming months.

Before we move on to the inner working of Tahiti and the Radeon HD 7970 in general, we should highlight a few previous HotHardware articles that are pertinent to today’s announcement. Although it’s based on a new GPU, the Radeon HD 7970 shares many features with previous-generation Radeons, like CrossFire, Eyefinity, PowerTune, UVD, and more. Since we won’t be covering those topics in depth here again, we’d suggest giving the following articles a glance.

• AMD Radeon HD 6970 & 6950 Debut: Enter Cayman
• AMD Radeon HD 6870 & 6850 Graphics Cards Debut
• AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870: Unquestionably Number One
• ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition Gaming
• AMD Radeon HD 6870 CrossFire with 5x1 Eyefinity

In the Radeon HD 6800 and 6900 series launch articles, we discuss a number of features like PowerTune, the UVD video engine, and Eyefinity. In the Eyefinity specific articles, we further explain the technology, discuss performance, and show a number of demos of Eyefinity in action on a variety of screen configurations. 

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CTL Rolls Out Ubuntu Powered Notebook

CTL probably isn't on your short list of laptop makers if you're in the market for a new notebook, but if you're specifically looking for an Ubuntu-powered machine, perhaps the Oregon-based outfit should be. The 14.1-inch MB40U is CTL's first Ubuntu compatible notebook, and the company's pretty excited about it. So much, in fact, that it's already looking ahead to more Ubuntu products.

"CTL is very pleased to introduce our line of notebooks and desktops based on Ubuntu version 11.10. Ubuntu has emerged as one of the most popular and user-friendly Linux operating systems in the market. With Ubuntu, users can have full desktop experience supported by a robust ecosystem and a full suite of free applications. CTL will be offering more Ubuntu based products in the future," says CTL’s COO Erik Stromquist.

Pricing for the MB40U starts at $449 and includes:

• Intel Core i3 2330 processor (2.2GHz, 3MB cache)
• 2GB DDR3-1066 memory
• 160GB SATA hard drive (5400 RPM)
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit pre-installed
• 1 year parts and labor warranty

If that doesn't float your boat, the system is slightly customizable to accommodate a faster processor (up to a Core i7 2630QM), more RAM (up to 8GB), and bigger and faster storage solutions (up to a 500GB 7200 RPM HDD or up to a 512GB SSD).

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Gigabyte Issues Emergency BIOS Update for Certain X79 Series Motherboards

Overclocking used to be a dark art reserved for a power users who didn't mind taking potentially catastrophic risks in order to squeeze a few more ounces of free performance out of their components. Things have changed dramatically in recent years, but lest anyone forget, overclocking can still be dangerous, even with all of the modern day safe guards. YouTube user "japan0827" found this out the unfortunate way when his overclocked system went up in smoke...literally (see video here).

He was using a Gigabyte X79-UD3 motherboard and narrowed the culprit down to a faulty MOSFET that couldn't handle the stress from the board's CPU VRM. Pictures are littered all over the Web on various forums, and they aren't pretty. Unfortunately, the problem is more serious than bad part on a single motherboard.

"It has come to our attention that certain X79 Series motherboards (see models below) may malfunction due to excess heat when performing Extreme Overclocking beyond the board’s limit. To address this issue and to ensure our product is being used as intended, we urge existing X79 users to either visit Gigabyte’s official website to download and update their X79 series BIOS, or contact Gigabyte’s regional service center," Gigabyte said in a statement.

Below is a list of affected boards with links to an updated BIOS:

• G1.Assassin 2 (Update to BIOS F7 or later)
• GA-X79-UD7 (Update to BIOS F7 or later)
• GA-X79-UD5 (Update to BIOS F7 or later)
• GA-X79-UD3 (Update to BIOS F7 or later)

Some early reports suggested Gigabyte was recalling the above models, but that's not the case in the U.S. Instead, Gigabyte is taking a three pronged approach to resolving the problem:

1. Gigabyte will make its best efforts to ensure that all partners, distributors and retailers have the latest firmware (BIOS) installed on existing X79 Series Motherboard models.
2. Gigabyte's commitment to service excellence will not be compromised. The GIGABYTE X79 Series Motherboards offer an unprecedented 5 year warranty, the longest offered in the industry. We encourage users to register for this FREE 5 year warranty here: http://e-service.gigabyte.com/Productregistration/webevent/ExtendWarranty_US.aspx
3. If any existing user is still unsatisfied after the recommended firmware (BIOS) update of their X79 Series Motherboard, Gigabyte will offer an unconditional replacement of their X79 Series Motherboard (same model). No Questions Asked.

As to the BIOS update, there are reports that it throttles the CPU when pushed too far, which will prevent things from burning up, but also gimps the boards' overclocking potential.

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