LaCie unveils the first hard drive with Thunderbolt

HomeNewsLaCie reveals the first hard drive with ThunderboltPosted Devina from Divecha on Sun 27 Feb 2011

Will be the first ever capable-Thunderbolt hard become essential for techies as LBD is for fashionistas?

Today LaCie announced the first storage device that supports the newest Thunderbolt technology, available only on the new Apple MacBook Pro Apart from Thunderbolt, the new MacBook Pro seems to host a variety of impressive specifications.

Formerly known as light Peak, Thunderbolt is a standard technology fast i/o peripheral that owns a 10Gbps (1 .25gbps), speed, and can support high-resolution displays.

Running on PCI Express and DisplayPort protocols, the LaCie Little Big Disk is designed for mobile professionals and the media in mind, allowing multiple HD video streams in minutes instead of hours without compromise.

Data transferred between devices on Thunderbolt reported can be made 20 times faster than USB 2.0.

The LBD consists of two 250 GB Intel 510 series solid state drives and is enclosed in an aluminum d2.

Philippe Spruch, CEO of LaCie said, "Thunderbolt technology is a breakthrough in technology and represents the future of mobile computing. Soon will be able to exercise power and workstation-class functionality in compact devices. "

The LaCie Little Big Disk was developed by Intel and is expected to become available by summer 2011. Capacity of storage and prices are yet unknown.

What are your thoughts on the new standard Thunderbolt? Head to our Facebook and Twitter pages and tell us. Watch this space for more news updates superfast tech.

Fedora and openSUSE Linux Drop drive efforts

Canonical made quite a splash of autumn, when it announced that the interface units used in his edition of Ubuntu Netbook would become the default interface of the Linux distribution as well as desktop version starting with version 11.04 or narwhal Natty.

Previously used Ubuntu, GNOME shell by default. Conflicts on design issues between Canonical and the GNOME project, however, apparently caused canonical move instead to shell and 3D multitouch enabled units.

Not long after the announcement of canonical, developers on projects both Fedora and openSUSE indicated that they would start implementing unit on their distributions as well. Whereas now, Ubuntu is the Linux distribution of no 1, according to Distrowatch, Fedora is no 3 and openSUSE is no. 5.

«Still stuck on this Bug»

"Unit of an interesting project," wrote Fedora Developer Adam Williamson back in December. "I want to look at and compare it with GNOME Shell and I think very few others do too, so it looks nice a package so that you can run both on Fedora."

This week, however, both efforts apparently stuck.

Williamson of Fedora, for example, said on Monday that he "had little time or inclination to do much with unit/Poulsbo.

"The drive is still stuck on this bug that promised the upstream maintainer to look after Christmas (I presented Last change prompted on Jan 25, and it was crickets from)," explained, noting that his work effort is entirely voluntary. "If I had the inclination might have set up a repo for side carry on building stuff, or spied on ajax to include the patch anyway. Only I didn't. "

"Lack of satisfactory"

Nelson Marques of the openSUSE project, meanwhile, has encountered similar obstacles.

Marques "packaging unit was much of a problem, but the implementation is to be translated in frustration," he wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. That "and the lack of satisfactory results may lead to situations pre-burnout, and not I'm walking that road."

Marques cited problems encountered as part of his frustration, including "Compiz git different behaviour on different snapshots", and "gconf defaults requests from the drive and backup and restore operations from openSUSE defaults."

Compiz is a window manager that is used by default to unity in narwhal Natty.

"Maybe it's wiser to wait for some more development from upstream, before examining the question," concluded Marques. "openSUSE is supposed to be stable and reliable, and I don't see this branch of Compiz correspond to those two quality yet."

Ubuntu is isolated

Both developers did welcome the involvement of other stakeholders in the effort, and Marques said that he would look into it later, "once there is an official release of Compiz from branch that you need for unity".

In the meantime, however, seems narwhal Natty--whose final version is expected to be published at the end of April--will be the only one with the unit turned on by default, at least for the foreseeable future.

The unit can now be seen in the second alpha version of Natty, which is now available for download on the Ubuntu site. A video on YouTube shows the release in action. If you have checked out the new interface, please share your impressions in comments.

Follow Katherine Noyes on Twitter: @ Noyesk.

It is essential to drive productivity, Intel says

Intellect has agreed with Government Ministers plans to hold a technology Summit to examine how it can play a role in the growth strategy of the United Kingdom.

Trade Association for the technology sector of the United Kingdom considers that it has an important role in guiding the country's productivity and economic growth.

John Higgins, Director General of intellect, said: "this is special pleading for more spending on ICT. Promoting investment in ICT that fails to generate additional benefits in terms of productivity throughout the economy, the long-term interest of the sector will not benefit.

"The focus should be on the scale of the use of ICT and the most efficient and effective use of ICT to innovation rather than simply the volume. It is vital for the country in bridging the productivity gap. "

The Technology Summit is an ad that comes out of a recent event hosted roundtable that intellect, assisted by the Corporate Secretary Vince cable and Vaizey and the Minister of communications.

Cable said: "the revision of growth not only focuses on emerging areas, but also those that are already strong, as the technology sector.

"Promote these sectors and working to remove barriers to growth we can make sure that we create the conditions for a future economic prosperity."

Representatives of the sector, who have also participated in the roundtable included Olivia Garfield, Director of strategy, policy and portfolio to BT, Stephen Leonard, CEO of IBM UK, Andy Green, CEO of Logica and Victor Chavez, CEO of Thales.

Now intellect will review technology drives innovation and helps to increase productivity, Technology Summit, which is scheduled for this year. Issues such as skills, training and education, computer security and finance for the sector will be examined at the Summit.