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Archive for » August, 2011 «

NASA Makes New Shuttle Program Artifacts Available

Monday, August 29th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

A little more than a month ago, the final landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis marked the end of the Space Shuttle program. We followed the story pretty closely here on the OWC Blog, mostly in relation to our friends over at The Last Shuttle Project. Well, now we have a nice little postscript to the saga.

On Monday, Aug. 15, the eighth batch of artifacts from NASA’s various programs were made available on a website that the agency and the General Services Administration (GSA) developed.

This batch of artifacts not only included items from the Space Shuttle program, but the Apollo, Mercury, and Hubble Space Telescope programs as well.

To date, approximately 29,000 items of historic significance have been offered, mainly from the shuttle, with contributions from the Hubble, Apollo, Mercury, Gemini, and International Space Station programs. Approximately 3,000 artifacts have been requested. The remainder will be considered for federal and state reuse and then offered to the general public for sale.

For more information about these artifacts and how they’re distributed, you may want to check out the NASA Artifact site; there’s a lot more information there.

 

OWC Announces Lowest Priced 60GB Mercury Electra 6G SSD – One Of The Fastest 6G Solid State Drives Available

Thursday, August 25th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing today announced the $129.99 MSRP 60GB capacity model to its award-winning, built in the USA OWC Mercury Electra 6G Solid State Drive line. Offering a lower starting price point to one of the industry’s fastest 6G SSD lines, the new SandForce Driven 6Gb/s 60GB capacity OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD utilizes the highest quality components available, including Tier 1/Grade A NAND, to deliver 556MB/s read and 523MB/s write sustained data rates for over 7X faster performance than a standard factory hard drive found in Mac and PC computers. Article Continues…

The End Of An Era … Steve Jobs Resigns As Apple’s CEO

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 | Author: OWC Michael

After years of being the singular most influential driving force in the computing industry, Steve Jobs resigned today from his post as CEO of Apple Inc. and recommended Tim Cook as his successor.

Mr. Jobs published this letter to Apple:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee. Article Continues…

OWC Announces Upgrade Service For All Mid-2011 Apple iMacs Featuring Up To Three High Performance 6Gb/s Solid State Drives, 3.0TB Hard Drive, 32GB RAM And/Or Industry’s Only eSATA Interface For 27″ Models

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today its OWC Turnkey Upgrade Installation Program for the Mid-2011 Apple iMac that enables any 2011 21.5″ or 27″ iMac model owner to have OWC professionally install up to three award winning OWC Mercury 6G Solid State Drives up to 480GB each, a larger capacity hard drive up to 3.0TB, and OWC Memory Upgrades up to 32GB. 27″ iMac owners also have the option of OWC installing the industry’s only eSATA interface and experience data transfer rates up to 600MB/s. OWC’s installation service program offers multiple configuration options starting at $169 with a 48 business hours or less installation turnaround. Article Continues…

OWC Turnkey Program for 2011 iMacs Announced.

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 | Author: OWC Grant

You know that feeling of accomplishment when you’ve overcome a huge obstacle and you can’t wait to tell the entire world about it? Well, we’ve got it; we’ve overcome the whole “fan/drive sensor” problem found when installing a non-factory drive in the 2011 iMacs. That means we can now officially announce the OWC Turnkey Program for the 2011 iMacs.

We’re also going to one-up the 2010 program by including upgrade options for both the 21.5″ and the 27″ 2011 iMac models.

That drive sensor thing was a big hurdle. Apple uses a custom firmware that sends temperature info in a non-standard fashion. Unfortunately, unless the drive has this special firmware, the fans spin at full speed. We wanted a solution that would be a long-term solution that wasn’t dependent on a software patch or hack. Though those sorts of fixes can be temporarily effective, we didn’t want to rely on them for two reasons:

  1. they put overhead on the bus which can reduce performance
  2. a software solution can can fail or be rendered non-functional by a wide variety of actions (software updates, system reinstalls, etc.) which could risk the hard drive and the data contained on it.

So, we went another route and developed a hardware solution that interfaces accurately and properly with what can be viewed as a frustratingly unique temperature data monitoring method by Apple. While our solution adds a little bit to the cost of upgrading the iMac’s hard drives, we feel that cost is more than offset by the advantages it has over software solutions. Article Continues…

The Other World – Episode 32

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Category: The Other World

Take Your iPad 2 Everywhere Safe & Secure With NuGuard GripStand 2 / GripBase Bundle

Thursday, August 18th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Safely Bring Your iPad to School – Protective Features Ideal for Educational Environments

Newer Technology, Inc. announced today the NuGuard GripStand 2/GripBase Bundle for iPad 2, a multi-use solution for the Apple iPad 2 to bring it everywhere you go — on the run, at your desk, or in the car

Available in black or white and affordably priced at only $39.99 MSRP, the NuGuard GripStand 2/GripBase Bundle offers iPad 2 owners one of the most flexible and low-cost combinations of iPad 2 protection, portability, and viewing available on the market.  The NuGuard GripStand 2/GripBase Bundle lets you comfortably use your iPad 2 while standing, walking, commuting, in school, at work, for sales calls, meetings, during lectures, in the library, at your desk, or in the car as an entertainment center. Article Continues…

Category: Press Releases

Want to win an OWC Electra SSD?

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 | Author: OWC Michael

Our friends over at The SSD Review are currently holding a contest to win the fastest and most reliable Solid State Drive on the market today: the OWC 240GB Mercury Electra 6G SSD.

To be eligible, one must be (or become) an active and contributing member in the SSD Review forums between August 15th and August 29th, 2011. To claim the prize you must be 16 years of age or over and be able to answer a skill testing question. Full details can be found at The SSD Review.

Good luck!