Intel Feeling The Recession Pinch

In the so-called times of crisis (I’m not believing it), everyone is affected from small guns to the big barrels; like Intel. And recently, Ryaz Pattel whom I met at the Tumpang-Intel Core i7 event, reported his visit to Low Yat plaza was proof of the recession. He calls it the ‘R’ word.

I really liked the part in his post regarding economics when he shared how a government incentive would help during this time. Which I’d like to quote:

Who benefits from a big, broad incentive like this?

Let’s think about the jobs it can create:

Directly, it’ll impact…

• the retail sales person who sells you the broadband and internet device (ie: the PC),
• the marketing people who created the broadband package you’re buying,
• the designer(s) who creates the flyers and brochures for the promotions.

Don’t forget…

• the technician who loads the software,
• the software developer who wrote some of the cool applications you use,
• the broadband technician who tweaks his network to support your subscription.

What about…

• the delivery man who stocks the stores,
• the factory worker who assembled your PC,
• the procurement person and
• the accountants, the banks, the finance people in the backroom?

The impact will trickle down to…

• the cleaner who keeps the store dust-free and windows clean,
• the security man who walks around making sure you’re safe after your purchase,
• the insurance salesman who sells insurance to the retail store in case of theft or fire.

His article; On the Growth Path to Emerge Stronger, to me tells Intel is as much worried like any other human living on this planet.

So in this time of so-called need, we’re relying on what the Malaysia government can do (with our taxes) to asisst us this year.

Has your company felt the pinch already?

Possible Premature Drive Failure With Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive

A friend of mine forwarded an email to me warning there may be major problems which can lead to premature drive failure with the new 3.5 inch Seagate Barracuda 7200.11.

He said this in his email:

If you have just brought a brand new internal 3.5-inch Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive, be warned that it is currently experiencing some major problems which can lead to premature drive failure!

If you own a Seagate that is 1TB and above, chances are you are affected. The new 1TB drives are using 7200.11, Seagate’s new family of hard drives that have improper firmware which can lead to your drive being unusable only after a few months.

The problem appears to be rooted in the drive’s firmware which can run fine but suddenly seize up after a few weeks or months causing the drive to be beyond recovery. Seagate has since released updated fixes for their drives to correct this problem and there have been reports of problems going away after the update.

But to be clear, if your hard drive is affected and you cannot detect it in BIOS, consider it bricked and you need to contact Seagate to have them fix the problem. Your data will be retained, however which is a relief. As before, it is a firmware problem, not a hardware problem.

If you do have a problem with the hard disk, the links to the correct firmware can be found on the official Seagate forum.

Disclaimer: I’ve no hard evidence of the matter but am sharing this out in goodwill of my friends, clients or users to backup their data if they own the said product.