Pierre-X: <<1. WDC is behind the technology curve. By their own admission they were last to transition to MR products. This worked to their advantage last fiscal year but in the last CC WDC said they plan to accelerate transition to MR due to the pricing pressures>> A lot of people have the same misconception as you do. WD may be late for MR transition. But, their first MR program that the management said would ship 1.5 million this quarter is not behind those from either SEG or QNTM. As a matter of fact, it is at the forefront of disk drive technology (except IBM). This drive has 2.1G/platter, 9.5ms average seek time, Ultra DMA (33.3M).
Please go into QNTM or SEG websites and look for similar products. If I did not read it incorrectly: QNTM will have drives of similar specs in January 1998. I don't know when SEG will have it. In SEG's medalist UDMA series, 9.5ms seek time products up to 6.4GB, they use up to 5 platters to achieve the same density as the same WD MR products with 3 platters:
medalist 2122 (2.1G, 3 platters), 2532 (2.5G 3 platters), 3232 (3.2G, 3 platters), 4342 (4.3G, 4 platters), 6451 (6.4G, 5 platters).
Who has the cost and technology advantage?
John |
