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Pastimes : J Doe #13 Off-topic Non-Specific Tech Stock Ponderings -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charlie Finley who wrote (1454)	3/10/1999 1:18:00 AM
From: Johnathan C. Doe	Respond to of 1819

This is what is killing Gateway; as the technology shifts; one goes up the other down. WDC got killed because its technology was the old stuff; that was about a year and a half ago or just over that long ago. Now they have started to dig themselves out of the shift. I had seen the IBM/WDC deal a long time ago; maybe 9 months or so; I've lost track, but with it; I had always figured that WDC was ok. It seems to me that WDC is the buy with it dirt cheap and likely to come back as a turnaround with SEG coming down like WDC did before. SEG has some of this technology coming and so they will be ok, but there could be a timing issue and they might get driven down on that. ATA-66; I don't know where SEG stands on that, but I believe they had a technology similar to IBM's for the next generation platters. Anyhow; WDC just sold off their old stuff which was not of much use to staying competitive and has linked up with IBM; seems to be a good direction to go. IBM is now their supplier instead of the other company they just sold their old stuff to; can't recall their name right off the cuff; APM was it????? Anyhow; that's what is up with SEG I believe; I haven't studied this closely though. Gateway First to Feature WD Expert 7,200 RPM Ultra ATA/66 Hard Drive in New PC Models; Western Digital Well Positioned for Upcoming Technology Transitions Western Digital Leads Desktop Industry With Move to 7,200 RPM, GMR Heads and Ultra ATA/66 Interface IRVINE, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC - news) today announced that Gateway Corporation (NYSE: GWY - news) is shipping the WD Expert 7,200 RPM hard drive with GMR heads and the Ultra ATA/66 interface in its newly released Gateway Performance product line. Gateway's inclusion of the new features is a harbinger of the desktop PC industry's transition to more advanced storage technologies in calendar 1999, according to research from International Data Corporation. ''The market for 7,200 RPM hard drives will accelerate throughout 1999 and will exit the year at about a 30% run rate,'' said Danielle Levitas, senior research analyst at International Data Corporation. ''Additionally, we expect the 10-19.9 GB capacity range to predominate the mix of 7,200 RPM drives through the first half of 2001.'' Western Digital is well positioned with time-to-market advantages on its WD Caviar, WD Expert and WD Enterprise hard drive product offerings during this calendar year's anticipated technology transitions. These transitions include the shifts to the use of giant magnetoresistive head (GMR) technology, the move from 5,400 RPM to 7,200 RPM rotational spindle speed in the desktop segment and to 10,000 RPM spindle speed, low profile hard drives in the enterprise/server space, as well as the move to the higher-performance Ultra ATA/66 interface in the desktop market. Western Digital and IBM are the first two companies to ship a 4.55 GB per platter 7,200 RPM desktop hard drive based on the technology licensing and component supply agreement signed in June, 1998. The Company plans to complete the transition to GMR heads from the current AMR (anisotropic magnetoresistive) standard heads by the end of calendar 1999. Western Digital's GMR heads are supplied by technology leader IBM. ''The more sophisticated end user expects a higher level of performance from their PC,'' said Matt Massengill, executive vice president and general manager of Western Digital's Drive Products Division. ''The newest transitions in the hard drive industry are all about achieving that performance boost, and changing the overall combined feature set to include the faster spindle speed, GMR heads and the Ultra ATA/66 interface to bring a performance increase to the hard drive. This performance enhancement allows consumers to both bring up larger files and download data faster. Every one of our major PC OEM customers has 7,200 RPM desktop PCs on their product roadmaps this year and WD is well positioned to participate in this transition because of our technology leadership position.'' Western Digital is currently shipping the 7,200 RPM WD Expert product line, announced in December of 1998, and the 5,400 WD Caviar 20.4 GB hard drive, which both feature GMR heads and the Ultra ATA/66 interface. Under the terms of the agreement with IBM, Western Digital leverages IBM's long-standing technology leadership by implementing simultaneously with IBM's deployment of hard drive technology and components. The agreement leverages Western Digital's extensive hard drive development, high-volume manufacturing experience, OEM and channel customer relationships and award-winning WD brand. IBM invented and has shipped more GMR heads than any other supplier. With an eye to providing the end user with the required performance they need, Western Digital is also the first hard drive manufacturer to ship hard drives featuring the new Ultra ATA/66 interface. The Ultra ATA/66 interface allows data to transfer at higher speeds up to 66.6 MB/s, doubling the data transfer rate from the previously standard Ultra ATA/33.