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Technology Stocks : Western Digital (WDC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandi obrien who wrote (10258)	4/8/1999 2:16:00 PM
From: The Insider	Respond to of 11057

"0" to name a figure.

To: sandi obrien who wrote (10258)	4/8/1999 5:24:00 PM
From: Mark Adams	Respond to of 11057

10 gig gets about $200 today. y2k sales may taper off in a bad way 2h99 as companies implement change freezes. You wouldn't think of drives being a y2k risk, but as I understand it, companies want the hardware and software certified, then don't want anything changed until the new year is well underway. Of course, this could just be the last urban legend. So I don't see a huge near-term demand driver for the sector, though I hold both WDC and QNTM.

To: sandi obrien who wrote (10258)	4/8/1999 9:28:00 PM
From: Kirk Vanden	Respond to of 11057

>>Any opinions to the contrary? Also, if everyone is buying >>hardware because of the y2k problem, shouldn't that help the >>disk drive sector? And, REALLY, how much lower can WDC go? I thought most Y2K spending was for software. The two leading problems with hardware (IMO) in a normal computer are the RTC (real time clock) and the BIOS. The BIOS is easily updated free from new versions on the manufacturers WWW site. The RTC might be harder to replace but we have found even old Dell 486s have a Y2K compliant RTC. So, I actually think hardware sales have been hurt by Y2K as companies are forced to spend fixed IT budgets on software fixes and upgrades. I am also encouraged by the new 7200 RPM drives appearing. It looks like WDC will maintain a line of 5400 RPM drives as well. Instead of just size (Gigabytes) disk drives are now being differentiated by speed as well. I believe the 7200's will enable them to make nice fat profits on each drive. I think this is a smart marketing move, if indeed they plan to do this. Like someone pointed out the size of drives are increasing past what the average user needs. However, the 7200 RPM drives can greatly speed up application performance, including multimedia, games, and video. Also, I see an emerging market for audio/visual drives for use in VCR type of appliances. I read somewhere that WDC is working with Sony on a drive. AV drives don't have to be as accurate as data drives, which need to get EVERY bit correct or programs fail and files are corrupted. For video playback the human eye will never notice losses caused by minor storage errors. Here is my thinking. Look at the way Intel makes CPUs. They really only make one type. If it fails the test to run reliably at 500 Mhz then they retest to see if it can work in a reliable manner at 450. If not then 400...350. They make maximum use of slight lower performing parts. Now, what if the AV drive market pickes up and suddenly WDC can re-test failed data drives to see if they can pass the quality tests for an AV drive. This highly maximizes production efficiency. I recently saw a VCR type of device that stored a HUGE amount of TV shows. It used hard drives, probably AV drives. Only, the demand for AV drives need to increase I guess for my theory to be tested. Just thinking out loud here. This is why I picked up some WDC and Komag. Hoping for another market to emerge. If not I'll wait until MS introduces Windows 2000 and Office 2000 and fills up all those big hard drives.