Here’s a quick news release of new WD products for this month:

A. WD Blue 5mm HDD and WD Black 5mm SSHD

Western Digital announces the release of their new 2.5” Blue and Black drives that are now 5mm thin, and the new 2.5” Black drives now being a Solid State Hybrid Drive, which was developed in partnership with SanDisk.

Here’re some features included in the new 2.5” Drives:

Ultra-slim Form Factor – 5 mm height with compact connector offers system designers a greater degree of chassis design freedom. This ultra-slim form factor reduces weight by up to 36 percent compared with a standard 9.5 mm drive.

Best-in-class Acoustics and Shock – WD’s best-in-class acoustics use technologies that reduce noise when the drive is active or idle. The WD Blue and WD Black 5 mm drives deliver unprecedented operation and non-operation shock specifications with 400 G and 1000G, respectively.

Edge Card Technology – WD designed the connector and board utilizing cell phone miniaturization technology to maximize the mechanical sway space in the hard drive and ensure shock performance.

Edge Card Connector – WD Blue 5 mm hard drives also feature the first application of a new small form factor SFF-8784 edge connector. This new connector receives power from and interfaces with the host I/O bus via the SATA interface connector SFF-8784.

StableTrac™ – The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations which enables consistently higher performance.

Dual Stage Actuator – Leading-edge enterprise dual stage actuators provide two actuators that improve positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.

Now the main difference between the Blue model and the Black model is the existence of a solid state drive co-developed by SanDisk.

Right now, the WD Blue 5mm 2.5” drive is being sold here for 3,995 SRP, while the Black model is still being shipped to OEMs and would be released for retail later.

B. WD 3.5” SAS WD XE

WD releases a solution that solves the problem with some enterprise servers seeking a way to transition from the legacy 3.5” storage solution to the latest 2.5” solution. The answer is through the WD 3.5” SAS WD XE (or WD XE for short) which is a 2.5” drive mounted on a 3.5” adapter (similar to a WD Raptor, which is also mounted on an adapter, but used for cooling purposes) to fit the new drive on legacy 3.5” mounts found on servers.

WD XE 2.5-inch SAS hard drives in 3.5-inch performance adapters feature:

Highest performance in its class – WD XE delivers ultra-fast 6 Gb/s transfer rates, best-in-class sequential data rate of 204 MB/s, and outstanding random I/O performance;

Low power consumption – This 3.5-inch SAS drive delivers up to 67 percent lower power versus 3.5-inch 15,000 RPM drives, which can result in substantially lower total cost of ownership (TCO) while increasing capacity and reliability;

Form factor – 2.5-inch drive mounted in 3.5-inch performance adapter for ease of upgrade and ultra-cool operation;

Dual port, full duplex connectivity – Offers higher reliability, performance and data availability by eliminating single points of failure, designed for high-availability datacenter systems;

NoTouch™ ramp load technology – The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit; and

Industry’s highest reliability rating – 2 million hours MTBF.

Availability, it’s currently being sold through some retailers and distributed by Verdure Xchange Tech and Ubertech Inc for an SRP of 10,999 to 28,999 depending on drive size (300GB to 900GB).

C. WD My Passport Ultra

WD announces the availability of the new WD My Passport Ultra, which offers more layers of data protection of your files. Available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes, these My Passport Ultra portable drives have SmartWare Pro backup software with DropBox integration, hardware encryption and password protection.

The new portable drives are available and sold for an SRP of 3,790 for the 500GB drive, and 5,090 for the 1TB Drive.

Better late than never, here’s a list of some of the games released over the summer that would have given us something to play with (note, some of the games here that I own didn’t get a review due to time and schedule constraints). Listed not in correct order of release:

1. Far Cry 3
2. StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm
3. Bioshock Infinite
4. Strike Suit Zero
5. Devil May Cry
6. Crysis 3
7. Assassin’s Creed 3
8. Resident Evil 6

Sharing this weekend Gadget Sale at the Whitespace in Makati. Here’re the details:

(pardon for the abruptness as I’m currently feeling the effects of a fever)

Bioshock Infinite is in a totally different world from the original Bioshock, yet still brings back the mystery and lore of the original game from 2007 (and its sequel).

We play as Booker De Witt who is formerly a Pinkerton Detective, now a private investigator whose current job is to retrieve a girl from the floating city of Columbia in order to pay off his debts. Unknown to him, he would play part in the fall of Columbia and discover other things regarding its existence, his past, the girl Elizabeth and her role. The story is grand

Gameplay wise, Bioshock Infinite carries the previous title’s gunplay and use of plasmid based attacks into what is now called as vigors. Stores come in the form of steampunk style mechanical vending machines and certain vigors can override some machines into giving money. One new element in the game is the use of Columbia’s Skylines that enable Booker to traverse between platforms letting him move to higher/lower ground when needed as well as setup his shots. Enemies in the game are varied, from club wielding city police to their more heavier armed variants to Columbia’s soldiers and automatons called Motorized Patriots who have faces of famous US founding fathers like Washington. Handymen are steampunk cyborgs who utilize brute strength in fighting Booker. Others include Boys of Silence which are blind people equipped with a helmet that enables them to hear better and will call backup once Booker has been detected. Gunplay requires some degree of thinking on the move  as later levels suggest, having a mix of combat between human enemies and not-so-human enemies.

For noncombat gameplay, there’s a lot to explore in Columbia, lots of items to pick-up, voxphones to collect in order to understand the whole story behind the game, and the kinetoscope machines (something sort of a TV) scattered around the place. Also do take note of some irregularities in the environment… as well as the music being played. One may just notice, but the some of the songs are recreations of some well known songs of the 20th century.

Graphics, Irrational made it well polished, especially during the earlier part of the game, showcasing Columbia as a bright city, shiny and bright. As the game progresses, they are able to show the decay and destruction being brought to the entire city. Character design is topnotch and their animation is good, drawing upon the late 19th and early 20th century design styles. Weapons are detailed down to the labels on their frames, their designs range from the classic 19th century weaponry (revolvers and gattling guns) and WWII era weaponry (machine guns, rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, etc.).

PROS:

• Excellent Artwork by the team in bringing the city of Columbia, the people and everything in between.
• A well written story, full of plot twists.
• The little details were taken cared of, like the mysteries of the Leutece siblings, the source of various music played, and the play on US’s founding fathers’.
• Combat with Elizabeth can be creative, enabling Booker to have cover, additional gun turrets to aid in attacking enemies, or stashes of additional weapons around the map.

CONS:

• Some problems I’ve found came with the combat, while it is true that Elizabeth helps in giving Booker the edge in combat, I noticed that handouts could be quite frequent at times, making things a bit boring as one would just wait on her to give reloads.
• Not all areas could be backtracked.
• There are not much menacing enemies in the game. It doesn’t have the Big Daddy enemy found in earlier games which give suspense when fighting them.

Final Score: 9/10

Where is Baku anyway?