Why was the picture in the background of the screenshot photoshopped?

Is that star wars kid?

Third question, where's my prize?

You're absolutely right that they have, but this one is a bit more of an extreme claim than they've previously made. To the best of my knowledge this is FIVE TIMES more efficient than ALL other video codecs currently out there. And they are pretty lossy at that kind of compression.

I just can not believe that they've outdone everyone that handily and 'with zero compression artifacts'.

This seems a bit too good to be true. Put me in the 'snake oil' category until they actually deliver a working product to an independent tester.

This drive is positioned as a datastore. Most people wouldn't use this as a system drive, meaning the one benefit (seek time - or more directly Input/output operations per second) afforded to high rotational platter speed is negated. Furthermore, take a look at that average seek time (5.5ms), which is only about 1.4ms higher than a comperable 7200rpm seagate offering.

Realistically, there is no reason why you need an extremely high number of IOPS on a storage drive. This only comes into play when youve got an application that feeds upon data access that cannot be stored in the RAM (a database for example).

Plus, if you want really fast drive space, get a few of them, stripe the drive to about half capacity and place them all in RAID 0. Youll end up with something faster than dual raptors.

Any word on pricing and date of availability?

I'll wait for the monoprice version.

Ill take one, please.

This is a phone for the blind, not those who cant talk.

It's spelled silicone.

You are all so blinded by the number 250GB and the perception that it is "BIG" that you are overlooking the simple mathematics of the situation. Your conversions are all short sighted calculations that don't represent the reality of the cap in any way. Let's meter it out like Comcast does when they are selling the stuff...

250GB/mo translates to a constant transfer rate of 0.78mbit/s. That means that, if you are a subscriber to their fastest package, Comcast is offering you LESS THAN ONE TWENTIETH of the bandwidth (16mbit) available to you in a typical calendar month.

Another way to look at it is that you would EASILY exceed this cap if you had a constant transfer rate of ONLY 100KB/s. Is this still a reasonable limit?

I do believe that there's a reasonable limit out there, but it certainly isn't 250/GB per month for everyone. Implement QOS on the node if you're having problem with bandwidth hogs, throttle them back when necessary to ensure a level of service for the 'normal users'. When these normal users drop off, let the hogs go hog wild.

Despite what the cable companies want you to believe, there is not a bandwidth crisis occurring; there's PLENTY to go around.