The enterprise VelociRaptor is designed to enterprise standards for reliability in demanding computing environments. The SATA VelociRaptor has the highest mean time between failure rating of any SATA drive on the market at 1.4 million hours according to Western Digital.

Despite the smaller 2.5-inch form factor, the enterprise VelociRaptor maintains the 10,000 RPM speed, SATA 3 GB/s interface and 16MB cache found on the consumer version. You may recall when DailyTech first reported on the VelociRaptor for the 3.5-inch enthusiast market the drive itself was actually only a 2.5-inch inside a larger cooling block to make the drive fit in standard 3.5-inch slots in a PC chassis. Western Digital says the enterprise version of the drive is currently undergoing evaluation with OEM customers and will be available via select retailers at the end of the month. Pricing information was not offered, but considering it is the same drive as the 3.5-inch with the heatsink missing it would be reasonable to expect it to come in at the same $299.99 price point or even a bit under that mark.

In a Wednesday e-mail memo to employees that also outlined changes brought on by the departure of platforms and services chief Kevin Johnson, Ballmer cited several areas that Microsoft would focus on during the next year. Among his comments were some cryptic remarks about Apple.

“In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1,” Ballmer said in the e-mail, which was obtained by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as well as other news outlets. “But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience.”

Ballmer went on to promise that Microsoft would change how it deals with hardware vendors, such as Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 computer sellers, respectively. “Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones — providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.”

Analysts struggled to interpret Ballmer’s comments, with some unsure exactly what he meant and others willing to read between the lines.

“If he’s serious, this would be a pretty fundamental change in how they work with hardware manufacturers,” said Rob Helm, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash., research firm.

Historically, Microsoft’s role in deciding what goes into a PC, or how PCs are priced, has been minor. “Microsoft may have had a major role at times, the Tablet PC is one, but really it relies on forward-thinking partners like HP, who would take a change on Microsoft’s designs on software,” said Helm.

But the company clearly sees Apple as a threat, outnumbered sales notwithstanding. “Apple’s making inroads in the U.S., especially in the consumer market and at the high end,” Helms said as he speculated on what drove Ballmer to announce a major change in PC production. “Those are the same people that might pay for a premium version of Windows, so maybe that’s one reason.”

Justin Rattner, CTO and a senior fellow at Intel, told Computerworld that perhaps as early as 2012 we’ll see the lines between human and machine intelligence begin to blur. Nanoscale chips or machines will move through our bodies, fixing deteriorating organs or unclogging arteries. Sensors will float around our internal systems monitoring our blood sugar levels and heart rates, and alerting doctors to potential health problems.

Virtual worlds will become increasingly realistic, while robots will develop enough intelligence and human-like characteristics that they’ll become companions, not merely vacuum cleaners and toys.

Most aspects of our lives, in fact, will be very different as we close in on the year 2050. Computing will be less about launching applications and more about living lives in which computers are inextricably woven into our daily activities.

“What we think of as a computer and what we think of as IT, in general, is likely to change,” said Rattner, who has been at Intel for 35 of the company’s 40 years. “The intelligent systems will move from being information systems to intelligent systems that will carry out a whole variety of tasks that we just won’t think of as computing tasks…. The technology will find its way into so many things we do, and we won’t even think about it. The explicit way we’ve done computing in the past will be there, but it will be a very small subset of what we’ll be doing.”

Intel hit its 40th anniversary last Friday. The company launched its first microprocessor in 1971, developed a processor with more than 1 million transistors in 1989, and late in 2007 packed 820 million transistors onto a single chip.

While chip advancements will continue throughout the semiconductor industry, technology advancements in general will start to change, according to Rattner.

“When you think back on where we were [decades ago] … computers were still things that largely sat in big rooms behind big windows and were attended to by computing gurus or priests,” he added. “In the 40 years, we’ve just completely changed the way people think about computers and computing. It’s gone from a very expensive, very exclusive kind of technology to something that is unquestionably ubiquitous — from the computers on our desks to the computers in our cell phones.”

“It didn’t work out, fine, we’re done, we can move on,” he said, speaking at Microsoft’s annual analyst meeting. “Does that mean nobody will ever talk to anybody again? I suspect the answer to that is also no. It’s a long time and a big world, but we are moving on.”

Microsoft first made an offer to buy Yahoo in February but was rebuffed. The companies have since had on-again, off-again discussions over various deals, including one where Microsoft would buy Yahoo’s search business. Microsoft has also had discussions with Carl Icahn, a wealthy investor who owns nearly 5% of Yahoo shares and had tried to replace Yahoo’s board in order to make some sort of deal with Microsoft.

Ballmer pointed out the downsides to a Yahoo deal and reiterated that Microsoft will do well without a deal with the company. “Yahoo for us was always a tactic, not a strategy,” he said. Yahoo would have helped Microsoft improve the number of advertisers on its network to deliver more relevant ads to users. Yet, a Yahoo acquisition would have had some downsides, he said.

“Frankly, without the big commitment to buy Yahoo, our flexibility in reinventing the search and ad model, we have more flexibility,” he said. After putting nearly $50 billion into an acquisition, Microsoft to some degree would have been locked into building on the same model that Yahoo had created, he said.

Microsoft is working internally on alternate ways to increase ad relevance, he said. In addition, Yahoo largely has a presence only in the U.S. and Japan, so it wouldn’t have helped Microsoft in other areas of the world, he said.

In fact, it’s a situation fairly common in many organizations — especially small to medium-size ones, IT managers and others cautioned in the wake of the recent Terry Childs incident. Childs, an employee working for San Francisco’s IT department, used his privileged access to lock everyone out of a crucial network for days.

A network administrator working for San Francisco’s IT Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS), Childs was arrested on July 13 for allegedly tampering with the city’s FiberWAN network. He is also alleged to have planted network devices that enabled illegal remote access to the FiberWAN network, which carries almost 60% of the city government’s traffic.

He was jailed on $5 million bond after refusing to divulge the passwords he had used to block access to the network. Childs pleaded not guilty to the charges against him at a hearing in San Francisco Superior Court last week and asked for his bail amount to be lowered.

At a bail hearing Wednesday, a San Francisco Superior Court Judge refused to lower the bail, even though Childs in a dramatic move earlier this week disclosed the passwords to Mayor Gavin Newsom in a jailhouse meeting. His next hearing is scheduled for September…

Like Intel, Apple showed strong year-to-year growth, jumping from net revenue of $5.41B USD in Q3 2007 to $7.46B USD in Q3 2008, a growth of 38 percent. Profit jumped from $818M USD to 1.07B USD, a growth of 30.8 percent.

On the unit sales side, Apple shipped 2,496,000 Macintosh computers representing 41 percent unit growth and 43 percent revenue growth over Q3 2007. It also managed to surprisingly grow its iPod share, which some had speculated was stagnating. A total of 11,011,000 iPods were sold, representing a 12 percent unit growth and seven percent revenue growth. It also sold 717,000 iPhones, up from 270,000 quarterly last year.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO was encouraged by the results, stating, “We’re extremely pleased with the growth of our business and the generation of almost $5.4 billion in cash in the first three quarters of fiscal 2008. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $7.8 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.00.”

The only disappointments came in the fact that its gross margin was down to 34.8 percent from 36.9 last year, also a problem for Intel. Also, Apple lowered its projections for Q4 2008 to $7.8B in revenue, which resulted in some stock jitters, despite the strong performance.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs added to the press release a statement saying, “We’re proud to report the best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple’s history. We set a new record for Mac sales, we think we have a real winner with our new iPhone 3G, and we’re busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months.”

The NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX uses the G92 core and is the top-of-the-line mobile GPU from NVIDIA. The card has a core frequency of 500MHz and uses 112 shaders each running at 1250MHz. The card is capable of 420 gigaflops and uses a 256-bit memory interface. The 9800M GTX is capable of operating in SLI mode as well.

The 9800M GT is the next step down and runs on the G94 core. The core frequency is 500MHz with 96 shaders running at 1250MHz. The GPU is capable of 360 gigaflops. The NVIDIA 9800M GTS also uses the G94 core with a frequency of 500MHz. The card has 64 shaders running at 600MHz and is capable of 288 gigaflops.

While the base 1.6GHz system with an 80GB HDD still rings in at $1,799, the pre-configured 1.8GHz system with a 64GB SSD now only costs $2,598 — this represents a $500 price cut for consumers. In addition, Apple also cut the price of upgrading from a 1.6GHz processor to a 1.8GHz processor on the base machine from $200 to $100.

Despite the $500 price drop, the 64GB SSD still represents a $599 option and one that many potential customers may have trouble swallowing. This becomes even more apparent given the recent announcement from OCZ concerning low-cost, high-performance SSDs.

Even though Firefox 3 holds the record for most downloads in a day, it still holds a fraction of the browser market that number one Internet Explorer has. According to The Wall Street Journal Firefox held 19.03% of the browser market in June while Internet Explorer captured 73% of the total browser market.

Mozilla announced its record setting attempt with much pomp and fanfare on June 17 and to commemorate the occasion the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft even sent over a cake.

OCZ is looking to trump Super Talent push down-market with faster SSDs at even lower price points. The company today announced its new Core Series 2.5″ SSDs which are the most affordable, large-capacity SSDs that we’ve seen to date. The 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB models are priced at $169, $259, and $479 respectively — the drives also feature a two-year warranty.

And unlike the Super Talent MX SSDs, these new Core series doesn’t give up much in terms of speed to its more expensive rivals. OCZ is projecting read speeds of 120 to 143 MB/sec and write speeds of 80 to 93 MB/sec. All Core Series SSDs feature a mean time before failure (MTBF) of 1.5 million hours.