12,000 laptops lost & a 400GB CD invented

12,000 laptops lost in U.S. airports every month

source: Dallas news
According to the study commissioned by Dell, more than 12,000 laptop computers are lost in U.S. airports every week. That’s about 600,000 notebooks per year. What’s more, only 33 percent of the laptops found in airports are ever reclaimed. That’s not surprising if (as the survey found) 16 percent of business travelers said they would do nothing if they lost their laptops, while 58 percent said they’d contact their companies for advice before they did anything. Just 27 percent said they’d immediately retrace their steps and contact lost and found.
A question for those who said they would do nothing: what do you do when you show up to the big meeting sans laptop? Pretend to type on an invisible computer? Act like you’re suffering from amnesia? Seriously, who does “nothing” when they discover their laptop is missing? I know laptops are getting cheap, but this seems like a stunning lack of concern for the whereabouts of a machine worth several hundred dollars at least, and presumably storing important documents, valuable photos and so forth. Of course, Dell is using the startling findings to pitch its new laptop protection and data recovery services, so make of these findings what you will.

400GB optical disc invented by Pioneer

source: Cnet
Got a big archiving project you’ve been itching to do? Pioneer’s latest development could help you keep all your data in one nice, little circular package. The Japanese electronics maker has been working on an optical disc, which, like Blu-ray, can store 25GB of data in a single layer. But Pioneer says it’s one-upped the high-definition format to the sixteenth degree. The company announced today that it has a single disc that contains 16 layers of storage, at 25GB each. That adds up to 400GB of data capable of being stored on a single disc.
Blu-ray comes in single layer (25GB) and dual-layer (50GB) flavors. Pioneer does say that because the lens specification for reading the discs is similar to Blu-ray, “it is possible to maintain compatibility” between its disc and Blu-ray discs. That’s not saying it will be compatible, but it would make sense since Pioneer is one of the original Blu-ray Disc Association members. However, plans for that archiving project will have to be put on pause if you want to use this technology. Pioneer is going to demonstrate it at an industry conference next week, but for now the disc is read-only. Eventually, they’ll add write capability as well.