Promises

When is a handshake deal not a deal? When it's on national TV.

On the ABC show "Shark Tank" earlier this month, a young, first-time entrepreneur, Megan Cummins, successfully pitched the panel of five "sharks" to raise money for her company, You Smell Soap. It's safe to say that the sharks liked her moxie. Cummins turned down offers from Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran, and took the deal from Canadian software mogul Robert Herjavec: $55,000 for 20 percent of her company, with a $50,000 kicker as her "salary" for the … Read more

If you're looking for a storage device that only a few deserving computers can handle, Promise Technology's Thunderbolt-enabled Pegasus R6 external hard drive is for you. It's a storage device like no other.

And it was hard to review it. For one thing, as it's the first storage device with Thunderbolt, we needed to think of a new set of tests for it while still comparing it with existing storage devices in a way that makes sense. However, the hardest part was not the logistics but how to rate the drive.

As Thunderbolt currently offers 10Gbps … Read more

Ever since Intel announced Thunderbolt and made it exclusively available to Macs, Windows users have been wondering if they are missing out. The truth is: yes, they are, big-time. I've been working with the first Thunderbolt storage device, the Pegasus R6 from Promise, and find it to be the fastest consumer-grade storage device out there, period. (Stay tuned for my full review, coming up soon.)

On the other hand, since Macs generally don't support USB 3.0, which has been out for a long time and is becoming more and more popular in the PC world, Mac users have also been missing out quite a bit. Many people are wondering which is better, Thunderbolt or USB 3.0. This is a hard question, as Thunderbolt is about more than data storage; it's also about video transport, connectivity, expandability, and synced audio. However, strictly in terms of storage applications, neither is better. Consumers should really have both. The current separation of the two standards is a lose-lose situation for Windows and Mac users alike. … Read more

It's been a while since Intel announced Thunderbolt, but now the first storage solution based on the new peripheral standard is finally available for purchase, if you can afford it.

Promise, one of the hardware vendors that participated along with LaCie in the Intel Thunderbolt event with demo products, announced today that it is now shipping the Pegasus line of high-performance RAID storage solutions featuring Thunderbolt technology. LaCie, on the other hand, says it will ship its own Thunderbolt device sometime this summer.

The line includes four- and six-bay external storage enclosures that offer between 4TB and 12TB of … Read more

Thunderbolt became more than just a Mini DisplayPort with potential this morning. The iMac and MacBook Pro both received Thunderbolt-related software updates yesterday, and this morning the Apple store has added the first Thunderbolt cable, as well as the first Thunderbolt peripheral in the form of the Promise Pegasus R6 external RAID array.

The cable costs $49 and works for both data and display connections. The RAID drive is a bigger commitment, starting at $1,499 for the 6TB model. Apple has previously mentioned eight Thunderbolt devices, ranging from external storage to video capture hubs, but as of this morning, … Read more

NEW YORK--You can never please everyone, especially on the Internet. But at #Promise (yes, with a built-in Twitter hash tag), a Thursday conference about Digital Age corporate responsibility held in conjunction with Internet Week New York, it was evident that consumers are starting to expect more when it comes to companies' attempts to "do good."

"Corporate communications, as such, no longer matter," the conference's keynote speaker, author and business theorist Douglas Rushkoff, said during his midday talk. "The only thing that actually matters is corporate activity...if it's doing something real, that will … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Network-attached storage servers have always been among the harder products to install and use. Most of them require at least some know-how of computers and networking setup. This might change, however, with what Promise has to offer.

The company released at CES the new SmartStor ZERO NS2600, which it claims is the first no-muss, no-fuss NAS server. According to Promise, all you need to do is plug the server in, power it on, and install the included software and the rest is taken care of. The software will map an open network share, allowing instant access for data backup … Read more

BiblePromise gives you a fresh Bible passage every day, and boasts a very intriguing extra option. With a layout that could not get much simpler, you can easily receive daily inspiration on your desktop.

The program is so focused that there is very little room for anyone to get confused. BiblePromise offers a few customizations, but it basically runs itself. The Help file reflects this, as it focuses mostly on religious topics and very little on overcoming any hurdles in the program. The program simply appears when a computer is started. The image is a small rectangular box filled with … Read more

Customers who lost data after it had failed to be backed up properly by service provider Carbonite in 2007 may have few legal remedies, a lawyer said on Monday. Meanwhile, Carbonite is suing the hardware manufacturer and reseller for charges including breach of warranty, breach of contract, fraud, and unfair and deceptive practices.

Carbonite filed a lawsuit last week against hardware maker Promise Technology and reseller Interactive Digital Systems, alleging it was sold $3 million worth of defective equipment, which affected backups of 7,500 customers.

In its lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts' Suffolk County Superior Court, Carbonite claims it lost … Read more