Seagate Technology

Las Vegas, NV
Here at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), we’re getting ready for our biggest event, with thousands of convention attendees expected to come by the Active Storage Tour. We’re parked right outside the show floor and we have a tricked-out Scion that showcases how storage is becoming more and more prevalent in the auto world. Inside the South Hall, you can visit Seagate’s big booth at South 3 30659 and check out some cool new storage products. We look forward to letting everyone know how the show went and what were the biggest surprises and hottest applications of storage we saw at CES.

Anaheim, CA
Getting down to the wire for Christmas shopping and this Fry’s store has been packed. Lots of people are buying new computers for the holidays with portable hard drives becoming the hot item with people wanting a convenient way to transfer over their gigabytes of photos, music, videos and files to their new systems. Have a great holiday and we look forward to a great 2007 and seeing you at CES!

Sunnyvale, CA
Wow – an exciting weekend in Sunnyvale. The holiday shopping season is in full swing and consumer electronics seems to be the cool gifts. A lot of people are asking us about what some of the best ways are to make sure their digital life is portable and backed up to ensure that their digital assets are secure. Christmas is right around the corner and disk drives seem to be a perfect stocking stuffer.

Sacramento, CA
The first Northern California rains of the year couldn’t keep the crowds away from the Active Storage Tour. People were coming in and sharing how their digital needs that are driving them to Seagate Storage.

San Jose, CA
Today we had a great visit with one of Seagate’s long time distribution partners, Bell Micro. We have been fortunate to bring the Active Storage Tour to Bell Micro facilities throughout the country and it was great to get to their headquarters and share the tour with the people that are a vital partner in Seagate’s business. It is always fascinating hearing about their customers and the unique demands and applications for storage they serve. Some of these are well known brands that use Seagate storage for consumer electronics and others are niche solutions such as those for video surveillance.
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Fremont, CA
After the long trip across country and a nice Thanksgiving break we made it back to the Bay Area in California to revisit one of our first tour stops from last February, Fry’s in Fremont. Another exciting event with all kinds of technology gurus coming by that were completely psyched about the tour, especially the Terabyte Toyota RAV4 and the Evolution of Storage. The Evolution of Storage shows one of Seagate’s earliest products from 1980s that had 5 MB and was the size of a couple of bricks was seen as “more storage than you could ever need.” Now a 1” hard drive (about the size of a wrist watch) is ubiquitously used for digital music players and navigation to store 8GB - or about 1,600 times more storage than the 5MB ST506. You can see a timeline of some Seagate milestones here. Now it is hard to imagine a world without hard drives!

Minneapolis, MN
We’ve just wrapped up a few weeks in the Twin Cities with several thousand participants coming through. Two visits took us to Seagate sites in Bloomington and Shakopee with a stop at Circuit City sandwiched in between. We got to meet and visit with the engineers, designers and people who manufacture Seagate’s industry leading storage solutions. While we were blown away with manufacturing of the storage solutions they couldn’t get enough of the digital lifestyle applications and how the products they help make are getting used in such innovative ways.

Chicago, IL
A trip to the Windy City took us to another football shrine, with the mighty (also undefeated) Chicago Bears taking on the San Francisco 49ers. A videographer who films weddings came in and watched the Seagate Branded Solutions Video that features Spike Lee and was so jazzed that Spike uses Seagate external drives, he went in and purchased a couple for himself. And again the Active Storage Tour brought luck to the home team (Bears 41, 49ers 10). The AST is 3-0 this year and the teams in the cities we have visited are a collective 22-0!

Indianapolis, IN
We just finished up three days at the Fry’s Fishers store. For those that don’t know about Fry’s, it is like a shrine for computer and technology gearheads. These stores are huge and have everything you could ever need! Speaking of shrines—that is what one fanatic attendee to the Active Storage Tour exclaimed. “Is this the Seagate shrine? I love you guys!" That is always nice to hear on the truck. We also had a doctor who visited and let us know about how he benefits from having a Mirra™ Synch and Share Personal Server to make sure he is keeping office and patient data consistently backed up, safe and secure. Oh, yeah, the Colts did beat the Redskins, 36-22.

Trumbull, CN
We traveled back to the States from our trip into Canada and stopped at Tech Depot, an online computer and technology reseller that operates as a subsidiary of Office Depot, Inc., the world's largest seller of office products. We had a great afternoon of meetings with account management teams, sharing with them more about how storage is becoming central to all types of applications—including surveillance. It was a mutually educational process as Seagate shared insight into hard drives and evolutionary technology while Tech Depot had all sorts of wild stories about how drives are being used in unique applications. Next, we begin heading west towards Indianapolis, where the undefeated Colts will be taking on the Washington Redskins this weekend.

Canada
The rain cleared and we had great weather for our stop at Supercom, where they opened up their doors for the Active Storage Tour, Seagate partners and customers. It was a great evening of revelry for more than 250 guests. They were excited and kept the truck buzzing about the applications, especially the consumer electronic applications, of Seagate and Maxtor products. The Compact Flash Photo Hard drives were a bit hit and someone was sharing a new business idea he was developing that could really benefit from the product. A few executives squared off in a virtual battle on the xBox 360 that showcased Seagate drives before the party wound down and everyone left for the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.

Canada
The Tour crossed the border into Canada to share our products with key partners and their customers. Our first stop was at Synnex, where we showcased the entire line of Seagate and Maxtor branded products. We had a steady downpour of rain, but the weather didn’t keep the eager Synnex employees and their customers from interacting with the demonstrations of storage applications and enjoying a BBQ. “I can’t believe how many products Seagate is part of that I never event knew about,” remarked one participant. People were especially amazed by the power of the Mirra Synch and Share Personal Server and its practical uses within a corporate office.

Ann Arbor, Michigan
The Seagate Active Storage Tour has caught football fever. Set up right next to the Michigan stadium—“The Big House”—the Tour is part of the pregame festivities for the 107,501 fans that will be descending upon the University of Michigan’s football stadium as it takes on undefeated rival Wisconsin. The atmosphere is electric with the pregame buzz, and several fans are hunkering down to play a “mock” game on the tour’s NCAA Football video games that utilize Seagate drives (like the xBox 360). We are looking to take advantage of the Seagate 8 GB CompactFlash Photo Hard Drive to capture all of the action from the stands!

Williamsville, NY— Ingram Micro East
Situated in Williamsville, New York, Ingram Micro East hosted Seagate and its staff as we stopped just outside Buffalo. The employees of Ingram confirmed that Seagate was by far the coolest mobile tour that had come through its facility. Nearly 200 employees traveled through the interactive stations and were particularly interested in the handheld gadgets that showcase the benefits and application of hard drives, including personal GPS units, MP3 players and Seagate Pocket Drives.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
With beautiful weather, the Seagate Active Storage Tour opened its doors over Labor Day weekend at the MicroCenter. Located in the heart of Cambridge, MicroCenter plays hosts to many of the nation’s top universities, including MIT, Harvard and Boston College. The Seagate truck drew a lot of attention, with nearly 1000 people vying to walk through the demonstrations, discuss storage and learn more about the different applications of storage. A number of students and teachers were enthusiastic about how portable storage, such as the Seagate Pocket Drive and Seagate Portable Drive, are great for their digital lifestyle needs. The professionals in the area were really intrigued with the Mirra Sync and Share Personal Server, and quite a few took them home to use in their home and office.

Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia, is the home of Circuit City’s headquarters—a key partner for Seagate and a major retailer of electronic products. With a full crew on site, the Seagate Active Storage Tour staff was able to host 400 participants that stopped by to learn more about Seagate and the unique applications of storage in products they use everyday. Of particular interest was the Mirra Sync and Share Personal Server, the Seagate Pocket Drive and the onboard hard drive museum.