I am not so sure if this is good or bad. Some say that this would reduce the number of choices and will hurt the competition. But it might also help these companies to survive. Overall, I have an impression that the HDD manufacturing industry is in a very tight corner. On one hand, the market demands more and more smaller in size and larger in capacity drives. On another hand, at the current recording densities it is harder and harder to make the next step for yet denser memory (for both technological and fundamental reason). Additionally, the competition has driven this market segment to the level of profit margins being so thin that this might affect (and I believe, does) quality control for the low-end HDDs. The tight budget for the low-end products results in shity low-end products.
I naively hope that this merger would help improving the quality of the low-end models, as well as all products. However, this merger might hurt the job market in magnetic recording industry, and from my perspective, this would be a bad outcome. Igor PS. On a sentimental side: I've had my share of problems with HDDs from both companies, but somehow I don't like Maxtor HDDs, and have a good opinion about Seagate. Maybe because I know well some people who do research on magnetic storage at Seagate. P. J. Alling Sat, 14 Jan 2006 17:33:35 -0800 That's too bad. Mark Roberts wrote: On an only-slightly-tangentially-related-to-a-slightly-off-topic-discussion note: Has everyone heard that hard drive manufacturer Seagate is buying Maxtor?
