It's too bad the cash from this patent selloff won't likely be seen in the local economy of Rochester, NY, Kodak's home town. We've pretty much given up completely on the once largest local employer. Too many of my friends have long since had severance packages run out. She's not sinking, rather she's already resting on the bottom of the ocean flapping a bit.

I wonder what is actually in the patent portfolio that Google and Apple can sue each other over in 5 years.

We keep a few large garbage bags in our colo rack toolbox. If we ever need to haul gear out for RMA or something, I don't want to have to worry about rain on my way to the parking lot.

Yes, they are selling you a Seagate Constellation 1TB drive for waaaay more than what you would pay on NewEgg. But they burn in their drives before shipping them to you. This saves them money in CRUs and saves you time in drive replacements. More than anything, you are paying for their support.

From someone who recently experienced a pretty nasty multiple-drive failure in an EMC array, holy shit their support is amazing. I will continue to spend my (employer's) money on EMC gear based solely on how they handled my recent "situation".

(I had multiple drives in the same AX4 enclosure report multiple soft errors simultaneously. SOP is to replace failed drives, but they insisted on proactively replacing the rest of the drives in that enclosure. And the AX4 is one of their crapola products. If something like this happened on our VNX, I would have a team of CEs in my office sweating all over my desk.)

Don't forget about Compellant. That was another great acquisition, IMO a best in class SAN product line.