Re:what Sony claimed (Score 1)

Sony's achievement used helical scan -- IBM's is with linear tape, which is much more commonly used for data storage. Also, Sony used evaporated metal tape. IBM used the economical "dual-coat" tape, which is a newly created formulation of Fuji Photo Film's NANOCUBIC tape.

For more details, and magnetic force microscope images of the bits themselves, see: http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/n ews.20060516_magnetic.html