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back to article Duracell powers into cloud storage market

The Gillette Company was famously founded on the idea that by giving away razors, but charging for new blades, you can milk customers forever. What then to make of a new Gillette venture, Duracell Cloud Storage? Yes, you read that right: the battery-maker (and Gillette subsidiary) Duracell now does cloud storage. And does it …

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  1. Richard 12 Silver badge

    How much for 2TB?

    For that you can buy complete replacement local hardware (two HDD and the enclosure) every two to three months!

    Even Seagate's aren't that bad!

    That pricing is just crazy, nobody would pay that for a domestic/small business scale storage system, even with automatic offsite backup.

    At $199 up-front with a small monthly covering the offsite backup and replacement local disks past the 3year warranty period (basically life insurance for HDDs) they might have a business, otherwise, nope.

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    1. shifty_powers
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      Stop

      Re: How much for 2TB?

      Kind of missed the point there haven't you? If you read the article then you get 2tb on premises and unlimited cloud storage. Not sure I buy the 150x faster cloud storage malarkey but nonetheless, it could be an interesting deal...

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      1. AndrueC Silver badge
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        Meh

        Re: How much for 2TB?

        Not sure I buy the 150x faster cloud storage malarkey

        Perhaps it uses the local storage as a cached front-end to the cloud. That might enough for your typical gung-ho marketroid type to make such a claim.

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        1. Fatman
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          WTF?

          Re: How much for 2TB?

          That might enough for your typical gung-ho lying out the ass marketroid type to make such a claim.

          FTFY!!!

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    2. TheVogon
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      Re: How much for 2TB?

      Presumably they have found a way to optimise the data storage potential of armies of druming bunnies....

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      1. Dave 126 Silver badge
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        Re: How much for 2TB?

        >Nor are we sure just how Duracell will deliver on a claim that it is “ 250-1000 times faster than most cloud storage providers” as the site is silent on how Duracell pulls off that trick.

        If I had to guess, the small-print might read: " * 250 times faster for backups after the initial upload" i.e it might be using some ZFS-style magic to only backup to the cloud the blocks that have changed.

        But yeah, either that or homing bunnies with HDDs strapped to their backs.

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      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How much for 2TB?

        "Presumably they have found a way to optimise the data storage potential of armies of druming bunnies...."

        Well if Duracell's got an army of drumming bunnies that's bad news for the Energizer Battery Company, whose mascot is... a drumming bunny.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: How much for 2TB?

          Duracell does already have an army of drumming bunnies that predates Energizer's rip-off by 16 years...

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLd4whqqzF8

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  2. Buzzword

    Local cache

    Obviously with the box and claims of higher speeds, it's just a local cloud cache. Nothing fancy about the hardware; so presumably there's some clever software deciding what to cache. Nevertheless, there's no such thing as unlimited storage - they'll have to impose limits eventually.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Absolutely not saying their claims are fanciful, not trying to imply it, just saying their razor ads are. Ads for Gillette razors make me want to throw a shoe at the telly. Although I've got a Gillette razor. Mach III Turbo, don't remember how many blades its got. I guess the turbocharger runs on hot air. I bought it because it was the cheapest of the kind that don't work by tearing the hair out, not because I fell for the ads. I despair to think that there are guys who do, but I suppose the point of ads for men's razors is they're aimed at the wives/girlfriends. At least I sincerely hope so. I hope that their claims are fanciful because I want them to take a fall for inflicting the razor ads on us.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      WTF?

      "Although I've got a Gillette razor. Mach III Turbo, don't remember how many blades its got"

      Hmm that's a tough one, if only there was some sort of clue in the name.......

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      1. Dave 126 Silver badge
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        Try the King of Shaves Azor razors... they typically work out at less than a quid a blade, but I find they work better for me than Gillette.

        Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of shaving in this country. The Gillette Mach3 was the razor to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-blade razor. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That's three blades and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to four blades. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five blades.

        http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          I actually find it hard nowadays to find a non-disposable razor with less than 6 blades. Mind you, the missus says they do a wonderful job on my meat & two veg, so there is that ...

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          1. Dave 126 Silver badge
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            Re AC

            Amazon.co.uk: Customer Reviews: Veet for Men Hair Removal Gel ...

            http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B000KKNQBK

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          2. Anonymous Coward
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            Anonymous Coward

            I actually find it hard nowadays to find a non-disposable razor with less than 6 blades. Mind you, the missus says they do a wonderful job on my meat & two veg, so there is that ...

            Do that too regularly and you'll end up with stubble on your plums that's as harsh as Desperate Dan's chin. Not that I speak from experience. Honest.

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          3. Steven Raith
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            " Mind you, the missus says they do a wonderful job on my meat & two veg, so there is that ..."

            To be honest I find a fork and a steak knife work better than a razor, but each to thi....oh, you meant your cock and balls.

            I made myself feel sad.

            Steven R

            (I concur on the stubblage - you can guess how I know)

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        2. John 62
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          I know I'm responding to an Onion quote, but stay with me!

          Gillette didn't stick with 3 blades an aloe strip, they put a AAA battery in the razor handle and a motor that did nothing useful except make the handle heavier and threaten to give you vibration white finger.

          Then they bought the company that made 4 bladed razors. Yes. Wilkinson Sword, Gillette's main rival is owned by Gillette now!

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          1. Anonymous Coward
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            Anonymous Coward

            The vibration does really help. It gives the blades a slicing action so you can do a low-speed shave without ripping your face (or anything else) off! It gives you some of the advantages of a slant-bar razor with much less risk.

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  4. Iain Griffiths

    Aren't Gillette now part of Proctor and Gamble ?

    So we could get Persil registry cleaners ( whiter than white) ?

    God knows what they'd do with the Fairy Brand ....

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    1. frank ly
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      Perhaps ..

      "These databases are so clean and consistent Mummy."

      "That's because I use FairySQL."

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      1. Irongut
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        Re: Perhaps ..

        I want FairySQL and Persil RegClean liquitabs now!

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        1. Anonymous Custard
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          Joke

          Re: Perhaps ..

          And why don't the servers have copper coloured tops?

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  5. James 100

    Upload=write speed

    The '250-1000' will come from a simple comparison: "it's got Gigabit Ethernet, most people have 1-4 Mbps of upload" I imagine. Which has a bit of logic behind it, I suppose, you'll be able to write to the device at LAN speeds then leave it to upload over the Net much more slowly later on. Marketing BS, of course, and I doubt it can really max out GbE for more than a few seconds at a time - then again, ISPs and hosting providers can't handle saturated pipes 24x7 either.

    A local storage cache like that would actually be quite handy - maybe an S3 wrapper. I remember looking for one a while ago and not finding it, though.

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    1. Nelbert Noggins
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      Re: Upload=write speed

      A local storage cache like that would actually be quite handy - maybe an S3 wrapper. I remember looking for one a while ago and not finding it, though.

      You mean something a bit like an AWS Storage Gateway?

      "Gateway-Cached volumes allow you to utilize Amazon S3 for your primary data, while retaining some portion of it locally in a cache for frequently accessed data"

      "Gateway-Stored volumes store your primary data locally, while asynchronously backing up that data to AWS."

      I suspect this is more like the Gateway Cache volumes with a 2TB local limit, but in a box, where as Amazon provide you with a VM Image to host locally on your own hardware.

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  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Meh

    Summing up. It's *probably* a 2TB cloud cache +"unlimited"* cloud storage for $199/month

    Firstly 2TB for how much?

    "unlimited?" Whose cloud servers?

    It's either the bargain of the century (but how could you verify "unlimited") or hugely expensive.

    I'll play the odds on bet of it being the latter.

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  7. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Trollface

    Low bat

    Maybe the catch is that the drives don't come with an AC adaptor.

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    1. Stuart Halliday
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      Re: Low bat

      Maybe they run off 6x D cell Duracell Ultras with a free bunny thrown in?

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  8. M7S
    Coat

    Tech Support: Is their BOFH Mr Bumbledrop?

    Because you know the PFY just has to be Torchy. The Battery Boy

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