CONTACT:

DATE:

SUBJECT:   

Julie Montez, VP Business Development

Julie_Montez at OrangeWare.com

(714) 998-9003 ext. 111

October 4th, 2004

OrangeWare® releases 1394b Driver with Support for Microsoft’s Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)

  Anaheim, CA –  Today, OrangeWare, Inc. does it again by introducing a FireWire 800/IEEE 1394b driver for Windows XP with support for Microsoft Service Pack 2 (SP2).

In Microsoft’s latest release of WindowsXP SP2, the speed functionality of 1394b is severely damaged, reducing the throughput from 400 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s.   Additionally, the “backward compatibility” feature of 1394b ceases to function at the rated speed of 800 Mb/s.  In fact, in some instances, the backward compatibility feature ceases to work at all! These two issues can and will cause serious problems for consumers because their 1394a and 1394b host cards and peripherals will cease to function properly after the update of SP2.

The OrangeWare 1394b driver solution solves both the speed and backward compatibility issues that consumers would otherwise experience after the SP2 update installation.  The OrangeWare driver offers a simple and seamless solution to OEM’s manufacturing 1394b products.

By licensing the OrangeWare 1394b driver, you are guaranteed customer satisfaction with SP2 as well as future product updates as needed and provided by OrangeWare.  “We pride ourselves on offering seamless and simple driver solutions with tier 1 support and future updates for all of our product offerings,” notes Julie Montez, OrangeWare’s VP of Business Development.  “OrangeWare has a large customer base with an impeccable customer satisfaction rating.”

The testing matrix below summarizes the significant reduction in transfer speed between Microsoft’s SP1 and SP2 release as well as the enhanced speeds obtained by running the OrangeWare 1394b driver.

Operating System and Driver                    Read                       Write

XP SP1 with MS Driver*                                    83MB/s                52MB/s

XP SP1 with OrangeWare Driver*                     82MB/s                56MB/s

XP SP2 with MS Driver*                                   10MB/s                  10MB/s

XP SP2 with OrangeWare Driver*                63MB/s                46MB/s

*The testing results were obtained on a Nvidia CK8S with AMD 64 3.2 GHz

using SiSoftware Sandra Pro 2004 with a

LaCie d2 HD Extreme FireWire800 7200 RPM drive.

To summarize, 1394b transfer speeds in SP2 is significantly slower than it was in the SP1 release.  The transfer speed with Microsoft's SP2 driver drops to 10MB/s.  With the OrangeWare driver running with SP2, consumers will once again maintain high transfer rates of 63MB/s and can take full advantage of the “backward compatibility” feature the 1394 technology provides.  

Interested manufacturers and OEM’s are invited to test the 1394b trial driver internally with their1394b products.  For information or to set up a licensing agreement, please contact sales@orangeware.com or call 714-998-9003 x111.