Having drooled over the REGZA LCD TV range, the boys at Toshiba have rolled out a couple of HD DVD players for at least their European fans to drool over as well. The HD-EP30 and HD-EP35 will be available ‘en Europa’ from October and will retail some where around 349 euros and 449 euros respectively. So what’s the skinny on these puppies?

Well both models have 1080p image support whilst the HD-EP35 boasts Toshiba’s REGZA link plus Deep Colour functionality. Part of the REGZA link functionality includes the ability to control a full range of Toshiba units with one remote, a feature any better half is bound to appreciate!

Audio wise the HD-EP35 supports High Bit Rate Audio (7.1 channels) plus Dolby Digital Plus, True HD and DTS HD formats. Sounds good? Well, you’d better check them out soon as I’m sure they’ll be selling like the proverbial hot cakes as soon as the present giving season gets under way.

Source: Pocket-Lint

Featured Tags hd-dvd, regza, toshiba


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I’m not sure how the guys at Wolverine have done it, but they have managed to squeeze 250 GB worth of data into their new not so shiny ESP media player whilst only weighing in at 10.2 oz and measuring 5.3″x2.8″x0.9″. The unit boasts a 320 x 240 3.6 inch display as well and to include all the photographers in their consumer audience there’s a 7-in-1 memory card reader with support for RAW image data from a whole raft of digital cameras. Way to go Wolverine.

Here’s a list of some more specs for you to drool over

* Video interface to hook up to a TV, monitor or projector - cable supplied :)
* Built-in microphone and line-in recording from an external source
* Built-in speaker
* Built-in FM radio with 18 pre-sets
* Direct printing
* Audio support for MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, AAC & CDA
* Video support for MPEG-1, MPEG-4, WMV9 and Xvid

So what’s the downside? A price tag of US$650 may seem a bit hefty for some and the design team appear to have gone retro without actually making it truly retro with the battlesship grey look, would it have been too much to ask to make some bits of it shiny? Obviously it would. But overall, the Wolverine ESP does what it says on the box, stores and plays back 250 GB of media data, there aren’t many other media players out there that can claim the same.

Source: Electronista

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Flash drive capacity seems to increase on daily basis … and today is no different. SanDisk, the storage gurus, have squeezed in a massive 8 GB of flash memory into their little Cruzer USB drive. The drive also boasts a retractable connector - better than a cover which you’d only lose after five minutes - and also gives Vista a ReadyBoost.

This little sucker comes with the following onboard software

* CruzerSync synchronization software
* SignupShield password manager
* SKYPE “Make video calls from PC to PC”
* AVAST antivirus software

And it does come with a largish price tag of US$130 but hey it’s 8 GB of extremely light weight storage. What you complaining about?

Source: Business Wire

Featured Tags cruzer, flash-drive, sandisk, usb-drive


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Not quite sure if the Tempo is of any use or not. It is a concept hard drive from Cagnina Design which stores deleted files. When you delete a file on your PC that file is stored in the Tempo drive, just in case you really needed it. Correct me if I’m wrong I actually thought that’s what the recycle bin was for in Windows? The unit does have a nice coffee cup design with blue LEDs that light up as the drive fills up with up to 250 GB of your unwanted data and wirelessly connects to your PC via Bluetooth.

So other than looking rather swish on your desk I’m not too sure if the Tempo actually serves any useful purpose. I also think that sticking a green recycling label on the side of a superfluous piece of power-sucking equipment is probably a tad cheeky. I know its represents ‘recycled data’ but even so guys.

Well, Cagnina Design, your Tempo gets 10 out of 10 for looks, but a big fat zero for usefulness. Unless, of course, someone out there can think of another use for the coffee cup drive? Let me know if you do!

Source: Sci Fi Tech

Featured Tags cagninadesign, hdd, recycle-bin, tempo


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Users of the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage feature, just about all XP and Vista users, could have come face to face with a lovely pirate message from MS over the weekend. A major outage on the servers that handle the WGA process meant that users of XP and Vista may have been unable to validate their legal copy of the OS if they attempted an upgrade or installation. The ‘invalidated’ PCs would not have shut down but the OS would have had its functionality reduced, features such as Aero would have been turned off. Phil Liu, the WGA Program Manager, selflessly stated on the MS forums that

I will personally resolve this issue before I go to sleep - whether or not it is Tuesday I sleep. My goal is to identify a FIX for this issue - afterwards get you all what you are looking for, an explanation and cause.

Fortunately for Phil the issue was fixed on Saturday and according to the WGA blog

We’ve been receiving reports on our forum and through customer service starting last night that Windows Vista validations have been failing on genuine systems. It looks now as though the issue has been resolved and validations are being processed successfully.

If there’s anyone out there who had an issue with validating their Windows OS please share your experience here at Our Picks.

Featured Tags microsoft, vista, windows, xp


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Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate, the well-known HDD manufacturer, ‘disclosed’ in an interview to the Wall Street Journal that the company intends producing solid state drives using flash memory next year. No surprises there really, with flash memory capacity increasing almost daily, it’ll soon be on a par with magnetic storage. Of course, flash memory storage is great for your laptop as its lighter and more importantly consumes less power than its positive and negative counterpart.

The thing that struck me as strange about the ‘disclosure’ from Bill was that Seagate already have a hydrid magnetic/flash drive available. Their absurdly named Momentus 5400 PSD already enables laptop users to have a 160 GB drive with the flash/magnetic storage combo.

Come on Bill tell us something we didn’t already know or couldn’t at least guess.

Source: enGadget

Featured Tags flash-memory, hdd, laptop_hard_drives, seagate


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Hot news from the boys at Toshiba if you’re looking to squeeze more storage into your laptop without resorting to external methods. They’ve just announced the MK3252GSX, a 320GB 2.5 inch HDD that spins around at 5,400 rpm and is a mere 9.5 mm tall. The reduction in height means that this little sucker will fit neatly into super-slim laptops that require a smaller 2.5 inch HDD than their more portly brothers. Other spec include a 12ms seek time, 3Gbps interface speed and 8 MB of buffer memory. There’s also an optional Free Fall Sensor function to park the heads up once ‘freefall’ is detected.

Of course the big step forward with the MK3252GSX is the added capacity, admittedly blowing away the competition by only a mere 20 GB, but it does spin faster and will slide gracefully into an ultra-slim laptop. Apparently the extra storage is available because

The MK3252GSX uses an improved read-write head and enhanced magnetic layer to boost areal density and achieves a storage capacity of 320GB.

Anyway Toshiba will start knocking this big boy out around November time, so if you are thinking of investing in a new laptop and need plenty of storage it could be worth the wait.

Source: Toshiba

Featured Tags hard-drive, hdd, laptop_hard_drives, toshiba


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