I admit that I wasn’t overly impressed with the design of the last LaCie hard drive my eyes wandered over but LaCie may just have won me over with the Little Disk. Designed by a gentlemen called Sam Hecht, the Little Disk looks quite attractive with its extendable USB cable and flip off lid and who would know what lies inside the little black box when its not in use. Unfortunately any kudos built up as a man of mystery with his ‘little black box’ would soon be blown away when people realise it contains a series of zeros and ones. However for a while there you were ‘the dude with the mystery black box’.

Anyway lets crank out the numbers on this puppy

* All models sport USB 2.0 connectivity at 480 Mbps with a couple of FireWire 400 ports at 400 Mbps on larger models
* Spinning speed is 5,400 rpm for all apart from an oh so slow 3,600 for the 30 and 60 GB models
* Most models measure up at 81 x 129 x 18 mm but the dinky 30/60 GB models square up at a mere 64 x 80 x 18 mm
* Again the larger units weigh in at 195g but the smaller ones are 126g
* Capacity starts at the 30 GB mark and goes up to 250 GB on the biggest model

Prices start at US$100 for the 30 GB up to $230 for the 250 GB although there is a 250 GB without FireWire for $180. So nothing to write home about but its sleekness and elegance – attributes fairly uncommon in the external HDD world – make the Little Disk stand out in the crowd.

Source: LaCie

Featured Tags extenal-hdd, hdd, lacie, little-disk


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This little sucker only seems available in Europe, but its looks and price tag got my attention. The Logic3 SoundStage certainly looks the part and will fit snugly underneath that LCD unit hanging from your lounge wall. No more trailing wires for your rear and side speaker units and a simpler setup you could not find, with just one optical or coaxial cable required to fire this puppy up, oh yeah and a power lead!

The 15 speaker system pumps out 150 Watts RMS and according to Logic3 will provide ‘a room filling sound’. It supposedly lifts up the sound to be level with your head as opposed to waist or ankle level, well since I tend to be sitting rather than standing when I watch a movie or sports event, I think waist level will suit me fine!

Marketing hyperbole aside this speaker system is a steal at 250 sterling (US$500) and certainly would be a benefit in any spatially challenged room. As always I would be concerned about the actual quality of the sound reproduction and the system’s ability to provide true surround sound. Whilst audiophiles may prefer a wireless option with individual speakers, the price tag and looks of the SoundStage certainly make it worth considering.

Source: PocketLint

Featured Tags logic3, soundstage, speaker-system


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According to the rumour mill on September 18th O2 will be announced as the official carrier for the Apple iPhone in the UK, whilst T-Mobile and Orange win the German and French deals respectively. Apparently at 10am BST there will be an Apple event in London probably announcing these much rumoured deals for European carriers.

The deals have come with a hefty price tag – it’s believed that Apple will receive 40% of iPhone revenue from each carrier, that’s right, revenue not profit. Nice!

So what about all the old Vodafone rumours floating around not so long ago. Well I reckon that the 40% revenue share was just too much to swallow for some carriers and they will take their chances with other mobile manufacturers. O2 and the others have obviously decided that the iPhone branding will reap other financial rewards at some stage as a 40% revenue share must surely spell ‘loss-making venture’?

The only people smiling right now are the Apple execs who dreamt up this plan of dominance business plan. Oh and of course European mobile users who can now find out what all the fuss was about ‘over the pond’ a few months ago.

Source: Electronista

Featured Tags apple, iphone, o2, orange, t-mobile


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Looks like Samsung have decided that the lucky Europeans will be the first to get their mits on the Samsung SGH-F700. This little baby certainly looks the part with its sleek rounded-corner look and its snazzy QWERTY slider keypad. I was unable to find an actual retail price for this sucker but I can’t imagine you being able to buy one with the change in your pocket. Anyway here’s a look at some numbers that I did manage to find

* GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA at 1.8 Mbps with 3G support
* 112 x 56 x 16 mm
* 432 x 240 res, 3.2 inch display
* 5 MP camera
* Support for MPEG4, MP3, AAC media formats
* microSD memory
* slide-out QWERTY key pad
* USB and Bluetooth connectivity

Not a bad spec overall, but there’s no Wi-fi connectivity and the microSD will limit the number of tunes and vids you can squeeze into this sucker. So hopefully the price will reflect these issues, anyway to the European readers out there, enjoy!

Source: AkihabaraNews

Featured Tags samsung, sgh-f700


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Good news for the planet, Lenovo has just announced their latest energy-saving desktop code-named Blue Sky now rather un-sexily re-branded as the ThinkCentre A61e. The press release states that this latest offering from Lenovo can save users up to 50% in energy costs when compared to previous, presumably Lenovo, models. How have they managed to do this? Well here’s a breakdown of some of the more pertinent and energy-saving features on this little sucker.

* Use of energy saving processors, namely the 45 watt AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core and AMD Sempron single core
* Low speed fan
* Low noise level
* Manufactured from up to 90% reusable/recyclable materials plus 90% recyclable packaging

Consequently the unit has earned Lenovo a Gold Star from EPEAT, the Green Electronics Council and exceeds the EPA’s Energy Star 4.0 criteria. And the savings for you and me? Well Lenovo believe

A user could save on average more than $20 a year in energy savings and the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emissions created by two round-trip plane flights from Boston to New York.

Twenty bucks a year is nothing to write home about, but how can you put a price on the nice warm fuzzy feeling you get from saving the planet, eh?

Other upsides to this unit include it only being the size of a phonebook and weighing in at 8 lbs and the basic model sports a US$449 price tag whilst featuring XP Pro, 512 MB memory, 80 GB HDD, a 64 MB ATI Radeon X1200 card and a DVD reader. Not bad, eh? The downside? Well, its butt ugly, but when you’re saving the planet what does beauty matter.

Source: Lenovo

Featured Tags blue_sky, desktop, energy_saving, lenovo, thinkcentre_a61e


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Microsoft have brought out this nifty little mouse, the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000. US$100 gets you a re-charging wireless mouse with 1 GB of memory, 10 metre range and a battery life indicator. The memory sits neatly in the transceiver plugged into a USB port on your PC freeing up another USB port. The unit recharges when a magnetic connector from the mouse is attached to the transceiver in your USB port – very handy. The mouse boasts 4 way scrolling with Tilt Wheel Technology and sports five programmable buttons. There’s also an on/off switch to power off the batteries when not in use, a great energy saving feature.

As you can probably tell I’m quite taken with this little sucker. Well, almost, in the MS blurb there is no mention of the 1 GB flash memory being ReadyBoost compatible. So although it sports some excellent features it probably lacks the most obvious feature that a memory mouse should really have, an omission made even more glaring when you realise that the mouse is manufactured by the same company that produce the bloated OS in the first place. Come on MS, prove me wrong, tell me marketing screwed up and it is ReadyBoost compatible.

Source: I4U

Featured Tags microsoft, mouse, usb, usb-drive


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Samsung have announced that their 64 GB solid state drive (SSD) has been snapped up by Alienware and Dell and is now available in the manufacturers notebooks. Dell is offering the drive on its XPS M1330 ultra-portable notebook and Alienware have got dual SSDs tucked away in its Area-51 m9750 gaming notebook along side a spinning 200 GB oh-so-yesterday HDD.

Despite only having a 64 GB max capacity – that figure will, as with all figures techie, increase over time – SSD does boast a number of advantages over its older sibling the HDD

* No moving parts, so less bits to go wrong
* Noise free
* Produces little heat, always a bonus with a lap-burning laptop
* Handles shocks and knocks better

So hats off to Samsung for getting this little sucker out into the world, another step forward in the endless quest to squeeze more stuff into less space.

Source: BusinessWire

Featured Tags alienware, dell, hdd, laptop, samsung, SSD


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