Optoma have just announced a couple of new projectors squarely aimed at the home theater market, namely the HD65 and HD71. Both of these suckers sport the following features

* 720p resolution
* HDMI 1.3, component, VGA, composite and s-video connectivity
* 4,000:1 contrast ratio

Whilst the big brother of the pair has these added bells and whistles

* 2400 lumens of brightness (over 1600 on the HD65)
* DVI input
* 2 Watt speaker

The HD65 and HD71 will retail at US$999 and US$1299 respectively, with the HD65 being available now and the HD71 appearing on the streets next year in January.

Source: Optoma

Featured tags: hd65 hd71 optoma

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There’s a new kid on the SSD block, Micron have just announced a range of 1.8 inch and 2.8 inch SSD units varying in capacity all the way from 1 GB to 64 GB, the RealSSD. Micron, more well known for their memory manufacturing, enter the drive market with these new units

“SSDs are becoming the new storage medium, fundamentally altering the way data is stored,” said Dean Klein, Micron vice president of memory system development. “The storage market is ripe for innovation, and it’s an opportunity Micron is embracing given our expertise in NAND. We know how to manage NAND flash to work best with controllers, allowing us to develop an optimized SSD solution for every application.”

The new 32 GB and 64 GB offerings sport a native SATA inteface removing the need for a SATA bridge chip, suck less than two watts of power whilst transferring zeroes and ones and apparently suck ‘dramatically’ less power in idle and standby mode.

Strangely there’s no specs on actual read/write speeds which drive manufacturers tend to live and die by, so may be the RealSSD units don’t quite live up to the hype. There’s no price indicator either, but I’m guessing the term ‘expensive’ could be applied to these suckers despite being a relative term. Despite all this, competition is always good and kudos must go to Micron entering the SSD fray which is sure to hot up in the very near future.

Source: BusinessWire

Featured tags: micron realssd SSD

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After a long delay Verizon have finally pulled finger and have launched the HTC built smartphone, the XV6800. US$349 (with $100 online and $50 mail-in rebate) will get you this sucker along with the obligatory two year contract. If you’re still keen here are the specs for this baby

* Windows Mobile 6 OS
* Slide-out QWERTY keypad
* Wi-fi (802.11 b/g) and bluetooth connectivity
* 2.0 MP camera
* 2.8 inch, 240×320 touch sensitive LCD display
* MicroSD memory slot for up to 8 GB
* 4.3 x 2.3 x 0.7 inch
* 5.8 oz
* 324 minutes talk-time or 340 hours standby

So was the wait worth it? Not really, despite all the discounts it’s still $350 for some pretty standard stuff, but I do prefer the slide-out keypads, so may be it’s a winner. Let me know what you think.

Source: Verizon

Featured tags: htc verizon xv6800

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Joining the rest of the gang are Fujitsu with their very own 320 GB 2.5 inch HDD, the MHZ2 BH. This little puppy spins around at 5,400 rpm, sports a 3 Gb/s SATA interface and only sucks 1.9 watts when transferring your zeroes and ones.

Fujitsu are primarily aiming the MHZ2 BH at compact desktops, laptops and HDD recorders as the ever increasing consumer need for disk space grows.

There’s currently no price tag around this baby’s neck and the unit won’t be available until Feb 2008 but we can still dream, eh? Here are a few more specs from Fujitsu.

* Average seek time 12ms (read) 14ms (write)
* 300 MB/s transfer rate
* 9.5 x 70 x 100 mm
* 101 g

Source: Fujitsu

Featured tags: fujitsu hdd laptop hard drives

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As if on cue AT&T have launched the Samsung Blackjack II (aka SGH-I617) just in time for Thanksgiving. For some reason only the black version of the unit is currently available as the red unit is waiting until December 12th to come out of hiding. A mere US$150 will land you one of these puppies and a two-year contract along with these features

* UMTS/HSDPA and GPRS/EDGE
* MS Windows Mobile 6.0
* 320×240 res 2.4 inch display
* 7 hrs talk time and 14 days standby
* QWERTY keypad
* 2.0 MP camera
* MPEG4,H.263,WMV recording
* POP3/IMAP4 email
* Instant Messaging

Not to be sniffed at with that price tag of US$150, so check it out over at Samsung US.

Featured tags: at&t blackjack II samsung SGH I617

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Beating the usual suspects out of the gate, Buffalo will launch their very own 320 GB portable hard drive, the MiniStation Turbo USB HD-PS320U2, in December. Not only will the new unit sport oodles of disk space but will spin around at 5,400 rpm which according to the Buffalo spiel about their other portable 5,400 rpm drives means they are up to 64% faster than their oh so slow 4,200 rpm siblings.

The unit also features 256 bit encryption provided by Buffalo’s Secure Lock Ware plus Memeo’s AutoBackup software. Connectivity is provided by a USB 2.0 interface, which sucks power for the unit from the attached PC rather than requiring a hefty separate power supply. The drive is encased in a ‘Shock Resistant Chassis’ although I’d like to see how it performs in my sledge-hammer testing rig :)

It talks nicely with kit running W2K, XP, Vista and Mac OS X. But what about the moola? The MiniStation Turbo has a surprisingly nice price tag of US$319 hanging around its neck. Overall I think Buffalo have come out with a little beauty for anyone looking for a ton of portable storage space.

Featured tags: buffalo external hdd hdd portable hard drive

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Here are some nice shiny new NAS drives from the guys over at I-O Data. There are four versions available at 250, 320, 500 GB and 1 TB, all supporting the following features

* Play nicely with Windows and OSX based networks
* Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 connectivity
* 42 x 195 x 147 mm

These puppies retail for US$221, $241, $282 and $676 respectively but only in Japan at the moment. I must admit there’s nothing special on these units and the 1 TB unit is absurdly priced at over twice the cost of the 500 GB unit, so we shouldn’t be getting too excited, yet consumerism is all about choice, right?

Featured tags: hard drive i o data network hard drive

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