Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

LaCie’s Rugged Hard Disk

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

LaCie Rugged Hard Disk

Worried about some axe-wielding maniac dealing to your external hard drive? You may find some comfort in LaCie’s latest offering the Rugged Hard Disk. It offers a scratch-protected (note not resistant) aluminium case along with a shock-resistant rubber bumper in a delicious shade of orange. Aside from the usual specs, the maximum drop height is 90cm and that’s in non-operating mode – apparently dropping is not recommended in operating mode. The unit comes in two flavours, a USB 2.0 connection version and a USB 2.0, FireWire 400/800 version. Apparently the encased HDD is Hitachi’s 2.5-inch Travelstar 5K500 with the following specs

* 5,400 rpm
* 480 Mbps transfer rate
* 90 x 25 x 145 mm
* 250 g
* plays nicely with Windows 2000 upwards and Mac OS 9.x upwards

Pricing depends on the capacity required and connectivity option chosen. For USB 2.0 only, 80 GB starts at US$90, going up to US$340 for the 500 GB version, whilst the USB/FireWire model starts out at US$130 for 120 GB increasing up to US$400 for 500 GB’s worth of zeros and ones.

Source: LaCie Rugged Hard Disk

Tags:, ,
Posted in Hardware | No Comments »

LaCie launch new Desktop Hard Drive and Mobile Drive

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

LaCie 1TB Desktop Hard Disk
LaCie Desktop Hard Disk
LaCie Mobile Disk
LaCie have obviously been quite busy as they have just launched a whole raft of external hard drives for both desktops and laptops. The desktop range, cunningly entitled LaCie Desktop Hard Drive, comes in three sizes, 320 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB with the 1 TB big boy having a larger form factor too. The laptop range, called LaCie Mobile Disk, comes in a variety of sizes from 80 GB up to 320 GB. Here are a few more details on the new drives

Desktop Hard Drive

* Hi speed USB 2.0 interface
* 7,200 rpm
* 8 MB cache (16 MB on the 1TB version)
* 480 Mbps transfer rate
* 41 x 113 x 194 mm (115 x 65 x 208 mm for the 1TB version)
* 900g (1800g for the big boy)
* Plays nicely with W2K upwards and Mac OS X 10.3 or higher

Mobile Disk

* USB mini connectivity
* 5,400 rpm
* 8 MB cache
* 480 Mbps transfer rate
* 81 x 128 x 15 mm
* 170g
* Plays nicely with W2K upwards and Mac OS X 10.3 or higher

There’s no official price tags for these suckers on the LaCie website at the moment, but rumour has it that they’ll start at US$125 and go from there. So as long as rumour is right and the price tags are reasonable these drives may be a worthwhile investment and they certainly look the part.

Source: Electronista

Tags:, ,
Posted in Hardware | 1 Comment »

LaCie Little Disk by Sam Hecht

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

Lacie Little Disk designed by Sam HechtI 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

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Hardware | No Comments »

Memory Mouse – Microsoft release self-charging mouse with memory

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000Microsoft 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

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Hardware | No Comments »

Where’s the go faster stripe?

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

LaCie External 250GB Hard DriveI must admit I’m not overly impressed with the look of the new 250GB portable hard drive from LaCie. What’s even more surprising is that it’s designed by Porsche but then I’m not a lover of their cars either. But the drive’s stats do stand up nicely and I’m a sucker for numbers!

It can transfer data at 480 Mb/s over its USB 2.0 connection or at 400 Mb/s across the FireWire interface, spins round at 5,400 and is a slimline 17 x 76 x 129 mm. But the winner for me is the 6.35 ounces that this baby weighs – nice! The drive is already pre-formatted for both Macs and PCs, so plug it in and away you go! Unfortunately it’s priced at US$270 which is a lot more than similar spec’ed externals but then it is a Porsche hard drive :)

Source: Pocket-Lint

Tags:, ,
Posted in Hardware | 1 Comment »

Dell PCs move into the shop window

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Dell PCDell will start to sell its PCs via Wal-Mart retail stores in the US from June 10. This is a major shift for the manufacturer which relied on direct sales throughout its 23 year existence.

Consumers will be able to buy a $700 PC with accessories through Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores in the US and Canada. Dell were unable to provide details of what was included in the accessories package.

Dell PCs will cozy up along side PCs from HP, Acer and Gateway on the shelves at Wal-Mart which are already sold by the chain.

According to PC World there appears to be two main reasons for the shift

But the direct-sales business model is no longer such an advantage, since competing PC vendors say they have learned their lesson and trimmed their own costs. And critics note that buyers in developing countries don’t trust their postal systems enough to purchase expensive PCs through the mail.

Hopefully this should be good news for all PC consumers.

Source: Reuters

Tags:, ,
Posted in Hardware | No Comments »

Picotux – The smallest Linux running machine

Saturday, April 14th, 2007

It seems that Picotux is the world’s smallest Linux running computer.
Its sizes are 35mm×19mm×19mm. Inside there’s an ARM7 CPU running at 55 MHz and an uClinux kernel 2.4.27 + Busybox 1.0.
Being this small, you might think the communication/connectivity part would have to suffer, but that’s not true.
It also has an 10/100 Mbps half/full duplex Ethernet and a serial port with up to 230.400 baud.
You may want to check the full list of technical specifications here.

The price may vary from ~100Euros (the cheapest) and it can go up to ~240Euros for advanced features. Aditional features can be bought as well.

Here’s a picture of it. What do you think?

linux

Tags:, ,
Posted in Gadgets, Hardware | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »