Rounding out our hard drive Hat Trick for today is Verbatim’s announcement of the first fruit to ripen from its acquisition of SmartDisk last year, a bushel of portable, bus-powered 2.5″ drives. Ranging in capacities from 120GB to 320GB, these drives will be available starting at US$99 starting later this month. Verbatim is playing up Mac compatibility, even going as far as mentioning Time Machine support, but is mindful of reminding consumers that they also play with Windows. The company website has not yet been updated with these new products.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: CES, hardware, news

Hot on the heels of my WD 320GB lappy drive review comes Hitachi’s announcement of their new 400 and 500GB 2.5″ SATA drives, the TravelStar 5K500. The drives will be available by the end of February, though no pricing details have been released. These drives are 2.5″ SATA types, run at 5400RPM, have drop protection, and a reasonable 12ms access time.

Hitachi, in conjunction with ASUS, also announced that ASUS is producing a dual drive laptop based on the 500GB model, making it the first 1TB laptop. Of course, since the 500GB model will likely only offer 480GB usable, it won’t really be a Terabyte lappy. Close enough for rock & roll, as we used to say!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: CES, hardware, news

Since we don’t do any hardcore specification reviewing here at The Dojo, its difficult for us to review products whose benefits are subjective on many levels. The hard drive is certainly one of the most difficult devices to review since it really just stores data. For a mobile human on the go, however, a large hard drive in the lappy can make a huge difference, and this is where Western Digital’s new Scorpio 320GB 2.5″ SATA drive comes in.

This particular review has two primary components. First is the drive itself. Second is the installation. The first part I can get out of the way quickly. The drive looks like any other standard 2.5″ SATA drive. Made of metal and some plastic. SATA interface on the back. Label on the top. Little hole with a warning not to cover it. Holes for various screws and whatnot. Specification-wise, its a 2.5″ drive with 320GBs of capacity, it runs at 5400RPM, a reasonable 12ms access time, integrated drop protection, and has an 8MB cache. Continue reading »

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: hardware, review

Well, Quicklogic certainly isn’t pulling any punches. In its Pre-CES announcement the company has stated that it is now offering OEM/ODM services to other companies (this is B2B stuff, folks) for the following product categories: 802.11G and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR wireless hard drive, hard drive and solid state memory based GPS devices, PDAs, HSDPA wireless cards, 3G handsets, PMPs, and even a UMPC. Looks like HTC has some competition. Finally!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: CES, hardware, news

Though I’m no fan of SanDisk (long story) their new Cruzer Titanium Plus looks interesting. Via a service offered by SanDisk, all data which is added to the Cruzer Titanium Plus is also uploaded to be available online. This allows all of your data to remain available, even if the USB memory stick is destroyed, lost, or stolen. The 4GB device will retail for US$59.99 which includes six months of free mirroring service. After that crack-like taste, you owe them US$29.99 per year for ongoing service. Oh, and it only works with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. Sorry, Mac users.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: CES, hardware, news, service

Much in the same way the Palm Foleo would have offered extensive companion functionality to Palm and Windows Mobile Treos before it was axed, the recently announced Celio Redfly does it for just Windows Mobile. If this isn’t validation for the Foleo concept, I don’t know what (Its gonna take me a while before I get over this one, dear readers). The difference here is that the Redfly doesn’t come with an operating system. Nay. It, and I quote, “…changes the resolution of your smartphone display so that applications, web sites, email, and attachments all have more room to play!”

That cinches it, really. All this US$400 laptop-like gizmo does is act as a battery powered KVM for your mobile. Hmm. Sure, you have more screen real estate to do stuff, but you’re still stuck with the same, tired, unreliable Windows Mobile applications we’ve been saddled with since Windows CE 1.0. In summary, the Redfly will not replace your laptop. Instead, you’ll have to carry your smart phone, the Redfly, and a laptop (the Redfly weighs two pounds). Not so exciting any more, is it.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: CES, hardware, news, service