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Watch That Tiny $74 1.5GHz Android-Powered Thumb-Puter In Action The original Drobo was a highly regarded, easily expandable storage “robot” that could be stuffed with a new SATA drive whenever you required more space. But it was slow, even for a USB drive. Today a new Drobo has been announced that’s equipped with two FireWire 800 ports and an upgraded processor. What’s that mean? They claim it’s now fast enough for video editing. The hollow version starts at US$499. And if you’re willing to settle for an older Drobo, that’s on clearance for US$349. [Drobo]
The Mercury-On-The-Go from OWC is a somewhat tempting three-way connectible 500GB portable HDD. Component-wise there are no surprises, under the hood is a 2.5″ 5400 RPM Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 with an 8MB cache. With Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0 you get three-way connectivity and bus power.
This 62-in-1 USB hub can read just about any memory card you can throw at it, and maybe some that don’t even exist. Seriously, I had no idea that there were even this many formats out there. It also features an internal 3.5″ connect bay, USB, Firewire and SATA slots, and audio in / out. And the best part is that it only costs $US39.99 —which seems a little too good to be true. [Product Page via TRFJ]
Come with us into the world of fantasy, where there’s just one kind of plug and its associated cable that will work for every electronic device. What we would like to see is one cable that carries audio, video and power to or from whatever device you need to use. It needs to be small, it needs to have tremendous bandwidth (perhaps using fibre optics), and it needs to be smart enough not to ruin anything you plug it into. It sure would beat the alphabet soup we have to deal with now.
We’ve posted our share of crazy awesome USB hubs, but “The Hub” from Ora-Ito actually looks great and looks like it works great. Not only does it have two Firewire cables, it’s got a miniUSB, two USB extension cables, a regular USB cable, a USB light and a USB fan. But the good news is that it looks somewhat like an electronic plant, so you’ll feel real great knowing you spent $90 on a USB/Firewire hub. [APlusRStore via Popgadget]
galleryPost('thehub', 4, 'The Hub');
Toshiba has unleashed two killer HD DVD players/recorders in Japan, the RD-A600 and the RD-A300. Both of them record to HD DVD-R and DVD media, but the A600 takes it one step further with its built-in 600GB hard drive. Each model comes with two tuners, HDMI, and FireWire (iLINK) ports. The A600 is going for about $1,600 while the A300 hits the $1,200 price point, which is more than what you’ll find here, but then again, we’re talking a 600GB HDD here. – Louis Ramirez
galleryPost('ToshibaRDA600', 4, 'ToshibaRDA600'); Toshiba HD DVD Recorder [Impress]
It seemed like just yesterday when we pointed out OWC’s 1TB Dual Drive RAID Array. But that was back on July 26, 2005, when that sucker cost $979.99, and now here’s a 2TB RAID array for $1099 – just a few bucks more, but nearly two years later, too.
The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual 2.0TB RAID drive has two 1TB 7200RPM disks inside, and you can hook the enclosure up to your Mac or PC via one of its two FireWire 800 ports or a single FireWire 400 connector. Of course, you can also plug it in via USB 2.0 if you so desire. But wait. We can do better than this, can’t we?
Yes. While we really like this enclosure’s G5-like styling and cool blue indicator light, we’d really like to see eSATA connectivity (300MB/s) for faster throughput than the 100MB/s of this FireWire 800 rig. But then, we could just get an OWC sSATA enclosure and build one ourselves.– Charlie White
Product Page [Other World Computing, via CrunchGear]
Good news, media pirates/porn addicts: you can now get an external drive that can hold a whopping 1TB of your illegal/illicit materials. OWC is releasing its Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” 1.0TB External Drive Solution for $600, and it’s loaded up with connectivity options. You can plug it in via FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, or eSATA ports. It’s your choice! Just go wild!
Best of all, it’s styled to go great with your Mac Pro tower (not that it won’t work on Windows machines; you’ll just look like a poser). Finally, something to hold all your porn and look good while doing it! So long, ratty DVD-R binder! –Adam Frucci
Product Page [MacSales]
