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Sony Updates NAS-Enabled Stereos, M700HD and D500HD
Posted by Kit Eaton at 6:44 PM on September 8, 2008
It was almost exactly a year ago that we talked about Sony's network-accessible storage stereo systems, and now Sony's popped up with two new similar devices. The NAS-M700HD and D500HD are basically upgrades to the old M75HD and D55HD: the M700 has a 160GB HDD, plays minidiscs and has an S-Master digital amplifier built in, the D500 is essentially the same, but lacks MD and the S-Master. Both have Walkman ports with the WM-PORT connector and support DLNA 1.0, and both support KDDI's LISMO service for uploading of music to mobile phones and can access the AnyMusic online store for direct access to new tunes. This means these beasts will likely remain in Japan, where they'll be out October 18 for US$780 for the M700 and US$600 for the D500. [AVWatch]
Buffalo has come up with a new network accessible storage system which not only hangs onto up to 4TB of your files but is also Time Machine and iPhone compatible. OK, so this last bit is over a dedicated web access system and the phone can't save the files, but it can view the contents of music, photo and video files. The LS-QL/R5's 13 x 18 x 22cm box can fit in up to four 3.5-inch drives, has a RAID-5 option, Gigabit Ethernet, a DLNA server and is due in late September for US$560 for a 1TB version, around US$710 for 2TB and US$1,300 for 4TB. [
Freecom's just taken the portable hard drive crown with what they're claiming to be the smallest and lightest 2.5-inch USB drive on the market now. Their Mobile Drive XXS comes in 160GB, 250GB and 320GB sizes, and is bus-powered for one less thing you have to carry around. It seems like the race to having the smallest 2.5-inch hard drive is kind of ridiculous. The lowest you can go is down to the bare drive, which is exactly what someone should release (complete with USB adaptor cable) and call themselves the ultimate victor in this competition no one cares about. [
Canon's AVCHD 
I hope this SSD good/bad theme doesn't turn into one of those long-running "good for you/bad for you" food fiascoes (is coffee on the good list again, by the way? Blogging is thirsty work.) A new bit of investigation by Laptopmag seems to challenge the 
Drobo, the storage enclosure that monitors up to 4 HDDs, now has an open SDK to go with its ability to protect and share your data. What does this mean for Drobo users? They can expect apps that will allow them to stream data across DLNA devices, work as a bittorrent client, interface with wi-fi devices like the Eye-Fi or set up a simple FTP. The SDK is available now and can be found at [
Maxtor just released their Maxtor Central AXIS 7200 RPM NAS, which offers 1TB of storage, DLNA Compliance, and an HTTP-based interface that allows for multi-user remote access with admin and guest privileges. Since the interface is an HTTP-based app, it works with any platform with a web browser, and the DLNA compliance means you can send photos, video and music to devices like Xbox 360, PS3 and countless televisions. Expect the Maxtor Central Axis to hit stores in July for US$330. 
Today Samsung announced that two new laptop hard drives, the Spinpoint M2 and M6, are ready to ship with specs that offer a 2.5-inch 250GB HDD with a 7200rpm rotation and SATA II 3.0Gbps along with a 500GB HDD with a 5400rpm spindle speed, 8MB cache, and 3.0Gbps SATA respectively. That makes the M2 one of the fastest laptop hard drives on the market and the M6 the highest capacity laptop hard drive on the market. The Spinpoint M6 is available for US$299 and the MP2 for US$199. Full details are available in the press release after the break.
LaCie's Little Big Disk Quadra has been around for some time, but it's just gotten a major capacity boost. Now the external eSATA/Firewire 800 drive supports up to 1 terabyte of storage by utilising two 2.5-inch 500GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration. It's not quite 
The Gadget: The Iomega 
