Hasta La Gadget!

Plug Sony’s new 180g portable drive into your PC and you’ll get decent USB 3.0 storage plus some preloaded software that claims to accelerate transfers over USB 2.0. Underwhelmed? Us too. But wait — hook this baby up to some of that other Sony bric-a-brac you’ve got lying around and it’ll unlock a bunch of extra features. It can record broadcasts straight off a Bravia TV, for example, so you can watch them back later on another device. It’ll also hoover up footage directly from a new HandyCam (such as the DCR-SX21E or DCR-SR21), removing the need for a PC. And, when you’re done, you can connect the HD-PG5U to your PS3 and watch all your AVCHD videos back via the Filmy app — again, no PC required. Now, if Sony had done something similar with the MemoryStick, we might have turned down the hate. Full details in the PR.

Continue reading Sony HD-PG5U USB 3.0 drive puts family first, works best with other Sonys

Sony HD-PG5U USB 3.0 drive puts family first, works best with other Sonys originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hard to say how long WD’s going to keep its My Book line a-churnin’, but when you’ve got a good thing going…. The outfit has just announced a gently refreshed version of its My Book Studio, now available in capacities reaching 3TB and sporting a flashy new exterior that should blend right into your Mac Pro + Cinema Display setup. Much like the G-Force drives of yesteryear, these new models are equipped with a brushed aluminum casing and rely on Western Digital’s Caviar Green HDDs to handle the ints and outs. You’ll also find FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, meaning that Thunderbolt aficionados should probably be turning their nose up right about now. The new guys are available at “select retailers and distributors” as we speak, with pricing set at $149.99 (1TB), $199.99 (2TB) and $249.99 (3TB).

Continue reading Western Digital’s My Book Studio jumps to 3TB, dons Mac-approved brushed aluminum garb

Western Digital’s My Book Studio jumps to 3TB, dons Mac-approved brushed aluminum garb originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jul 2011 07:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LaCie, a company that’s no stranger to employing aluminum and high profile designers on its external storage drives, is back at it today with the announcement of a pair of new HDDs. The P9220 Mobile and P9230 Desktop drives — one’s thin and portable, the other’s chunkier and stores more data, guess which is which — harness the creative minds at Porsche Design to deliver… well, some pretty tamely designed peripherals. We guess it’s all about minimalism and letting the scratch-resistant aluminum casing speak for itself, but we still kinda feel like the Porsche guys did this on a Thursday lunch break. As simple as it is, the look of these drives still managed to impress the guys at CrunchGear, whose hands-on coverage can be read at the link provided below. If you want to get to grips with one yourself, the P9220 starts out at £89.90 ($105 in US) for 500GB and will also have a 1TB option soon, whereas the P9230 costs £99.90 / $120 for a terabyte or £129.90 / $160 for two — all come with USB 3.0 connectivity and the pride-stroking knowledge that you own a legitimate Porsche.

Continue reading LaCie introduces Porsche-designed, aluminum-framed USB 3.0 HDDs

LaCie introduces Porsche-designed, aluminum-framed USB 3.0 HDDs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mice have been a computing mainstay since pretty close to the dawn of the PC, but they don’t offer much in terms of information about the on-screen data you’re interacting with. What if they featured physical feedback to tip you off to things like the size of the files you’re moving around? Two German students have answered that question likely before you even had a chance to ask. The result is an admittedly cool concept that slows the roll of your mouse, giving files the feeling weight based on the size of their contents. A “breathing” feature can also clue you in to how much a given file has been used. Also worthy of mention is their DataBot Harddrive concept, which expands and contracts based on the amount of space being used up. Video of weirdly lifelike peripherals after the break.

Continue reading DataBot mouse and HDD concepts give weight to files, encourage data purges (video)

DataBot mouse and HDD concepts give weight to files, encourage data purges (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As file sizes for many data types continue to grow, smaller chunks are also becoming more ubiquitous, particularly on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and search tools like Google. These high-volume, small-size blocks of data may soon be served up from a specific type of SSD, like the Moneta Onyx prototype developed by a team at the University of California, San Diego. Onyx uses phase-change memory (PCM), which can rewrite single bits of data (1s and 0s) on demand, rather than rewriting data in larger chunks, yielding sustained 327 megabyte per second (MB/s) reads and 91MB/s writes with smaller file types — two to seven times faster than the most efficient commercial SSDs. PCM specifically benefits granular data, rather than large files that must be transferred completely (like photos and documents), so the tech is more likely to appear on devices serving up short text-based messages. Traditional SSDs can write larger files faster than the Onyx prototype, though the new drive offers speedier read speeds across the board. It’ll be at least a couple years before PCM becomes commercially available, but once (and if) it does, you’ll be reading about your coworker’s breakfast or college buddy’s traffic jam milliseconds faster than before.

Moneta Onyx phase-change memory prototype can write some data 7x faster than traditional SSDs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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