Hasta La Gadget!

Pretec has been busy. The flash memory company (whose site ironically relies heavily on Adobe Flash) has, among other things, built the world’s first SDXC card (the 2TB capable cards we saw at CES) and the world’s first miCARD (a teeny, tiny memory card).

But the most startling achievements are both on show at the PMA in Las Vegas — a 100GB Compact Flash card and a 666x Compact Flash card (itself a healthy 64GB in size).

The theoretical speed limit for CF cards is 133MB/sec. The new 666x card manages an astounding 100MB/sec, and Pretec rather proudly boasts that it “will likely also be the last of the high speed CF card in the CompactFlash industry”.

The press release than goes off into the realms of recursive redundancy: “ruggedized construction […] provides extensive ruggedness.”

Also announced are two large capacity cards, both running at a speedy 233x (35MB/sec). These come in 64GB and 100GB flavors, and will also likely be very expensive.

At these sizes, putting them in a camera seems rather foolish — unless you have a Hasselblad which lays down 300MB files, 100GB of photos in one place is a scary proposition even for the most carefree photographer. Still, you could always use these to build yourself a homemade SSD RAID drive.

666x Press release [Pretec via Photography Bay]

100GB Press release [Pretec]

D_skin is a protective cover for DVDs, a scratch guard for optical media. Unlike the hard to apply, sticky film protectors you are familiar with, the d_skin clips on and can therefore be replaced when you scratch it.

There is, however, a problem. The d_skin cost more than the DVDs it protects. At $12 for a five-pack, they come in at around ten times the price of DVD-R blanks. Of course, if you buy pre-recorded DVDs, in the form of movies and video games, the price ratio of this replaceable prophylactic improves. But the product site pushes this as a cover for your regular, home made media, even touting the fact that you can burn a disc with the skin in place.

The real problem is optical media in general, though. DVDs are low capacity, expensive and easy to damage. There are two reasons we still have them — DRM and poor bandwidth. The former is due to shortsighted paranoia on the part of content producers, the latter is due to greed on the part of the cable and internet providers, who insist on capping and slowing data on their networks.

So, if you haven’t already backed up your Xbox games onto a hard drive somewhere, you might want to grab some of these. OR, you know, learn to hack and just burn them to another blank DVD — it’ll be cheaper.

Product page [d-skin via Core77]

When the MacBook Air was first drawn from a meme-inspiring manila envelope, we gasped. "It’s so, so, so thin!" we shouted, like Marty McFly meeting his teenage mother. Then we found out that there was no optical drive inside and the hand-wringing began. "How will we install AOL?" cried the blogging world.

A year later and nobody cares. DVD-free netbooks are flying off the shelves and the CD-ROM hasn’t gotten any more relevant. Hell, I have a new MacBook and I don’t want the SuperDrive in there. I never use it and it makes an annoying groan every time the computer wakes up.

MCE comes to the rescue. Using its kit you can replace your optical drive with a second hard drive of up to 500GB. It’s essentially a sled which fits into the optical drive bay and holds a standard 2.5" hard drive. And your old drive? MCE will sell you an enclosure for that so you can have it around for those rare times when you need to reinstall AOL. The new drive hooks into the SATA connector and should just show up upon reboot.

This is a fantastic idea, if a little expensive. The 500GB kit will cost $250 if you install it yourself. Add an extra $100 if you want MCE to do it for you. After opening up my MacBook to add RAM, I saw how easy it is to access the SuperDrive. I’m very, very tempted to try this out.

Product page [MCE via Apple Insider]

See Also:

• How-To: Adding RAM to Unibody MacBooks

Hitachi’s storage wing (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) today announced its acquisition of Fabrik, Inc., a personal and professional storage provider. Fabrik runs a number of storage brands, including SimpleTech and G-Technology.

Hitachi has not disclosed the financial details of the acquisition, which is set to close in Q2. According to the company, Fabrik will form the basis for Hitachi’s newly minted external storage wing. The SimpleTech and G-Technology brands will remain intact.

“The Fabrik acquisition becomes the cornerstone for the next phase of our business transformation. It strategically expands our market presence, strengthens our product portfolio, and increases our customer base,” said Hitachi GST president, Steve Milligan of the aquisition. “Fabrik is a key component of our growth and profit strategy going forward and will enable us to deliver a differentiated set of products across a broad range of end-user market segments.”

The My Book World Edition from Western Digital is just another hard drive, but it’s getting a mention for a few reasons. First, it’s huge, coming in both 1TB and 2TB flavors. Two, it has gigabit Ethernet so you can just hook it up to your router and access it wirelessly on the network for use as a music server or backup drive.

Third, you can stream media to your Xbox 360 or PS3. Fourth, it comes with a USB port so you can add even more storage. And finally, it’s cute looking. I’m a sucker for these WD drives — I have a little white Passport version which I take everywhere. WD also make some Mac-friendly drives, with FireWire ports (if your Mac still has one) and pre-formatted for Mac file systems, and we like companies that play nice with both sides of the divide.

The 1TB is available now with the 2TB due soon. They’ll cost $230 and $450.

Press release [Western Digital via New Launches]