Hasta La Gadget!

Seems like all these CES vendors have wised up to the fact that announcing their new products amidst a maelstrom of new product announcements tends to be slightly counterproductive. So, naturally, they’re spending their December carefully teasing out little pre-release details. It’s ASUS’ turn today, who clearly isn’t content just telling us about its Eee Pad / Slate / Tablet / Chopping Board and has decided to dish out some candid hardware shots. What we see above is a USB 3.0 port embedded within a very slinky keyboard panel, which itself seems attached to a touchscreen display (with Android buttons!) up top. It’s looking more like a tablet PC (presumably with a pivoting screen) than a tablet, which is corroborated by other images at the source link. Two devices are included in this teaser picture set, with the other looking like it has a slider keyboard (see it after the break) — none of it is definitive just yet, but it makes for a good guessing game to fill the time until the big show kicks off in Vegas next week.

Continue reading ASUS teases Eee Pad and Eee Slate ahead of CES launch

ASUS teases Eee Pad and Eee Slate ahead of CES launch originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Dec 2010 04:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It took LaCie nearly a full year to ship the 2big USB 3.0 RAID drive — a device that was announced in the fall of 2009 — but now that it’s here, it’s being accompanied by a concept that actually far outshines the unit itself: USB 3.0 on a Mac. For whatever reason, Apple has refused to offer SuperSpeed USB on any of its machines, even a fully specced-out Mac Pro costing well north of $10,000. We’ve seen purported emails from Steve Jobs noting that USB 3.0 just isn’t mainstream enough to sweat just yet, but coming from the guy who’s still bearish on Blu-ray, we get the feeling that it’ll be quite some time far too long before Apple finally caves and upgrades from USB 2.0. We’re obviously no fans of the holdout — after all, even a few sub-$500 netbooks are enjoying the SuperSpeed spoils already — so we couldn’t have possibly been more excited to hear that a longstanding storage vendor was about to fill the void that Cupertino continues to ignore. We were able to pick up a LaCie USB 3.0 PCIe expansion card as well as a 4TB (2 x 2TB) 2big USB 3.0 drive and put the whole setup through its paces on our in-house Mac Pro. Care to see how it stacked up against USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800? Head on past the break for the grisly details.

Continue reading USB 3.0 for Mac review and benchmarks (with a LaCie 2big USB 3.0)

USB 3.0 for Mac review and benchmarks (with a LaCie 2big USB 3.0) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At present, there seem to be three strategies to embracing the potential of USB 3.0 — go all out with an external SSD, introduce a hulking RAID-on-a-stick, or settle for a single-chip USB key with ho-hum maximum read/write speeds of roughly around 80MB / sec and 60MB / sec. There are a number of these barely-better-than-USB-2.0 flash drives floating about, but Patriot decided not to settle for that — its new Supersonic flash drive uses the mythical “quad channel” technology (and a native USB 3.0 controller) to eke out some extra speed. That allows Patriot to beat down the USB 2.0 straw man with 70MB / sec writes and 100MB / sec reads, and possibly justify a pricing premium if the company can’t manufacture them on the cheap. If the Supersonic sounds like the best of all worlds for your portable data, you’ll find it in 32GB and 64GB configurations starting Q1 2011. No word on price quite yet.

Patriot intros Supersonic USB 3.0 flash drive, milks 100MB / sec from a single chip originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Dec 2010 03:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even in their prime, USB hubs were never the sexiest part of a tech geek’s shopping trip — people would typically grab the most functional (or crazy) looking option and move on to picking out their next set of “future-proof” RAM sticks. We’re not convinced LaCie‘s really going to change all that with its Hub4, but it sure is trying hard by giving it a curvaceous exterior and those oh-so-desirable blue USB jacks. Yes, the USB 3.0 color coding is large and in charge here, highlighting a full quartet of ports for all that SuperSpeed gear you’ve been stashing. Of course, you’ll still need at least one 3.0 connector on your computer to make the most of this USB peripheral (otherwise you’ll have a very curvy and very standard USB 2.0 hub), but if that’s already accounted for, you’ll just need $59.99 and the source link to get yourself connected to the future.

LaCie’s Hub4 quadruples your USB 3.0 pleasure originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How’s this for post-purchase pleasantries? Super Talent has just revealed a new tidbit surrounding the world’s first USB 3.0 thumb drive (that would be the RAIDDrive), and it’s one that takes full advantage of second generation USB 3.0 controller technology — presumably on the PC side and not via a firmware update. The end result? An extra 55MB/sec on the benchmarking front, pushing its proven maximum speed to 370MB/sec. Head on past the break and mash play if you don’t believe us, and feel free to start pressing your own storage boutique of choice for something similar for all those other SuperSpeed products.

Continue reading Super Talent USB 3.0 RAIDDrive nabs an extra 55MB/sec

Super Talent USB 3.0 RAIDDrive nabs an extra 55MB/sec originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Nov 2010 07:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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