Gadgets and Gizmos

Iomega launches eGo Portable Hard Drive

Iomega has introduced the eGo Portable Hard Drive family with the capacities of 160GB and 250GB. The new family of hard drives is being displayed at Macworld, which is being held at San Francisco. The new eGo Portable Hard Drives family includes 160GB and 250GB models featuring dual USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 ports.

Iomega originally introduced the 250 GB, dual-interface eGo drives at last September’s Apple Expo in Paris, but is finally bringing the drives to the U.S. market. The drives will be available in black, cherry red, and alpine white enclosures, in an effort to bring some style to external storage devices.

“With the eGo Portable Hard Drive, Iomega shook up the industry by introducing fashion to a world previously known for little gray and black boxes,” said Iomega president Tom Kampfer, in a statement. The drive is also equipped with “DropGuard,” technology that can secure the drive from accidental damage caused by drops of up to 51 inches. The drive works with Mac OS X v10.1.5 or later. (more…)

Samsung and LaCie team on Hard Drives

LaCie has teamed-up with Samsung to develop 1.3-inch large capacity hard drives for smaller devices. This has led LaCie to introduce new 30GB and 40GB small drives in its Little Disk range. The company is also introducing an updated version of its credit card-sized USB Key Max drive. Both solutions connect to the computer using USB 2.0.

The 30 and40 GB Little Disks pack 1.3-inch, 3,600 rpm hard disk drives from Samsung, which were designed to offer the most efficient use of capacity per volume. By using this technology in these new mobile offerings, LaCie was able to see an increase in maximum capacity from 12GB to 40GB.” The Little Disk’s operate off power from a USB 2.0 port and operate without drives on Mac OS X 10.2 or newer, Windows 2000/XP/Vista, and Linux systems.

It is available in 30GB or 40GB versions, LaCie will be offering its smallest Little Disk yet, as well as an update to the credit card-sized USB Key Max. Both products are USB 2.0 powered, include their very own connection cable and are compatible with any computer running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.2 or higher or Linux 2.4 or 2. (more…)

SanDisk unveils 8 Gigabite Extreme III SDHC

The SanDisk Extreme III 8-GB SDHC is flash memory card. The 8-GB SDHC card will be packaged with a SanDisk MicroMate USB 2.0 Reader, so that users have a one-stop solution for capturing, storing and transferring their images.

The 8-GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card can store more than 4,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 16 hours of MPEG 4 video. The card has a read/write speed of 20-MB per second, thus providing rapid downloads to a personal computer.

The latest model can also work with SATA and eSATA drives for even more options, according to Gadget Venue. But seriously, if make use of all 62 formats, an intervention of some kind may be in order. The bundled card and reader are expected to ship within the next 30 days to U.S. retailers at a suggested price of $179.99. It will also be available in Europe.

Epson Stylus Photo R290 Inkjet Photo Printer

Epson has unveiled a new single-function inkjet photo printer, the Stylus Photo R290. The R290 has a print speed of 37 pages per minute for A4-sized black text documents and 38 ppm for color documents. Meanwhile, the draft 4R photos can be printed in just 12 seconds, the company claims.

The Epson R290 printer features Claria Photographic Inks, which replicates a variety of colors. This feature is not usually found with other printers in the same category.

Moreover a six INK dividual cartridge system protects the printed images from fading. Micro Piezo and Advanced Variable Sized Droplet Technology are the key features of the Stylus Photo R290. And the print speed and superb printout quality is achieved through Advanced Variable Sized Droplet Technology.
(more…)

ATI R680 Graphics Card is faster than a Cray-1 Supercomputer

ATI has launched its R680 Graphics Card which is 1000X Faster than a Cray-1 Supercomputer. The ATI Radeon HD 3800 series back in November, the 3870 X2 is a dual-GPU powered card that leverages ATI’s CrossFire technology. Here’s an up close and personal look at the card.

ATI R680 is indeed a high-end product for $799, but which is projected to be available already in Q4 2007. Technical details about the new graphics card are unclear, however, it is rumoured that the new high-end GPU from ATI/AMD will support DirectX 10.1, PCI Express 2.0, Avivo HD video engine with universal video decoder (UVD) as well as all the features currently available on ATI Radeon HD 2000-series GPUs.

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 has two Radeon HD 3870’s on board it’s not too tough to figure out. The cards are the longest cards. ATI make and since the cards have just one CrossFire bridge connector it seems that running four of these in CrossFireX isn’t going to happen, well at least for now. It should also be noted that the cards were actually running on a demo system that AMD made available.