Seagate has definitely gotten the attention of road warriors and storage nerds with their Momentus XT hybrid hard disk drive. Many agree with Brent Ozar, who called for it to be a standard component of every laptop. Even I was impressed! That’s why I’m psyched to see the 500 GB Momentus XT listed on Amazon.com for just $114.99. That’s only a little more than a standard 7200 rpm 500 GB hard disk drive, and the performance is notably better.
Terabyte home
ioSafe SoloPRO Review: Is It The Safest Place For Your Data?
It’s hard to stand out in the world of external storage devices, and doubly-hard to compete with the hard disk drive makers themselves. This hasn’t stopped folks like Iomega, Verbatim, and LaCie from trying to impress customers with flashy cases, software bundles, and clever functionality. But clever new twist on the external hard drive concept just rolled into the Pack Rat lair: The ioSafe SoloPRO is fireproof and waterproof. Cool!
Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)
More information about the unconventional SSD used in Apple’s new MacBook Air. As I discussed in my previous coverage of this new flash form factor, it resembles a PCI Express Mini Card but is much smaller. Toshiba has now proved my speculation that the device uses SATA signals rather than the PCI Express lane used by the similar AirPort card. We also know that the lauded performance of the device is due to its chips and controller rather than skipping SATA in favor of PCIe as some had speculated.
LaCie Releases USB 3.0 Driver For Mac OS X (But It Only Works With LaCie Drives)
Steve Jobs isn’t too keen on USB 3.0, apparently, but other vendors are stepping in to fill the void. CalDigit was first with a USB 3.o driver, but it was tied to the pricey PCI Express and Mini-PCIe cards they sell. Now LaCie is out with a free driver for just about any USB 3.0 card, but it’s locked to LaCie’s storage products. Let’s hope we get an unlocked driver soon!
The Tablet Wasteland and the iPad Oasis
Last year, as the pre-release hype around the iPad was reaching its peak, dozens of companies announced their own tablet computers or “pads”. Some predicted doom for Apple’s device even before it was released. After all, how could premium-priced Apple compete with the volume PC makers and all the factories in China? Pretty well, it turns out. Almost a year later, no tablet has even come close to Apple’s mighty iPad, and it currently boasts 95% market share. Where are the iPad killers?
