It’s that time of the week again, and we bring you our weekly Gadget Update. Boo yah.
ASUS Eee Box 1501 now comes with Blu-ray?
ASUS Eee Box 1501 with Blu-ray
We continually admire ASUS and it’s commitment to bringing affordable technology to the masses. That admiration has grown constantly, as we see them launch powerful but affordable machines like the Eee PC Seashell 1201N, currently one of the best performing netbooks known to man. And then they build their reps up just a bit more by putting Blu-ray on their Eee Box 1501 nettop.
The earlier version of the ASUS Eee Box 1501 was a solid media system, especially as people are beginning to realize that nettops work very well as home theater PCs. Adding Blu-ray capability to an already impressive and affordable system just makes it better, especially for Blu-ray addicts like us. A dual-core Atom N330 proc (just like the 1201N netbook), 2 GB of RAM and nVidia ION graphics will suggest that it has all the juice it needs to run HD content from Blu-ray discs. They even squeezed in a 320GB HDD in there. This is now only available in Switzerland at around $600USD, but should make its way mainstream shortly.
First seen here at Nexus4040.com.
Brando HDD Dock Station – with stereo speakers!!
Brando Workshop's HDD Dock Station - with audio out.
HDD docks are the in thing today, for those who do a lot of their work with bare hard drives. The Brando HDD dock offers compatibility with both 3.5 and 2.5 SATA HDDs. Just plug it into any Windows PC system – through USB 2.0 – and with will give you access to the drive’s content. We like that.
The other features, jury’s still out. Consider: 1) The dock has 2 extra USB ports on the front panel, making it an instant 2-port USB hub. That sounds nifty, but only if you have other gadgets to plug into it. This is not the main reason why we buy the dock in the first place. 2) The dock can serve as an MP3 player — after a fashion. If any of your plugged storage devices — hard drive or USB flash drive — have mp3 files on it, the dock will automatically start playing them. Slight iffy issue though, you can’t navigate through your audio files since the only available controls are Volume Up/Down, and Mute. So yeah, meh. This retails at $59USD.
First seen at TheITChronicle.com.
FAIL (at least, aesthetically): The M-budget Netbook
M-Budget Netbook - with a very interesting color scheme
A Swiss manufacturer called melectronics is selling a very affordable netbook, aptly named the M-Budget Netbook. The specs are nothing to whistle at: Atom N270 proc, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive on Intel GMA graphics. The $300 price tag is certainly apt.
What we question the sanity of, is the aesthetic design (or the lack of it). I mean, look at it? Would you fancy carrying that around? Or is there a chic fashion to it that only Europeans know about? I really don’t know.
First seen at NetbookNews.com.
Another USB 3.0 offering from Seagate – the BlackArmor PS 110 Portable HardDrive
Seagate's SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive
If you’ve got the need for speed, especially from your portable hard drives, the Seagate BlackArmor PS 110 USB 3.0 external hard drive should fill that need. Real-world USB 3.0 data transfer tests confirm that it is at least 3 times faster than any USB 2.0 drive around. Just make sure you have the USB 3.0 hardware for it, though. Check out our last Gadget Update for more on USB 3.0.
Seen here at IBTimes.com.au.
That does it for our weekly gadget fix, see you at this space next week. MacPCWiz out.
