Gadget Update: External Hard Drives, netbooks, and then some

MacPCWiz is feeling pumped up for 2010, and so we’re introducing a new portion on this here blog: the MacPCWiz Weeky Gadget Update. (ta-dah!)

Here we feature NOT ONLY the newest, top-of-the-line, leading/bleeding edge gadgets — but anything at all that tickles our fancy, attention, anything that has cute and pretty models with it, or at worst — anything as ugly/bad/horrific as to merit our very short temper. Are you ready? For this week we bring you:

Buffalo Japan’s HD-AVU2 External Hard Drive Series

Buffalo's very pretty HD-AVU2 external hard drive

It’s basically your USB 2 external hard drive with monster-size capacity — available in 500GB, 1TB,1.5TB, and 2TB. You know, for all those movies you “legally” downloaded off the net. *wink* Pretty exteriors — glossy piano black — make it a nice appendage to your home theater system without you looking all nerdy. 2TBs is huge enough to fit a LOT of DVD and Blu-ray rips. Dig the LED lights in front — capacity meter. Nice. Available in Japan for now. It should cross the Pacific soon. Seen first at Akihabara.com.

The LG XG1 Chic external hard drive

Pretty hard drives from LG

The very cute model aside, the external hard drive itself is not bad at all, aesthetically. Stylish black or white gives you flexibility of choice if you’re, errr… particular about matching colors with your living room. It comes in 1TB, 1.5TB or 2TB — shipping to South Korea next month, and hopefully, the rest of the world in the near future. Seen first at Engadget.com.

DIGISTOR’s spanking new external hard drives

DIGISTOR's new External HDDs

We love DIGISTOR so much because of their external optical drives – external DVD burners and USB Blu-ray burners. It’s happiness to us that they are adding to their data backup and archiving products with this new line of portable hard disks. They’re extremely portable — these cute things will fit in your pocket, literally. They’re stylish — available in piano black or white. They have PC and Mac-formatted models, and are configured to connect via USB 2.0 and FireWire (FW400/FW800).

From DIGISTOR’s twitter feed, we learned that they’ll be at CES 2010 in Vegas. We’ll hope to visit their spot there and look more into these spanking new portable hard drives.

Lenovo’s new Skylight Smartbook

Skylight Smartbook - a smartphone AND a netbook

A smartbook — for you who need to get up to speed on the new termings — is a cross between a smartphone and a netbook. Web-enabled and optimized for broadband  and social networking, it may take the standard clamshell form of the netbook and may be able to carry out netbook-y tasks such as media playback and document processing stuff. This particular one is strong on the inside — a 1Ghz ARM CPU powers it, and it has a graphics processor capable of doing HD recording and playback. 10-inch screen, full-sized keyboard,  more than 10 hours of battery life, and a partridge in a pear tree. Seen first at InformationWeek.com.

ASUS adds style to its netbook horde

Asus Eee PC 1008P - The Karim Rashid Collection

ASUS, hoping to push its netbook market power to the limits, put out a sub-line of its ubiquitous Eee PC netbook — this time with style in mind. With the help of Karim Rashid, a New York designer known for his fondness of materials such as foam, plastic, and synthetic fabrics. This sub-line will come in two colors that we absolutely love: Hot Pink and Coffee Brown. Both designs have intersecting lines that when light reflects off of them, a bit of 3D effect comes off. So cool. The materials are soft to the touch—almost foam-like. First seen at PCMag.com.

Gateway’s version of “Excuse me, it’s NOT a netbook.”

Gateway's notebook in netbook clothing

These things are the reason why doomsayers are predicting the upcoming death of the netbook. Nevertheless, we won’t say its not awesome at all, because all things considered, it is. Gateway’s EC1430u is netbook in size (11.6-inch screen) and cost ($500+). The comparison ends there. The things has muy macho guts — an Intel Celeron dual core processor, 3GBs of RAM, a 320GB internal hard drive, and an Intel HD4500 GMA graphics chip — enough to run all your office apps, a few games, and (wait for it…) full 720p High Definition playback. Ok, it probably is not a netbook. Other than the lack of an optical drive, which means you have to get an external DVD burner or a USB Blu-Ray burner separately. First seen at HardwareCentral.com.

Are you all gadgeted-out yet? Watch out next week for our next MacPCWiz Gadget Update.