Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

Digital Storage problems? Three hard disk solutions from 0.5 to 1.5 TB!

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Gigabytes biting you from your PCs or Macs?
Discovering the (not so-) unique ability to fill every hard disk drive around?
Let’s consider three different solutions to the problem, three hard disk drives suited for every environment.

The bad guy: Iomega Prestige 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

Ideal for adding capacity to your system, the stylish Iomega Prestige 1.5 TB drive offers sturdy aluminum construction along with a convenient stand.
It’s the easiest way to save photos, music, videos, and more. Plus the Prestige Desktop Hard Drive is powered by an Energy Star qualified adapter for a cleaner environment.

Iomega Prestige 1.5 TB’s weaponry:

  • Style and durability with sturdy aluminum construction and stand
  • Easy-to-use USB 2.0 interface; just plug and play
  • Secure–EMC Retrospect Express (Mac/PC) software license for easy file backup (software via download)
  • Free MozyHome Online Backup (2GB online capacity)
  • Energy efficient design with an Energy Star qualified adapter

The Iomega Prestige 1.5 TB price is now $149.95 (you save 25% on regular price): that’s slightly less than one dollar per Gigabyte!

The stealth guy: WD Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA II

You feel really bored about your internal drive or need to feed your beloved desktop: chances are you’re in need for the WD!

WD Caviar Black 1 TB drives combine a high performance electronics architecture with a rock solid mechanical architecture to deliver the perfect storage solution for your fully-loaded PC or maxed out gaming machine. Cool drive operation, no-touch head technology, and leading-edge vibration protection ensure enhanced reliability and sustained data throughput.

Features list:

  • 1TB Capacity
  • 3 Gb/s SATA
  • 32MB Cache/Buffer Size
  • 7200 RPM Spindle Speed
  • 145 Mbytes/s Buffer to Disk Transfer Rate

Grab the WD Caviar Black 1 TB now for US $ 99.99 and save up to 60% off regular price.

The stylish- (& party-) guy: Iomega Prestige 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive

Fast, elegant, and ultra-portable, the Iomega Prestige 500 GB Portable is an ideal storage solution for mobile professionals, busy students, and anyone else who needs documents and media files to be available at a moment’s notice. For your peace of mind, this drive is designed to be both rugged and flexible so your files stay safe faced with the rough realities of travel.

Half-a-gigabyte you’ll carry around easily with you and that’s fast and smart to connect with its single-cable USB 2.0-powered operation.

The Iomega Prestige 500 GB Portable goes for a mere US $ 99.99 (saving 33% off list price).

Get in (remote) control of your music with Gyration GYR4101CKUS Air Music Remote with Compact Keyboard with a twist - literally!

Monday, May 25th, 2009

With Gyration’s intelligent Gyration GYR4101CKUS Air Music Remote featuring MotionSense, the world just got a little bit easier to navigate.No strings, no wires, no tricks, no gimmicks!

Just better technology allowing a more comfortable, portable mouse to operate in the air or on the desk: take control of your applications with a flick of the wrist!

The Gyration GYR4101CKUS Air Music Remote combines the functionality of an In-Air Mouse with a Media Center PC remote and Universal IR control.
It’s the perfect companion for home entertainment and PC convergence, offering complete access to your iTunes or Windows Media music from up to 100 ft (about 30 mt) away with RF technology and built-in LCD screen.

The remote is Microsoft Green Button certified and includes the one touch access to the Windows Media Center interface.The IR Universal remote allows you to control three A/V electronic components.
The Gyration Air Music Remote with MotionSense, a gyroscopic subsystem containing sensory devices to sense motion, allows you to take control with natural in-air hand motions.

It provides five degrees of freedom and 360° roll compensation to deliver any rolled orientation and produces true X-Y moon, dynamic drift compensation, and drift correction during motion.
Use natural and comfortable wrist movements to take control of your iTunes or Windows Media Player content on your computer. The back lit LCD screen makes it easy to navigate through your entire music library.

Grab the Gyration GYR4101CKUS now, at US $ 122.09 (46 % saving off regular price)!

A geek’s dream: Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB DDR5 PCI-Express Video Card

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Technogeeks alert: the Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB DDR5 PCI-Express Video Graphics Card provides performance once only seen in cards that were so expensive only a few could afford one.
Here you have a frame busting card for not a lot of money.
The raw performance produced from the Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 is earth shattering considering its price to performance ratio.
PowerColor has once again outdone itself bringing us the HD 4870 video card.

The Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 takes the memory from the previous standard of GDDR3 to the new GDDR5 which, even with lower memory clock speeds, boasts a higher memory bandwidth over GDDR3, all with a 256-bit memory bus versus the 512-bit that the new NVIDIA GTX series cards are using.

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 feature list include:

  • DirectX 10.1 Compatible
  • Factory Overclocked Performance
  • ATI CrossFireX upgradable
  • Made for gaming enthusiasts
  • PowerColor Custom Designed

Get the Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB DDR5 PCI-Express Video Graphics Card now for US$ 173.56 (that’s 28% off its price)!

Apple Time Capsule: the perfect Time Machine companion

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Let’s admit it: from day one that Apple introduced Leopard’s Time Machine, finding an adequate hard disk to fit the tedious task of backing up our data has been quite a problem.
More problems for a multi-user home (more and more out there).

Meet Apple Time Capsule, right from the same MacWorld Expo where MacBook Air was born!

What’s inside Time Capsule?
- an Airport Extreme 802.11N base station, well known and quite proven,
- three Gigabit ethernet ports,
- one USB port for printer sharing,
- a 500GB or 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA server-grade hard disk drive
- same sleek form factor of Apple TV.

The hard disk is available to all connected Leopard users as the preferred Time Machine default storage device.

(By the way, Tiger and Windows users are allowed to access the disk too…)

Available for pre-order in 500 GB an 1 TB flavors, the Time Capsule retails US$299.99 and US$ 499.99 respectively.

Seagate Maxtor OneTouch 4 500 GB External Hard Drive

Saturday, December 29th, 2007

Entering 2008? Think about making a backup of 2007-related data! Think about a Maxtor OneTouch 4 500 GB External Hard Drive.

This PC- and Mac-friendly drive spins at 7200rpm and features a 16MB buffer.

Backup your files with a push of a button or set up the software to perform convenient automatic backups.
With 7200 RPM and 16 MB cache buffer, you get fast drive performance, seamless data exchange, and instant access to your files.
Simple setup: just connect the USB 2.0 cable, and your Maxtor OneTouch 4 500 GB External Hard Drive automatically appears on your desktop.
For all those precious pictures, videos, music and data files, external hard drive is a must have.

Features:

  • Maxtor OneTouch button - the easy way to make backup copies of your files.
  • Simple Maxtor user-interface for backup scheduling and restoring.
  • Instant storage for your stuff.
  • Customizable Maxtor OneTouch button.
  • Auto Updater helps keep your Maxtor OneTouch solution current.
  • Plug and play storage.
  • USB 2.0/1.1 interface.
  • PC and Mac compatible.

  • London Adobe CS3 Seminar report - part 1

    Saturday, May 19th, 2007

    Adobe CS3Square Group Ltd in association with Adobe, Apple and a slew of other partners organized an Adobe Creative Suite CS3 seminar at BFI Southbank in London last Tuesday, May 15, 2007. The seminar featured presentations from both Adobe and Apple about the new features of the many applications that make up Adobe’s new crown jewel, CS3, alongside demonstrations of related products from the likes of Eizo, Wacom, Extensis, HP and G-Tech. SourceCrowd was in attendance and can bring you an exclusive report from the event.
    Before the seminar, attendees were able to peruse stands with a few interesting products on show. Eizo wowed the crowd with its stunning professional quality displays like the ColorEdge CE240W sporting hardware colour calibration, 14-bit color processing and easy profiling. Extensis was showcasing two of its software products for asset management: Suitcase Fusion, a font manager to organize, categorize and activate/deactivate fonts on the fly, and Portfolio, a complete multimedia files management tool. HP was showcasing the HP B9180 Photosmart Pro Printer, an eight-tanks pigment ink powerhouse which demonstrated stunning results on some of HP’s custom papers (especially impressive were the results on canvas-textured paper). Wacom had both the A4 Intuos3 graphic tablet and the Cintiq 21UX display available for hands-on demonstrations, making precise editing of pictures a breeze. Last but not least, G-Tech had the whole range of its external high speed hard drives solution on display. The elegant silver enclosures sport the latest in eSata and Firewire connections on the G-Raid2, G-Drive 250GB External FW400/USB2, G-Mini and G-Safe, with high-end fibre-channel RAID solutions also available in the G-Speed models.

    Then it was finally time to immerse into the presentation!

    Adobe seminarThe first speaker was Richard West, Apple Business Development Manager for the UK and Ireland. He started by stressing how important it is, in a multimedia communicational landscape, to put to good use the plethora of different ways that businesses have to reach clients, by customizing communications to target and focus on different markets. Adobe Creative Suite CS3, he argued, is the tool of choice to do so, allowing the use of a single creative process for multiple disciplines through its multiplicity of applications. Since output is so important to the designers and developers who use CS3, he then went on to demonstrate how colour calibration devices (in this case, the Pantone Huey Pro MEU113) can work in tandem with OS X ColorSync Utility (found in the Applications>Utilities folder) to prevent disparity between screen output versus print/web output. In particular he showed how it is possible to compare colour spaces graphically, and onscreen proofing of different colour spaces just by dragging and dropping images on the application. Microsoft’s Windows has “borrowed” the same functionality for its latest OS, implemented in Vista under the name Windows Colour System (located in the Control Panel).

    Stay tuned for the second part of our report - coming soon!

    LG.Philips LCD develops world’s first colour A4 E-paper display

    Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

    LG Philips E-paperLG.Philips LCD announced it has developed the world’s first 14.1″ flexible color E-paper display, equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper and less than 300 micrometers(㎛) thick. The images displayed are said to be comparable in quality to printed pages. This new device is a further enhancement after the company’s black and white flexible E-paper display announced in May 2006. According to the LG.Philips website, the E-paper uses electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. to produce a maximum of 4,096 colors. It has a viewing angle of 180 degrees, allowing images to be viewed even when the display is bent.
    This new colour version uses a substrate that arranges Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on metal foil rather than glass, allowing it to recover its original shape after being bent.

    Speed bump for Apple’s Macbooks

    Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

    Apple MacBookApple has updated its consumer line of MacBook laptops adding faster processors (Intel’s Core 2 Duo), bumping up the RAM to 1GB and offering larger hard drives. The popular 13.3″ laptops still come in the familiar three configurations, with two white models and a high end black one, built-in iSight, 802.11n wireless networking and OS X Tiger and iLife suite preloaded. The lineup with the new processors is as follows:

    • 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 80GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1099
    • 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 120GB hard drive, 1GB RAM. Intel Graphics 950, RRP$1299
    • 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ Black MacBook, 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1499

    The new MacBooks are available for purchase now from the Apple Store
    and other selected retailers.

    Best price for Apple MacBook MA700LL/A 13.3″ Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) - White

    New HD graphic cards from AMD/ATI

    Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

    AMD ATI Radeon HDAMD has today launched its ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphic card. They feature, according to the company’s website, a series of “firsts” in the graphics market: second-generation Unified Shader Architecture (USA), a 512-bit memory bus designed for full performance high dynamic range (HDR) rendering, and new Unified Video Decoder (UVD) technology for high-fidelity HD media playback. The HD 2000 series also takes full advantage of DirectX 10 and Windows Vista’s features, as well as the latest OpenGL programs. The new chips have built-in Crossfire capability, allowing users to pair up 2 cards in PCI Express slots without the need of any additional hardware or cables. AMD’s guide design can include HDMI-out with audio, thus completing the process of transforming PCs into real media hubs in the modern home.

    This HD revolution involves notebooks as well as desktops: the Mobility Radeon HD series features the same architecture in a package that uses smaller 65 nm process technology in order to achieve passive cooling and promises lower power consumption. At the same time, these powerful chips should relieve the main CPU from the more taxing graphic tasks, allowing next-gen HD content to be enjoyed on even the smaller, thin portable computers.

    The Radeon HD 2000 series for desktops will be available in the next few days, with the first Mobility models set to launch in new laptops by the end of the month.

    Low prices on nVidia and ATi graphics cards with next day delivery!

    Xbox 360 Elite launched today

    Sunday, April 29th, 2007

    Xbox eliteMicrosoft is today set to launch the Elite version of its Xbox 360 console, a substantial upgrade which clearly targets competing next gen gamestations like Sony’s Playstation 3. The new console comes with reworked looks (sleek black surfaces with metallic detailing) a bigger storage space of 120GB and HDMI port to drive High Definition TV sets. Included in the package are HDMI and component cables, Xbox Live headset, and a wireless game controller.

    The white clad Premium and Core packages of the console remain available alongside this new beefed up version, which is set to retail at $749.99.

    Crucial introduces new Gizmo! Jr. ultra-slim flash key

    Thursday, April 26th, 2007

    crucial gizmoCrucial has introduced a new ultra-slim line to its Gizmo! USB flash storage products. The Gizmo! Jr. is half the size of a standard USB flash drive (measuring a mere 12.4 mm (w) by 34.3 mm (l) by 2.2mm (t)) and weighs only 1.62 g. The diminutive drive comes in three flavors, offering 1GB, 2GB and 4GB of storage space on the go. A key chain, a lanyard and a protective sleeve come bundled with every Gizmo!.

    Crucial is also planning a special introductory price offer in the UK set to last for 3 days until April 29, 2007. Special discount prices (with savings ranging from 10-16% depending on density) can be found here.

    TIPA awards announced

    Thursday, April 26th, 2007

    TIPATIPA (Technical Image Press Association), a consortium of Europe’s leading photography magazines, has today announced its annual awards, dubbed as the European ‘Oscars’ of the Photo Imaging Industry. The prestigious recognitions are given to products excelling in a number of categories, from consumer point&shoot cameras to DSLRs, plus related software, printers and accessories.

    Nikon has once again picked up the Best Entry Level DSLR award, with the Nikon D40x 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera following last year’s winner D50. SourceCrowd had reported about the introduction of the new Nikon here.

    A great recognition in the Best Photo Software category goes to Apple Aperture 1.5, especially since a lot of criticism had been leveled at the 1.0 version of the pro application. Aperture is a complete workflow and image management app with Apple’s trademark cool design and ease of use, and has now reached full maturity with the update to 1.5. It follows in the path of past winners like Adobe’s Photoshop.

    iGrill: the new frontier of… iPod barbeques?

    Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

    ipod barbecueThe George Foreman iGrill (!) is the ultimate barbeque cooking machine for the iPod generation… or something like that. We don’t know what the launch campaign slogans will sound like, but we have just heard about this “gem” and couldn’t pass up the occasion to relay it to our readers. The iGrill is an indoor/outdoor electric barbeque grill with an impressive 200 sq. inches of nonstick coated cooking surface, adjustable temperature control probe and… is iPod ready with an integrated 10 watts speaker. So invite your friends around… no barbeque party will ever be the same again!

    The The George Foreman iGrill is available now for a street price of $149.99.

    Wacom introduces new LCD tablet

    Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

    Wacom tabletWacom has announced the introduction of the new 15″ DTF-521 LCD tablet, adding a little brother to its DTF line of business and education oriented writing instruments (which had debuted with the 17″ DTF-720 and the 21″ DTF-2100). The new product sports an XGA resolution screen with 1024 x 768 pixels and 16.2 million colours. The tablet/screen hybrid comes with an adjustable stand (140 degrees horizontal to 130 degrees vertical), and the standard cordless battery-free pen with 512 pressure levels. According to Wacom, the DTF-521 offers “a natural tool for freehand writing, annotating and navigating directly with the pen on the screen”, allowing huge amounts of freedom during a presentation or lesson. A VGA-out port assures easy connection with external screens and projectors.
    The tablet has a RRP of $1624 (£699 excluding VAT in the UK, where it is known as the PL-521), and is compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows PCs (including Vista support).






    All products names and icons are trademarks of their respective holders.
    SourceCrowd.com is not responsible for the availability and correctness of the information provided
    nor responsible for any damage that may occure to your equipment or you by using the published information.