The PC Guardian probably won’t excite much interest from the home user (unless you’ve got some pretty hefty security concerns about members of your family), but we can see it catching the eye of security professionals with public terminals to protect. The entire kit, which comes in three pieces and totals about $25, locks down your computer’s USB ports with a push-button lock and a plate combination, while using a cable guard lock to prevent removal of wanted USB peripherals like mice or keyboards. The PC Guardian website illustrates the kit in action, showing how the three pieces can disable the group of four USB ports that have become standard on the backs of desktop PCs.
We think the PC Guardian is a clever idea, especially for small groups of lower-end desktops you’d see in a place like a public library, but we’d prefer a solution with just the cable guard, where you could lock up the port or ports you needed, and disable everything else in Windows.
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Vodafone Mobile Connect 3.5G data card used to be a brick and then a pebble, and now it’s merely an oversized USB stick. The latest facelift for the HSDPA modem resembles a traditional USB thumbdrive, and as such, it neglects the need for a connection cable. The cap is also cleverly tethered to the device, thus making it almost impossible to lose. The real benefit is obviously the bump to 7.2Mbps download and 2Mbps upload speed, putting the modem’s performance on par with that of most ADSL services. The additional bandwidth inherently speeds up your file download while your wireless carrier will definitely put their ‘fair use’ policy that limits users to a certain data downloaded per month to good use.
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HD DVD is on its last leg, and Toshiba is forced to slash price of their players by 50% to make it as an attractive DVD up-scalers. Microsoft doesn’t have much choice but to follow with some deep price cut for its XBox 360 external hi-def player. Now the USB 2.0 HD DVD drive – also compatible with PC – is now $129.99, dropped from $179.99; and it seems like the pricing is effective worldwide. Though, not every country gets the 5 free HD DVD offer. Keep in mind this is only the MSRP, hence retail pricing could be even lower. Consider yourself lucky if someone picked up your 360 drive on eBay before this.
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USB 3.0 with its 4.8Gbit/s bandwidth maybe an overkill for current NAND flash chips, but IM Flash – a Intel-Micro joint venture – has recently debuted a single-level cell chip that that will leverage the potential of the upcoming interface standard by boosting read & write speed five times faster than today’s NAND.
Designed with 50nm process technologies, IM Flash’s latest 8Gbit chip can max out at 200MB/s read and 100MB/s write. Intel touted the new flash is also built with USB 3.0 in mind, while other platforms will undoubtedly benefit from this breakthrough as well. Samples are now in the hands of OEMs and controller manufacturers; mass production is expected in second half of 2008.
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Have you ever wished that you could get the wonderful benefits of Vista’s ReadyBoost for your XP machines? Yeah, we didn’t think so either, but just in case you are, there is now the eBoostr application promising to make your computer boot faster. Just like ReadyBoost, eBoostr is supposed to make your computer boot faster and be a little more responsive by using its smart caching technology. ReadyBoost seems to be a complete waste of your flash drive with Vista, so maybe this app will do a little bit better on XP.
I’ve said it before and I’ll be happy to say it again, ReadyBoost is simply one OS implementation too late to make a big impact on users. Back when XP launched and most PC’s had a maximum of 128-256 MB of memory, this could have been a huge help. Now that consumers have made it through the memory rush that has driven the standard to between 1GB and 2GB of RAM, there is little point in having additional memory.
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Maybe the thought of buying a gauge to display all the information you want makes you cringe, simply because you know there has to be a way to do it yourself. Maybe you are just a mod fanatic that finds that customized look of doing something yourself so much more pleasing that something that 15 million other people can simply pay a few bucks for. Either way, DIY Life has an excellent guide on how to make your own analog gauges and even show you how to set it up to display just about any information you want.
Using USB, a PIC, and some gauges they picked up for a buck at an auction, they provide a step by step tutorial of how to mod these gauges into some retro stylin’ for your PC. Make sure you check out the video of them in action while you are there.
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After reading this description from the company’s website, we’re pretty sure that if you cracked open a GLOW Amp One a little bearded hippie would jump out and deliver a lecture about the superiority of the craftsman over the shoddy mass produced product of the factory, with some thoughts on sound quality for the people tossed in for good measure. That’s not an indictment of the GLOW USB tube amplifiers per se; it’s just that these guys talk a huge game when describing their product: better sound than the big-name manufacturers while throwing conventions like power usage, price, and materials out the window. It’s difficult to assess the company’s claims without hearing the GLOW Amp One in person, but both the MSRP ($480 through their online store) and the specifications suggest a powerful and versatile tube amplifier for both your digital and analog sound reproduction needs. With a little luck, GLOW just might start an audiophile revolution.
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External hard drives are becoming almost as popular as flash drives and it isn’t hard to see why. They are extremely easy to install and offer the portability that internal drives simply don’t offer out of the box. This makes them great for users on the go needing to store large amounts of data or need an easy to use yet still cheap backup system. Bus powered external drives are even more portable than their non-bus powered brethren, however their size usually requires them to sacrifice some speed as they usually offer only USB support. Buffalo thinks that this shouldn’t be the case which is why we are taking a look at the Buffalo 320GB MiniStation Turbo USB portable hard drive, a drive they claim to be up to 64% faster than the competition.
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