Best computer news

Lacie tempts us today with another set of avant garde speakers from designer Neil Poulton, the LaCie Sound². Similar in style to other Poulton-LaCie speakers, these speakers have some serious internals that warrant special attention. They may look like the belong in the Pompidou Center but these odd looking speakers will make you feel more like you are in a concert hall than an art center. LaCie has partnered with musical experts Cabasse to match high fashion with sound quality. Packing a pair of 80Hz – 20kHz response drivers and an internal 30W power amplifier these bad boys aren’t toys. When running on AC power and USB connected, you’ll experience 30W of crisp sound from an onboard sound processor. This enabled when attached to a PC or Mac with no need for drivers. If an AC power source isn’t handy you can still power the speakers solely by USB using the attached cable, sacrificing some output power.

The ubiquitous PMP isn’t left out of the fun though either. The Bass Reflex speakers also have a line-in port of the stereo plug adapter variety that can pump high fidelity sound for your iPod or other portable device. Astoundingly, the designer speakers with the major thump won’t empty your wallet. They will retail for $99 at Lacie’s online store. No word yet on the exact release date but you should be able to get your hands on them soon.
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Twilight fans rejoice! Here’s the movie tie-in flash drive with digital copy of the New Moon soundtrack included. The 3″ thumbdrive (if you can call it that) features the Cullen Family Crest. As for the soundtrack, the 2GB collectible storage includes no less than 15 original songs, including these ones below:

• “The Violet Hour” (Sea Wolf)
• “Hearing Damage” (Thom Yorke)
• “Meet Me on the Equinox” (Death Cab for Cutie)
• “I Belong to You” [New Moon Remix] (Muse)
• “A White Demon Love Song” (The Killers)

We kinda hope the Star Wars’ Funko series would receive the same music content treatment. Those who are interested can pre-order Twilight: New Moon drive now for $32.99 and wait for to ship in mid-October. The movie however won’t be released until Nov. 20th.
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Besides Freecom, Buffalo is the also one of the first companies to jump into the USB 3.0 bandwagon. Its DriveStation HD-HXU3 offers transfer speed of up to 125MB/s – about 3 to 4 times faster than the fastest USB 2.0 hard drive available to date so you can kiss Turbo USB tweaked driver goodbye. According to USB-IF, Buffalo HD-HXU3 will be powered by Fujitsu MB86C30A USB 3.0 to SATA IC.

If Buffalo’s current DriveStation series is any indication, Buffalo will likely activate the Fujitsu IC’s AES full-disk encryption engine, and ship with a full version of Memeo AutoSync backup software. Also launched is a USB 3.0 card to take advantage of the new SuperSpeed USB mode. The company will initially ship the USB 3.0 drive in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB as well as the add-on card in Middle East and Europe in Q4 2009. There’s no word on the pricing yet.
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Light Peak was demoed at IDF (Intel Developers Forum) recently and it has USB 3.0 supporters up in arms. The demo shows it moving large amounts of files and playing HD video at the same time. The limited amount of press material and obvious implications to USB 3.0 have those looking forward to SuperSpeed USB devices a bit confused. Intel and Apple are allegedly to be in close collaboration on the Light Peak system, which the chip giant says will ship in 2010. While this date may be extremely optimistic, it does overlap with the launch of USB 3.0. Will this chip away at developer confidence and investment in USB 3.0 when Light Peak is apparently at hand? The HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle still has companies and consumers reeling and this latecomer may give pause to those who invested the wrong way. Fiber optics do surpass copper in the amount of data that can theoretically be transmitted, but it is not likely to shake USB quickly. The cost of the implementing the technology still puts it out of reach of most applications, for now. While TOSlink and FDDI connectors have seen decent adoption in the world, fiber optic communications have pretty major technical barriers to climb. Fiber optic cables are not currently very flexible and can easily be damaged by being bent past a certain limit. Also, the distance that light can be carried through a medium (without degradation) is much shorter than metal cables.

Optical transmission systems do have many benefits, but penetration into consumer markets will take considerable work. Apple and Sony, who are both rumored to be the major backers of this next step, would likely use this for extremely high bandwidth applications like video, hard drives and networking. Think next-gen high definition video displays, DVR-to-go synchronization of media players and video camera uploads to a computer. Until the hardware is polished, many technical roadblocks are cleared and materials become free, don’t expect to see anything more than a very limited adoption of Light Peak in only the most needy of devices. Heed the cautionary tale of Apple’s proprietary video connector (ADC) and Sony’s mini-disc, memory stick, UMD, betamax,… well, just about everything from Sony (yes, except the CD), before jumping on any bandwagons.
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Wacom, well known for its Intuos tablet writing and sketching devices, has released a finger friendly touchpad for external use. The Bamboo Touch has arrived to meld the features of multi-touch with the comfort of Wacom’s large tablet area. The buzz has settled a little about multi-touch technology lately but its adoption is continuing to grow. First experienced by Apple’s users on various Macbook models, multi-touch is showing up on more and more devices. A few niche manufacturers have created multi-touch pads, but Wacom is the first major name to bring a device to market. The whole Bamboo line is multi-touch enabled, and the Bamboo Touch is the smallest and most affordable of them.

The Bamboo Touch brings just the large comfortable touchpad experience for a very nominal price. Nine basic gestures are supported by the Touch, including Navigate, Click, Double Click, Right Click, Forward & Back, Scroll, Select & Drag, Rotate, and Zoom. All these gestures are easily and comfortably performed on the 5.4″ x 8.2″ tablet. There are also 4 physical buttons for clicks or programming functions or launching macros. The touch area is considerably larger than a laptop touchpad, and should make a decent desktop companion. At only $69, you can add multi-touch to your iMac or Windows 7 desktops by giving up a USB plug.
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Palm, enraged by a recent update to iTunes that disconnected Pre users from iTunes, has submitted a complaint to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). This is the governing body that owns the intellectual property and leases that connectivity to the world, but not without rules. The 8.2.1 update to iTunes basically broke a vital selling point for the Palm Pre. One of the Pre’s major selling points was its ability to natively sync with iTunes. Apple decided this was enough of an encroachment on the iPhone sales, and decided to have iTunes reject connections with the Pre. Now thousands of Pre users are stuck and aggravated.

Palm has brought the matter to the attention of the USB-IF with the accusation that Apple is violating the spirit of inter-connectivity that USB was designed to enable. Palm went further and described the efforts it had to go through to spoof themselves as an Apple device in order to regain connection. While the original intention of this hardware ID was to enable PCs to correctly identify drivers, it has become a tool for business to control operation with their software. Unfortunately for Palm, the steps it was ‘forced’ to resort to are a violation of the letter of the USB-IF’s policies. Palm now has to answer for that violation of the letter of the law and has denied Palm’s claim that Apple is in the wrong. Hair-pulling and clawing is about to ensue, we’re sure. Stayed tuned, the next tantrum will likely land them both on Springer.
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Proprietary notebook docks are things of the past. USB counterparts hit big time with its universal compatibility and more recently the addition of DisplayLink USB video. Kensington has just overhauled its aging sd200v notebook dock with two major upgrades: HD video output and auto install. The new dock, now called sd400v, has been upgraded with DisplayLink’s DL-195 to enable display resolutions up to 2048 x 1152. 720p and 1080p are supported if you add a DVI-to-HDMI adapter. The $149.99 sd400v has a DVI-I for video output.

Auto-install is particularly interesting as the sd400v would no longer require users to first install software drivers before plugging in the dock (although installation does happen in the background). This makes the sd400v pretty close to true plug-and-play. You will find 4 USB ports, stereo sound jack, DVI and an 10/100 Ethernet on the back. The audio (headphone and mic) ports and 1 always-on USB port for charging mobile devices even if the notebook is shut down are on the front. This one won’t support Mac out of the box, however. There’s model without Ethernet and auto-install that goes for $129.99.
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Freecom from Germany couldn’t wait any longer to release its USB Hard Drive XS 3.0 which is, as you may have guessed, the first retail SuperSpeed USB storage. Granted, there aren’t any motherboards nor built-in OS drivers available, but Freecom has USB 3.0 cards for both laptop and desktop PCs, and these come with proprietary drivers.

Aimed squarely at consumer users, external drive offers speeds of up to 130MBytes/s (or 1040Mb/s); in comparison, the fastest USB 2.0 drive maxes out at 40MBytes/s (or 320Mb/s). Better silicons both for SATA bridge and host will emerge to further improve throughput so it’s likely performance of future USB 3.0 drives will double. The Hard Drive XS 3.0 also sports hardware encryption with AES 256-bit strength. Freecom expects to ship the 3.5″ SuperSpeed USB drive in mid-November starting at 1TB for £99.99; the USB 3.0 PCIe card and ExpressCard will hit retail the same time for £23 and £26 respectively.
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Accell Cables recently announced its signal corrected long distance cables. Designed to support the high bandwidth needs that will accompany the new SuperSpeed USB mode, the cables contain special circuitry to maintain USB 3.0 signal quality which peripherals are particular sensitive at such high speed. Applications (e.g. video editing) that can make use of the amount of data that USB 3.0 will offer will be less tolerant of errors or signal problems. Accell ‘s cables utilize corrective circuitry that allows them to reach a length of 6 meters. In comparison, hardware and cables previously being tested started to see fatal amounts of errors and jitter after 3 meters, which is the length limit to passive USB 3.0 cable. The new connective technology requires no extra power, and the cables aren’t any thicker than today’s USB cables and will be available in a variety of lengths while of course the connectors would be larger to accommodate the extra pins.

Video and storage applications will most likely be the first applications that require cables of this quality. Expect to see advanced peripherals and perhaps even a transformation of the computer altogether. USB 3.0 brings data transfer capabilities that have traditionally been restricted to the motherboard. USB video, notebook docks, audio, add on processing units with parallelism and cheap, secure, thin client systems could hit the scenes very quickly taking advantage of game-changing speed that SuperSpeed USB brings. These cables, available in 3m, 4, 5 and 6m, should be available as soon as USB 3.0 devices make their way into the market.
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Itching to trying your hand at the DJ business? ION is ready to get you started with the Discover DJ system. This dual turntable mixing and scratching deck uses digital music from your PC to put you in control of the beats. It’s not able to play actual LPs, you can keep your vinyl in pristine condition and still generate the addictive loops and mixes using MP3s or audio CDs. MixVibes DJ software includes ties your music to the deck and has easy controls for bass, treble and cross-fading to allow smooth transitions from one song to the next. The software has an automatic beat-matching function that will match up the rhythms as well. We can’t promise you won’t end up looking like Super-Greg while you do this, but it’s a great way to learn the controls.

Fire this up at your next birthday party instead of renting a clown with a low-jack and more felonies than balloon animals. The software and Discover DJ deck are both Mac and PC compatible and will be for sale soon on Ion’s site.
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