Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

A lot of high-end DSLRs still use compact flash cards instead of the ever-more-popular SD and its smaller cohorts. (The Nikon D3 comes to mind.) But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to buy a CF card which are getting harder and harder to find these days. These handy adapters from PhotoFast allow to use standard SD and microSD cards in your camera via a CF type II compliant adapter. And I particularly like the model in the lower right-corner which actually comes with a built-in RAID controller allowing you to use up to 4 microSD cards at the same time, theoretically giving you about 64GB of storage with 4 x 16GB microSDHC cards.

All 3 of these adapters appear to be available from the PhotoFast website and range in price from about $25 for the SD to CF adapter to about $30 for the microSDHC to CF adapter. Though the microSDHC model with the RAID controller won’t be available until mid-July.

[ PhotoFast CF Adapters ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Shane McGlaun

I used to try to carry a flash drive with me when I had a real job and actually left the house on occasion. More often than not, I left it at home because I forgot to pick it up and put it in my pocket. I tried a small flash drive that could fit in my wallet once, but it was too thick and made sitting uncomfortable.

A company called TopTech Products has announced a new flash drive that is shaped like a credit card and appears thin enough to not be a pain in the rear when sitting. The drive measures 3.4-inches x 2.1-inches x 0.11-inches.

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By Andrew Liszewski

Buffalo just upped the capacity of their itty-bitty 5mm Thumbkey USB flash drives from 8GB to 16GB, making them the perfect way to easily lose a big chunk of data. The drives should be available from Geek Stuff 4 U in black, red or white sometime near the end of June with a price tag of about $136. Expensive yes, but a ridiculously easy way to increase the storage space on your netbook.

[ Buffalo 16GB 5mm Thumbkey ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Until now, the fastest SD/SDHC cards you could buy were known as Class 6, which ensured a transfer rate of at least 6MB/s. But today Panasonic announced a new series of Class 10 SD/SDHC cards with capacities maxing out at 32GB and a minimal transfer rate of 10MB/s. Of course that 32GB card will set you back about $420, but it does come with a maximum speed of 22MB/s which should make owners of a DSLR with an SD card slot very happy, though somewhat poorer.

[ Panasonic Class 10 SDHC Cards ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Shane McGlaun

Keeping the games, controllers and game console tidy and stored out of the way when not in use can be a big issue for some users. Entertainment centers are often too small often leaving a tangled mess of wires and games lying around.

A new storage product for game consoles and accessories called Game On has been unveiled. The device can be mounted to the wall and has an upper shelf that holds games and a lower shelf that holds the game console itself.

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By Evan Ackerman

If you work for a company that makes USB 3.5″ floppy disk drives, like Daniel Olson does, you probably find yourself with a lot of down time. In an effort to make 3.5″ floppies relevant again, Daniel made himself a RAID array out of 5 drives and a USB hub. The array has a usable capacity of about 4 mb, and is able to fill itself in just over 30 seconds. That’s like, uh, 0.13 mbps! Wow!

For his next project, Daniel plans to make a 125 disk array with a capacity of something like 256 mb. I guess he’s keeping ‘em out of a landfill, so that’s a good thing.

VIA [ Every Joe ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Iomega (click of death) recently updated their line of eGo Portable Hard Drives (click of death) with 4 new colors including Ruby Red, Silver, Midnight Blue and Helium (click of death) in capacities ranging from 250GB up to 500GB, depending on which color you buy. They also come with (click of death) Iomega’s Drop Guard feature which protects the drives from drops of up to 51 inches, as well as (click of death) the Iomega Protection Software Suite which includes apps like McAfee Virus Scan, MozyHome and Iomega QuickProtect. The drives should be available sometime in June (click of death) and will range in price from $84.99 for the 250GB models and up to $134.99 for the 500GB.

P.S. Can you tell I’m still holding a grudge? Does it show? My therapist says I’ve made great progress, but I’m not so sure.

[ Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drives ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It’s time to make your desktop PC work a bit harder for you with this multi-function 3.5 inch jack-of-all-external-storage replacement bay from Brando. It’s got a built-in card reader that accepts almost every flash card format short of Compact Flash, an e-SATA port and Molex 4 pin power port allowing you to connect a variety of external SATA drives and even its own built-in 2.5 inch SATA HDD enclosure that can be easily removed or docked as needed. Now obviously with a price tag of $49 a 2.5-inch SATA hard drive isn’t included, but if you’re constantly moving around a lot of data via an external drive, this could at least help keep your desk a bit tidier.

[ UNITEK 3.5" Multi-Functional Bay ] VIA [ Plunder Guide ]

By Shane McGlaun

SSDs have been around for a while now and for enterprise use, they make a lot of sense. The savings from the lower power consumption alone is often enough to justify the upgrade for large data centers. Consumers still don’t have a compelling reason to upgrade to SSDs, other than the simple desire to use the new technology and gain small improvements in performance.

For consumers looking to upgrade their notebook or desktop computer to a SSD Imation has announced that it is now shipping both its M and S-class SSDs along with upgrade kit bundles. The price for the SSDs themselves starts at $189.99 for the M-class with 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities available. The S-class starts at $659.99 with 64GB or 128GB versions available.

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