Dell’s latest mini-desktop, the Inspiron Zino HD, has broken cover, but the company obviously has some blackmail-quality information about Engadget and Gizmodo as neither site are spilling the details of what’s inside the low-profile box. Known so far is that there’s an optical drive, plenty of ports and interchangeable top covers with various patterns and finishes.
ASUS have announced the O!Play HDP-R1 HD Media Player, a compact wired-only media streamer intended to funnel local and network content into your HDTV. Supporting HDMI and composite A/V connections for the display and a choice of USB 2.0, eSATA or wired ethernet, there’s also an optical digital audio output for use with a surround sound amp.
Acer have announced their first consumer NAS running Windows Home Server, the Aspire easyStore AH340-UA230N. It may not have a snappy name, but it does have 1TB of standard storage plus three hot-swappable 3.5-inch hard-drive bays for a total of 7TB capacity. There are also five USB 2.0 ports and an eSATA connection.
Apricorn announced their newest storage device today called the Aegis Desktop and this thing has a serious capacity. With up to 1.5TB of storage space, this device makes good and sure that you have plenty of room for everything.
LaCie have announced two new storage servers intended for small workgroups. The LaCie Big Disk Network and d2 Network can each support up to 50 users (15 simultaneously), with the Big Disk having dual RAID 0 drives for up to 4TBs capacity, while the d2 Network has 1.5TB of its own storage plus an eSATA port for adding external high-speed drives.
With a name that sounds awfully like a certain other external RAID enclosure, and a logo that’s also pretty similar, we could waste plenty of column inches calling Sarotech’s Frigo hard-drive enclosures Drobo knock-offs. Instead, let’s just accept that these things happen, and ask whether space for up to two (Sarotech Frigo RS-2) or four (Sarotech Frigo RS-4) 2TB SATA drives are tempting enough to overlook any similarities.
When it launched back in January, you couldn’t really fault Apricorn’s DVR Expander for its specifications: 1.5TB of storage for plug’n'play expansion of your DVR, with a range of connectivity to suit various different TiVo, Cable and DirectTV receivers, among others. What was less impressive was the casing; it looked cheap and, certainly in the case of the pink unit Apricorn bizarrely chose for their press shots, not something you’d want sat next to your TV. Now the DVR Expander has had a makeover: the same impressive capabilities, but with a far slicker case.
We’ve drooled over Niveus’ multi-room HD hardware before, but it’s only now that the company has released a relatively mainstream product our meager blogger budgets could even hope to afford. The Niveus ZONE is a Core 2 Duo based small-form-factor media player, capable not only of upscaling DVDs and playing 1080p Blu-ray content, but distributing it to other networked ZONE units around the home.
Video demo after the cut
After the flurry of netbooks earlier this week, Samsung have now announced two new Centrino 2 notebooks. The Samsung Q320, shown here, and Samsung R522, shown after the cut, are aimed at “mobile enthusiasts” and “families” respectively, with the Q320 having a 13.4-inch zero-bezel display and the R522 a more traditional 15.6-inch panel.
The original Acer Aspire One has proved a willing and able subject for modders, and the most recent hack makes the 8.9-inch netbook all the more data-friendly with the addition of an eSATA port. Piggy-backing over the Storage Expansion SD slot, modder tnkgrl used the netbook’s SATA port to wire things up.
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