A-DATA have lobbed a few new external hard-drives our way and, while we’d normally squeal like little girls at the thought of data damage, today we’re mute as sensible, grown men. That’s because the A-DATA SH93 portable hard-drives are waterproof and shock resistant, thanks to a nifty molded rubber-plastic casing.
If you’ve ever lost your car, wife or house because of your poor sense of direction, then the miniHomer from Navin may save the day. A keyring-sized GPS compass, the miniHomer may not have an appetite for donuts but it will store up to five different locations (one of which could be a donut store, admittedly) and guide you back to them with a digital compass.
There are quite a few companies out there who will sell you a ruggedized laptop, cellphone or digital camera, but they’ll also help themselves to a healthy amount from your wallet in return. The gang at Popular Mechanics decided to see if – with only the sort of typical supplies you could find at Home Depot and Staples – they could make their own versions for a whole lot less money. That, of course, provided the ideal opportunity to give one of Dell’s Inspiron 1545 notebooks a good kicking.
Ruckus Wireless have announced a new outdoor access point, which the company claims is the “world’s first and only outdoor dual-band 802.11n with dynamic beam forming.” The ZoneFlex 7762 supports WiFi draft-n along with concurrent dualband 2.4/5GHz and up to sixteen simultaneous SSIDs, inside a heated weatherproof casing.
Hitachi have announced a new range of simple USB hard-drives, together with a basic NAS adapter which can connect two external drives to a network. The SimpleDRIVE Mini and SimpleTOUGH portable USB drives are available in 250, 320 and 500GB capacities, with the former adding ruggedness and the latter basic colors.
Do you have room in your heart for another tiny memory stick? Super Talent hope so, hence their latest Pico Mini thumb-drives. Offering 2GB to 16GB of storage with a USB 2.0 interface and up to 200x transfer speeds, the drives are also waterproof.
Who doesn’t like a little bit of entertainment when lounging in the pool? But it can be difficult to bring out speakers and audio equipment for fear of it being damaged by the water. Luckily, there’s the Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker to solve all your music and pool-related problems.
Garmin have announced their latest personal navigators, the Oregon 550 and Oregon 550t, each of which includes a 3.2-megapixel digital camera for taking geotagged photos. Fronted by a 3-inch touchscreen, the two new Oregon units have 3-axis compasses, waterproof casings and are powered by two AA batteries (with a pair of precharged NiMH batteries and charger provided, good for up to 16hrs runtime).
Any rubber-clad gadget can claim to be rugged, but it takes some preparation to put your shiny new product through MIL-STD-810F ruggedization testing. It’s tough when it’s a cellphone; making an entire Tablet PC stand up to the same drops, dust, water and more is quite the challenge. Still, that’s what Motion did with their new J3400 rugged slate, and they’ve released some of the videos of the testing it endured.
Videos after the cut
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Hey, Premium Notebooks or Netbooks, Get the Basics Right!
SlashGear Japan
