usb

There was only one product at CES 2008 that I couldn't wait to get--a new model of safe from the Sentry Safe company. I even tried to buy one from Sentry's website one evening while I was still in Las Vegas, but that turned out to be impossible; it has to be shipped by truck freight, so I had to place the order with Sentry over the phone to make those arrangements.

I ordered the safe when I got back home, and it arrived here last week--a good bit sooner than the company predicted. I've got it … Read more

Well it's about time. Like everyone else, we've been pining for a combo USB Aroma Radio/Speaker for some time.

Apparently the insane but driven R&D staff at Hong Kong's Brando was determined to one-up the competition, which includes aromatherapy gadgets in the form of USB humidifiers and fragrance oil burners. Brando's version not only tickles the olefactory senses but also pipes in the music from your MP3 player and provides mood lighting in seven LED colors.

For optimum relaxation, be sure to use this on a computer with at least two USB ports. … Read more

So you pulled that cramped old 40GB hard drive out of your notebook and replaced it with 160GB of storage goodness. Ever wonder what you should do with the leftover drive? Simple: stick it in an enclosure and use it as a portable USB hard drive.

You supply the drive; Meritline.com has an enclosure for just $10.99 shipped (after entering coupon code HW1971413OFF, which expires 1/25). It's compatible with all 2.5-inch IDE and SATA drives, and it includes both IDE and SATA external interfaces (cables, too). You also get a carrying case and a little … Read more

Imagine this in the near future: While separating the bottles and cans from paper products in the recycling bin, we may also need to set aside some old flash drives. That, at least, is part of the goal put forth by memory manufacturer ATP, which is releasing what it calls "the world's first bio-recyclable USB drive."

The "EarthDrive," which comes in capacities ranging from 1GB to 8GB, is a bit on the pricey side at $20 to $100 considering how cheap thumb drives are getting these days. But it's all for a good cause: … Read more

Transferring data from an old hard drive to a new PC can be such a pain, having to install and remove multiple drives. Newer Technology's latest USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter, which debuted at Macworld 2008, may offer a solution.

Using the common USB port, almost any flavor of hard disks and even optical drives can be hooked up to the PC easily. It's not too expensive, priced at $29.95, and is compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and even Linux systems.

(Source: Crave Asia)

It's always nice to see a company making progress, and Mii Stor is no exception. The last time we visited with the company, it was offering a 4GB thumb drive for $19,000

Now, thanks to the advancement of technology, it has upgraded the line with a model dubbed "Ice" that has more capacity for about $29,000, according to Luxurylaunches--capacity for diamonds, that is, of which there are 456. (The previously cited "Snow" version had a mere 96 stones.) It's also made of platinum, as opposed to the low-rent 18k gold of its … Read more

If your power strips are as overloaded as mine with cords and bulky transformers, you'll be glad to hear that eSATA--a standard that gives external hard drives the data transfer speeds of internal drives--is untethering itself from its power cord.

eSATA is an external version of the Serial ATA technology used to hook up internal PCs, but today external eSATA drives need their own power supply. But on Monday, the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) announced it's working on a version that will let external drives draw power over the cable that connects the drive to a computer. … Read more

Joining Yoggie's cool Gatekeeper Pico, a security suite on a USB stick, is the new Firestick Pico, a firewall-only version of the same thing.

As covered previously on Crave, Yoggie's products are essentially security coprocessors. Computers unto themselves, they intercept all Internet traffic going in and out of your computer and scan it for threats. The Gatekeeper products scan for viruses, spam, and other threats, as well as running a bidirectional firewall. The new Firestick is a firewall only.

The benefit to these products is that they free up your computer's processor from running the security processes … Read more

You young'uns won't remember this, but there was a time when a 4GB flash drive cost hundreds of dollars. Literally hundreds! Now you can scoop one up for a mere $17.49, and you won't even have to pay for shipping.

As you can see from the photo, the PQI 4GB Cool Drive comes in pink--nothing a can of spray paint can't fix (unless, of course, you like pink). PQI supplies a bunch of preloaded mobile software, including unnamed browser, "doc," and e-mail applications. (Obviously you can ditch this stuff if it turns out … Read more