Latest Gear Live Videos
Entertaining Politics
Posted by K.C. Morgan Categories: Rivalries, Videos, Editorials,
Politicians are not celebrities. Celebrities are not politicians. ...Or, are they? The fur is really starting to fly in the election. Presidential candidate John McCain has likened Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Rappers who support Obama have released tracks dissing John McCain. What happens when politics and celebrity mix? Nothing good.
In one of his political ads, McCain seems to be trying to undermine Obama as a presidential contender - calling him a star instead of the vehicle of change Obama claims to be. It isn’t odd for politicians to use celebrities to further their own cause, and it isn’t even odd for celebrities to decide to become politicians.
So maybe it’s even the norm for celebrities and politics to mix…but should they? Sometimes, celebs can do much more harm than good when they back a certain candidate.
Click to continue reading Entertaining Politics
E! Online
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Data Robotics releases second gen Drobo
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, PC / Laptop, Storage,
Yesterday, we would have said that Drobo is the best external storage solution out there, but today’s news cements that statement. The folks at Data Robotics have just announced the second generation Drobo, and this one is a doozy. The new Drobo is faster inside and out, and we are impressed. First and foremost, Drobo now features two FireWire 800 ports, while maintaining the USB 2.0 connection of the original Drobo. The two ports mean you can daisy chain these bad boys together. The core processor has also been upgraded, so Drobo feels snappier to boot. They’ve also done some firmware tweaking, so now heavy load won’t start bogging down Drobo’s software. What does all this mean? The new Drobo is more than twice as fast as the original at reading data, and almost twice as fast as writing data as well.
In terms of pricing, the good news is that there is no price increase. The second generation Drobo can be purchased on its own for $499 USD. If you want a couple of 1TB drives thrown in, then the bundle will run you $899. If you want to go all out and bundle in 4 1TB drives, then that will cost you $1,299. That’s the best deal on the market quite frankly, as Data Robotics just buys their drives direct from drive manufacturers and doesn’t mark up pricing when bundling them with Drobo units. With the new speeds, Drobo is starting to look like a location for primary storage rather than just secondary. We like where this is heading.
The second-gen Drobo is compatible with the DroboShare NAS add-on, and if you are upgrading from the older model, you can simply pull the drives right out of those and drop them into the new model, and you will be up and running immediately. If you prefer to keep the older version, and just want to chain it to the newer model, you can do that too.
Bleeding Edge TV 270: Computex 2008 - A look at the Promise SmartStor NAS Media Server
Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Announcements, Home Entertainment, Internet, Movies, Music, PC / Laptop, Storage, Videocasts, Videos,
Drobo is meeting some fierce competition from Promise this year. The SmartStor is an all-in-one RAID5 controller with hot-swappable drives just like the Drobo, but it also includes a built-in NAS to share files over the network, and a BitTorrent client to boot. It’s compatible with dlna, UPnP, and AMD Live! systems so sharing media is a breeze as well.
We talk with Alex Ling from Promise at Computex 2008 and he walks us through the SmartStor’s many features.
Unboxing Live 035: Drobo and DroboShare
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Laptop, Networking, PC, Peripherals, Robots, Videocasts,
Drobo is billed as the “World’s first data storage robot.” We like to think of it as super, super simple data storage that also doubles as a fantastic backup destination. Backing up your data is both extremely boring, and excruciatingly essential. Apple has tried to spice things up in this area with their Time Machine technology in Leopard (which Drobo supports), and Windows Home Server offers easy backup for your Windows-based computers.
As you may recall, we got a full feature rundown of Drobo back at CES 2008, so check that out if you need a refresher, or in case you missed it. We were thoroughly impressed, and had to get our hands on one to bring you the scoop on what we think of the device after using it in the real world. While the review is soon to come, we knew you’d want to see the Drobo unboxed. Oh, and as a bonus, we also have the DroboShare as well. This add-on turns your Drobo into a NAS device, and can even pair two Drobos up together for the ultimate in small environment networked data storage.
Check out the video above for the full unboxing of the Drobo and DroboShare NAS device.
Ripserver Makes CDs
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Misc. Tech, Music, USB,
Whether you have your own band or want to start a mini-music production company, Ripfactory has unveiled its NAS with integrated CD ripping engine. Plug the Ripserver into a network connection via USB and it will hold up to 1TB of music files. Insert a CD into the loading drive slot and it will be converted in a matter of minutes, adds it to your library with its UPnP media server, and spits it back out. No keyboard or monitor is needed. Ripserver runs on Linux and needs minimal setup. Select from 500 or 1TB capacity, black or white, for £599 (~$1,200.00) or £699 (~$1,400.00.)
Read More 
| Ripfactory
MacWorld 2008: Apple announces TIme Capsule Airport Extreme with built-in hard drive
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Storage, Wireless / WiFi,
During this morning’s MacWorld keynote, Apple announced a brand new router specifically meant for those of us running Leopard on Apple notebooks, called Time Capsule. Basically an Airport Extreme NAS, the Time Capsule router allows those running Leopard while connected over WiFi to run Time Machine. Currently, unless you use a back-end hack to enable WiFi backups, you have to plug and unplug your laptop to an external drive to run Time Machine backups. Time Capsule removes that requirement, thus making WiFi Time Machine backups simple. Of course, it comes at a price. A 500 GB Time Capsule retails for $299 USD, which a 1 TB version costs $499.
Read More | Time Capsule Product Page
