USB

Yes, USB memory sticks really are old news but occasionally somebody comes up with a design tweak that makes it worth reporting. In this case the “somebody” is Sony and the tweak is the spring loaded click-top mechanism for retracting the USB port.

Think ballpoint pen. It’s a simple and effective way of protecting the connector without having a separate cap to get lost. Plus it has a glowing light. Who doesn’t like glowing lights?

The Microvault Click is available in capacities up to 32GB and comes pre-loaded with “Virtual Expander” compression software to increase the available storage space.

Head on over to Amazon to pick yours up.

This new drive from Verbatim managed to catch my eye thanks to its front panel display that shows free space. A simple idea, the always-on LCD shows the drive name and free space even when it’s not connected to the PC.

Handy, if you have a few external drives that aren’t connected all the time.

They’re available in the US at the moment priced at $150 for the 500GB model.

Chainsaws will occupy a special place in the heart of anybody who’s been around long enough to remember ID Software’s genre-defining game, Doom. (or, indeed, any fans of the Evil Dead series)

With the advent of the i.Saw USB chainsaw you can bring your space-marine/zombie hunting fantasies one step closer… or at least you might be able to in September when they actually start shipping the things.

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This cool flight-sim addon made a brief appearance in the form of a “coming soon” press release at least a year ago, if not more than that. Since then we’ve heard nothing but recently it appeared out of nowhere on Saitek’s website.

What you’re looking at is a USB connected 5” colour LCD screen that can replicate the dials and displays in an aircraft. You can choose one of 6 dials to display (Altimeter, artificial horizon etc) and you can plug multiple units in at once if you want the whole cockpit feel.

Out of the box it’s compatible with Flight Simulator X, although it’s programmable so theoretically any flight sim could be made to talk to it (don’t hold your breath though, it depends on the publisher being interested…)

It’ll be available at the end of the month from the Saitek online store for £129.99.

You probably won’t have heard of Pogoplug – they’re only just releasing in the US and (as yet) aren’t available over here. Which is a shame as it’s got to be the easiest way yet of making your data available anywhere. Plug the Pogoplug into your router and a USB hard drive and voila – hard drive appears on your laptop as a standard windows (or Mac) network share, wherever in the world you happen to be.

As of Saturday morning the iPhone is added to the device list, meaning you can open and save files and photos from the connected drive on an iPhone.

Cute – all we need now is a UK version!

If you’re going to leave your data on the train then this is is the drive enclosure for you.  The Icy Box IB-220RFID is a standard 2.5” SATA external hard drive enclosure with a unique selling point, RFID.  Data is encrypted on the drive and can only be written and read while the RFID token is in close proximity to the enclosure. 

The enclosure has a USB 2.0 interface with an LCD display showing; power, encryption and de-encryption status.  Icy Box include 2 RFID tokens just in case as well as; a Y-power cable (if required), a USB cable, Screwdriver, leatherette pouch, CD and manual. 

If you don’t trust yourself not to lose an RFID token then Icy Box also do the IB-225-STU-FP 2.5” SATA drive enclosure with Finger Print authentication.  I’m hoping you won’t misplace a finger but just in case you do the enclosure can register up to 10 finger prints.

The RFID enclosure is selling for around £22 and the Finger Print version is going for around £32 not including hard drive.

The Flip Mino is a parent-proof, pocket sized point and shoot camcorder recording to internal memory. The original Flip has been around for a while but there’s a new HD version in town, and it comes to Firebox UK on Monday.

Keeping the form factor and ease of use that made the flip a global smash, the Flip Mino HD adds 720p recording (making it the smallest HD camcorder in the world*) and keeps the 60 minute recording time of the original thanks to upgraded storage.

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I’ve recently bought an Asus EeePC901 which runs an Asus version of Xandros as standard. All very nice and simple but I wanted to take a look at some of the replacement Linux distributions that are out there without actually having to install them, at least until I find the one that works for me.

The thing is this means creating a bootable USB memory stick which takes time and gets a little technical. It was while I was looking at the various distributions that I stumbled across the Unetbootin utility which automates the entire process for you whether you run Windows or Linux on your PC.

The usual warning about messing with your OS applies: you do this at your own risk so don’t blame us if you accidentally trash your main hard drive!

Having said that, the process worked for me so if the warning didn’t scare you away, read on…

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With the economy the way it is at the moment, everybody’s looking for a bargain and this USB TV receiver from bizarrely named technology company August international might just hit the spot.  It needs a fairly strong signal for the best reception but if you have that then it’s a cheap and simple way of getting your Big Brother (shudder) fix on your laptop.

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