With spring just around the corner it’s a great time to get some digital gear for summer. Nothing would fit that ticket better then a USB SurfDrive. Obviously you couldn’t hang-ten with this board, unless you where a USB Star Wars Pez but a great Easter basket stuffer for your little one. USB SurfDrives are available in sizes from 256MB to 1GB with free shipping. Who said USB novelty items are worthless?
OCZ Technology ups the ante for UFDs with their Rally 2 with Firewire connectivity. Although USB is king for connectivity it never hurts to have options, especially when USB ports disappear so quickly with keyboards, speakers and now monitors.
The Rally 2 flash drive comes with two Firewire version, a small 4pin version and larger 6 pin version. As Dave White from Mobile Magazine admits, the Rally 2 could be the answer to what could be a common problem – lack of USB ports.
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Samsung announced a new 19-inch LCD monitor called, the SyncMaster 940UX, which can be connected to a PC using only a USB port. I’ve been saying this for years, but a move like this from Samsung once again proves my point…USB is king of plug-n-play solutions.
The SyncMaster approach of USB connectivity for monitors eliminates the need for a second graphics card and although it never took a masters degree in engineering
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I got an email from Apple this morning at 4 A.M.. Guess my Apple TV is on its way. And it looks like they gave me a discount. I only got charged $281. It’s listed for $299 on Apple.com. I pre-ordered my Apple TV the day it was announced. Maybe I got the discount because it got delayed a month?
So here’s a poor mans USB hack to secure your network from unscrupulous characters downloading company secrets via USB.
In Windows XP SP2 and Vista you can disable writing to USB devices altogether by implementing a simple registry hack.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Control\StorageDevicePolicies] “WriteProtectâ€=dword:00000001
**Note: I inserted a break after …Set\< br>Control… to fit into post page.
Once done, reboot and you’re set. Make sure others don’t have Administrative rights, otherwise they could easily set things back. Here is the Vista error message upon copy attempt:
There is an auto executable download available to disable writing to USB drives without searching for the registry area yourself. If interested in this USB hack, then jump over to How-To-Geek and snag it.
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We wrapped up another poll this week and it appears 64% of the GetUSB.info readers have U3 software loaded on their flash drives. Interestingly enough, today Kingston made the announcement they will drop the U3 platform do to high royalty costs and low demand for the product. I for one, think the platform and idea are a nice addition and if you haven’t tried U3 flash drives, you should – you may never go back.
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One year ago, almost to the day, IOCell introduced the self proclaimed “World’s largest capacity flash drive” at the CeBIT 2006 show. Today, you can find 16GB flash drives from Transcend, US Modular and Pretec, so why is the Buffalo 16GB announcement of interest? Well, it uses Silicon HDD Technology.
Silicon hard drives are different then normal hard drives in that no magnetic discs are present, rather the data is stored in silicon memory. How the silicon (HDD) hard drive works is by
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Yesterday GetUSB.info reported on Kingston giving U3 the axe and their decision to stop selling the portable application bundled into Kingston UFDs.
Interestingly enough, part of that announcement indicated sales for U3 devices are lack-luster and demand for U3 drives aren’t high enough to offset the royalty fee associated with platform.
However, as the story broke, GetUSB.info just finished their latest USB Poll on “Do You Own a Flash Drive With U3 Software?” The results concluded that 64% of GetUSB.info readers have U3 drives, where as the balance do not. Seems to us, there are some mixed numbers.
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Kingston Technology released a statement yesterday giving U3 the axe for pre-installation on USB flash drives. Kingston will stop selling the U3 product because the royalty fees are too great for the price sensitive flash memory market.
Kingston explained its decision in saying that extra bundled software means additional costs for consumers. The company already has its own similar platform to substitute for U3, according to company sources.
According to some IC controller design houses, SanDisk – the big player advocating U3 – charges about a 5% royalty fee for adopting the U3 platform.
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The CoSoSys Carry It Easy software we recently reported will now be found, pre-installed, on the ATP USB ToughDrive. The preloaded CoSoSys software will allow for quick and easy sync of email, contacts and personal bookmarks.
If not familiar with the ATP ToughDrive, it’s a ruggedized flash drive designed to withstand water, dust, static discharge and extreme temps.
Include the Secure It Easy software from CoSoSys and now you’re not only portable but iron-clad secure too.
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Gadget Centre has once again pulled through with an excellent review. The Terratec USB Surround Sound Headmaster is one high-tech, well built, hard core headphone system.
…held together by a unsightly looping support which wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval dungeon, it’s a good job the Headset Master is for your PC: if you took it outside people would go out of their way to point and laugh at you.
Chris Russell points out that although they are a little heavy, they are well built and designed for the hard core gamer who’d appreciate every tweak of sound during an all intense Counter-Strike tourney.
Atlantis is carving out a name for themselves with non-Microsoft word processing software. I’ve used the software and I like it. Atlantis is taking a more social approach to their software. You’ve got plugins to download and easy integration of audio and video.
Recently Atlantis made their Word Processing portable for U3 flash drives. I think most of us can agree there is a love-hate relationship between Microsoft applications and having to use them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed with Microsoft, I couldn’t have done what Bill did. But the fact is, most of us get trapped into using their software because it’s at home, at work and everywhere else.
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