Just looking at the picture, wouldn’t it be a shame if the Porsche-inspired USB hard drive from LaCie got a scratch on it? Not many tech products are designed after household names like Porsche, but it seems LaCie is making a good business out of it.
The exclusive design is available in 500GB and 1TB sizes, with an even more exclusive 750GB version only available at Porsche stores. Wouldn’t that be odd: “Honey, I’m going down to the Porsche dealership to pick up a hard drive to expand the TiVo box.” But after she saw the hard drive, I’m sure she would understand.
So when you can find a 500GB USB hard drive for about $80, why bother? Drop another $20 and get the LaCie Porsche version. Now that is money well spent.
For the tech folks, it’s USB 3.0, so you get great transfer rates. For the Uber-Geek, forget about Thunderbolt — the spec had just come out at the time, and I’m sure it took Porsche at least six months just to approve the design. So stop getting theoretical
on me
about why it should be Thunderbolt and get some perspective.
For those who ended up buying a bulk lot of the LaCie drives (image-conscious marketing companies come to mind), may I suggest a USB hard drive copier like the one from
Nexcopy
to make data loading a quick task?
Source:
LaCie News.
The USB Implimentors Forum announced the availability of the USB On-The-GO [OTG] specification for embedded USB host controller applications where a PC is not required.
The supplement ensures that mobile devices such as phones or cameras are able to use a SuperSpeed USB link in both USB host and USB peripheral roles through a single receptacle. OTG and Embedded Host Devices requiring fast synchronization or streaming of rich data will benefit from this feature.
The USB OTG 3.0 and Embedded Host supplement offers power saving features equivalent to those available in USB OTG 2.0, enabling the adoption of SuperSpeed USB in mobile devices. Additionally, USB OTG 3.0 provides backward compatibility with USB OTG 2.0.
To learn more about the specification,
Continue Reading
Lets ditch the AC/DC power block with most laptops and just plug into one of those USB wall mount power stations. Or recharge your laptop directly off your tower PC. Or easily power an unlimited number of USB devices via your USB laptop USB 3.0 port.
This means more and more peripherals will be powered via USB and not require the extra power adapter. This ultimately mean less cost and less hassle for the average computer user.
Step 1: Get your items. Dice, USB, Dremel, blue or epoxy and a file.
Step 2:Â After some measurements, mill out the hold where the USB will be inserted.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 for the second die as this will be your cap. You also need to drill a hole on a dice side for the lanyard which will attached to your key-chain
Step 4: Epoxy the USB drive into the base die, and attached the lanyard to the cap die. Now you’ve got a USB dice key-chain.
You might want to take things a step further and
First off, lets get some pricing out of the way. The download update is retail at $30. The 
Voltaic is a company that deals with voltage. They specialize in the solar charging to create volts. Their latest entry is the Spark. The Spark is a solar panel design for tablet and notebooks.
Voltaic is marketing the Spark for the iPad – and why not as there’s plenty of marketing spin going on for Apple tablets.
The Spark will generate 8watts of solar power. So for those who don’t have an electrical engineering degree, or simply can’t do the math – one hour of sun to the Spark will generate enough power to run one hour of video off the iPad. Not bad.
One of the main goals for Windows 8 with respect to peripheral support, is the robust support for USB devices. From the first 1.1 standard, the high speed 2.0 standard and the newest addition of SuperSpeed USB 3.0.
Microsoft expects to see all new PCs have a USB 3.0 port by 2015…but I think we’ll see USB 3.0 in all PCs before the end of 2013. Microsoft also forecasts a number of 2 billion USB 3.0 devices to ship in 2015 as well.
Microsoft’s game plan is keeping their current USB stack for 1.1 and 2.0 devices as it’s proven and stable, while incorporating a new USB stack for 3.0 devices.
A Russian engineer has posted his version of a 
First off, if you are using something like the 
In short, you’re going to use the lanyard loop of the stick and some thread to stitch it a piece of Velcro which is then put into the wallet. This design allows the drive to be some-what permanent, yet you can pull it out completely when needed.