Crave

When it comes to ultrabooks, you have to pick between a solid-state drive (SSD) or a hard drive as the main storage drive. The former is generally limited in terms of capacity, expensive but very fast, while the latter offers much more storage space for a much lower cost.

If you're willing to go with a hard drive, WD now offers another option.

The company announced today the availability of the new single-platter WD Scorpio Blue hard drive. The drive still uses the 2.5-inch standard but is just 7mm thick, as opposed to 9.5mm in regular laptop hard drives. … Read more

D-Link announced today its latest streaming device, which is a stripped-down version of its Boxee Box, called the MovieNite.

Unlike the Boxee, that in addition to streaming can play back content stored on a plugged-in external hard drive, the MovieNite is a stream-only device. It supports popular steaming services, including Vudu, Netflix, Pandora and YouTube.

To make up for this, the new device costs just about one third the price of the Boxee Box, at around $60.

The MovieNite comes with just one HDMI port and supports up to 1080p high-def streaming content. It supports wireless N standard and a … Read more

Beside death and taxes -- and April 17 is approaching, in case you don't pay attention -- the loss of data might be the third thing that's certain in life; it's just a matter of time. But there's hope.

Since you can file an extension to do the tax return, which you should avoid, there's also a way for you to further prevent data loss, which you definitely should do. And the Solo G3 from IoSafe is one of the best, if not the best solution, all things considered.

In a nutshell it's an … Read more

The 2.5-inch standard Vertex 4 solid-state drive (SSD) is a clear signal that OCZ wants to move to use its own Indilix Everest controllers rather than those from SandForce, which was used in the Vertex 3.

And that would be a good decision. The new Vertex 4 now uses the second generation (Everest 2) of the controller and offered great performance in my testing.

It's the first SSD I've seen that took just a second to be formatted and was immediately recognized by the system when used as a secondary drive.… Read more

While Netgear and D-Link introduced their approaches to app-supporting and cloud-enabled networking products at CES 2012, Cisco, which didn't have anything to announce at CES, turns out to be the first to materialize the new concepts.

Cisco today unveiled a line of Linksys Smart Wi-Fi routers that promises to change the face, and the body, of home networking.

The Linksys EA4500, EA3500, and EA2700 -- the "A" designation being short for "app-enabled" -- look like models in the earlier E Series but have more-powerful hardware and support Cisco Connect Cloud, the next generation of Cisco … Read more

While Mac users can use the recently reviewed Windows-preformatted 2TB WD My Passport portable drive, they now have another drive to call their own.

Western Digital announced today the new My Passport Studio, which increased the storage space to up to 2TB. Similar to the existing My Passport Studio, the new drive offers USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 connectivity in the place of USB 3.0. This is because Macs generally don't support USB 3.0, leaving FireWire 800 the only second fastest peripheral connection to Thunderbolt. In fact the new 2TB model shares the same design as the current 1TB model with the all-metal casing. … Read more

The WD My Passport, the first-ever 2TB portable drive WD introduced last week, turned out to be pretty impressive.

Despite the fact that it offers the top capacity for 2.5-inch-based drives that use the current perpendicular recording technology, the drive is also compact and light. In fact, it's more compact than the My Passport Studio that offers just half of its storage space.

Originally, it was predicted that for 2.5-inch internal drives -- those housed inside portable drives like the new My Passport -- to reach 2TB, a new recording technology would be required. WD's My … Read more

After the excellent N+ router that came out a few years ago, Belkin has been on a streak of rather mediocre routers, such as the Play or Play Max. But the Advance N900 DB Wireless Dual-Band N+ router is a bit different.

This is the latest router from the company and also its first one that supports the 3 by 3 450Mbps standard on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz simultaneously. This is the reason for the N900 designation, which shows that the router supports the 802.11n specification and provides up to 900Mbps.

In my testing, the N900 DB lived … Read more

Editors' note: This blog was originally posted on March 30, 2012, and updated on March 29, 2013, to update the list of devices and add relevant information.

This last Sunday of March is World Backup Day, and you'll see a lot of storage/backup vendors taking this occasion to pitch their products. I am about to do a similar thing, but from a very different point of view: yours.

This is because none of the existing vendors goes as far as guaranteeing the integrity of storage on the products. At most, a vendor would give you a new product to replace the broken one, or in the currently unique case of IoSafe, offer to pay up to a certain amount toward data recovery. I, on the other hand, promise, if not guarantee, that if you follow my advice, your data will be safe.… Read more