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Poker-chip USB drive is a good bet

With USB storage keys ranging from the ridiculous to the obnoxious, we were beginning to think that it was impossible to find one that we'd even consider buying. But leave it to a game of chance to restore what little faith we had in product marketing.

Memorex's "Poker Chip Flash Drive" is a bit late to the poker party that's become a national craze, but it makes up for much of that with an admirable design that conceals its 1GB key in what looks like a stack of three clay chips. In keeping with the … Read more

A drive-in movie for the backyard

As much as we love bleeding-edge media technologies, Crave occasionally still pines for certain forms of entertainment from yesteryear. And few things make us more nostalgic than the drive-in movie.

Now you can do your part to revive this nearly extinct phenomenon in the privacy of your own backyard with a 24-foot inflatable screen for sale on eBay. This monster system from VXP, which includes a projector, speakers, DVD player and other various equipment, has a "Buy It Now" price of $14,995 on the auction, which ends Saturday. (Don't worry, the listing indicates that two are … Read more

Samsung spinning up 200GB, 2.5-inch drive

That darned hard drive industry just keeps giving us excuses not to weed out all those old files on the laptop.

Samsung on Wednesday announced a new 2.5-inch hard drive, taking a step ahead of the herd with a 200GB model with a 7200rpm rotation speed.

The SpinPoint MP1 line also will be available in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities when it begins shipping in May, the Korean electronics giant said. The drives use a 3-gigabit-per-second SATA connection and will have 8MB or 16MB of cache memory.

Faster rotational speeds allow drives to find data more quickly and transfer … Read more

Dell rolls out massive laptop hard drives

Laptops are all about cramming the most stuff into the least amount of space, so the Interwebs are rightfully buzzing about the latest offerings found in the Dell and Alienware online system configurators.

With no prerelease hype, you can now order an Alienware m9700or Dell XPS M2010 with a gigantic 250GB 2.5-inch hard drive (running at 5,400rpm)--or even pair two drives up for half a terabyte of ripped DVDs data storage.

That's better than the 160GB drives most laptops topped out at until now, but what's all that extra capacity going to cost you? For … Read more

Park a Ferrari on your desk

Fabrik announced today a new family of sleek desktop hard drives that incorporates 2GB of free online storage through the company's MyFabrik Web service: SimpleDrive. The new drives (designed by Pininfarina, longtime designer of the Ferrari) come in several capacities, which are color-coded: 160GB (red); 250GB (white); 320GB (blue); 500GB (black); 750GB (charcoal); and 1TB (charcoal). All feature a single, 3.5-inch hard drive from Hitachi, including the 1TB version. This is the first single-disk, 1TB external hard drive on the market.

Initially, all versions will ship with USB 2.0 interfaces, but in May, Fabrik plans to ship … Read more

Wait, before you throw out that old hard drive...

Wondering why you haven't junked that old PC collecting dust in the corner of your room? Because you knew one day you would harvest it for parts, right? With a $25 kit from NewerTech you can give its hard drive a second life as an external drive, or grab any data you may have left on it without the trouble of connecting it to your current PC's motherboard. Without so much as a turn of a thumbscrew, NewerTech's USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter lets you access your old drive--via USB 2.0. The adapter works with … Read more

It's official: USB drive replaces the keychain

As USB drives have been reduced to greeting-card status, it's been clear that they've been destined for marketing swagdom. And now, sites such as Custom USB have made it official. But while others just slap a logo on a lowest-common-denominator model, this outfit offers more than 50 styles ranging from "Capless" to "Swivel" (pictured) with scads of colors including translucent, according to Gadgetizer. Storage sizes are available from 128MB to 2GB, priced accordingly. Personally, we think it's a better use than sending a Valentine.

What next, a USB engagement ring?

Some manufacturers are clearly hell-bent on making USB keys look like fine jewelry. And unlike most of these attempts (Swarovski), some of them actually seem to be done in relative good taste.

But we have to ask: When one of these products clearly looks like it belongs in a jewelry case, like the "i-Disk Vogue" from Pretec, why bother to include a USB drive at all? BornRich says this "pendant drive" is available in storage sizes up to 8GB and can work with the latest Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, but we seriously doubt that … Read more

Don't let a full DVR ruin your life

TiVo may be a life-changer, but there's a dark side for couch potatoes who are also pack rats: the dreaded full hard drive. If you're too cheap to get a new version (that would be us), you're stuck with a disc that seems perennially full: As we all know, the maximum storage capacity is always based on low-resolution recordings, which make Lost reruns look like moving impressionist paintings.

But if you do have a newer Series 3 box--or any other DVR with an eSATA port--there may be help for those who can't just can't bring … Read more