Peripherals

I know a lot of people don't care for rebates, but if you shift your perception a bit, they can seem like icing on the cake.

For example, Newegg has the Patriot PSF32GAUSB 32GB USB flash drive for $18.99 shipped. Right from the get-go, that's a great deal.

And here's the icing: a $10 mail-in rebate (PDF) brings your total cost down to $8.99, which is an unheard-of price for a 32GB drive. Heck, even a 16GB drive is a find at that price.

That rebate comes in the form of an American Express prepaid … Read more

Amazon's Gold Box feature is a catch-all page for the retailer's daily deals, and Cyber Monday gives music lovers the opportunity to grab a pair of the site's best-selling headphones at a seriously generous discount:

The Klipsh Image X10 are an older model, but still well worth the $84.99 price tag (76% off retail). CNET reviewed this one as well as its updated sibling that includes an in-line remote and microphone for calls, but their exceptionally clear and balanced audio response with passive sound isolation and superslim earpieces make a great sidekick to your music player. … Read more

Western Digital announced today that it's now shipping the 4TB WD Black (model WD4001FAEX) hard drive.

This drive is the highest-capacity hard drive on the market, and spins at 7,200rpm to offer fast data speeds. WD says the WD Black comes with 64MB of cache memory, and supports dual-stage actuator technology and the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard. The drive's integrated dual processor is designed to deliver a high level of performance.

Like other hard drives from WD, the 4TB WB Black supports WE's IntelliSeek, StableTrac, and NoTouch technology. IntelliSeek calculates optimum seek speeds to lower … Read more

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series. For the other parts, check out the related stories.

Now that you have some ideas about internal storage vs. memory after reading Part 1, here in Part 2 I'll talk about the two main types of external storage devices: direct-attached storage (DAS) and network-attached storage (NAS).

DAS and NAS share a few things in common. They both use one or more internal drives (hard drives or SSDs) on the inside, and they utilize the same methods to combine drives' storage space (when multiple drives are used). But before we … Read more

WD today announced the availability of its 802.11ac Wi-Fi products, including a new router and a media bridge.

WD, one of the largest hard-drive makers in the world, jumped into home networking just recently with the My Net router family, which includes the already reviewed My Net N900 HD and My Net N900 Central. The two new devices announced today complete the company's Wi-Fi portfolio by adding support for the latest 802.11ac standard.

The two new products include a 802.11ac router, the My Net AC1300 HD Dual-Band router, and a 802.1ac-compatible media bridge, the My … Read more

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series. For the other parts, check out the related stories.

It's not the locker room type of storage we're talking about here. Instead it's something much more important and often underrated: the place where information is stored.

When it comes to computer storage, judging from many questions friends and readers send me, there's quite a bit of confusion among general users as to what it actually is. And it's not your fault; digital storage can be as messy as my desk. This is the reason for … Read more

Bob Dylan famously sang that the times they are a-changin' -- but little did he know just how much. So much, in fact, that a MIDI-controlled orchestra made of old consumer electronics can now play one of his all-time classics.

Chris Cairns of production company Partizan teamed with creative firm Isthisgood? to turn old Brother photocopiers, scanners, fax machines, printers, hard drives, and modems into a full-scale scrapheap symphony with a penchant for folk.

They soldered, reprogrammed, hacked, and rewired 97 printer relics destined for the landfill and even custom-designed their own circuitboard that could control all of the printers from one main computer. … Read more

Intel on Monday introduced its latest solid-state drive, the DC S3700, which offers up to 800GB of storage space and will become available in early 2013.

The chip maker says the drive incorporates a new technology called High Endurance Technology (HET) that leads to much better endurance. Basically, the new drive can handle 10 full drive writes per day and still last a full 5-year life span for its lowest capacities. For the highest, 800GB capacity, this translates into a life span of almost 200 years should you choose to use it for video editing constantly.

The reason endurance is … Read more

LaCie today announced the availability of its latest network attached storage (NAS) server, the CloudBox.

Originally, the storage vendor announced this device more than a year ago, suggesting it'd be a unique network storage server that offers 100GB of local storage and a matching 100GB of online storage, with the two being synced over the Internet. The final device shipping today, however, appears to be quite traditional.

The CloudBox is now available in either 1TB, 2TB, or 3TB capacities and doesn't seem to come with any online storage. Instead it works by itself as a personal cloud server … Read more