A match made in heaven: Apple's MacBook Air and Iomega's eGo Helium

Earlier this year, we took a close look at Iomega's eGo line of portable hard drives. We tested both the brown leather eGo and the camo eGo, with superb results: we liked both Iomega's Drop Guard design that protects the drives from drops up to a meter above the floor, and the quick transfer speeds.

Now, Iomega is taking the drives' aesthetic value one step further by introducing the 320GB eGo Helium. The drive is just .63 inches, and its sleek exterior casing is anodized silver to match perfectly with Apple's MacBook Air. Inside the chassis, you'll find a slim 2.5-inch portable drive--the whole device weighs a svelte 7 ounces.

The eGo Helium attaches to your computer via USB 2.0 and is powered by the USB bus so there's no need for external power. It also features the Drop Guard design for extra protection from the elements of day-to-day travel, and is preformatted for use with Apple's HFS+ file system. The drive is also compatible with Windows 2000 Professional, XP, and Vista.

We're excited to take a closer look at the device and test the read and write speeds. The other eGo drives we tested before performed very well, reading data at 19.47 megabytes per second and writing at 19.5 MBps. Not bad for an external hard drive, but we'll see if the eGo Helium lives up to its ruggedized siblings.

Look for a review coming very soon.