There’s just not enough noise makers in the world and here’s Creative to ruin the quiet. Coming out in China shortly, this USB drum kit is fun for the whole family near the computer or on the go. The included software makes it a breeze to start up your own drum solo with just about any kind of percussion instrument you can imagine. The software with an as yet untranslated name can synthesize traditional Chinese drums, rock drums and cymbals, bongo drums and more. All this can be captured and recorded for your own personal Stomp (the performance group, not the fetish) style masterpiece. There’s also a guitar hero-esque set of games you can plan on the USB connected drum for fun and even a little fitness. The drum’s skin flexes and feels like real for comfort and extended play sessions.
The USB drum also works as a speaker. You can select up to three sound types and play them along with your music or more with hot keys. Aesthetically, you can just leave it on your desk as a simple PC speaker to complement your other trinkets of pan-Asian flare. Price and release date are unknown as of yet, but Creative doesn’t usually make us wait long after their announcements. Unfortunately, this might not be released outside the Central Kingdom.
Archive for the Category ◊ USB Products ◊
It’s definitely a landmark for a technology to have hit the mark where bleeding edge gives way to fun. Hardbox has released another external hard drive in the shape of a book. It may not be a true novelty drive, but it’s the coolest we’ve got so far, comparing to some commodity drive. The Hardbox would fit in just fine on any book shelf except for the fact that we’re not really racking up books on our shelves like we used to. So this may stand out like a sore thumb next to your junk mail and gum wrappers but it still looks good. That’s ignoring the USB 3.0 sweetness in sizes from 1TB to 3TB.
Sarotech has been making this particular style drive for awhile and knows the external harddrive game. If you are thinking about storing data at anywhere near those capacities, you definitely need to be putting some money into USB 3.0. Anything else would just be ridiculously time consuming. Sarotech should be shipping the Hardbox drives in February.
Hot on the heels of the Gigabyte announcement yesterday, Asus has re-announced its production of a pair of motherboards packing USB 3.0. Great news on the heels of the Intel production delay last week. The two Asus motherboards, the P7P55D-E and P7P55D are built for Intel’s latest Core i5 and i7 processors. The P7P55D-E is the big dog of the two and carries USB 3.0 and the new 6GB/s SATA support on-board. The P7P55D has the same 2 hot new features but only when accompanied by their U3S6 expansion board. This mobo actually was announced 2 months ago along with the SATA 6GB/s expansion card. Whatever setback they had on the original P6X58, which was unexpectedly cancelled, has been overcome on the P7P55D-E as well as being added to the daughter card.
Asus, we still love you, you still have our hearts from the eee. But considering that Gigabyte hasn’t broken our heart, we’re putting you on notice. One more mix up and we’ll drop you like a hot soldering iron. The Gigabyte mobo boasts most of the same specs. The race is on now between the P55A and the P7P55D motherboards to see who will be the first on sale.
Microsoft has finally owned up to the exciting new tool it’s releasing with Windows 7, a bootable USB Installer creator. Aimed squarely at netbook owners, which have eschewed the venerable optical drive for weight and battery life. Microsoft’s tool will let you take your downloaded install files and turn a sufficiently sized USB drive into a bootable installer. Be prepared, if you’ve never tried to put a few gigabytes of files onto an average flash drive in one sitting, you’re probably in for a bit of a wait. A USB hard drive is probably a better bet but not as cool. The program may also be called Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
Microsoft’s site describes the process as downloading the installer directly to the USB drive. We’ll have to wait for a few people to report back to find out exactly how it works. Having the option will definitely help netbook owners as well as system administrators. Being able to do away with CDs and DVDs for installs would definitely make support installs and server installs go a lot faster. It’s available now at Microsoft’s online store for download and purchase.
At first glance, iTwin might look like another novelty flash drive with a dual connector. Turns out it’s actually latest R&D effort of a new Singapore-based start-up that promises to bring plug and play bi-directional remote access to the mass market.
The iTwin Cableless USB Drive is a revolutionary PC-to-PC USB connection device slated for release in the first quarter of 2010. Typically, connecting two PCs to share data requires meeting a plethora of eligibility requirements: the same software, same passwords, etc. Suffice it to say, a PC to PC connection is not a Plug-n-Play process. The iTwin Cableless USB Drive aims to overcome this debilitating situation by allowing each end of its dual-USB drive to plug into a separate computer, after which each dongle relies on the specific PC’s Internet connection to establish a bi-directional interface between the two. To use it, users simply plug one side into a PC, snap off the other side, and then play that side into another PC. The whole process REQUIRES that each PC is connected to the Internet.
Have you ever reviewed your IT products?And find the changes of your computer products?
Notebooks have become more integral to our daily lives more than ever before and while in the past they were specifically designed for mobility and battery longevity, today’s systems can feature fast discrete graphics cards and high-power quad core processors that will blow away any gaming experience, excel sheet and video editing suite. But all that power comes at the price of heat and the sheer annoyance that you can’t even place your notebook on your lap from the fear that it will overheat or lead to pre-mature hardware failures. In the past, I’ve reviewed Choiix’s feature-rich but average cooler and the Antec 200 over-powered notebook cooler, but today I have the Logitech N100 USB laptop cooler in our offices to see what this renowned company can possibly build into a cooler to sway our purchasing dollars their way.
Well, the challenge to keep people away from your desk just got easier. The network manatees have been hard at work coming up with the USB powered, glowing, motion sensing alarm skull. A random convergence of features if there ever was one. Set this spooky brainbox on your desk and plug it in and watch it glow. But look out the skull watches you back, if anything moves in front of its gaze it lets out a blood curdling shriek. It only comes with a 3 foot cord, so an extension might be in order if you want to use this while you’re within earshot or the joke will be on you. This should make everyone think twice before bothering you while you are busy.
While there’s probably very few practical applications for this outside of pranks and annoying people this side of Halloween, pranks ought to be enough to warrant the spend. A measly $14 and you can get your Cinco de Mayo and Halloween shopping done a few months early. Once they’re in stock at thumbsup we can see if it might finally be the thing that keeps the cats off our keyboard.
Ready?Go!
Have you ever dreamed such a usb watch?
Sometimes I wonder who was the first person to start the “random USB gadget” trend, because they just seem to be getting stranger and stranger every day. Similar to the humping dogs, Thumbs Up UK’s new USB Owl seems to serve no purpose other than to simply entertain you.
The Owl moves his head, blinks his eyes, and even flaps his wings. He comes with a clip that allows him to perch atop your monitor and drive you crazy and also has an optional tree stump that he can roost on should you prefer it. It’s too bad he can’t be remote controlled or had a camera built in, as this would be great to perch on the top of your cubicle at work and make people feel that there is always someone watching them. Make sure you check out the video for the full effect. It will be available in May for about $25. Video demo after the jump.
Lovely owl ,lovely life!
It’s funny product,you will love it.
DreamCheeky our favorite maker of USB fun has another wacky gizmo that looks like perfect fun even if it makes no sense at all. The Bouncy USB Aquarium (a.k.a. USB Squish the Fish) is a cute little desktop Aquarium globe with 3 happy toy fish inside it. When plugged into USB, they rotate and swim about. Need a play break? Pick up the Aquarium Globe right off of its stand and bounce it around, don’t worry you won’t hurt the fish. Toss it around, give it a squeeze or kick it about the aquarium is a bouncy ball good for just about any level of goofing off you need to do. When you’re done just drop it back on the stand and the fish go right back to frolicking.
This might make a perfect bait / distraction for those who’s workspace is oft attacked by tiny hands. Little ones might go for the fish instead of your mouse giving you just enough time to save that presentation before your computer is attacked. This will be safer for your work and your family members. No word on price yet but pick one up at DreamCheeky.com later this month or at resellers like Thinkgeek.
Having a big screen laptop without Blu-ray is kinda like missing an opportunity to cruise down an empty highway. Granted, you can download HD content, but if you are geeks like us, there’s an urge to fully leverage the full potential of the notebook. For whatever reasons you are getting Blu-ray, the USB-powered Asus’ slim & sleek drive has you covered. It has upped the max. read speed to 4.8x for BD-ROM/RE which should relieve the agonizingly slow Blu-ray disc loading time. This however doesn’t help with writing Blu-ray as the Asus SBC-04D1S-U is only a BD reader, a tray-loading one.
What we also like about the BD reader is the big glowing ‘X’ on the side, making it far more aesthetically pleasing than the FastMac. A copy of CyberLink is bundled for movie playback. Keep in mind you can only output the HD content given both the laptop and the LCD screen have either HDMI or DVI (HDCP).