We reviewed the original Linutop a few months ago and liked it’s incredibly tiny form factor and low power consumption, but found the OS a little tiresome for beginners.

While still running a custom version of xubuntu, the Linutop2 has been up-rated, with a processor bump (Geode LX800), a new sexier black case, a power button (that was sorely missing on the original) and sensibly, an internal 1GB flash drive.

The new improved Linutop is available now from Linutop direct for 280Euros.

iHome’s new iP99BR is claimed to be the world’s first clock/radio for the iPhone. While it also works with current iPods, the unit has been engineered to suppress that annoying mobile phone noise speakers tend to make whenever your phone is near.

The iP99 has all the features you would expect from a quality clock/radio - , AM/FM radio with presets, and a user programmable snooze setting  - as well as some iPod/iPhone extras: Waking you to your own custom iPhone playlist at different times on different days, a remote that controls the unit and iPod menu functions.

Read on for more.

Vuzix claim their iWear AV920 glasses create virtual 62 inch screen (viewed from 9 feet) right in front of your eyes. Compatible with any composite audio/video devices, these glasses look set to replace that small screen TV for your portable viewing needs.

The glasses contain two 640x480 resolution video screens with an impressive 60Hz progressive scan update rate. 

The HomeStar PURE is the new, more affordable incarnation of Segatoy’s HomeStar Pro 21st Century Planetarium. At less than half the cost of the original, the HomeStar PURE projects 10,000 stars onto your ceiling and allows the user to manually rotate the star plate. The unit is powered by 4 AA batteries and with its new compact design, is no longer confined by an AC adaptor or cord.

The HomeStar PURE is available from Brando for $122US with a southern skies disc for us Aussies priced at $68US.

Computerworld has recently reported that in the next few years the sum total of Earth’s data will be in the two zetabyte vicinity. One Zetabyte is equal to one billion gigabytes.. in case you were wondering.
 
My personal and family data storage is still a little off that, but it has increased significantly since the birth of our child four years ago. This data is mainly in the form of digital photos and videos or work documents and it is all over the place: DVDs, CDs, hard drives in different PCs, etc.
 
The D-Link DNS-323 NAS RAID box offers a relatively inexpensive long term storage solution which can keep all your data in one place, allow universal access and when setup as a RAID 1 device, secure it from hardware gremlins.

Read on for more..

Watts in a name?  Well, that must have something to do with electricity, doesn't it? 

It's pretty elementary as Sherlock Holmes would say to his inquisitive offsider, Watson.

I love the name that DIY Kyoto has given to this energy monitoring device. 

Do It Yourself Kyoto is also pretty indicative of the type of company behind this. 

So let's see what the Wattson is capable of telling us apart from all the pretty colours and numbers.

IOGEAR's aptly named Portable Media Player allows you to store standard definition pictures, movies and music for easy playback and viewing on your TV, HDTV or monitor.

Complete with an internal 120GB SATA drive, the Portable Media Player can store oodles of videos, photos and music, which can all be controlled via the included remote control.

The device supports playback of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Vob, DIVX, XVID, MP3, Wav and JPEG files as well as many popular subtitle formats. Full DVD Menu support is also included straight out of the box, which when coupled with 720p upscaling make IOGEAR’s Portable Media Player a sound proposition.

Output is handled via composite (audio/video) and component video out, while a USB 2.0 port allows you to connect to your Windows 2000/XP/VISTA PC.

The Portable Media Player is available now from IOGEAR’s website for $349.95US.

Buffalo’s LinkStation Mini is perfect for people who want RAID security in their pocket and the flexibility of Network Attached Storage. The LinkStation Mini can stream multimedia files to PCs, Macs, and other DLNA CERTIFIED media players through its gigabit Ethernet port and supports SMB, FTP, DLNA and HTTPS file sharing protocols.

The Device supports both RAID 0 spanned (which allows the LinkStation Mini’s two internal drives to act as one large drive) or RAID 1 mirrored (offering full mirroring of data for optimum protection from hardware failure).

The LinkStation even has an extra USB port to allow users to add an additional external hard drive for expanded capacity or a printer that can then be shared via the integrated print server.

And all this in the palm of your hand!

The Buffalo LinkStation is expected to be available in May at an estimated street price of $699US. While we try to secure a unit for review, you can find out more at Buffalo’s website.

A slew of Seagate drives landed on our desk the other day in the middle of what seems like the hard drive hunting season: after the initial flurry of excitement about increased SSD capacities it looks like hard drives are back in the limelight with new capabilities.

We will be doing in-depth reviews on a number of them such as the Drobo robotic storage system, the Rebit and hopefully also the Seagate BlackArmor.

For now, let's have a very quick look at what else Seagate offers:

Hot on the heels of winning a “red dot” award for it’s i810 USB flash drive, PQI have released the new i820 USB flash drive. The new model utilises a piano black “single body” design and can be  tucked away neatly in an included, stylish miniature leather pouch.

The i820 is currently available in 4GB capacity, weighs only 1.35g and is only 2.5mm thin. Like earlier PQI drives, the i820 is also water, shock, dust and vibration proof.

For more information about PQi’s range of miniature drives, visit PQI’s website.