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.

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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.

Asus’s Eee PC has taken the portable segment by storm and in reaction, A-Data has released the S701 “Eee” branded USB Flashdrive.

The S701 is designed to act as a handy storage unit with up to 8GB of storage in a typically tiny Adata form factor. This product also won prestigious iF and Red Dot product design awards and looks to match the Eee perfectly.

To top it all off, peace of mind is provided by Adata’s lifetime warranty.

And if the Eee’s colour isn’t your cup of tea, Adata’s current range of S701 USB drives are available in a variety of colours in 2, 4 or 8GB capacities.

For more details head on over to Adata’s website.

In what has become an unstoppable universal shift from analogue to digital, no area has undergone more change than that of the humble photograph. Not only have photographers changed the way they take photographs, but the display of those images is also undergoing major change.

While the digital display of photographs isn’t revolutionary in and of its own, Pandigital’s new range of PanTouch digital photo frames stands out from the crowd with its user-friendly touch-operated interface.

The new PanTouch frames will be available in 7, 8 and 10.4 inches with the later sporting a 1024x768 “HD” LCD display. Prices start at $119.99US for the 7 inch, $169.99US for the 8 and $249.99US for the 10.4 inch frame.

We’re looking forward to getting one of these frames into our labs and well.. touching it!

For more information about the PanTouch range visit Pandigital’s website.
 

Anybody with a massive back catalogue of analogue prints will know, scanning photos using a conventional flat bed scanner  is time consuming and altogether unlikely. I can’t remember how long my prints have been in the “put it off till next year” basket!

Flying the face of this procrastination is Hammacher Schlemmer ‘s dedicated photo scanner: A device that literally allows you to deliver your old analogue photos into the digital realm at the mere touch of a button.

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DigitalReviews Network have been reporting on the Flybook from Dialogue over the last four years and have written several reviews on these ultra-connected and ultra-portable notebooks. 

You can find some of the reviews here and here as well as here. 

Today we are privileged to hear directly from the person in charge of marketing  from Dialogue, Mr Jack Lee. 

We asked him a few questions -- the sort of questions that you would ask if you had the opportunity and this is the result.