This pretty looking box is an external hard drive manufactured by Western Digital. Here the low-down: it looks sexy in a shiny black casing, and it is completely bus-powered—meaning no need for any kind of power adapter to get this hard drive enclosure to function. Every Dick, Bob and Jane makes an external hard drive enclosure, but it’s not that often you see a quality enclosure that is bus-powered. Nice job, WD, and I must say it looks mighty fine and would match a black MacBook perfectly. This 160GB jobber is available for a hefty $200—it may seem like a lot, but look how pretty it is! – Travis Hudson

Product Page [Via EverythingUSB]
from Gizmodo

With a variety of coloring known as “Wenge brown — a creamy, coffee-color made to resemble wood furniture,” and claims that “these new notebooks are designed to accent your interior design, as well as your life,” you know it’s going to be good. Sony is aiming their new Vaio N Series line of mid-tier laptops at the fashionista set, and while they aren’t incredibly forthcoming on specs, we’re sure these laptops will look good doing whatever they’ve got the juice to do. Starting at $1,000, the N Series models feature 15.4-inch displays, Core Duo processors (in the top-end at least) and a dual-layer DVD burner, along with the usual Sony frills like a Memory Stick reader, i.LINK port and ExpressCard slot. There’s also 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and while we’re not so sure about graphics options, Sony does claim that select models are Vista Premium ready, so we’ve got that going for us. The N Series ships next month, and Sony should be taking pre-orders starting today.

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from engadget

Perhaps we failed to adequately emphasize one key feature of the Gigabyte-sourced Xda Stealth when we outed its FCC filing yesterday: its diminutive size. At 110 x 53 x 22.5mm, it bests the HTC Wizard in all but length (where it clocks in just 2 millimeters longer), putting it nearly in dumbphone territory. Granted, the Stealth lacks a full keyboard, but everything’s put into better perspective when remembering that it manages to stuff Pocket PC Phone Edition power (and specs to match) into a package on par with some Smartphones on the market. Though there’s no 3G radio aboard the handset, we take solace in its 802.11g support; in fact, the only thing raining on our parade is the triband GSM support, which leaves parts of the world unhappy pretty much any way you slice it — let this be a lesson to Gigabyte that they’ve got some American sales waiting in the wings as soon as they want to tack GSM 850 onto this thing.

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from engadget

The iHome Multi-Center on display at CEDIA has been around for awhile but somehow managed to slip below our radar. Still, when a Windows Media Center Edition device touts the ability to playback Apple’s DRM-protected AAC files, well, it makes sense to double-back and take notice. The device is said to exploit iTunes and the Quicktime APIs to create a two-zone (analog and digital audio) music server in addition to its MCE capabilities. The magic created by using Quicktime as the output driver makes the iHome the only server product we know of that will playback your FairPlay tracks purchased off the iTunes store. The slab even busts-out an IP control server which generates both full-sized and mini flash-based HTML pages for two-way control over the system from any networked device sportin’ a web browser with Flash support. Sweet. The iHome MCE features a couple of 400GB disks (750GB disks coming early next year) and an HDTV video card for a luxurious, $8,000 addition to your home audio rack. You do have one don’t you?

[Via TalkAbout:CEDIA]
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from engadget

Speaking of the future, we always thought that by the 21st century we’d all have digital pads to read stuff on, instead of these old-fashioned analog “books.” Well, that’s what Sony‘s betting on with its PRS-500, anyway, which has just been spotted in the wild for the first time — in the hands of none other than Phillip Torrone of MAKE magazine (and Engadget) fame. We’d previously reported that this $350-ish e-book reader was going to be delayed (again), but that somehow it would be shipping in time for “the holidays.” Given Sony’s other problems of late, though, we wouldn’t be surprised if the company was referring to our next summer holiday. Remember, regular ol’ books may be low-tech, but at least they don’t explode. Keep reading for another snap.

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from engadget

Dell sure dragged it out long enough, but they’ve finally gone official on four new desktops, two of which hold those elusive — at least for Dell — AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core chips. Privy to the Athlon action are two new Dimension models, the E521 and C521 (pictured), while the new XPS 210 and Dimension E520 fight for truth, justice and the American way, Intel Core 2 Duo style. The E520 and E521 sport all the usual options, including ATI and NVIDIA graphics, dual TV tuners and dual HDDs. As for processors, the E521 can handle anything from AMD Sempron to Athlon 64 X2, while the E520 covers Pentium D and Core 2 Duo processors. Oddly, the E521 only sports one PCI slot, compared to the E520′s two, but matches its Intel brother for slots otherwise, with room for a x16 PCIe and a x1 PCIe card. The C521 slims things down to about half the size of the E521, and lacks multiple disc drive and HDD bays, but still manages to match the E521 for PCIe/PCI action. Similarly, the XPS 210 keeps things small, with even less expandability, but measures a mere 1 foot tall. In other news, Dell is moving ahead with their retail strategy, and has plans for opening a New York store in early 2007.

Read – Dell launches AMD desktops
Read – Dell plans NYC store
from engadget

Just in time to catch some portable audio buzz runoff from yesterday’s Apple madness, we present the iRiver S10, the South Korean company’s latest D-Click input-based portable media device. The scant 17.5g / 42 x 30 x 10.8mm device features 2GB of storage, MP3, OGG, and WMA playback (presume PlaysForSure, of course), as well as an 8 hour battery life. We hope you’ll forgive us as details are thin at this hour and only CNET Asia’s got the skinny on it, but we’ll update you guys as we can.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
from engadget
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