It looks as though the folks from Iomega took a seminar in how to be hip and applied everything they learned to their new line of Iomega Skin branded portable hard drives. Check it out, yo:

"The new Iomega Skin Drives exude an alternative personality with eye-catching Skin Industries graphics that demand the attention of anyone who doesn't accept the status quo, who zigs when others zag, especially when it comes to the look and design of their digital devices," said Jonathan Huberman, President of Iomega and the Consumer and Small Business Products Division of EMC. "Iomega's new Skin Drives deliver that kind of excitement in a lightweight, compact design with the quality features people expect from Iomega, including industry-leading ruggedness to protect your data and a top-tier software suite bundled free of charge with every Skin Hard Drive. That's an unbeatable personal storage combination for tech-savvy students and young professionals alike."

Iomega's keeping it real, homie, and these drives come in three different funky fresh designs, including "Red Hot," "Knock Out," and "Radical," all intended to "create a definition of hip and hot for today's young iconoclastic computer user." Sporting 500GB each, there's enough room to store up to 200,000 photo, over 125,000 songs, or more than 190 hours of video, homeslice.

The drives are available now for $120 each. Word up.

Iomega today announced the next generation of its double-drive desktop NAS box, the StorCenter ix2-200. The box comes available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, each with a four-step setup process, and sports a few noteworthy tricks, such as built-in torrent support.

It also touts multiple IP security camera support, RAID 1 configurations, device-to-device replication, VMWare certification, Time Machine support for Apple computer backups, Bluetooth, remote access, and a bunch more marketing bullets.

"The new StorCenter ix2-200 is definitely the easiest to use small office and consumer network storage appliance in the marketplace today," said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega and the Consumer and Small Business Products Division of EMC.

Both the 1TB and 2TB models are available now for $270 and $370, respectively. The 4TB NAS box will debut later this month for $700.

EMC earlier this year acquired storage and network security solutions company Iomega Corporation, who is perhaps best known for its line of Zip and Jaz drives. Today Iomega announces the first co-produced storage drive between the two companies, resulting in the StorCenter ix2. For $300, consumers get a network storage solution the company describes as being "smaller than a large dictionary." The price point works out to $0.30 per gigabyte.

"These are market-based prices," Iomega division president Jonathan Huberman said. "It's ridiculous how cheap these things are, but it is what it is. A great value for the consumer."

Upping the bang for buck factor, a 2TB version is also being made available for $479, or about $0.24 per gigabyte. Of course, the StorCenter ix2 offers more than raw hard drive space. The unit comes with EMC's Retrospect backup software, virus encryption technology, and RAID 1. A bult in media server and Bluetooth, UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), and DLNA (Digital Living Netwrok Alliance) media device capabilities also come part of the package.