One of the major problems with covering all of the news flowing out of CES is that inevitably, something nifty gets missed. This year, we were so busy reporting on Ultrabooks and AMD chips that we totally glossed over what may be the most awesome survival tool of all time; a Swiss Army knife with a whopping 1TB hard drive built in. Whether you need to pry open a can of beans, file your nails, or transfer over 220 million pages of text, this bad boy's got you covered.
Since when did the enterprise market get a sense of style? That's the first question that comes to mind when spying pureSilicon's new line of enterprise-focused storage devices, the Kage K1 USB Flash Drive and the Kage K1 SATA SSD, both of which bring a little pizazz to the storage sector. The "impossibly thing" (4.5mm) flash drive is especially funky looking and resemebles something you might see in a sci-fi flick.
There's nothing fancy to see here, just a nifty adapter to upgrade your HDMI-less notebook or desktop with HDMI output. The USB 3.0 to HDMI Adapter comes from Zotac, a company out of Hong Kong best known for its Zbox line of mini PCs. The idea of converting a USB port into HDMI is simple and convenient, and boy do we love our conveniences.
You knew it would only be a matter of time before SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity arrived on smartphones and tablets, and that time is coming. Not tomorrow, not next week, and not even next month, unfortunately. But by the end of the year or early next year, USB 3.0-enabled handsets will begin to trickle out, the USB Implementers Forum said at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
If you though the Consumer Electronics Show would be mostly about Ultrabooks and tablets, well, you're probably right. That doesn't mean there won't be other nifty products on display. AOC tells us it's going to unveil a 22-inch USB monitor (e2251Fwu) with LED backlight and simple plug-and-play connectivity, making dual- and multi-monitor setups an attainable goal for the masses.
You're a veteran tech geek. You build all your own systems. Your friends and family always look to you for advice when buying PC gear or gadgets. Yet there's still stuff you don't own, and don't realize you need. Now, it's true that many of you may have a couple of the items on this list. But there's likely gear here you don't have, and didn't realize you could use.
You can argue the Earth is flat or that man never really landed on the moon, but if you really want to avoid looking foolish, then don't tell anyone Intel is deliberately stalling USB 3.0 long enough for LightPeak to drive a stake in the competing transfer interface. Actually, Intel has long held that the two aren't really competitors at all, and putting its money where its mouth is, Intel went out and received SuperSpeed USB 3.0 certification for its upcoming 7 Series and C216 chipset families.
Don’t let the clean, neat wires and airflow-maximized layouts of our “Build It!” projects fool you: your Maximum PC editors aren’t necessarily neat freaks – you did see “Inside The Bags of Maximum PC Editors,” right? – but we love us some efficiency. So, apparently, do the engineers at Kingmax. The company’s new UI-03 USB drive has a paper-clip-mimicking hook on the back, so you can, um, store files and collate papers on the run AT THE SAME TIME.
Hard drive prices may be skyrocketing, but USB keys are almost a dime a dozen these days. Maybe that’s why people lose them so much; apparently, folks drop memory sticks at major rail lines by the literal bucket load. Misplacing all that data doesn’t sound smart, but security vendor Sophos recently tested an auction lot of 50 lost USBs on Sydney railways, and their findings show that losing those sticks may have been a good thing after all – since most of them were riddled with malware.
Antec is willing to bend over to backwards if that's what it takes for you to be able to use those blue colored SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports on your new P280 or Eleven Hundred computer case. The problem for some users is that their motherboards don't support USB 3.0. Rather than render those front panel USB 3.0 ports useless, Antec tells us it's willing to ship USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 adapters to P280 and Eleven Hundred case owners at no cost.Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
We introduce Intel's latest class of tablet killers and review 4 of the first Ultra...
Where have all the memorable videogame enemies gone?
This month's issue
Feature
11 Hardware Hacks
Feature
Overclock Your CPU
How-To
Supercharge Your Smartphone
Build It
A Powerful $830 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Multi-Monitor Usage On The Rise http://t.co/eWfJfCEG11 hours 45 min ago
- maximumpc: Windows 8 Consumer Preview Coming On February 29 http://t.co/3Nd04FdR17 hours 33 min ago
- maximumpc: Can RIM *ever* catch a break? Not today! App World numbers not as great as previously reported http://t.co/3ERRhr311 day 13 hours ago
