It’s a hard drive rack. You puts your hard drives in the cases, and it stores your datas on the disks. Is hard to understand? Yes, maybe, if there is a switch that lets you choose the RAID mode apparently on the fly. Is it intelligent and starts reorganizing your data, like a Drobo? Or is it dumb, and if you switch modes in the middle of a write, it corrupts your data? Since it costs less than $100, I’m going to guess dumb. It connects via SATA or USB and can hold (obviously) two hard drives.

The thing actually looks kind of cool, but I don’t trust it. Not one bit.

Microsoft has unveiled a plan under which a somewhat crippled version of XP will be made available to the makers of low-cost PCs like the Eee PC and XO laptop. I’m not sure how I feel about this; at $25 it’s practically free, but the arbitrary hardware limitations Microsoft is imposing are, I think, kind of despicable:

the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs…the systems can have no more than 1G byte of RAM and a single-core processor running at no more than 1GHz.

Really? Single core? No touchscreens? Limiting the damn screen size? What Microsoft has just done is make sure that the most advanced UMPCs and low-cost computers won’t be running Windows. They’re trying to set up the low-cost PC as a separate market, and so it is, but they can’t simple draw a box around the hardware and say “fit this.” It’s not their job. And I really don’t think the Eee PC is going to cannibalize Vista sales, guys, so don’t worry about it.

I have no doubt this will grease the wheels and get more low-cost PCs to market and to the people who need them in developing countries, but at the same time it’s very much Microsoft playing 800-lb gorilla.

It’s times like this I wish we really did just have the rovers on a sound stage or somewhere in the desert. Unfortunately, we really did fire a freaking rocket, loaded with robots, into space, which rendezvoused with another planet, then disgorged said robots for a perfect landing, after which time the robots ran perfectly well for four years now, advancing our knowledge of the red planet and the solar system.

Unfortunately, because of some “belt-tightening” at NASA (most likely siphoning off a little cash to buy more bombs), the rover Spirit will be put into sleep mode indefinitely sometime in the next few weeks. The good news is that Spirit is on a clear, sunny slope and chances of reactivation are high if they can get the ~$20 million per year they need to keep exploring. But I guess shooting RC robots to another planet and studying the hell out of our cosmic neighbor isn’t really that important! God! Why doesn’t someone bail out this poor organization? I know, how about the CEO of Bear Stearns? He could run it for ten years.

[UPDATE by Matt Hickey] Or, ya know, sike.

By no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a photographer, but I am trying to get better and learn as much as possible. As I get products to review I find myself looking at different areas of my apartment to take product shots and I haven’t found anything suitable, yet. And paying XX amount for a light tent is just out of the question. Our favorite Swede, Ikea, seems to be a purveyor of budget light tents whether they know it or not. A little ingenuity and elbow grease can pay dividends for any aspiring photographer needing equipment on the cheap.

Lampshade light tent [Make]

If there’s one thing Josh Goldman knows, it’s that two queens means no smoking. If there’s a second thing that Josh Goldman knows, it’s how to shop for tech on a budget, which is handy now that college is right around the corner. To that end he tricked Computer Shopper into letting him write a how-to guide on buying all the latest, coolest gadgetry. Split into four easily digestible sections, the guide walks you through the what’s what in laptops, desktops, hardware (nice catch-all) and gadgets & accessories.

How he wrote the article without recommending a MacBook is beyond me (though he does give a shout out to the iMac). Everyone who’s been to a college campus recently knows that there’s a handful of must-haves you’ll need once you say goodbye to your parents: a MacBook, an iPod of some sort and a fake ID. The fake ID guy instantly become Mr. Popular.

The Best Affordable Tech Products for Students [Computer Shopper]

The HP TVs we saw back at CES are finally shipping and it’s a good thing because I’m actually looking for a new HDTV and HP has a 1080p LCD TV in the line-up. Sweet. A nice mix of 720p and 1080p is being offered at reasonable prices and most come with three HDMI ports. You can’t really ask for much more at the prices they’re being sold for.
Read More

Toshiba has its ups and downs with notebooks, but the Satellite A135-S4527 looks
like a pretty solid deal overall. Expected to hit retail stores this week for under $800 total, the A135 comes with some impressive features like a dual-core 1.73GHz Intel Core Duo T2060 CPU, 1GB of RAM (bravo Toshiba!), DVD burner, 120GB hard disk, and Vista Home Premium to boot.

Yes, all this for under $800. How is Toshiba pulling it off? I suppose it might have something to do with an illegal arms deal, but who knows? Either way, those of you looking for a feature-rich, budget laptop should probably check this one out upon its release. Looks very promising.

(EDIT: Here’s a full review of a similar A135, though it sells for $899.)

Toshiba ships sub-$800 dual-core, DVD-R notebook [Electronista]

Vista may cost a lot for what it is, but Acer’s TravelMate 2480-2779 laptop is quite the bargain. For around $540, you’ll nab a 14-inch widescreen display along with Vista Home Basic and specs like a 1.6GHz Celeron M CPU, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and a 5-in-1 card reader.

Wait, you get all that and Vista for under $550? Now that’s a deal. Shoot on over to Newegg.com to pick one up for this discounted price.

Acer rolls out low-cost Vista notebook [Electronista]