Stuff Geeks Want

You might have seen Seagate’s FreeAgent Go portable hard drives. Sleek and ultra-thin, they really are no different than any other hard drive. But with the DockStar Network Adapter, you’re hard drive can stay at home but be with you remotely as long as you’ve got an Internet connection.

You’re saying to yourself, “This sounds like a similar thing from Pogoplug,” and you’d be right. Seagate is using the same technology licensed from Cloud Engine and uses an Web-based interface to access the data on the drive. What your buying is the dock shown above on the left. The hard drive is optional but obviously necessary.

Users of the dock can also place linked pictures and video onto MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter from the DockStar. The adapter comes with the first year of the Pogoplug service included. After that, the service costs $29.99 a year for unlimited storage and access.

Buy the Seagate FreeAgent DockStar Network Adapter for $80 from Amazon

Buy Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB hard drive for $107 from Amazon

Did you forget about the Zune HD? You’re not alone. It was almost four months ago Microsoft announced it would be coming. Apple’s planning and immediate availability of products is not Microsoft’s style, to say the least.

But here it is and ready to buy in America only. It replaces the original, poorly received Zune, comes in 16 and 32 gigabyte models, has a multi-touch OLED touchscreen (something we haven’t seen in any Apple devices yet), HD (720p) video out, WiFi Internet access, built-in accelerometer, Web browser, a touch-screen QWERTY keyboard, and FM radio tuner with HD radio capability.

Microsoft has also revamped the Zune’s interface, which now moves fluidly from one screen to the next, and includes a ‘history’ tab that lets you to access, in one click, the last video, photo, radio station, Web site, or song you were playing. An on-screen keyboard allows letters to linger above your fingertip, making URL and search entries easier.

The Bummers: Access to HD radio and HD video out can only be done via the dock (which is sold separately), there’s no online app store and won’t be for some time and no Facebook or Twitter clients at launch (come on, Microsoft!).

Microsoft did announce plans to launch the Zune video service in 17 countries later this year, which suggests that the Zune HD player may be released in those countries soon as well.

Buy the 16GB model for $220 from Amazon

Buy the 32GB model for $290 from Amazon

Yes, the Sony PRS300 Reader Pocket Edition has been available for just a few weeks, but our sources tell us availability has been tight. Not now.

E-book readers are expensive. Take the Kindle 2 at $300. But Sony’s new version comes in $100 cheaper, smaller (a little over six by four inches), lighter in weight (7.76 ounces), really thin at .4 of an inch, with a five-inch screen and eight shades of gray. Yes, it lacks an internal 3G connection to download books wirelessly like the Kindle, but it’s size and cheaper price will be a winner if you’ve been on the fence in buying an e-book reader.

It has enough memory to hold around 350 standard eBooks, while a single full battery charge ought to keep this going for two weeks of reading enjoyment. Sony’s also offering books online at competitive prices to Amazon.

With the PRS300, are we starting to see a collision between cheaper, smaller e-book readers and the iPod? It sure seems that way. With rumors of Apple working on a tablet, you wonder who’ll be competing with whom in the very near future.

Buy the dark blue model for $199 from Amazon

Buy the white model for $199 from Amazon

Buy the pink model for $199 from Amazon

Logitech added Thursday to its Squeezebox line of products with a new desktop WiFi Internet radio aptly named, well, the Squeezebox Radio (“Why don’t we just called it the ‘Radio’, guys? Yea, that’s a good name!”)

The Squeezebox Radio has been highly anticipated by many (including yours truly). There are a lot of Internet radios out there, but this one brings together a lot of features missing all on one unit together with a few new tricks…WiFi so you can stream your MP3, FLAC, WMA, WMA Lossless, AAC, Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF collections plus thousands of internet radio stations and music services like Rhapsody, Napster, Pandora, Sirius, and Last.fm…a 2.4-inch color screen to display album art, artist/track information, and Flickr slideshows…a 3/4-inch tweeter and a three-inch woofer…802.11b/g WiFi and wired Ethernet standard…a line-in cord for most iPod and other MP3 players with a standard 3.5 mm jack…and social networking support so you can browse music recommendations from friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Buy in black for $180 from Amazon

Buy in red for $180 from Amazon

Nothing is better than having your family photos with you to show to others on your laptop. That is until you forget you left ‘em at home.

The solution is the LaCie iamaKey USB Flash Drive. It’s a USB flash drive designed just like a house key so you can put it on your key ring. Knockout idea.

It comes in four and eight gigabyte capacities with transfer rates of 30MB a second for reading and 10MB for writing. It’s shaped into a sturdy metal design and the USB connection on the end is actually gold-plated, which LaCie says makes the drive water- and scratch-resistant.

Thinner than plastic USB keys, the IamaKey is 2.2 inches long by 0.94 inch wide by just 0.12 inch thick (hence the house key reference).

Buy the 4GB model for $24 from Amazon

Buy the 8GB model for $33 from Amazon

I love companies that think outside the box. Case in point: Verbatim. They went back to the drawing board and looked at boring hard drives. “How can we make them better? How can we make them look smarter?” The result is the Verbatim inSight USB Drive.

Available in 320GB and 500GB capacities, these drives are flat and sleek, reminiscent of a desktop digital scale at six ounces and measuring six inches in length.

But what makes them different than most is a two-line LCD display on the front. It displays the drive name and the remaining capacity even when the power is disconnected. A neat little feature.

Buy the 320GB model for $105 from Amazon

Buy the 500GB model for $139 from Amazon

Many of Hitachi’s new consumer computer products that were announced in early July are now available to buy. One that impressed us the most was their SimpleTOUGH portable USB drives.

In 250, 320 and 500GB sizes, they’re water-resistant and shock-proof drives which can survive a fall from about 10 feet fall and can stand up to a one-ton truck. It’s got an integrated, foldaway USB cable which we haven’t seen on another consumer drive.

Priced competitively with other drives you know and love, these are worth taking a look at.

Buy the 320GB model for $105 from Amazon

Buy the 500GB model for $126 from Amazon

Buy the 640GB model for $180 from Amazon

If you’re cranking out multiple labels constantly, the Dymo LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo might be the right solution. It’s basically two thermal printers in one (ie, no ink costs) that can hold address, shipping and postage label rolls. You can switch between which label you need, or load up the same type of label in both printers and switch when the first roll runs out.

It includes DYMOs labelmaker software, DYMO File, which sets up barcodes for auto-sorting scanned documents, and DYMO Stamps via Endicia.com for printing postage.

The only caveat with this printer is the price of the labels, which for instance can run you about $8 for a roll of 350 address labels. The cost is really not that bad when you take into account the speed of this printer versus a laser printer and wasting a 8.5 x 11 page of say 20 laser labels to get just two.

I spent a good two hours playing with this printer while setting it up on a law firms PC recently. Set up is fairly easy, print quality is good, the software is easy to use, and the print speed is great (up to 71 labels per minute).

Buy for $189 from Amazon

Let’s face it, fitness is all in the numbers. How far you’ve run. How many calories you’ve shed. How many ounces of sweat you’ve sacrificed. Now you can track that information (minus the sweat) as the Garmin FR60 watch wirelessly collects data from compatible scales, treadmills and other gym equipment while you exercise.

The FR60 uses a low-power radio called ANT+, which uses less than power than Bluetooth, which will guarantee you replacing the battery only once a year.

It works like this: Go to a gym with equipment that shows the ANT+ logo. Workout. The watch starts grabbing info as soon as it’s within a foot of the transmitter. Shower (please) and go home. Put the FR60 near the ANT+ adapter plugged into your PC or Mac and it will automatically upload stats to the fitness software so you can analyze your workout.

Buy for $200 from Amazon

Unlike a slew of other gadget/gizmo Web sites that have been reporting inaccurate and incomplete facts in the past few days about the Personal Pocket Safe USB Drive, StuffGeeksWant does its homework, and we’ve found there’s much more to this data encryption device than meets the eye.

To begin with, the Personal Pocket Safe – also known as the PPS8100 – is NOT your run-of-the-mill USB flash drive that requires you to enter a PIN code to access. It’s much more than that. In fact its parent company, Black Box Innovations, doesn’t really like to call it a USB flash drive in the general sense. While it will store one gigabyte of data, it’s not a flash drive that you just drop any and all files and applications onto. Instead, the Pocket Safe has it’s own Windows-ready application embedded on the drive that organizes your vital records. Following a series of pre-formatted fields, you simply enter important data on your car, home, bank accounts, investments, insurance policies, etc., even attach documents, photos, and other images to the appropriate groups.

Once you’ve got your valuable personal information on the drive, you can be assured it’s safe from prying eyes because of its various levels of security. Firstly, the drive is protected by a PIN code of three to 10 digits you enter on its keypad. Don’t enter the code within two minutes of docking the drive? It locks up for two minutes. Enter the PIN wrong three times? It locks up for two minutes. Forget the code? There’s an optional PIN replacement assistance service. Attempt to remove the physical flash RAM or fool around with the encryption controller or security controller? It will automatically destroy all the data. You get the idea…It’s pretty damn secure, and it comes with online backup software that will automatically backup your data in case it does self destruct or you lose it. The only bummer as we see it…it only works with Windows, but the company has future plans for a Macintosh version, we were told today.

So there you have it. REAL facts on the Personal Pocket Safe USB Drive. It’s our pleasure.

Buy for $43 from Amazon