CES 2008 – Seagate Technology, CORSAIR and ATP Electronics

With the proliferation of flash-based memory, you would think that hard drive manufacturers were doomed. Seagate doesn’t think so and they’re innovating the industry with at least two new introductions at CES 2008. On the flip side, we’ve also got CORSAIR with their line of flash, memory and power supply products. Not to be left out, ATP Electronics, a memory product manufacturer has come up with some unique products that set it apart from the others. Let’s have a look-see at these companies and see what they were showing off at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show or CES for short.

Seagate Technology

Over at the Seagate booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center — which was situated, ironically enough, next to the SanDisk booth — they had two major product announcements that they wanted to highlight. Both of these attack the more portable end of things, rather than speeding up the process with our internal hard drives. Sorry, people looking for 10,000 RPM multi-terabyte drive fans, this show wasn’t really for you.

 

First up is something that Seagate calls BlackArmor. In a nutshell, it is a new external hard drive enclosure that is supposed to be as secure as secure can be. BlackArmor was designed for carrying your most personal and sensitive documents, so they’ve included some of the best security measures available today. 

The drive on display was Maxtor-branded. In a nutshell, the Seagate BlackArmor portable hard drive doesn’t go with a software-based solution, because they say that those are too easily cracked. Instead, the unhackable drive features military-grade, 128-bit AES encryption across the entire magnetic surface. This is a hardware-based solution that has already been implemented in the Dell D600 and D800 notebooks.

When you connect the drive to your computer via USB 2.0, it does not show up immediately under My Computer. Instead, you see a “fake” CD Drive. It is only after you enter your secure password that you gain access to the contents of the drive. When you disconnect the drive, it will automatically lock back up. So this BlackArmor stuff sounds pretty secure, right? Well, there’s one rather major caveat to consider: There is no password recovery utility. If you forget your password, your only real option is to wipe the drive clean and start again. Shucks. The 160GB Seagate BlackArmor drive goes on sale in March for $149. The other major announcement was the Seagate D.A.V.E. reference design. Standing for Digital Audio-Video Experience, this pocket-sized drive actually functions as a wireless media server, boasting both WiFi and Bluetooth technologies. Measuring smaller than a deck of cards, this wireless device will connect with a variety of things, including but not limited to the iPhone, in-car entertainment systems, and digital cameras. The different applications that are possible with DAVE are amazing. You can expand the capacity of your iPhone, streaming music and videos directly from D.A.V.E. without a physical connection. The same can happen with the stereo in your car, or better still, pictures taken from your WiFi-capable digital camera can be stored directly on DAVE, rather than being limited to the capacity of your SD card. And yes, DAVE can rock several simultaneous connections. Seagate claims that the DAVE concept can last up to 14 hours in continuous streaming mode and they have already partnered with firms like Harman/Becker to bring it to market. Look for variants on DAVE to be released from several brands, rocking up to 60GB of wireless storage. Just toss DAVE in your backpack and you’re good to go! Very cool.

For more pictures from our SEAGATE visit, please check out our CES 2008 SEAGATE Photo Gallery.

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Corsair Memory

 Corsair has done quite well for itself this past year and they are now the exclusive memory provider for guys like Dell, HP, and Alienware. In fact, it is Corsair RAM that you find inside of the massive behemoth known as the HP Blackbird. Instead of fighting our way around the trade show floor, we got invited to Corsair’s private suite for a product rundown. In the USB flash drive department, Corsair hasn’t created a new form factor just yet, but they are upping the ante in terms of capacity. Both the Flash Voyager (which we’ve reviewed in 8 GB) and the Flash Survivor are now available with an incredible 32GB of high-density flash memory. This surely puts your tiny 2GB wonder to shame, doesn’t it? Both the Voyager and Survivor are built rugged enough to survive some rather nasty conditions, but the Survivor is definitely the tougher of the two. Pricing for the 32GB Voyager and 32GB Survivor are $230 and $250, respectively. When it comes to power supplies, it seems that the race to 1000 watts took a pit stop at 1000 and just kept going. CORSAIR never got into this race and just took their sweet time getting there. At CES, they showed off their first Kilowatt power supply that was powering a Triple-SLI gaming system in the suite. It was also powering one of CORSAIR’s Nautilus 500 Water Cooling Systems and was running a 3DMark06 demo all day long. They are obviously going for quality not qantity.

For more pictures from our CORSAIR visit, please check out our CES 2008 CORSAIR Photo Gallery. Let’s check on our friends at ATP Electronics next.

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ATP ElectronicsATP Electronics probably has one of the most misleading names ever. First off, they don’t seem to make any electronics. However, they make lots of flash memory and memory products. At CES, we had a look at a few of their cooler products.

 

Environmental responsibility is one of the hottest topics in today’s world. While we clean up the planet, we need to make sure we’re not messing it up again with useless junk. Many companies have taken it upon themselves to start using more environmentally production processes and materials to build their products and ATP Electronics is one such company.

 

One of the things we saw that was interesting was ATP’s line of Earthdrive products. The Earthdrive product line is made of Bio-Recycled material like corn. They are fully recyclable and the finished product is waterproof for all conditions. All this while maintaining the durability, strength, looks and feel of a quality USB flash drive. I guess if push came to shove, you could eat it if you wanted to. Mmm… Crunchy…

 

Another really interesting product was a GPS product called the Photofinder. This GPS picture tracker travels with you and your camera and based on the GPS position that it logs along with the timestamp of your picture files, it can sync GPS information right into your files. No computer is required as there is an SD slot on the device itself for synchronizing the GPS data with your files. This is perfect for use with Google Earth & Google Maps.

 

For DSLR users that shoot on Compact Flash, ATP also makes a unit that uses a docking system. You take the GPS dongle with you and shoot your pictures like normal. When you’re done, you plug in the dongle and your memory card and sync it up. With online mapping software getting popular, I think that products like these will catch on like wildfire. Most importantly, it gives you a way to prove that you’ve been where you’ve been and gives you the ability to share your trip visually with maps and pictures.

For more pictures of our visit with ATP Electronics, check out our CES 2008 ATP Electronics Photo Gallery.

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