Western Digital's My Book Studio Edition II

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It's a great time to be in the market for mass storage for your Mac. Hardware manufacturers keep coming out with new solutions that either provide more speed (like SSDs) or greater capacity, and the prices keep coming down.

Western Digital is now shipping the My Book Studio Edition II, a two-drive enclosure filled with 6 TB (that's right, six terabytes) of RAID 0 storage and a quad-interface (FW800 / FW400 /eSata / USB2.0) for only US$549.99. That price is quite amazing, since the competing LaCie 4 Quadra array sells for almost $400 more. The My Book Studio Edition II takes advantage of WD's 3 TB Caviar Green drives, two of which are nestled into an enclosure. The product comes with a power adapter usable in the US, Canada and most European countries, FireWire 800 and USB cables, a FireWire 800/400 cable and a CD containing a user manual and a selection of software.

The My Book Studio Edition II drive comes pre-formatted for Mac OS X and can be reformatted for use with Windows 7. While the array comes set up as a 6 TB RAID 0 stripe set, it's possible to use it as a mirrored pair (RAID 1) of 3 TB drives. For those who are looking for redundant storage, the RAID 1 solution makes a lot of sense. If it's raw storage capacity that you want, RAID 0 is the way you'll want to go -- just be sure to buy a second array for backup purposes.

To see how the My Book Studio Edition II array stood up during our tests, turn to the next page.

Droid Eris Hands-On

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 Verizon Droid Eris Priced At $99

App review | SPB Shell 3D for Android

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As we all know, the beauty of Android stems from the fact that you get a wide variety of choices when it comes to devices and interface, though the latter can sometimes be a double-edged sword. Luckily, users who are fed up with their bloated Android UI but don't want to (or can't) mess around with ROMs now have another easy solution. Joining the handful of Android launchers is SPB's Shell 3D app, which installs as a replacement (but removable) home screen that comes with some nifty widgets (radio switches, backlight dimmer, weather forecast with a 3D chart, clock with over 60 skins, world time with a 3D globe, etc.) and resizeable folders.

Motorola Citrus (Verizon)

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This week end only, VerizonWireless is charity a mid-range

The Verizon Motorola Citrus is a compact Android 2.1 Eclair smartphone that host's a Backtrack navigation pad on the rear and a 3-inch 320 x 240 px resolution, 262K color QVGA TFT Capacitive Touchscreen. You can customize up to 7 home screens and easily compose with the Virtual QWERTY Swype Keyboard. Access the web with the HTML Webkit Browser at 3G high data speed and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g connectivity. The Motorola Citrus let's you make Skype calls. Use Bing Search or Google Search by voice when you need to find some info. With the Motorola Citrus you can read your email, send / receive Instant Messages and stay social.

Motorola xoom hands on

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On January 5th at CES 2011,Verizon Wireless and Motorola unveiled

The Verizon Motorola Xoom enters the Tablet market as the first device powered by the Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. Featuring a 10.1-in WXGA Touch screen, portrait and landscape virtual QWERTY keyboards and 1GHz Dual Core Processor, the Motorola Xoom is ready to meet your mobile productivity and entertainment demands. 

RIM BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 Review

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BlackBerry Storm2 9550Phone (Verizon Wireless)

Faster and upgraded operating system the Verizon BlackBerry Storm2 returns to manage your life when on the move via fingertip navigation. The Verizon BlackBerry Storm2 features a 3.25 in 480 x 360 px 65k color touch screen with enhanced Surepress technology. 

Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3A) laptop review

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Back at CES, Samsung pulled out quite a few surprises, and no, we're not referring to its Zoll-infused press conference -- although, that performance still gives us the willies. Of all the Korean company's announcements at the show, which we'll remind you included an impressive new LTE phone and range ofSmartTVs, it was its Series 9 laptop that left us the most stunned. And well, a glance at that picture above should explain why we found ourselves counting down the days until its March launch date. The 2.8-pound system is a complete and total 180 from Samsung's typical bulky mainstream systems, yet its 0.64-inch thick chassis still crams in quite a bit of horsepower with a Core i5-2537M processor, a 128GB SSD, and 4GB of RAM. It's also built from some of the toughest stuff on earth, has a backlit keyboard,and an incredibly high quality 400 nit LCD. You see, the $1,699 machine teeters on having the absolute perfect balance of beauty and brawn, and certainty has the core ingredients to compete with that otherextremely popular and super thin ultraportable -- but when you get it home and out of its fancy box, does it truly have the chops? Or is this just yet another rail thin and expensive Windows laptop that falls short? The time has come to find out – hit the break for our full review.

Cowon D3 Plenue Android PMP review

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One thing's for sure: Cowon's D3 Plenue is vastly different (and superior) to the firm's AMOLED-equipped S9 from 2008, and it's also catering to a vastly different sect of consumers compared to its ultra-capacious X7. This beaut is one of the few pocketable Android-based PMPs available today, offering up a gorgeous 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchpanel (800 x 480), dedicated media controls along the edges, Android 2.1, WiFi, 1080p video output, a built-in microphone and a battery good for up to 21 hours of use. As with every other Cowon player, this one also supports every file format ever conceived, including FLAC, APE and OGG -- three that the audiophiles in attendance will definitely recognize. The real question here is simple: does having Android on a non-connected (cellular, anyway) device really do you much good, and moreover, is it really worth the $357.99 asking price? We'll discuss these points and more in our full review just after the break. Join us, won't you?

Peel Fruit and iOS app review

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There's no shortage of devices that aim to replace your always-missing remote control with your always-present smartphone, and the Peel is one of the more recent and unique entries into the space. A software / hardware combination consisting of a "Peel Fruit" and accompanying iOS app, the package brings a new approach to finding what to watch -- and it's unlike most other smartphone-IR options we've encountered so far. Does it all come together, or are we left wishing for more? Read on past the break to find out!

HTC Arrive reviews

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Though it was teased late last year -- on the same day that HTC announced its very first Windows Phone 7 devices, in fact -- the company's QWERTY-packing 7 Pro has taken its sweet time to make it to American airwaves; in the process, it's gone through a name change and picked up the first big platform update from Microsoft. The phone we now know as the Arrive is finally available from Sprint, becoming the first Windows Phone 7 device available on a CDMA network. These days, it's pretty unusual for an HTC handset -- or a handset on any American carrier, really, regardless of manufacturer -- to take this long to make it to subscribers' hands after announcement, but in this case, Sprint's hands were tied: Microsoft simply didn't support CDMA initially, which explains why both AT&T and T-Mobile have been enjoying a selection of models from Samsung, LG, Dell, and HTC alike while Sprint and Verizon have been patiently twiddling their thumbs.