Winextra » USB

Flash drive cool factor increases with this Mimobot Bossk Star Wars flash drive

Steven — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:23:57 +0000

The Mimobot Bossk Star Wars Flash Drive

We all have our favorite characters from the Star Wars movies and it only gets better when you can find that favorite character being used to make your daily geek gadgets even cooler.

Much like this hand numbered limited edition SDCC Exclusive Bossk Star Wars MIMOBOT Series 7 USB flash drive (there`s only 500 of them being made).

So head over to Amazon real quick an plop down your $49.95 to get yours before they are all gone.

via Geek Alerts

Flash drive cool factor increases with this Mimobot Bossk Star Wars flash drive is a post from: winextra
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Android gets a sweet tooth with the Cotton Candy USB stick [Video]

Steven — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:06:12 +0000

FXI Technologies - Cotton Candy USB computer

The idea of being able to carry around a computer in your shirt pocket and can be used simply by plugging it into a screen is pretty interesting, but that is exactly the idea behind FXI Technologies’ Cotton Candy USB stick.

It comes loaded with Android installed on the USB stick with a HDMI output on one end and a microSD slot on the other end. Once it is booted up you can use Bluetooth enabled keyboard and mouse just as with any other system for input.

It’s other specs aren’t anything to sneeze at either given its size:

An ARM Cortex-A9 1.2GHz CPU
An ARM Mali-400 MP quad-core GPU
1GB DRAM
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Decodes MPEG-4 and H.264 and is HD-capable

Here’s a promo video of Cotton Candy in action.

via CNET Crave

Android gets a sweet tooth with the Cotton Candy USB stick [Video] is a post from: winextra
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The iPad Knockoffs Are Here And They Look Good…

Paul — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:28:44 +0000

The very enterprising Chinese have come up with their first iPad knockoff and while esthetically similar, this little baby just happens to run Windows 7 and comes with 3 USB ports.

That’s right, the sexiness of the iPad, the multitasking, flash and video support of Windows 7 and USB support so you can easily move your files around and hook up other devices.

What more could you want? Well, according to Reuters, this is just the beginning and things will only get better.

This is just the first rough version,” Lin said in Cantonese. “While the shape isn’t quite the same, the external appearance is very similar to the iPad, so we don’t think it will affect our sales that much.

When the knock offs are already more feature rich that the iPad itself, you have to wonder what future lies in store for Steve Jobs baby.

Oh, did I mention that the knockoff is also $90 cheaper at $410?

I wonder if they ship to Ireland?

Image credit: REUTERS/Bobby Yip

The iPad Knockoffs Are Here And They Look Good… is a post from: winextra
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Watch out for the Energizer Bunny he might be carrying a trojan

Steven — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:40:33 +0000

Okay so it’s not the batteries themselves that are in danger of infecting your machines but rather the software that comes with USB battery chargers.

According to the folks over at Sunbelt Software there is a warning out today from CERT that the Energizer DUO USB battery chargers have been found to be infected with a trojan that loads up backdoor malware when you install the battery monitoring software.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is warning that Energizer DUO USB battery chargers have been found infected with a Trojan that loads backdoor malware on a victim PC along with its battery monitoring software.
The charger copies a .dll file named UsbCharger.dll in the application’s directory and another named Arucer.dll in the Windows system32 directory. USBCharger sets a registry entry to autoexecute Arucer.dll when Windows starts.
Arucer.dll is a backdoor that communicates through TCP port 7777.
The charger has been sold worldwide for three years.
CERT notes that the Trojan contains Chinese language text.
Sunbelt detects it as Trojan.Arugizer.
CERT Vulnerability Note VU#154421 here.

I always knew I hated that drum beating rabbit.

Watch out for the Energizer Bunny he might be carrying a trojan is a post from: winextra
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Hardware: Thermaltake DUO Enclosure

Steven — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:09:50 +0000

If you fool with computers enough, you’ve got no option: eventually there are going to be computer parts stashed all over the place. What are these cables for? Why do we have 22 56k modems? What’s on these hard drives? I don’t know. Open one of the machines and install it. Which of them has SATA? I think that one over there is IDE-only. And that one has problems recognizing new drives unless they’re NTFS. Is it? Hell if I know. Man, what a pain in the ass, forget it.

We used to have a Western Digital USB external drive that I had dismantled when the drive inside had failed. (30 days after the warranty passed) We used this for random drive-checking, but it only supported IDE, and never went back together right, so ended up laying across the desk with wires all over.

Then, I found the Silver River DUO enclosure from Thermaltake. We picked this up from Newegg for about 45usd, and it supports both IDE as well as SATA drives. No clue how it handles SSD’s, we Winexxers haven’t jumped into that realm yet. Sometimes the bleeding edge of current tech is just too damned pricey.

Aside from my soon-to-be usual complaint about over-bright lights, this unit seemed to fit exactly what we needed. We can grab any hard drive We have lying about, and within a minute or two, be happily perusing the contents. One limitation: the interface can only handle up to 1000gigs, so those 1.5TB drives will have to go elsewhere. No, we don’t have any here, we weren’t worried.

The black and silver aluminum enclosure is designed to wick heat away from your drive, and actually feels pretty solid. I had expected it to look and feel somewhat cheap considering that it resides in the low end of the price hierarchy for enclosures.

Wandering the Internet, one can run across some reports of failures of the SR DUO, but that has not been in our experience. We’ve swapped a couple dozen drives in and out of this thing, and it’s still going strong. It’s currently running as a 24/7 drive on an XP Pro machine with an 80gig IDE drive in it, and has been doing so for about a month, trouble-free.

Heat can be an issue, we had it lying flat on the desk, and it started getting pretty hot. Once the provided stand was fished out of the box and put on the unit, it cooled right down. Use the stand, it needs the airflow on all sides.

Switching out the drives could be easier, but that’s not to say it’s difficult to do. A screwdriver (included) is required to remove two screws and slide out the drive tray. I could justify this by pointing out that quick-release plastic bits can wear out, whereas the screws will last far longer…provided you don’t lose them.

Once open, you select the interface and power cables depending on the drive type. Keep the box, you’ll need it to store the extra cables, probably. Slip the drive in, attach the cables and slide the tray back in. Don’t pinch the LED power lead. That could have been better designed.

Select eSATA or USB. Plug in the power cord, plug in the eSATA or USB cord and Windows detects the device immediately. Except in the case that the drive is dead. Why do we have dead hard drives around? I don’t have the answer to that. Probably the same reason we have 5 13” CRT monitors in the garage.

Overall, we’ve been pleased with the Silver River DUO. There are a couple things that get a thumbs-down, but for the price, it does what it’s supposed to do with minimal headache.

Features
- Portable 3.5" Hard Disk Drive enclosure
- Supports all 3.5" IDE and SATA HDDs
- Compatible with notebooks, PCs, and Macs
- Hot-Swap ability for higher mobility
- USB 2.0 – Transfer speed up to 480Mbps
- ESATA – Transfer speed up to 3.0Gbps
- Supports up to 1,000 gigabytes
- Durable aluminum shell lowers HDD operating temperature by up to 40%

Pros: Looks good, inexpensive, IDE & SATA, USB & eSATA.

Cons: Too-bright light, disassembly could be easier, LED lead gets in the way.

Hardware: Thermaltake DUO Enclosure is a post from: winextra
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Create a bootable USB for installing Windows 7

Steven — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:56:11 +0000

USB sticks are finding all kinds of interesting uses among them now is the ability to create a bootable USB drive for Windows 7 and Vista. While this might not be a great need for a lot of people I know that some of WinExtra’s will find this to another handy utility to have in their toolbox.

With a big thanks to VG over at the Tweaking with Vishal, who along with one of his readers has come up with a handy utility to create a bootable USB and have made it freely available. With the utility it takes four steps to start creating your bootable USB stick so it really doesn’t get any easier than that.

So head over to Tweaking with Vishal and have a quick read through of how it works as you are downloading the free utility.

A big hat tip to Steve Clayton for the pointer to this.

Create a bootable USB for installing Windows 7 is a post from: winextra
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