CES 2006 - Day 1: Dell's 30" Display, Quad SLI, WUSB and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 6, 2006 4:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Seagate's WUSB Demo and eSATA/DVR drive
Wisair and Seagate were demonstrating a proof of concept technology demo using Wireless USB to stream video from an external hard drive to a laptop.
The demo was simple; an external Seagate hard drive and a laptop were both outfitted with Wireless USB antennas.
The laptop started playing content from the Seagate drive without a hitch, all wirelessly. However one of the major issues with Wireless USB, especially for storage, is that you still have to plug the device into the wall for power. So Seagate's demo actually employed an external hard drive with a battery that would allow you to stream data from the drive, completely wirelessly.
The demonstration got choppy when on battery power as the operator moved further away from the notebook, but it is an early technology so hiccups can be expected.
The switch on the back of the unit switched between external and battery power
While transfer rates weren't disclosed, Wireless USB is supposed to be able to achieve transfer rates of up to 480Mbps - the same as wired USB 2.0.
The other interesting device at Seagate's booth was an external SATA drive that was plug and play compatible with Scientific Atlanta DVR boxes. Simply plug the drive in to the eSATA port on your Scientific Atlanta DVR and you instantly increase your storage capacity, allowing you to record more shows without having to open your DVR.
Note that the external drive does not allow you to move content onto your PC or other devices.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
48 Comments
View All Comments
Aerows - Saturday, February 4, 2006 - link
This design has a lot going for it. As one user suggested, kids going to college. BUT, I think that a strong argument could be made for it with small business owners.Why?
Considering that I went through Hurricane Katrina, and literally everything (including both of my cars, my father's brand new Avalanche, both PC's) was underwater, the one thing that saved all of our records was my mother's laptop.
No one expected it to be quite the monster that it was, and even though the PC's were put up high, and bagged, they were swamped. My mom's laptop of course, went home with her.
Had we had two of these mobile PC's, I *guarantee* they would have been taken out of the building and away from the storm, and we wouldn't have to deal with waiting for insurance to settle, the inevitable depreciation involved (even though the two PC's involved in the storm were perfectly okay for our needs), and lost productivity. Backups are great and all, but let's face it, they are fallible and it can take a lot of effort to recover from two lost PCs.
Personally, if these units were available in "value" flavors without the souped up video cards, I know several folks I would recommend them to right now.
Of course, I'd want a decked out screamer for my own personal use :)! ::drool::
estbear - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I think this is a verry intresting thing, but can it realy work like houres whit solar power. I mean thers almoust light everywhaer when this can work let's say 10 h I be impressed.Sry for bad englis :P
PeteRoy - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6020675.html">Watch the videodev0lution - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Funny that everyone thinks of dell for low price/cheap computers and now that profit margins have slowed they drop a 30" LCD for 2 grand that takes a "limited edition" overclocked (Overclocked by Dell...hell must be cold!) quad GPU XPS just to eke out playable framerates on the newest games. What's next?!?! Water cooling and AMD brought to you by the dell duuuude? =XAnonymouseUser - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Who'd a thunk it?hoppa - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Does the flaming skull graphic on the Dell machine automatically change to a rusty snail over the next 3 years?ohnnyj - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Very true. Plop down an estimated 10 grand on a system like this today and it will be outdated next year or even by the end of this year (there is no way nVidia will leave Quad SLI as a Dell exclusive). People will stick them in an overclocked FX-57 (perhaps watercooled) they build themselves and save themselves a few thousand dollars (and have a higher performing system to boot).Griswold - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
We'll leave you today with a picture of Toshiba's HD-DVD player that was sitting in Intel's booth. The player crashed when we took this picture, but other than that there was nothing particularly interesting to see here.Aww poor DVD player is shy. Dont take pictures please! Move along, give this DVD player some breathing roomm!
yuchai - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
I don't think it's a good idea. I quote the article "Internally it's basically a notebook with discrete graphics and support for up to two 2.5" hard drives running in RAID."It offers nothing over a Desktop Replacement Laptop imo.
Nick5324 - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
I was thinking the same thing, however I think it has potential. Assuming it's priced competitively, and we could dump the discrete graphics, I'd be interested.