Special Offers – Week of February 1st

Good afternoon all, hopefully the return to work from the weekend hasn’t been too hard on you. Things are going quite well here, even the weather seems to have cheered up a little. Anyway, every Monday afternoon we post a list of our special offers for the week. It means you guys have as long as possible to check things out before deciding if you’d like to pick them up while they’re at a reduced price.

Anyway, this week we’ve got a few really nice bits and pieces on offer, including Intel’s X25 SSD, Belkin’s Gigabit Powerline HD starter kit, a Radeon 5670 and a Pioneer surround setup.

Intel X25:

For a very long time indeed, the SSD was a very expensive option indeed, but Intel has attempted to remedy that, offering solid-state storage on a wider scale for less-than-bankrupting sums… which is always nice.

Click through to see our page for Intel's X25 80GB SSD 🙂

Intel’s X25 is, in case anyone missed it, a solid-state drive. As with the vast majority of SSDs, it’s a 2.5-inch drive, so it should fit into a laptop without any real bother. Moreover, because it’s solid-state you’ll see faster read and write speeds than most standard hard-drives, which should mean a quicker boot… which is always nice. Your data will also be that bit more secure when it comes to the drive being knocked around a little in transit, thanks to the fact that the drive has no moving parts.

All in all, it’s a solid drive, and one that we’re genuinely pleased to be able to have on offer, because it’s attracted an awful lot of attention over the last couple of months.

Intel’s X25 80GB SSD is down to €199 this week, which isn’t bad at all when you consider the upsides of a nice SSD.

iPad to Hit Ireland in March

Apple’s iPad has been given something of a more solid release date for both the UK and Ireland, and it must be said that it’s a little ahead of Steve Jobs estimated June/July timeframe.

iPad, youPad, hePads, shePads, wePad, you(plural)Pad, theyPad 🙂

Indeed, Apple has updated it’s store page for those looking to pick up the touch-screen device, confirming pre-announcement rumours that Apple would start shipping the device in March. Of course, when those rumours first hit there was no indication yet that we’d see two different flavours of the device (one 3G capable and the other not). The update to Apple’s page simply reads,

“Wi-Fi models shipping in late March.
3G models shippin in April.
Local pricing to be announced.”

Smart Networking – IP Over Power

When it comes to home networking, it seems that most people are served very well indeed by a relatively straightforward wireless router. There’s no real mystery to it, a router just has enough coverage to envelop most houses. Still, there are some who, for one reason or another, just can’t use a router. In those cases, IP over power can be a refreshing change.

Check out our page for the Belkin IP over power arrangement 🙂

People can have any number of reasons for moving away from wireless: for some it’s just that their house is too big (or of too-dense construction) to allow solid wireless access, for others its that their desktop is their gaming machine, and on the wrong end of the house to their router. These things happen. Indeed, our Country Manager recently found himself in such a bind…

WiMAX to Bolster Irish Internet

It seems that Imagine isn’t the only company eying a wide scale WiMAX rollout in Ireland as one of the ways to easily supply wide-scale internet to a country whose population is, by and large, quite thinly spread.

It's hard to say no with a logo like that 🙂

Indeed, according to SiliconRepublic it seems that the Telocommunications and Internet Federation [TIF] is on board with plans for a WiMAX rollout, citing the fact that the wireless standard facilitates relatively high-speed internet connections across large areas, whether urban or rural. It’s an interesting point, and it’s certainly true that a wide scale WiMAX rollout would cost significantly less than trailing cable across the countryside, but just how well it works out remains to be seen.

Analysts Predict Android Surge

It seems that Google’s mobile operating system, the much vaunted Android, is set to see a tremendous amount of growth in the coming years, with analysts predicting that it will outpace its competitors.

The only thing the little guy is missing is a name... I like to think of him as Android Dave 😉

Indeed, according to a Cnet report, it seems that Google’s Android is currently bringing up the rear a little, when it comes to the mobile OS market, at least. Interestingly enough, it seems that there’s still plenty of love out there for RIM and its BlackBerry line, which currently holds the number two spot, while Apple’s iPhone OS rests at number three.

Special Offers – Week of January 25th

Good afternoon all, hopefully everyone’s managing the return from the weekend at least reasonably well. For those who aren’t long-time readers, we generally do a post about what we have on special offer on a Monday afternoon, with the intention of having it up on the blog as early in the week as possible… it gives you guys as much of a chance to have a bit of a think about whether or not you’d really like something before it goes out of our Special Offers next Sunday.

This week, we’ve got some nice bits and pieces on offer, so we’ll get straight into them.

Netgear Stora:

Netgear’s Stora is a network attached storage (NAS) setup, for those of you who don’t know what a NAS is, don’t worry, it’s not complicated, and it’s unusually useful.

Click through to check out our page for Netgear's 1TB Stora 🙂

Essentially, a NAS box is a device that houses some storage and sits attached to your network so that the volume is accessible to all of the machines connected. It’s a relatively simple concept, but it tends to be one of those things that a lot of users simply haven’t encountered. Netgear’s Stora boasts a 1TB drive, with space for another 1TB drive if you feel the need to expand it.

For those who haven’t used a NAS before, it’s an ideal way to keep media (whether music or movies) on a centralised drive that’s accessible to every machine on your network. Moreover, as long as you’re not too fussed about having all of your media accessible when you’re out and about, it’s also an excellent way to keep your PCs’ drives free of clutter.

Thanks to the fact that the drive is easily accessible via your local network, you’ll also be able to run backups of your notebook via your wireless network (software permitting), which is probably the closest you’ll get to a totally hassle-free backup experience.

You can also use the option to add another drive to the mix to make your backup that bit more reliable. Since the Stora offers RAID1 support directly, you can generally rely on your backup (or whatever you care to store on it) to be very well looked after indeed, unless there’s some totally catastrophic failure… or a fire.

Netgear’s Stora is down to €164.32 this week, with a 1TB hard drive already in there.

If you’d like to throw in an extra 1TB hard disk, then you could always pick up Samsung’s SpinPoint F3, which will set you back around €77.

Iomega Launches “Smart” NAS

Iomega has launched the iConnect Wireless Data Station which it bills as a “powerful and yet inexpensive device” that provides a simple way to bring all of your USB storage into your network, allowing you to connect, share and access files anywhere, including over the Internet.

So far we only have a US price ($79) but it’s available worldwide from next month and for those sick of copious wires everywhere this should put a dent in that problem at the very least. The rub of the green is that once you pocket the pretty darn light (there’s no onboard storage so it’s a handy size) iConnect, you then hook it to your router in either a wired or wireless configuration, and it’s as easy as plugging external USB drives or USB Flash drives into any of the four USB ports on the device, making the drives automatically connected to and accessible from any computer on your network or remotely via the web.

RCA Shows off Wireless Charger

RCA has taken the time at CES this year to show off a wireless charging arrangement it calls the AirEnergy, which is charged entirely by wireless signals, elegantly enough.

Until now, Powermat had been the wireless charger to watch...

While we’ve been hearing about wireless charging, and some of us practically drooling over it, for years now, it seems as though RCA is a shoe-in to the first company to really hit with something usable, affordable and practical. RCA’s AirEnergy is, as we said above, charged entirely by ambient Wi-Fi, which means that it will charge as you go about your day, likely with it buried somewhere near the bottom of a bag or in a pocket somewhere.

Special Offers – Week of December 29th

Good afternoon all, hopefully Christmas was as kind to you as possible, but if it wasn’t there’s always some consolation to be had from the fact that it’s all over now. Anyway, before we get to the “happy new year” potion of the post (that’ll be at the end) we always do a post at the start of the week to detail some of our special offers.

This week, we have a solid notebook, a Wireless N router and a 1TB media player on sale. We’ll roll with the notebook first.

Acer Aspire 7730G-664G100MN:

Acer’s Aspire 7730G-664G100MN may have a model name that reads like a license plate, but aside from making its name a little hard to keep in your head that shouldn’t discourage you.

Click through to see our page for Acer's Aspire notebook 🙂

We’ll get down to brass tacks as quickly as possible. The Aspire boasts a 17” display with a resolution of 1440 x 900, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor clocked at 2.2GHz and 4GB of memory. Moreover, it boasts 1TB of internal storage, though not on one drive. Instead, it’s spread across two 500GB drives, which means you’re at lower risk of both failing. It might seem like a small thing, but it can be a godsend if you end up in a position to need it. It’s also got a GeForce 9600M-GT.

The machine does come with Windows Vista Home Premium, which means you’d be best off purchasing an upgrade copy of Windows 7 to set up on the machine when you get it, if Windows Vista is a deal-breaker.

The Acer Aspire weighs in at €695, which isn’t a bad old deal at all.

Sony Debuts Short Range Wireless

Sony is showing off some new short range wireless technology it calls TransferJet, which supports reasonably high-speed, short range wireless data transfer, ideal for portable devices.

According to Engadget, the whole idea with TransferJet seems to be that it offers an alternative to USB-style connections for data transfer to mobile devices. It might seem relatively simple, but with a theoretical maximum speed of 560Mbps at a range of 3cm there’s no real reason to need something like USB for mobile devices once hardware like TransferJet achieves some solid penetration.

Of course, it’s excellent to see that there’s also some fairly widespread support for Sony’s new attempt to make short-range wireless technology widespread. Brands that we’re interested to see supporting TransferJet include Canon, Nikon, Samsung, Casio, Kodak and Olympus. Admittedly, they’re mostly camera manufacturers for now, but the fact that there are some phone companies in there is fairly interesting.

If only for simple things like transferring contact information and photos, it’s certainly an interesting concept, and in tandem with things like induction-based wireless charging for mobile devices it certainly does make for a very interesting bit of near-future wireless charging and fast data-transfer when it comes to mobile devices.

For now we’re left a little wanting when it comes to details of devices we can expect to see it in, but if you’re at all interested to see what Sony expects to see its short range wireless used for then you’d do well to check out the video over at Engadget, where it shows some genuinely impressive and very simple shots of the devices at work.