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Heh, it wouldn't be stupid if you had one of these. They wouldn't work if it was bus-unpowered. Oh, and it wouldn't be stupid if you could charge, say, your iPod on a plane in a sacrificial manner so you could listen to some tunes and hit the sack instead of just letting the battery go.

Willy

If you don't have firewire on your computer yet, what kind of a nerd are you?

Check out some firewire hard drives from VST.

The prices are a bit higher than the iomega drive, but they will come down.

Daniel

I remember a discussion here on Slashdot a while ago about SmartDisk. Somebody was asking if there were any Linux drivers being developed for SmartDisk's amazing disk adapters that allow you to use your existing 1.44MB floppy drive to read/write 2MB - 128MB flash memory modules (the answer was a resounding "yes"). Neat huh?

Anyway, I quickly discovered that the folks at SmartMedia make a bunch of other cool products too, such as ultra-portable USB hard disks (ignore the fact they only mention Macintosh systems in the summaries - the details state they can be used on PCs too). The 4 GB disks are about $180, 6 GB disks are $20 more. If USB is too slow for you, and you have the capacity, they also offer FireWire versions (you probably will need a Mac for these). And finally, if you can't make up your mind, they offer 3 GB - 30 GB versions that support both USB and FireWire environments.

I can't offer any experience with these disks, but I really want to try one out! Maybe someone can post their experience with SmartDisk products? Failing that, you could always get one of these drives and then do us a favor by submitting a review to Slashdot or something. :)

I remember a discussion here on Slashdot a while ago about SmartDisk. Somebody was asking if there were any Linux drivers being developed for SmartDisk's amazing disk adapters that allow you to use your existing 1.44MB floppy drive to read/write 2MB - 128MB flash memory modules (the answer was a resounding "yes"). Neat huh?

Anyway, I quickly discovered that the folks at SmartMedia make a bunch of other cool products too, such as ultra-portable USB hard disks (ignore the fact they only mention Macintosh systems in the summaries - the details state they can be used on PCs too). The 4 GB disks are about $180, 6 GB disks are $20 more. If USB is too slow for you, and you have the capacity, they also offer FireWire versions (you probably will need a Mac for these). And finally, if you can't make up your mind, they offer 3 GB - 30 GB versions that support both USB and FireWire environments.

I can't offer any experience with these disks, but I really want to try one out! Maybe someone can post their experience with SmartDisk products? Failing that, you could always get one of these drives and then do us a favor by submitting a review to Slashdot or something. :)

Take a look at this little article on USB 2.0 and this one.

I can say that firewire is here and it works now, beautifully. Why should I wait for manufacturers to develop and implement USB 2.0 mobos and devices? For a measly extra 80Mb/s? I'll wait for firewire to go to 800Mb/s later this year.

What? No firewire devices besides camcorders? My favorite firewire devices are the sancube and this portable firewire raid array.

Now they (hard drive manufacturers in particular) just need to make some native firewire devices, bridges are just so... inelegant.

does anyone know of other small stuff to go with this thing?

Palm bought a foldable keyboard design from a company called Think Outside which, if it could be hooked up, would be the perfect companion from something like this.

A portable display??? Anyone? Teeny LCD?

OK, then Sony makes these goggle things - but they seem really expensive...

And then, outside of lugging around a car battery, anyone know of any nice power supply solution that might work with this thing?
VST makes a firewire RAID that can run off powerbook batteries (or maybe just as a backup source???) So something might be hackable by a skilled and brave geek with a soldering iron...

Break the 1 box tyranny of laptops! Think modular. break it up into seperately usable parts. I wish that my powerbook screen was detachable and could be used with my linux box, for instance. Why have two screens on my desk?

this type of thing is definately the future. why make things big???


adrien cater
boring.ch

Apple's firewire page
...and product list

Orange Micro PC firewire products
Ratoc systems firewire products
VST firewire pcmcia card

The company that makes FireWire HDs for Macs is VST Technologies. They make a variety of FireWire drives colored bright red and yellow, and a FireWire Zip. The drives are as big as 37 gigs, but they come at a steep premium as I believe VST one of a limited amount of FW drive makers, along with LaCie, and maybe Sony (I know they have a FireWire CD-R). VST is also making this very cool product that is like a little tower that you can plug a bunch of drives in, and a bottom slot that can hold a PowerBook battery to power them all portably. I think FireWire is just beginning to bloom and will become quite standard soon enough, Linux support for FireWire will only strengthen FireWire's future.

forget mini discs, i wnat the mini drives.

Don't forget the 2/4/6GB FireWire drives (and other peripherals) that are available now.