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Bluetooth Enabled External Harddrive
anocow writes "According to this press release at Nikkei Biztech (Japanese), Toshiba will be selling a Bluetooth enabled 5 gig external hard disk called the "Hopbit". It will be priced at 49800 yen. Apparently it will run on batteries for a maximum of 6 hours continuously. Talk about mobility!"
Bypass the network completely and hack straight into the wireless drive. Wardisking?
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
I do believe that the protocol you run on top of Bluetooth is responsible for data encryption.
But I believe Bluetooth does have better authentication - including encrypted exchange of pairing and link keys - than WLAN.
The solution would be reasonably complex and expensive as two bluetooth devices would be required, either a modified player, or a BT tramsmitter that connects to the headphone jack, and the headphones / earpiece itself. Both of these would require an independent power source. I would also wonder about the quality of the audio, as the current BT headsets are for voice and not HiFi quality music.
I would love to be able to keep my minidisk player in a backpack and listen to it without trailing wires, and have the phone interupt the music if someone calls. But at the moment vibrating alert will have to do.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.....my life is my own.
Personally I see it as more of a supplement to a PDA. I mean if you could hook up 5 gigs of storage to a Zaurus, you'd have something rivallling a laptop in functionality but fitting in your pocket. I kinda like the idea of having my harddrive in my pocket while I tap away at my Zaurus :)
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
only a few weeks ago /.ers were complaining about why anyone would buy the new Sony bluetooth enabled digital camera ... and don't forget Sony use memorys(t)ick not the neat 1Gb IBM microdrives, so this basically gives you something that can back up your digital camera while you're travelling. So you take your pictures of, say, the Eiffel tower, sit down for a coffee and by the time you're finished the camera has transferred everything to the hard disk and you can clear the memory stick and go take pictures of the Louvre!
Is not carrying around a 1m firewire cable really worth giving up a ton of space, almost all the speeeeeeeed, and the battery life too?
Bluetooth is nice for SMS, but anything bigger you're better off with an old fashioned serial cable cerca 1970.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Every new tech starts with issues. 802.11 is getting there. So will bluetooth when need comes up. But in the case of BT, you will have to be real real close to the person to *snort*. And so it is not really that big a security risk
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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The part of the iPod that is reserved for the palm or whatever BT device accesses it could be allowed full transwer two-and-from except for .mp3's so RIAA doesn't have a shit fit. Do this, Apple, and I'd buy a basket of the little things!!!
Depends on what was being stored, if the right protocols could be set up then I guess a drive full of my MP3 collection that I could just place next to a BT enabled stereo or in my bag for my BT walkman.
The trick is that if its not data that you need to keep secure and if it can be configured for say read only (or even write only) then its a lot safer.
Spell checker (c) creative spelling inc. (aka my dyslexic brain)
I mean what is the point? I could perhaps imagine some highly convoluted situation where it might be useful but it just seems like a solution where no problem exists. Besides, this kind of thing would be utterly useless on a plane where any kind of wireless devices would have to be switched off anyway.
Here's an idea I had that this product would work nicely with:
Take a digital camera. Add a memory card to act as a buffer. Add Bluetooth.
Take this product, but add a bigger battery and stick it in a backpack. Add a Firewire connection.
Now, when the camera takes a picture, with the memory card acting as a buffer, it quickly transfers the picture to the hard drive. If you take several pictures in succession, they are buffered and sent when feasible.
When you're done for the day, plug it into your laptop or desktop with the Firewire connection and move the pictures off portable hard drive.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
How about just a drive case (2.5 or 3.5in) that is Bluetooth (or 802.11b) enabled? Then you could add your drive of choice.
Maybe a bigger version, with a slim dvd drive and a HD bay?
I love the USB/Firewire drive cases. Record SG-1, transfer it over and watch it during lunch at work for 4 days...
If there were Bluetooth-enabled digital cameras, this would be the perfect solution for storing high-resolution, uncompressed images.
Quality or Quantity, don't tell me they're the same.
I'd love to walk in with a player in my pocket and have it automatically sync with my desktop's current media collection.
At just under 1 Mbit, you'd better be staying in the room a long time if you want to sync up more than a single MP3. Bluetooth was obsolete before it hit the shelves.
I could sacrifice one of my teeth for storage space, i would never forget it then.
--JonnyBlog
Assuming 1 MBit/sec Bluetooth transfer, in six hours this device can transfer about half its contents, running flat out.