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!"

Comments

Re:Warsurfing?

[rassie]

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.

Re:Hmmn...

[PerryMason]

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 :)

Because

[magicianuk]

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!

Good grief.

[Duncan3]

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.

Re:Warsurfing?

[tanveer1979]

As though 802.11 wasn't bad enough. Now we can have someone sniffing hard drive accesses as well?

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

DEAR APPLE...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

...if the next iPod was 30gig and had build-in blue-tooth and color screen, and appls so i could access the HD from my Palm to store docs, email, etc (say I could devote 10 gig of iPod to the Palm) I'd pay $600 plus. OK, forget the color screen, but GIVE THE iPOD BLUETOOTH!!! Let me use my palm with it, or put a USB BT adapter into a clients PC and I'd be consultant from heaven, one little iPod with ALL my needed data!

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!!!

Digital photography

[sward]

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.

Might be good for digital photography...

[Joseph Wharton]

If there were Bluetooth-enabled digital cameras, this would be the perfect solution for storing high-resolution, uncompressed images.