May 16 - 03:45pm EDT   Fujitsu is developing a graphics adapter that would give ultraportable or budget notebooks a visual upgrade, according to leaked images from a presentation. Not unlike the ASUS XG Station, the AMILO GraphicBooster would plug into a notebook and receive the performance of a faster video chipset without having to tote a larger system. It also saves energy by allowing users to drop back to integrated graphics just by removing the box, Fujitsu claims in its notes. [full story]

May 16 - 03:10pm EDT   A new discovery could dramatically improve the capacity of magnetic hard drives, according to a new discovery made by a Rennselaer Polytechnic doctoral graduate. Paul Morrow has developed a new, nanotechnology-based magnetic storage technique that alternates magnetic and non-magnetic layers and uses a non-magnetic microscope to read the data at the nanoscale level. The advancement would both allow hard drives to read a three-dimensional grid of data but would also permit more information to be packed into a given space. [full story]

May 15 - 03:55pm EDT   Other World Computing says it has begun shipping a new series of Mercury On-the-Go external hard drives. All Mercury drives are roughly palm-sized, and support both Windows and Mac systems, including technologies such as Mac OS X Leopard's Time Machine. The new drives feature FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 ports, and are in available in 100, 200, 320 and 500GB capacities. [full story]

May 15 - 03:30pm EDT   AMD's upcoming ATI Radeon HD 4800 series cards will see a staggered launch over the late spring and summer that sees a number of significant improvements to the company's feature set, TG Daily says in a new leak. Besides expanding the amount of pixel and geometry effects each card can handle at once, the update is now said to build AMD's GPGPU physics processing into mainstream cards, letting supporting games and professional apps offload some of their work to the video card when not in use. [full story]

May 15 - 01:40pm EDT   Western Digital on Thursday released its My DVR Expander External Hard Drive USB Edition made to work with DISH Network ViP-series HD DVRs to more than double their recording capacity. The 500GB drive is capable of storing up to 60 hours of HD programming or 300 hours in standard definition. The drives connect to the DVRs via a USB 2.0 connection, unlike WD's previous Expander, which featured an eSATA interface. [full story]

May 13 - 11:50am EDT   QuickerTek has introduced an extended battery upgrade for Apple's MacBook Air, which it says offes six to ten hours of additional battery power -- for a total of 12-16 hours of battery life when used in conjunction with the (charged) internal battery. "Since the MacBook Air has a non-removeable battery, the typical user strategy of using multiple batteries is not possible. QuickerTek had already developed battery charging technology for MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, but those solutions did not charge AND power the computer at the same time. QuickerTek's MacBook Air External Battery powers and charges the internal battery while in use." [full story]

May 12 - 09:15am EDT   Eye-Fi this morning rolled out two new SD camera cards that alternately expand and curb the limit of their wireless technology. The Eye-Fi Explore builds in support for map positioning using Skyhook's triangulation of Wi-Fi hotspots and will automatically geotag photos saved to the camera wherever the card can identify its location; it also gets free access for one year with Wayport-owned wireless access points, including all McDonald's restaurants. The 2GB card works with any SD-compatible camera and ships on June 6th for $129. [full story]

May 09 - 05:50pm EDT   MCE Technologies on Friday said it will begin shipping a 1TB internal hard drive solution for the Apple's MacBook Pro 17-inch. The solution, which installs two half-terabyte drives and affects battery performance a bit, consists of the new MCE OptiBay SATA 500GB Optical Bay Hard Drive and an MCE MobileStor 500GB Internal SATA Hard Drive. The new MCE OptiBay SATA 500GB Optical Bay Hard Drive replaces the internal SuperDrive of the MacBook Pro 17-inch with a 500GB internal hard drive; however, the company provides a slim, portable enclosure for the internal SuperDrive, effectively converting it into a portable, bus-powered, bootable, external USB 2.0 SuperDrive able ... [full story]

May 08 - 05:40pm EDT   Sonnet Technologies on Thursday debuted the Fusion RAID Expander, which provides a simple solution for connecting up to seven Sonnet Fusion SATA RAID desktop or rackmount storage systems to a single computer for faster performance as well as access to up to 56 terabytes (TB) of protected storage. The Fusion RAID Expander extends a computer's PCI Express (PCIe) bus outside of the box and provides seven slots for installing PCIe cards. The Sonnet expansion system delivers plug-and-play installation and is transparent to the computer's operating system for zero-configuration use. [full story]

May 07 - 03:45pm EDT   Complementing its TP HD home theater PC, Sony on Wednesday rolled out a new home server. The 1TB HS1 and its 1.5TB HS1S counterpart are some of the first VAIO extenders offered by Sony and are built expressly to share content automatically: PCs with Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) compatible software, as well as devices such as the PlayStation 3, can automatically find content from the HS1 and stream it over a gigabit Ethernet link. [full story]