Sonnet’s Edge Last issue we wrote about Sonnet’s incredible Tempo Sata Pro Expresscard, the world’s fastest eSata interface to your Macbook. Two things could have been improved: price, and bulk. The card’s connectors do stick out of your laptop. Sonnet just released the Tempo Sata Edge Expresscard. It fits flush against the side of your Macbook or other laptop. And it’s an astonishing 1/4 the price of the Pro, at $49 MSRP. What’s the downside? Most users won’t notice any difference between the two cards. The Edge will happily connect your external or RAID external. But the Pro has an additional channel (and an additional ...

Sonnet Technologies: RackMac mini The latest Mac mini makes a popular and inexpensive server. Sonnet’s $169 RackMac mini solves the problem of rack-mounting one or two of them. The RackMac mini is sturdy, convenient, and elegant. Yet again, we award Sonnet for identifying opportunities to manufacture well-engineered products that satisfy an emerging need. Did we call it right? We told you at press time in early October there would be an 11-inch Macbook Air. And by the end of the month, there really was. Whew! We gave our annual award to Dell's Alienware 11mx because it was then, and still is by far, the most powerful 11-inch laptop ...

Well folks, the rumors can now end about the whether or not the iCloud service will be shown off at WWDC. Apple has posted a press release that details what will be in the Keynote address from Apple on Monday. These things include Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, iOS 5, and as previously mentioned, iCloud. While we've already seen a lot of what Lion has to offer through developer releases and previous keynotes, we don't know when Apple is planning on selling the goodies. iOS 5 is going to be a pretty good surprise too, as there aren't too many rumors circulating as to what it might contain except that it may include a new notification system and widgets.

Just as was rumored in the wee hours of yesterday, Google yesterday launched their Music Beta music service. The service is designed to compete directly against Amazon's recently launched Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, as well as the much-anticipated MobileMe revamp. Just like Amazon's Cloud Player, you upload your music library and then are able to stream it as desired. It is unknown whether or not Google will launch a music store, but it is likely they will. Pricing is also unavailable at this point, and as is usual with Google's betas, it is invitation only at this point. [via: MacRumors]

Rumors have been going for the past several months as to how Apple is going to change MobileMe and what services they will offer, but there is a more pressing issue for many users: how do you pay for it? Presently, the subscription can only be purchased electronically because Apple has stopped selling physical boxes for MobileMe in their retail stores, which contain activation codes. For those without credit or debit cards, MobileMe is inaccessible without hassle. A German Mac news site is claiming that Apple Support revealed to them that there would be an alternative payment method becoming available soon for subscriptions to MobileMe, ...

After the past few days, many people are losing faith in what Apple has to come, but don't forget that Steve Jobs isn't dead like many people are acting - he isn't even officially gone from Apple. Yesterday some rumors were going around that Apple is going to be killing more server products than just the Xserve that we already know is on its way out. A concerned user e-mailed Steve, who still apparently checks his e-mail. Q: If you are abandoning enterprise solutions by eliminating the Xserve, does that mean OS X Server is not far behind? It seems that way. I would hate to see that because I like the product. A: No. Sent from my iPhone ...

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Popular file sync and cloud storage system, Dropbox, has released an update to its popular iPhone app to make it universal. Now you can have all the great functionality of the iPhone version on your iPad screen without it being stretched. In addition to iPad support, the new version also allows you to export documents stored in your Dropbox into third-party iPad apps, presumably apps such as Pages. You can also upload files from your iPad to your Dropbox to be synced back to your Mac or Windows PC. You can even stream video or audio from your Dropbox to your iPad, an interesting feature for sure! Check it out here!

Wi-what? This is a question that has probably been asked many times over the past couple of weeks, but allow me to explain. Wi-gig is the next generation of the wireless standard that is being introduced by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. It uses a much higher 60GHz frequency to transmit a much larger amount of data, up to 7Gbps, to be exact. The problem with Wi-Gig, however, is that it is a short-distance communication and the signal rapidly degrades. Evidently when you get too far from the source of the signal, it will switch to traditional Wi-Fi connection. The Wireless Gigabit Alliance also partnered with the Wi-Fi Alliance to open an ...

MacDailyNews has reported a rumor that Apple could possibly be making MobileMe free to all users. The system provides a number of tools centralized around cloud storage and syncing for $99 per year. The predicament Apple is facing is that many of these cloud features are all ready free or at least cheap from competitors such as Google Docs and Microsoft's SkyDrive. While synchronization with these is much less natural for Mac users, for the $99 that MobileMe costs, these alternatives become much more attractive. The rumor states that it depends on "certain facilities going operational." With Apple recently putting up a server farm in ...

Intel demonstrated for the first time exactly how much Light Peak is capable of at their inaugural European research showcase in Brussels. What makes the setup special is that this time, it was run from a laptop. The laptop was sending out two different HD video streams to the HDTV seen in the picture using the single Light Peak link without any noticeable lag. This is a huge step in the right direction. Light Peak is a technology designed by Intel using optical technology that can transfer data both ways at a simultaneous 10Gbits/sec, but that is just the beginning. Intel hopes to use this single interface to replace USB, FireWire, and ...

The creator of Parallels Desktop for Mac, the popular hardware virtualization software for the Mac has now come out with a new piece of software designed for Mac OS X Server. Using this software, Apple hardware can now support standard server applications that are otherwise relatively unavailable such as Microsoft Exchange, Oracle Database, or Microsoft SharePoint. This is a much lower cost than buying Windows-based servers, so it is worth the investment to have the cross-platform compatibility in one package. New features include support, per virtual machine, of up to 12 virtual CPUs, 64GB of RAM, 8 USB 2.0, 8 USB 1.1, and 16 virtual ...

Drives and storage manufacturer LaCie recently released 3 new network-attached storage devices for small to midsize businesses. The drives all come in familiar enclosures, but have new internal features. The three models consist of the d2, the 2big, and the 5big. The d2 features a single drive that comes in offerings of 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB for sizes. The dual-drive model, the 2big comes with 2TB, 3TB, or 4TB, and can be set up in a RAID 0 or 1 configuration. The final offering is the 5big, which, as you probably figured out, 5 drives with a variety of configurations ranging from 2.5TB to 10TB. All three drives support Apple's Time Machine,

Since its inception, G-Technology (g-technology.com) has been focused on creating high-performance storage solutions for content creation. In the early days of digital video production there was a big problem with external hard drives that were being used for editing – they were burning up! G-Tech’s first product, the G-RAID, was designed specifically to withstand the heavy load this type of computing placed on the hard drive. According to marketing director Pete Schlatter, “we used only the best components including an all-aluminum chassis, high-end electronics and Hitachi hard drives. But the most important piece was adding a ...

Mad Catz finally shipped its own wireless bridge. The wireless bridge is meant as an alternative to the official Xbox adapter, the Wireless-N Gaming Adapter takes the Ethernet connection from an Xbox 360, 20GB PlayStation 3 or any computer and turns it into an 802.11n Wi-Fi signal. The peripheral doesn't reach full 802.11n speeds but can still peak at 150Mbps. Price is a cornerstone of the adapter as Mad Catz puts the adapter at $80, $20 below Microsoft's. The adapter should be available today.

Sprint began the week by bringing its 4G WiMAX service into action for several key areas promised earlier. The Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth areas as well as several North Carolina cities, including Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, High Point, Raleigh and Winston-Salem, all now have access to the wide-area wireless. The carrier still promises downstream speeds of about 3Mbps to 6Mbps in real situations, all of which allow VoIP, video and other tasks normally off-limits to 3G. Service primarily hinges on a $70 monthly plan that offers unlimited 4G and 5GB of 3G transfers, but visitors to a particular area can pay $10 for a ...

The final release of Palm Pixi today by Sprint on its network. The smartphone will ship to the carrier's stores on November 15 and cost $100 on contract after both a $50 immediate discount and a $100 mail-in rebate. It is also now known to work with the Touchstone inductive charging dock but needs both the $80 add-on as well as a $20 back shell to charge without using wires. The Pixi is the spiritual successor to the Centro and is the first candybar-shaped webOS phone, using a 2.6-inch multi-touch screen, 3G and GPS, but no Wi-Fi. It also shoots with a 2-megapixel camera and has 8GB of internal storage. Unlike the Pre, the Pixi ships with ...