GadgetReport.TV #3

The promise of Thunderbolt is starting to finally arrive this year at CES. Elgato, maker of one of my favorite gadgets, EyeTV, is bringing two Thunderbolt SSD Portable High-Speed Drives to those of us with a need for speed. We’ll be seeing a 120GB version and a 240GB version starting in February.

The new portable drives blow USB and Firewire data transfer speeds out of the water. USB 2.0 delivers 35 MB/s. FireWire 800 delivers 80 MB/s. The Elgato Thunderbolt SSD delivers a transfer speed of 270 MB/s! The connectivity of Thunderbolt paired with the read/write speed of solid state drives makes these portable drives all about performance. The metal enclosure is designed to protect the drive and your data when you’re on the go, and it looks pretty hot connected to a MacBook Air.http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/ThunderboltSSD.html

On the last episode of This Week in Tech, John C. Dvorak talked about how iPhone 4S makes a great document scanner. If that’s not good enough for you and you want a scanner built to be a scanner, Xerox has your back.Xerox developed it’s Mobile Scanner in partnership with Eye-Fi, maker of the world’s first wireless SD memory cards for photography. The mobile scanner scans a piece of paper, encodes the result as a PDF or JPG, and then sends it wirelessly to a PC, Android phone, Mac, iDevice or the Cloud. It’s a gadget intended to be taken out of your office. It comes with a 4GB Eye-Fi card, carrying case, rechargeable battery and charger. The scanner is priced at $249.99 and is available now at retail stores everywhere.

http://news.xerox.com/pr/xerox/Xerox-Mobile-Scanner-Sends-JPG-PDF-Files-.aspx

You don’t have to live in a giant house to find data transferring over your Wi-Fi network getting choked by walls or floors. If one of your first world problems is Wi-Fi deadzones in your home. Netgear is using CES to launch it’s Universal Dual Band WiFi Range Extender, 4-port Wi-Fi Adapter.

This Wi-Fi extender with the extremely long name will work with any brand wireless a/b/g or n router or gateway. An LED indicator helps you pick the optimum location in your home and a Push ‘N’ Connect button promises to make set up as painless as possible. Since much of the data we tend to move around the world is video like … oh say for example … GadgetReport.TV, Netgears FastLane Tech is designed to deliver maximum performance for streaming videos and gaming.

http://www.netgear.com/WN2500RP

Simple.TV is the first gadget I’ve found at CES that I want. If YOU’RE wanting to cut the cable and are in an area with access to over the air HD or unencrypted cable, you’re set.

SimpleTV is a DVR with a built-in HDTV tuner that converts broadcasts and cable TV into high quality streaming MPEG-4. TV is streamed to devices connected to your network … anything from a Boxee box, a Roku or an iDevice. Recorded shows are stored on any hard drive you choose to connect to it. It won’t give you everything required to replace cable.

You won’t get shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men or True Blood, which to me is just about the only reason cable still maters, but if you’re big thing is network TV shows and live sports, Simple TV is worth a look!

It sells for $149 and there’s a $4.99 monthly fee if you want the guide and access to streaming away from your home network.

https://www.simple.tv

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