By Andrew Liszewski
From SmartDisk comes an extension to their FireLite line of portable hard drives with the FireLite XPress. What sets this version apart is the use of a cholesteric liquid crystal screen (like e-ink technology but with a much slower refresh rate) that allows it to display information about the drive even when the unit is not powered on or connected to a computer.
With the included software the user can adjust what information is shown on the screen and how it is displayed. For example with a 6-point font size the 240 x 160 pixel screen will display 12 lines of text. Displayed information can include the user-designated drive name, the last date data was transferred to the drive and even a list of the drive contents. (Though unless the display can be scrolled a table of contents for a 60GB drive will probably not fit on a 12 line display.)
The FireLite XPress drives with the always-on display should be available in June and will retail at $199.99 for the 60GB model and $299.99 for the 120GB model.
[SmartDisk FireLite XPress Portable HD] VIA [Rob Galbraith DPI]
SmartDisk announces FireLite XPress drive with always-on screen…
We’ve seen a number of LCD screens on flash drives
before, but displays on portable hard drives are relatively few and far
between (if there is one, it’s probably more of a PMP than a hard
drive). Well, SmartDisk
is attemping to stand out from th…
The ChLCD module used in this product is passively addressed -it is not an active matrix display. In a direct drive or active matrix drive scheme, ChLCD’s refresh faster than electrophoretic (Eink) technology. (Eink typically uses a much more expensive active matrix backplane that can address pixels individually.)
The SmartDisk FireLite Xpress Hard Drive…
I know what you’re thinking, "big deal, another hard drive" but the SmartDisk FireLite Xpress boasts one cool feature of having a screen that can display information about the drive.? Now you won’t have to hook it up to see that last time …
Why didn?t they just use e-paper?