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Buffalo drops 4GB USB drive
Having already joined the ranks of 8GB thumb drives, Buffalo has busted out a separate line of "entry-level" USB drives that top out at a mere 4GB. The RUF2-E series apparently don't have the same "UltraSpeed" transfer times of the higher-end RUF2-R series, and they've further differentiated them with a questionable clear bluish-purple casing. Prices start our reasonably at 2,000 Yen ($17 US) for the 128MB model, but you'll have to fork over a whopping 47,800 Yen (or $415 US) for the pleasure of being able to carry 4GB on a string.[Via Digital World Tokyo]
Buffalo spices up spacious NAS line
We can always count on Buffalo to keep the updates rolling for their NAS products, and thanks to cheap and expansive hard drives, we're liking where things are going. Their new 2TB TeraStation holds four drives -- we'll leave the math to you here -- and sports Gigabit Ethernet and RAID 5 compatibility. The LinkStation merely houses a single drive, up to 750GB in capacity, but keeps the Gigabit connectivity for high-speed fun. Both devices also support DLNA to keep the media flowing, but we're not so sure on price or availability. Luckily these are the "consumer" line, so the damage shouldn't be too great.
Netgear and Linksys get draft-n routers reviewed
With all the pain associated, usually there's a bit of a pay-off for early adopters. They are, after all, playing with the "latest and greatest," right? Doesn't seem to be the case with the three new draft-n routers that just hit the market. We already hit up the disappointing Buffalo WZR-G300N, and it seems Netgear's WNR854T and Linksys' WRT300N fared little better. In fact, neither product managed to best its own predecessor. The PC Mag reviewer did have a lot of love for the actual setup and feature set of both of these products, with snazzy parental controls from Linksys and a built-in Gigabit Ethernet switch from Netgear (a first for consumer routers) among the evident router maturity these two companies have reached. Sadly, the fun stopped there, since out of the box neither product managed much connectivity at all, and even after firmware updates the two routers marked up some pretty lame benchmarks. Netgear beat all with 124mbps at 10 feet and 105mbps at 60 feet, but its lame 28mbps at 120 feet and abysmal 2.8mbps at 160 feet were thoroughly trounced by Netgear's own RangeMax 240 pre-n product. Linksys, like Buffalo, didn't even manage a signal at 160 feet, and across the board lost to its own pre-n product, the SRX400. That's gotta hurt. As much as we love that bleeding edge, we think we're going to sit this round out, mmkay?Read - Netgear WNR854TRead - Linksys WRT300N
Buffalo pre-N AirStation Nfiniti reviewed
Not one to let a little thing like standards acceptance get in their way, Buffalo has forged ahead (like so many others) and released their pre-N router, the AirStation Nfiniti. In case you're wondering how it actually performs, the good folks at TrustedReviews got their hands on a unit to see if it lives up to Buffalo's claims. Which are indeed pretty impressive, touting 300 Mbps for dual channel products and a blazing 600 Mbps for products taking advantage of all four spatial data streams. Unfortunately, TrustedReviews found those numbers to be too good to be true, receiving a much more modest 75 Mbps under ideal conditions, and testing real world performance they found that drop further to 46 Mbps. Still not too shabby, but you'll have to decide if it's worth the $200 US price tag and potential obsolescence whenever the final 802.11n standard is actually ratified by the IEEE.
Buffalo LinkTheater Wireless Media Player for Viiv PCs
If you like the idea of BenQ's Viiv-flavored DMP300 Digital Media Player we saw yesterday, but would so much prefer a version with snazzy antennas, Buffalo has you covered. It's the very same remote Internet applications and premium content that Viiv support enables, just this time in a Buffalo box, and featuring a USB 2.0 port for plugging in digital cameras and portable audio players. Codec support is hefty, with audio (MP3, WMA, AAC, LPCM), image (JPEG, BMP, PNG), and video (MPEG 1/2/4, WMV 7/8/9, XviD) formats well represented, along with DRM like DTCP-IP and Windows Media DRM 10 for Network Devices. There's an Ethernet port along with the 802.11a/b/g wireless connection, but though the device has S-Video and composite outputs, component video only works off of a D4 port via an included adapter, and no mention is made of HDMI. The LinkTheater should be available later this month for around $250.
Buffalo's latest USB key packs 8 gigs
They're not the first and most surely won't be the last to join the club, but Buffalo has just added an 8GB thumb drive to their flash lineup. The RUF2-R8G-S manages to squeeze the gigs into a 0.75 x 3.6 x 0.55 enclosure, and promises 32MB/s write and 27MB/s read speeds over USB 2.0. No word on price, but we're sure the Yen required will be many. Now how about a bit of 16GB action?[Via Akihabara]
Patoh's external P2P client / NAS
What do you get when you cross a 250GB Buffalo LinkStation network attached storage (NAS) device with some custom home-server software, a multi-protocol peer-to-peer client that supports FTP, Kad, BitTorrent, Overnet, FastTrack, and eDonkey? Well, for one you get a small device -- not unlike the LamaBox -- that can continuously download and seed your torrent data after you've shut down for the night, thereby keeping that ratio up and preventing you from getting booted from your fav invite-only tracker into the cold, harsh world of Scandieland downloads from less reliable anonymous sources. Do we sound like we know way too much about this stuff? Maybe so, which probably has something to do with the fact that we're a little stoked for Patoh's external RochiP2P 250, which should supposedly set you back €299 ($380 US) for the above features in that same familiar looking old Buffalo box shown here. Unfortunately it appears the Patoh uses desktop software to control all those torrents instead of a nice web interface, but we, um, never get our media online or do any torrenting ourselves, so what Patoh does or doesn't do with their products is really none of our concern. Ahem.
Buffalo's "all the cool kids are doing it" Blu-ray burner
They're just stuffing that Panasonic OEM drive into a USB 2.0 case like everyone else is, but Buffalo has the distinction of selling their external BR-H2U2 Blu-ray drive for $1012, along with black and white internal versions for the equally steep $916. The drives will be shipping (in Japan, at least) early this June, so early adopters looking for a little abuse between now and then can feel free to drop by our place to be kicked in the head and have your money lit on fire.[Via Akihabara News]
Buffalo HD VOD set-top; is a new trend emerging?
Buffalo introduced a high-def VOD box in the Far East and we noticed a few things. Right of the bat, there's no reason to assume that we'll see this box from Buffalo here in the States, however, they do sell multimedia and wireless networking products here. Clearly, based on the D1 outputs, this set-top shown above is for the Japanese market. It's interesting to note that the logo on the front looks a bunch like the li'l TiVo dude, but again, that's just a casual observation. The real interesting aspect to this is the apparent trend building for high-def on demand via the Internet.MovieBeam hit us two weeks ago, but Disney opted for an analog spectrum signal to gather up all of those HD bits and bytes. Now we see Buffalo with a device that uses the much faster broadband method. If this keeps up, pre-packaged content in the form of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray might have a very short shelf life.Is this the beginning of the newest trend? If so, what's Microsoft doing with their WMCE platform which clearly has similar capabilities like this box from Buffalo and the others that are sure to follow? Better yet: will the TiVo Series 3 include support for high-def broadband downloads? Let the speculation begin...
