Maingear ships $999 MX-L 15 multimedia laptop

Catering to its usual audience, Maingear has launched a new multimedia-friendly laptop. The MX-L 15 starts at $999 and is outfitted with a 15.6-inch 1366x768 display, an Intel Core i5-520M 2.4GHz processor, 2GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM, an AMD Mobility Radeon 4570 512MB, a 160GB 7200RPM HDD, and a DVD burner.

There are a variety of hardware options available, and the MX-L 15 maxes out with a 1600x900 LCD, a 1.73GHz Core i7-820QM, 8GB of RAM, a 320GB disk or 512GB flash drive, and a Blu-ray reader. All configurations include gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth, a 2MP webcam, HD audio, and a six-cell battery.


The MX-L15 ships with your choice of Windows 7 Home Premium 32/64-bit, Professional, or Ultimate -- and absolutely no bloatware. It's also backed by lifetime labor and phone support as well as one-year of Maingear's "Angelic Service."

Asus intros first networked media player with USB 3.0

Asus has quietly introduced a third member to the O!Play family at CeBIT. Although its specifications are mostly unknown, the O!Play HD2 is billed as the first networked media player to carry SuperSpeed USB 3.0. The company promises a "wealth of cloud infotainment," including access to more than 20,000 digital radio and 100 Internet TV channels.


Visible front-mounted connections include USB, eSATA, and memory card slots, while composite video is likely to be on the rear. As with O!Play systems before it, the HD2 should be able to feed 1080p HD video over a user's home network via Ethernet or over 802.11 Wi-Fi. It also boasts complete HD audio bit stream support for uncompressed 7.1-channel sound output, and is reportedly outfitted with a 3.5-inch hard drive.

Unfortunately, that's all Asus is willing to share for now, and there is no word on a release date or price.

Super Talent announces new USB 3.0 SuperCrypt drive, 16GB Express Drive to cost less than $70

Super Talent unveiled its third and latest USB 3.0 flash drive at CeBIT this week. Dubbed SuperCrypt Drive, the new series promises read speeds of up to 240MB/s and two different AES encryption options: 128-bit ECB on the regular SuperCrypt and 256-bit XTS encryption on the SuperCrypt Pro drive. Additionally, both units offer an STT encryption utility for password control.


As expected, the series is fully backward compatible with USB 2.0, so you'll be able to use the drives on just about any computer -- transfer speeds will be restricted by the older standard, of course. Storage capacities range from 16GB to 256GB for the SuperCrypt and 32GB to 256GB for the SuperCrypt Pro. The company says that the USB 3.0 drives will be available later this month but has yet to announce a price.

In the same vein we just contacted Super Talent for an update on their mainstream USB 3.0 Express Drive, which will offer sustained write speeds of around 50MB/s and is also expected to debut this month. The manufacturer was able to confirm that the 16GB unit should sell for under $70 but says it hasn't worked out the specific pricing for the whole series yet. In any case, assuming they sell for somewhere between $60-70, that works out to a $20-35 premium over your average 16GB thumb drive -- not too bad for the speed bump.

Super Talent also said the new SuperCrypt drives will be priced a lot lower than their top-of-the-line RAIDDrive USB 3.0 -- but that's not saying much considering the latter starts at around $330 for 32GB.