Crave

Epson PictureMate Show

(Credit: Epson)

Families around the world are sure to take tons of digital snapshots of loved ones for the holiday season, but how to get the photos off the camera? Epson's new PictureMate Show compact photo printer brings images to life with a dual purpose: you can also use it as a digital photo frame.

The Show works as both a digital photo frame and a compact photo printer thanks to its small size and 7-inch WVGA tilt screen that beautifully displays hi-res photos. Transferring pictures to the viewer is made easy using the 270MB of internal memory, but there's also a media card reader and a USB port on the side for downloading images from any digital camera.

Once you have the photos loaded, you can perform simple edits like cropping or resizing, but you can also set the device to automatically correct your photos before printing.

Unlike other portable dye-sublimation printers, the Epson PictureMate Show uses the company's own proprietary "Advanced MicroPiezo" technology, optimized for photo printing. Epson tells us the product produces vibrantly colored 4x6-inch photos in 37 seconds, but we'll need to put it to the test before we give our official review.

The Epson PictureMate Show is available now for $300. More pics after the jump.

Inside this shiny black monolith: a whopping 1.5 terabytes of storage.

(Credit: Dell)

Storage junkie that I am, I loved seeing terabyte hard drives dip below $100 this year, and then drop as low as $75.

Today we've reached another milestone: Dell has a Western Digital Elements 1.5-terabyte USB hard drive for $99.99 shipped. Yowza.

That's an awful lot of storage for less than $100. In fact, it's probably more than most people need, though I'd rather have too much space than too little.

The Elements sports a USB 2.0 interface. Curiously, Western Digital doesn't list the speed of the drive itself, which leads me to think it runs at 5,400 rpm, not 7,200. Consequently, it's probably not a performance dynamo, though I reckon it's fine for everyday tasks.

You can pair the drive with a Mac or Windows system; I believe it comes preformatted for the latter. (Thus, Mac users would need to reformat it, which is no biggie.)

The only real catch here is that Dell shows a ship time of "6+ weeks." Sheesh! Well, as long as you're not in a hurry, this is without a doubt the most bang you can get for your storage buck.

Bonus deal: Today only, you can get a refurbished Epson Stylus NX110 multifunction printer for just $19.99 shipped (with coupon code SAV40). Unreal, right? Amazingly, it includes a one-year warranty. Sadly, I've seen some fairly scathing user reviews of this model, so even at $20 it might not be worth it.

Just thought I'd show something different to illustrate how the XL2370 takes advantage of its technology.

(Credit: Josh P. Miller/CNET)

Over the last few months I've seen a flood of LED-based monitors released, and by "flood" I mean like four. Thing is, four is a huge improvement over the first half of the year where we saw fewer than half that number of LED-backlit monitors come through these offices.

While I'm as excited as the next person about the prospects of LED-based displays, not all of them live up to their promise of brighter screens, thinner panels, and more accurate colors.

There are a few that do and a couple others that come close. I've compiled a short list of my current favorites.

If your eyes aren't crossing yet from reading about all those Black Friday deals (and if you follow The Cheapskate, we're guessing they aren't), we've got another bargain to tell you about on this pre-Cyber-Monday Sunday.

(Credit: Brother)

Staples is knocking $70 off the $119.98 Brother HL-2140 laser printer, which puts the device at $49.98 with free delivery. That adds up to a solid deal for this home and home office peripheral.

The monochrome printer measures 6.7 inches by 14.5 inches by 14.2 inches and weighs 15 pounds. It has a print speed up to 23 ppm and resolution up to 2400x600 dpi. It has an input paper capacity of 250 sheets and an output capacity of 100 and comes with a one-year manufacturer limited warranty.

More than 300 customer reviews on the Staples site added up to an overall 4.3-star (out of 5) rating for the device, with easy setup, fast print time, compact design, and sharp detail rating among commonly cited pros, and a few people dinging it for flimsy construction and easily jamming. CNET users weren't far behind, giving the printer an average of 4 out of 5 stars.

In any case, if you're looking to print out all those other deals you read about on CNET in the last few days, $49.98 isn't a bad deal for a printer by a reputable maker that appears to score well with consumers.

Got questions on how to choose a printer? Check out CNET's Printer buying guide. It breaks down printer users into various categories--home user, digital photographer, entrepreneur, budding novelist, etc.--to help you figure out what you sort of specs will best match your needs.

Is that a printer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see the $29 price tag?

Happy Black Friday, everyone! As promised, I spent the morning avoiding retail stores, though I did see a few advertised items that were mighty tempting. Anybody brave the cold, the crowds, the 4 a.m. alarm clock?

Anyway, remember the Dell Wasabi pocket printer from a couple months back? It was a killer deal at $29 shipped, but it sold out quickly.

Amazon is offering the Wasabi's kissing cousin, the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer, for $29.99 shipped.

This is one of those zero-ink (a.k.a. ZINK) printers that made headlines last year. That means it uses, duh, zero ink, instead heating the crystals embedded in special photo paper (like this $8.67 30-pack, which is worth tossing in the cart).

Consequently, the printer itself is tiny, measuring just 0.9 inch thick by 4.7 inches long by 2.8 inches wide and weighing a mere 8 ounces (with its rechargeable battery installed).

So the PoGo can literally ride around in a pocket and churn out prints on-demand. Prints from where? Any PictBridge-compatible camera or, better yet, most Bluetooth-equipped camera phones.

I bought that virtually identical Dell Wasabi back in September, and while the reviewers are right that print quality is only so-so, I gotta say I love the little thing. (Just wish I could print via Bluetooth from my iPhone!).

Because the paper has peel-and-stick backing, my whole family is having fun pasting little photos all over the place.

Consequently, I think this makes a great gift. And it's available in black or red (oooh, red!) for that same price.

Like just about everything I've posted this week, it'll probably sell out fast (grrr), so if you want one, hurry up and get clicking.

Seriously, a plant pot in your monitor. I bet you'll never question the "greeness" of this monitor now!

(Credit: Josh P. Miller/CNET)

LED monitors were the new hotness at CES last January, but it wasn't until the Samsung SyncMaster XL2370 debuted that we really started to believe in them.

That was the first monitor that really seemed to live up to what has been promised by LED monitor manufacturers'.

That monitor was followed by several more that, while not as impressive as the Samsung SyncMaster XL2370, were still good, solid monitors--like the LG W2486L and AOC V22.

The new BenQ V2400 Eco gets a few things right--very low power consumption and a thin design. Not to mention a small pot built into the footstand, just in case you wanted start a small garden in your monitor. Seriously.

Check out the full review to see what else it gets right (and wrong).

Buffalo Technology seems to have won the race as the first vendor to actually ship a USB 3.0 hard drive.

Buffalo's new USB 3.0 hard drive

(Credit: Buffalo Technology)

The company announced Tuesday that it is shipping its new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external DriveStation HD-HXU3. Tapping into the speed of the new USB 3.0 spec, the drive can push data at least three times faster than a USB 2.0 drive.

Available in 1-terabyte, 1.5TB, and 2TB capacities, the drive is backward-compatible with existing USB 2.0 computers, said Buffalo. The company is also releasing a two-port USB 3.0 PCI card, so users can upgrade their desktop PCs to take advantage of the drive's higher speeds.

Since the USB 3.0 Promoter Group finalized the new USB 3.0 standard about a year ago, vendors have been pushing to get their new products out the door.

Buffalo had been dueling with Netherlands-based company Freecom to actually deliver the first USB 3.0 hard drive to consumers, not just announce it. Freecom had issued a press release promoting its own USB 3.0 drive in September. That drive was supposed to be available in Europe by mid-November, but I was unable to find any European vendors selling it online.

Responding to an earlier request for comment, a Freecom representative said that samples of the drive were sent to some PC manufacturers and key customers this month. But due to an order backlog, the drive would not generally be available to all customers until next year.

With its higher transfer rates, the new USB standard is ideal for moving around large images as well as huge audio and video streams. As such, USB 3.0 is seen as competition for other high-speed transfer technologies, such as eSATA and FireWire.

Though USB 3.0 offers a theoretical maximum burst rate of 625MB or 4.8 gigabits per second, neither the Buffalo nor Freecom drive will come close to that mark at this point. Freecom has rated its drive at 130 megabits per second while a Buffalo representative told me his company's drive would average around 120Mbps.

USB 3.0 has been promoted as offering speeds up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0. But manufacturers will need time to rev up their new drives to approach that threshold.

When will the new Buffalo drive actually hit the stores? The company rep said it's now shipping to online vendor Microcenter and should be available for purchase the week of December 7. Estimated prices are $199 for the 1TB, $249 for the 1.5TB, and $399 for the 2TB.

Updated at 10:25 a.m. PST to include a response from Freecom.

Data Robotics eSATA-enabled Drobo S

(Credit: Data Robotics)

Finally, it looks like the Drobo storage system I've been waiting for has arrived.

I've been struggling with the right way to deal with data as I move from a desktop machine with abundant internal storage to a laptop that can't fit my burgeoning photo library. Earlier four-drive Drobo models, with FireWire and USB ports, looked better at backup than storing live files I'd be using constantly.

But Monday, Data Robotics announced the Drobo S, a five-bay, $799 storage system that adds an eSATA connection to the mix.

Drobo systems use technology called BeyondRAID that stores data across a mixture of different drives. It offers redundancy and automatically rebuilds your files when you replace an older drive or add a new one that's more capacious. Drobos don't come cheap, but they offer longevity, and right now Amazon is selling 1.5-terabyte drives for $99.

So why should the prospect of dropping $1,000 on a storage system excite me? Because of eSATA. ... Read more