ComputerWorld Singapore is reporting that BenQ has a new line of portable storage drives they intend to bring to market beginning this fall. The Pocket Writer products will play and record 8-centimeter optical discs only.
Mock-ups of three different drives were displayed during a Taipei news conference: A CD compatible PW100, a PW200 model for DVD, and possibly most interesting, the PW300 that has been designed for use with Blu-ray Discs. This is according to Jennifer Ho, spokesperson for BenQ's storage division. The 8cm CD discs will hold 200 megs of information and the DVD disc, 1.4 gigabytes.
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Although several devices already offer a similar function, most are targeted at photographers who want to unload memory cards during a day's shooting and are based on hard-disk drives. BenQ decided to go with optical discs because they're cheaper and they enable data to be shared between people easily, said Ho. Imagine attending a wedding and on the way out, you're handed a disc with images from the ceremony, she said. |
The drives will display JPEG images on televisions and play MP3 audio files. The PW200 can also play MPEG 1, 2 or 4 video, however specifications for the Blu-ray compatible PW300 were not available at the time of the report. The PW100 will be offered in September with a list price of $179. Then next February, BenQ will introduce the PW200 and then finally, the PW300 will be released in the third quarter. The pricing was predicted to be $249 for the PW200 but no price was given for the PW300.
The article went on to say that BenQ will also make available in September, the EW164G, which is a 16X USB/FireWire DVD burner with USB On The Go support for an estimated price of $179.
Source: ComputerWorld Singapore
