On 8 Mar 2005 at 11:39, Frantisek wrote: > Hi, > another concern of mine about these devices is that most of them > seem to not be well shock protected. The devices I was able to see > insides of (the ones that have user-changeable HDD and somebody > posted photos on internet), do not have any shock protection for > either the PCB with electronics or the harddrive itself. I assume > 2.5" notebook drives have reasonably rugged mechanics inside,
<snip> > What I would like to see in such an unit would be: > > 1) shock-mounted innards. Electronics AND hdd. The 2.5" lap-top HDD now have pretty extraordinary shock resistance when they are parked (shut down) and far greater shock resistance than larger drives when in operation. I don't think the robustness of a small fibre glass board is of any real concern, lap-top bards usually fail when they are bent or twisted, small boards are very shock resistant if they are properly supported in a robust frame. Adding any kind of shock mounting will significantly increase the volume of the unit, not desirable for portable devices. Most come with a padded case but there is nothing stopping anyone a little paranoid from building a more robust case or even carting one about in a little Pelican case or something similar. > 2) in the best models, dustproof and spilllproof Most won't suffer from dust problems but spill proof isn't a feature I guess you'll see too soon, the solution again would be back to the Pelican case idea I suspect. > 3) easy and reliable verification of transfers My current CompactDrive illuminates a red LED if it encounters a verification error. > 4) running on interchangeable batteries (rechargeable (secondary) AAs seem > to > be the best, as you can get longlasting primary Lithiums when you can't > recharge the NiMHs, _with_ voltage regulation (so for 5V HDDs, running from > 5-6AA cells _with_ regulated voltage down to stable 5V. The Compactdrive is > unregulated, sadly. These devices could be regulated but they would need to implement a small DC-DC switch-mode supply if running on 4 regular rechargable cells, unfortunately even with the most efficient regulation there would be significant mAh consumed by the regulation system alone. > Is that asking too much ;-) ? In a word, yep > I guess it's again the old quality vs. quantity... vs price vs market potential Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
