ASUSTOR Inc., a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, has announced the launch of its brand new AS 3 Series Network Attached Storage (NAS). The AS 3 Series NAS devices feature powerful multimedia applications including support for 1080p high definition video playback and are the first devices in its class to come equipped with Intel Atom 1.6 GHz dual-core processors along with 1 GB of DDR3 memory. The devices in this new series consist of the 2-bay AS-302T model and the 4-bay AS-304T model. All devices boast a wealth of power saving features including internal and external disk hibernation, Night Mode and System Sleep Mode (S3). During System Sleep Mode, only 0.8 W of power is consumed, helping users to save a significant amount of energy.

With respect to hardware, the AS 3 Series was designed with multimedia and home cloud server applications in mind. In addition to its HDMI interface inherited from ASUSTOR's AS 6 Series, the AS 3 Series features an infrared receiver and 3.5 mm audio jack giving users added convenience and flexibility for multimedia applications. After installing the XBMC multimedia player App from ASUSTOR's App Central, users will be able to use the HDMI interface to play audio and video from the NAS directly to any HDMI ready display. Further pairing XBMC with the ASUSTOR remote control (optional purchase) will allow users to freely and conveniently control all multimedia playback from their NAS. Additionally, users are also free to play the music they have stored on their NAS by connecting it to USB speakers, utilizing the audio jack or connecting the NAS to an amplifier via HDMI.

DisplayLink, the leading provider of USB Graphics technology, today launched its latest software driver extending USB Graphics support for Mac OSX platforms. Following strong feedback from DisplayLink MAC OSX demonstrations at CES 2013, the company today announced availability of the latest V2.0 DisplayLink Mac driver supporting up to 4 simultaneous displays over monitors and docking stations enabled by the company's award winning chips and software technology.

"We're excited to be launching the new Mac V2.0 driver," said John Cummins, Vice President Sales and Marketing, "We've experienced a growing demand from the Mac community and witnessed an increase in Mac users both in consumer and enterprise markets globally, and invested heavily to bring our Mac support forwards."

Today, at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, LaCie announced it has the largest range of Thunderbolt solutions certified for use with Thunderbolt equipped Mac or PC. As the preeminent provider of Thunderbolt peripherals, LaCie is the only manufacturer to ensure five products in its Thunderbolt Series are compatible with Mac OS X and Windows 7 and 8 computers.

Intel's Thunderbolt certification program is a thorough process put in place to ensure an optimal end user experience with both Mac and PC. As a result, LaCie ensures its Thunderbolt product family offers universal compatibility and delivers reliable performances up to 800 MB/s for the most challenging media applications.

By far the most comprehensive expansion dock we've come across, the Echo 15 from Sonnet plugs into your MacBook's 10 Gb/s Thunderbolt port, and then productively uses that bandwidth to hook you up with 15 connectivity options. These include a 3.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s internal drive bay (2 TB HDD optional), a slimline optical drive (options include DVDRW and Blu-ray writers), two eSATA 6 Gb/s ports, 4-channel HD audio, four USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ports, gigabit Ethernet, and FireWire 800, each device is Mac OS X compatible. The device features two Thunderbolt ports, so it can be daisy-chained with other devices. Prices start at US $399.95.

HighPoint Technologies is now shipping the Industry's first USB 3.0 Storage HBA available for Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion - the RocketU 1144CM. This third generation, PCIe 2.0 x4 RAID HBA delivers HighPoint's industry-leading 5Gb/s per-port performance and supports up to 4 external USB SSD's, hard drives or Enclosures.

HighPoint's ground breaking RocketU 1144CM is the industry's first USB 3.0 Storage HBA designed specifically for Mac Pro workstation platforms and Mac OS x Mountain Lion. Device drivers are readily available for OS X 10.6.x and later, including the latest revisions of the 10.8.x operating system.

ZOTAC International, a global innovator and leading manufacturer of graphics cards, mainboards and mini-PCs, today embarks on a new era of digital media sharing with the StreamBox and RAIDbox accessories that eases sharing digital audio, video and image files. The ZOTAC StreamBox bridges the gap between mobile devices and television sets to enable easy broadcasting of audio, video and image files from Android smartphones, tablets and notebooks via the industry standard DLNA protocol. Display mirroring capabilities are available for select Android mobile devices via Miracast compatibility.

"We focused on making the ZOTAC StreamBox easy to use for users of all skill levels. All a user needs to do is connect to the ZOTAC StreamBox via WiFi and launch a DLNA-compatible application such as the free Realtek AirFun app and begin sharing your music, movies and images," said Carsten Berger, senior director, ZOTAC International. "Advanced users can take advantage of screen mirroring features found on select devices too."

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird's-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Offering a rare chance to experience a breath of untapped, crystal clear air, Valley Benchmark allows you to encounter a morning high up in the mountains when the snow-capped peaks are just barely glittering in the rising sun. Be it flying over the vast green expanses or hiking along rocky slopes, this journey continues as long you wish. Unique in every corner, this open-space world provides a wonderfully relaxing experience under the tranquil music and sounds of nature.DOWNLOAD: Unigine Valley for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

UNIGINE Corp. has released a new, enhanced version 4.0 of Heaven Benchmark, the GPU intensive benchmark that gained massive popularity among overclockers and hardware manufacturers for hammering their graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system's potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Heaven Benchmark immerses a user into a magical steampunk world of shiny brass, wood and gears. Nested on flying islands, a tiny village with its cozy, sun-heated cobblestone streets, an elaborately crafted dirigible above the expanse of fluffy clouds, and a majestic dragon on the central square gives a true sense of adventure. An interactive experience with fly-by and walk-through modes allows for exploring all corners of this world powered by the cutting-edge UNIGINE Engine that leverages the most advanced capabilities of graphics APIs and turns this benchmark into a visual masterpiece.DOWNLOAD: Unigine Heaven 4.0 for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

HighPoint Technologies launches the Industry's fastest USB 3.0 RAID HBAs available for Mac OS X 10.8x Mountain Lion - the RocketU 1144CM. This third generation, PCIe 2.0 RAID HBA delivers 5 Gb/s per-port performance and supports up to 4 external USB SSD's, hard drives or Enclosures. HighPoint's innovative 4-Port HBA architecture delivers revolutionary USB 3.0 performance. Unlike conventional USB 3.0 HBA's, each port has a dedicated USB 3.0 SuperSpeed controller, and delivers the fastest SATA performance possible over USB connectivity.

The four independent 5 Gb/s USB 3.0 Type-A connectors can be used simultaneously, and deliver an unprecedented transfer bandwidth of 20 Gb/s; ideal for multi-drive configurations of high-performance SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs and hard drives. The RocketU 1144CM is powered by HighPoint's industry proven hardware assisted RAID technology, and was designed specifically for Mac Pro workstations and high-performance applications. RocketU 1144CM HBAs are fully compatible with OSX 10.6x and later, including the most up to date builds of Mountain Lion 10.8x.

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash storage and enthusiast computer products today announces the availability of the new ultraportable Autobahn USB 2.0 drive. Designed for those looking for excellent USB 2.0 performance and high capacity in a micro sized form factor, the Patriot Autobahn is less than 18mm in length and becomes barely noticeable when plugged in.

Car audio enthusiasts can now rock their tunes with ease. The Autobahn is plug-and-play compatible with stereos that support USB connections for hours of music playback, without the hassle of plugging in an external player. The Patriot Autobahn is available in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities to take all your data with you in and ever increasing mobile world.

PROMISE Technology Inc., a leader in providing high-performance storage solutions for the rich media market and the leader in designing cutting-edge Thunderbolt enabled devices, is proud to announce creative professionals and power users on PCs can now leverage the unparalleled performance of the award-winning Pegasus J2 to power them through their creative projects. The ultra-portable PROMISE Pegasus J2, one of the first storage devices with Thunderbolt technology to be certified for PC by Intel Corporation, can deliver up to 750 MB/s of performance, yet it's pocket-sized, enabling users to harness high bandwidth to transfer, playback, or edit media directly from the Pegasus J2 from anywhere.

HighPoint Technologies, Inc., the industry's leading SATA 6Gb/s RAID HBA manufacturer, announces the availability of their second generation SATA 6Gb/s storage controllers - the RocketRAID 600L series. HighPoint's RocketRAID 600L series HBA's represent the industry's most comprehensive, and affordable selection of 6Gb/s SATA PCIe host controllers. Powered by industry-proven RAID technology, SATA port multiplier support, and an intuitive RAID Management Suite, HighPoint RocketRAID 600L HBA's are the ideal SATA 6Gb/s storage solution for any PC and Mac computing platform.

Imation Corp., a global scalable storage and data security company, today announced availability of its next-generation IronKey S250 and D250 hardware-encrypted flash drives. Widely known as The World's Most Secure Flash Drives, the newest IronKey flash drives feature faster performance, a redesigned control panel that supports multiple languages, and new remote management capabilities in its signature rugged, high-security design.

The IronKey S250 and D250 flash drives are available in Basic, Personal and Enterprise editions for enterprise and personal use. The IronKey flash drives deliver powerful protection against data loss and are validated to meet the stringent Security Level 3 requirements of the FIPS 140-2 standard, which fully support corporate and government compliance strategies.

Apple today introduced an all-new version of its popular 13-inch MacBook Pro featuring a stunning Retina display and all flash storage in a new compact design. At a mere 0.75 inches and 3.57 pounds, the remarkably portable 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is 20 percent thinner and almost a pound lighter than the current 13-inch MacBook Pro.

"The 13-inch MacBook Pro is our most popular Mac, and today it gets completely reinvented with a new thin and light design, fast flash storage and a gorgeous Retina display," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With vivid colors, razor sharp text and more pixels than anyone else's 15 or 17-inch notebooks, the Retina display completely changes what you expect from a notebook."

Creative technologies developer Modbook Inc. today announced that customers with shipping addresses in the United States can place orders beginning at 2 p.m. PDT today for the Modbook Pro, the company's innovative 13.3-inch pen tablet computer.

To create an easy one-stop shopping experience, Modbook Inc. has opened ModbookShop.com as the exclusive online source to purchase the Modbook Pro. Customers can visit this page and use the dynamic product configurator to customize their Modbook Pro system's processor (up to 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7), memory (up to 16 GB) and internal storage (up to 480 GB solid-state drive), as well as to build out complete single- or dual-display desktop installations, and even to get Microsoft Windows 7 preinstalled and configured as a primary or secondary operating system.

Creative technologies developer Modbook Inc. today announced that its highly portable 13.3-inch Mac-based pen tablet computer, the Modbook Pro, will forego the traditional internal storage method of hard disk drives (HDDs) in favor of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs). The standard internal storage option on the Modbook Pro will be a 64 GB solid-state drive, with upgrades possible to increase internal SSD storage to 480 GB.

Modbook Inc. today also announced that the ordering process for the Modbook Pro is scheduled to begin next Wednesday, October 3, 2012. Customers with shipping addresses in the United States will be able to order the Modbook Pro online for shipment as early as mid-November.

WD, a subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation, and a world leader in external storage and connected home solutions, is combining two high-speed technologies to produce one of the fastest and most robust dual-storage systems ever offered. Supported by the Mac OS X operating system, the new My Book VelociRaptor Duo dual-drive storage system becomes the ultimate storage drive for performance hungry Mac computer users and creative professionals.

My Book VelociRaptor Duo provides ultimate speed and performance with two 1 TB 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor drives along with two Thunderbolt ports. The 2 TB dual-drive storage system is ideal for editing high resolution video, 3D rendering, graphic design, and other demanding digital media applications. This boost in performance delivers solid state drive (SSD) -like data transfer rates of up to 400 MB/s for greater work-flow productivity. The dual-drive storage system offers RAID 0 for performance or RAID 1 for protection; and the twin Thunderbolt ports offer daisy-chaining multiple My Book VelociRaptor Duo drives and other high performance peripherals without impacting data transfer speeds or performance. The My Book VelociRaptor Duo also comes complete with a Thunderbolt cable in the box and is user-serviceable.

Valve's hit online multiplayer game, Left 4 Dead 2, which was recently ported to Ubuntu along with the Steam client, is found to play faster on the platform than even Windows. The game generates higher frame-rates on Ubuntu with the new OpenGL renderer for Source engine than the Direct3D renderer it uses on Windows.

The disclosure comes as part of Valve's ongoing efforts to optimize the Source engine to the Linux platform, following which, it plans to port more of its game franchises, such as Half Life, Counter Strike, Team Fortress, and Portal. The games will be available on Ubuntu with SteamPlay, allowing users who already own a license for the Windows or Mac OS X versions to simply download and play the game on Ubuntu, without any purchases.

Apple today announced that OS X Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of the world's most advanced desktop operating system, is available as a download from the Mac App Store. With more than 200 innovative new features, Mountain Lion includes iCloud integration, the all new Messages app, Notification Center, system-wide Sharing, Facebook integration, Dictation, AirPlay Mirroring and Game Center. Mountain Lion is available as an upgrade from Lion or Snow Leopard for $19.99.

"People are going to love the new features in Mountain Lion and how easy it is to download and install from the Mac App Store," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With iCloud integration, Mountain Lion is even easier to set up, and your important information stays up to date across all your devices so you can keep editing documents, taking notes, creating reminders, and continue conversations whether you started on a Mac, iPhone or iPad."

Buffalo launched a 2 TB variant of its MiniStation 3.0 portable hard drive (model: HD-PCT2. 0U3-GBJ). Slated for late-July, the drive will be priced at 29,925 JPY (US $380). The drive is built into the conventional MiniStation chassis, which is available in piano-black and pearl-white finishes. The drive is completely bus-powered, and connects to the host over USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface (backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 HiSpeed).

The drive comes pre-formatted with FAT32+ file-system, with the volume storing Windows and MacOS X installers for Buffalo Tools (disk management software) and TurboCopy (speeds up file-transfers). The drive can later be re-formatted to the file-system of your choice, after backing up the installers. Measuring 144 x 77 x 20 mm, the drive weighs about 255 g.

Valve announced porting of its Steam content-distribution platform, Source game engine, and the smash-hit multi-player game title Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2), to Ubuntu (Linux). The port isn't exactly straightforward, as code has to be rewritten for OpenGL. Valve already accomplished most of this, with its Mac OS X port, which uses the same API.

Valve is targeting just one distribution at this time, to minimize "optimization" overheads. Derivatives such as Mint could run the platform just fine. Valve's immediate goals are to get the Steam client to work on Ubuntu with full functionality, launching Steam for Linux with L4D2 (thanks to SteamPlay, gamers with L4D2 on Windows can play it on Ubuntu without additional purchases); and optimizing L4D2 to get additional frame-rates on Ubuntu. Valve is also work to get its other titles ported to Ubuntu.

G-Technology today announced a new line of portable and desktop USB 3.0 storage solutions for a broad range of users from consumers to audio/video professionals. Given the brand's strength in the content creation and Apple Mac community, G-Technology is well positioned to move the Mac industry forward in leveraging high-capacity, high-performance USB 3.0 drives across a variety of customer segments, all while delivering one of the industry's most respected external storage platforms with proven quality, reliability and performance.

Today, new kinds of devices and media formats require considerably more interface bandwidth and higher transfer rates to move, store and edit data quickly. Backward compatible with USB 2.0, G-Technology's USB 3.0 drives deliver speeds 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and six times faster than FireWire 800. This means that users can now transfer two full-length movies from a G-Technology USB 3.0 drive to a computer in minutes.

Apple today updated MacBook Air with the latest Intel Core processors, faster graphics and flash storage that is up to twice as fast as the previous generation.* MacBook Air is the ultimate everyday notebook, and with new lower prices it is more affordable than ever. The current generation 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro have also been updated with the latest Intel Core processors and powerful discrete graphics from NVIDIA. Apple's popular AirPort Express has been redesigned to include features previously available only in AirPort Extreme.

"Today we've updated the entire MacBook line with faster processors, graphics, memory, flash storage and USB 3 connectivity," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "We've made the world's best portable family even better and we think users are going to love the performance advances in both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro."

Weeks after security mogul Eugene Kaspersky opined that Apple is "10 years behind Microsoft on security," Kaspersky Lab revealed that it is collaborating with Apple to investigate security concerns (read: vulnerabilities) of its operating systems, and improve its security. Kaspersky Lab CTO Nikolai Grebennikov in an interview with Computing.co.uk was quoted saying "Apple recently invited us to improve its security."

Kaspersky Lab maintains that Apple's software is extremely vulnerable, going as far as to claim that Apple doesn't pay enough attention to security. "Our first investigations show Apple doesn't pay enough attention to security. For example, Oracle closed a vulnerability in Java, which was a target for a major botnet several months ago," said Grebennikov. Apple's decision to handle updates of Java runtime environment for OS X by itself, breaking away from Oracle's update cycle, particularly drew flack from Grebennikov. "Apple blocked Oracle from updating Java on Mac OS, and they perform all the udpates themselves. They only released the patch a few weeks ago - two or three months after the Oracle patch. That's far too long," he said. Kaspersky isn't too optimistic about the infinitely more popular iOS platform, either. "Our experience tells us that in the near future, perhaps in a year or so, we will see the first malware targeting iOS," it commented.

Connectivity and optical drives are some of the first casualties of Intel's notebook slimming operation to come up with the Ultrabook specification. As a result, a new market is created for external connectivity solutions such as docking stations, which give users additional connectivity when at their desk, while maintaining the added mobility of Ultrabook, when on the move. Japan's Apricorn introduced one such product. Called the NetDock, the device holds a slimline DVD writer drive (included), provision for a 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD, and a 4-port USB 2.0 hub.

The NetDock draws power from an AC adapter, and connects to your Ultrabook over a USB 2.0 connection. Its DVD writer is capable of writing discs at speeds of up to 8X. One of the four downstream USB 2.0 ports is a high-current port for charging other portable devices (such as smartphones, media players, tablets, cameras, etc.). Both drives (the DVD writer, and the added 2.5-inch HDD/SSD) are visible to the host as USB mass storage devices. The NetDock measures 158.8 x 146.1 x 54.0 mm (WxDxH), and supports Windows 7/Vista/XP, and Mac OS X. It will be priced at 7,980 JPY (US $99.99).