If you’ve been reading our column of late, you’d have noted that we’ve reviewed several products related to making videos. One thing we failed to discuss is how to store all those huge files — especially if you’re on the road. While we see the future as cloud storage for all of your files, there are still situations where a portable hard drive is needed. The solution we’ve come up with is the Seagate Backup Plus 2TB Portable hard drive.
First off, it’s compact — smaller than an iPhone. It comes with a candy apple red finish, a USB 3.0 drive cable and Seagate’s Dashboard software. It’s pretty much plug and play. The drive is powered by juice coming from the USB port, so there’s no plugging it into your wall. That makes it ideal for travel.
There are two terabytes of storage on this tiny little box, and it’s super fast. It backed up all the data in my desktop PC in less than an hour. You can use Dashboard to back up your PC, your smartphone and your social media sites.
Backups can be slated hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, or simply schedule a continuous backup which adds data from new or altered files. It also gives you an option to back up into the Seagate’s cloud service called Nero.
We kept it plugged into a desktop, and it ran continuously, without getting hot. (It got warm but not hot.) If you’re going to be shooting video on the road or even as a backup or archive of your home systems, this is a great option. The price is $100 on Amazon.
KEYBOARDS FROM ZAGG
We also had a chance to look at the ZAGG Auto-fit keyboard — a universal design that fits 8-inch Android tablets. My colleague Rob Kay had a chance to take the product on a writing assignment to Malaysia and test it on the road. He used the Ellipsis 7 tablet from Verizon, an inexpensive, nondescript product that proved a great test-bed.
The case has a solid, spring-loaded tray that allows it to adapt to a range of 7- to 8-inch tablets, and it fit perfectly with the Verizon Ellipsys, which is about 71⁄2 inches wide. The spring-loaded feature means that you can simply pop in the tray like a piece of bread in a toaster. It was easy to set up and synched with no problems to the keyboard. It charges via a microUSB cable (included) and, according to the documentation, will last a year on a charge with typical use. Our model didn’t hold the charge quite that long, but that may have had something to do with my colleague not turning off the keyboard switch.
The keyboard is by definition small, but ZAGG has large keys that do allow touch typing. Admittedly it took some getting used to but works well once you’re acclimated. We mostly used it to retrieve email and surf the Web, but it was pressed into service to make some changes on a website.
Given its condensed size, ergonomics were pretty good — what we really liked was the stiff clamshell hinge, which allows use of the tablet at different viewing angles.
It features a row of dedicated control keys including Home, Back, Lock, Cut, Copy and Paste. There are volume control keys along with media player controls and a battery life indicator.
In conclusion, we think this is a great solution if you’re on the road. The keyboard has a nice touch, and it’s robust. Given the Lilliputian dimensions, you probably wouldn’t want to type out your next novel with this device, but it’s much more convenient than typing on the screen.
The price is around $89, but I’ve seen it for less on Amazon.
Mike Meyer, formerly Internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is now chief information officer at Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu.
