Heads up, Apple — there’s a new cowboy in town, and its name is Ripserver. Taking an Apple-ish design nod for all things sleek and shiny, this new unit (set to officially release on March 1 but available for pre-order now) lets you store, rip and serve in one tight little package. With an aim to make the process of ripping all of your CDs as simple as possible, Ripserver is a true standalone piece of conversion storage — no monitor, no keyboard, just plug the unit into your network connection and your files are at your fingertips, quickly converted by inserting your CDs into the slot loading drive for a full disc rip in minutes (you can even adjust the MP3 options to set your own bit rate).

The embedded operating platform runs on Linux with an integrated UPnP server and USB access for direct access from computer to peripheral and back again. Ripserver is available in two different storage sizes — both 500GB and 1TB — and is compatible with any media player or device that can network share. Reserve yours now for £599 - £699 directly from the manufacturer’s website.

Sure, the new MacBook Air laptop is all the buzz this week — “thinspiration” straight from Apple — but we’re kind of excited about this new release, too. Anyone with a wealth of information on their computer certainly feels the pain of regularly backing things up; might as well scratch an afternoon off your calendar to spend time sorting through files, dragging and dropping, and weeding out needless junk. Apple wants to take some of the stress out of data storage with their new Time Capsule, a wireless hard drive with a 802.11n Wi-Fi base station that works seamlessly with the Time Machine utility in Mac OS X Leopard to automatically back up your computer. Available in 1TB and 500GB models (that’s at least a couple of years worth of data, right?), you can back up all of the computers in your home cable-free, connect the Time Capsule to your DSL or cable modem to create a new wireless network, use it as a wireless drive on both your Mac and PC, attach a printer via USB for wireless printing from any computer anywhere in your home, plus connect/transfer easily from your iPhone, Apple TV, iPod Touch and all of your other fun Wi-Fi goodies. Neat! The 500GB and 1TB models are available directly from Apple for $299 and $499 (won’t ship til February, but that’s only a couple of weeks off, and it sounds like this one is worth the wait).

Ever felt like chucking your computer into the bathtub after a really stressful day? (Sure, “out the window” is conventional and all, but the idea of a good deep-six is just as satisfying after the third crashed application sometimes.) Sentry Group Partners and Maxtor have teamed up to build a storage solution that’ll let you do just that — and still have a functioning drive afterwards when your temper simmers down. Oh, and it’s also nice for natural/in-home disasters too, not necessarily just protection against your own violent rages.

Sentry Group and Maxtor made the announcement today at the Consumer Electronics Show in New York, previewing six new Data and Document Security products that specifically protect digital assets. King among the group was the introduction of the FIRE-SAFE/Waterproof Hard Drive, containing the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini hard drive with a full suite of software protection tools and new software that allows for nearly instantaneous restoration of an entire computer system including applications and personal settings. But it’s not just a low-hassle recovery drive, oh no — the drive is set in a protected enclosure that promises to protect data from fire AND water, ETL verified for fire protection for 30 minutes up to 1550 degrees and fully-submersible waterproof for up to 24 hours (on the 25th hour, the barnacles start doing their dirty work I guess).

The new FIRE-SAFE/Waterproof Hard Drive is available in 80 and 160 GB models for $259.99 and $319.99 directly from the SentrySafe website.

Have you ever wanted the freedom to connect computers to the net from anywhere in your home without the use of complicated and sometimes lagging wireless technology? If so then the Homeplug AV Ethernet Bridge from Intellinet is for you. This magical piece of technological gadgetry allows you to network computers through your home’s existing AC power line with the latest power line technology and enhanced security.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of these Intellinet home kits and I must say that it really does an outstanding job. I happen to have an older house that I would rather not be ripping apart to run my own cat5 lines and I just can’t stand the unreliability and slower speed of regular wireless connecting so the Homeplug is a perfect solution. The best part of this product was that it is so easy to use and set up that I can say with confidence that absolutely anyone could do it

The Ethernet Bridge Kit came with everything I needed including two bridges, plugs, and Ethernet cables to connect to my router and any other workstation of my choice. I had my network up and running within 5 minutes of un-boxing with its exceptional plug and play capabilities and the performance was better than I expected. My testing station was a full 3 rooms and 50 feet away from my router and I had no noticeable loss in speed from a standard Ethernet connection and 4X better speeds than my wireless connection. At 17 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up I could not detect the slightest difference in my connection speeds.

I can’t stress enough just how pleased I was with this device and how amazed I was that it ran so perfectly in a big old house with lots of big old wiring. If you want to extend the range of your network without all the fancy wiring you can get your hands on one of these 200Mbps starter kits for just under $250 or if you don’t need that kind of speed, $129 for the 85 Mbps version and be confident that it is money well spent.

Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing, just can’t catch a break these days. First the Treo gets generally slammed by the public for failing to be as sexy and modern as its competitors in the handheld device arena, and then he releases “the most exciting project [he's] ever worked on” the same day Microsoft goes media-nuclear with The Surface. Still, this may not just be poor PR and production — the kids might be on to something by failing to do virtual backflips over the new Palm Foleo.

First, let’s be clear: this IS NOT a laptop. Sure, it’s masquerading as a slim little lappy, but don’t get confused — the Foleo is merely a companion device to the Treo. Maybe merely is a little harsh; it does run a Linux-based OS with a 10-inch display (because who isn’t sick of staring at tiny screens) and full-sized keyboard that lets you sync up with your Treo to view/send emails and edit documents. Representatives are quick to point out that the Foleo is light (2.5 lbs), boasts 5 hours of battery life, comes with a Wi-Fi connection, and is expected to also work with BlackBerry devices and the new iPhone. Unfortunately, when you strip away the oohs and aahs of a simple design and easy plug-and-play functionality, what’ve you got?

For $500, and without some really revolutionary advances, it’s tough to get too excited over this smartphone extension. Sorry, Jeff.

Sony’s latest Vaio offers something no other manufacture has done yet - a 2.5-inch 160GB disk and a 1.8-inch 32GB SSD together.

This laptop is perfect and goes against the argument that “Flash memory isn’t enough in laptops to store out data.” The VAIO TZ completely wipes out this statement as you can have your OS installed on the Flash drive, and all other important data on the larger disk.

Also added to the notebook is a newly designed keyboard that has been carried over from earlier Sony’s and similar to the one found on Apple’s consumer based MacBook line.

This laptop looks promising, it will start to hit shelves May 26th.

I don’t know if it’s the best bendable product since crazy straws, but LG.Philips LCD got my attention yesterday by announcing the release of their new flexible 14.1-inch color screen. The A4 size screen, maxing out at 4,096 colors, can be viewed from a full 180 degrees, which means the image is always crystal clear.

And no, it’s not mirrors or “meers” or whatever that little girl in the TI commercial with the elephant in the field seemed so excited about. LG.Philips LCD is making use of electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. and a substrate that arranges Thin-Film Transistors on metal foil, making the final display ridiculously thin (300 micrometers), pliable and able to return to its original shape. Double bonus: the display is extremely energy efficient since it only uses energy when the displayed image is changed.

No word yet on when or how you’ll see these screens on product shelves, but I like the idea of a display that’s got some flexibility to it. Just think, no more limp-noodle laptop monitor hinges because you’re having to constantly crank it back and forth to get the right angle — or even cooler, being able to roll it up and tuck it in your back pocket.

If you’re a Mac owner, you’re probably used to waiting awhile for products to come out with a Mac-compatible version. Luckily, the great ideas always trickle up — like Blu-ray Discs, offering massive high-quality storage in the palm of your hand.

Forget CDs and DVDs (that inevitably end up sloppily stacked on your desktop) or external hard drives (let’s face it, they’re not meant for laptop travel), FastMac’s Blu-ray slot loading drive lets you write — and rewrite — up to 50GBs on its dual-layer disc. Just think, you could have all of your photos, movies and music available in a click without bogging down your operating drive or flipping through DVD cases.

The Blu-Ray drive is fully backwards compatible with plug-and-play functionality; it even comes bundled with Toast 8 Titanium, including a new Dynamic Writing feature that lets you use Blu-ray like a hard disk drive. Starting at $499.95, get the right model for your Mac at FastMac.

For the seasoned traveler Averatec has rolled out an 11.1-inch ultra-portable notebook, packing a snappy processor into a super portable frame.

The 11.1-inch machine features a 1.06GHz Intel Core Duo U2400 processor, WXGA resolution, 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, 802.11a/b/g, and a flash card reader that plays nice with SD, MMC, MS, and MSPro. No word on battery life as yet, we’ll have to wait for the machine to start shipping before reports start revealing more.

This nifty machine is more than capable of handling simple Microsoft Word documents or emails and by adding an external display many could turn this into their main desktop and portable workstation.

It retails for $1,275, not much more than Apple’s closest rivaling 13.3-inch MacBook at $999.

The Drobo is one of the most innovative and exciting products I’ve seen in years - I’m so hyped about this product and it’s not even released yet (for another couple of months).

The Drobo is labeled as a “Storage Robot”. It will hold up to 4 SATA hard-drives and it’s smart enough to allow you to hot-swap, replace, or remove these drives without losing any data. You can combine up to four hard drives into a big pool of protected storage. Start with two, grow to four, then upsize smaller drives without having to interact with your machine in any way.

The device is plug and play so, all you have to do is simply connect it to your machine without having to install any additional software. The Drobo also acts as a normal external HDD so, it shows up on your desktop as simply one big disk.

Check out the video to get a better idea of what this product is capable of and if you have so much money you don’t even know what to do with it, head over to the Drobo Store and place your order for a mere $499 (without drives).