A few weeks ago, we ran a short post about the release of OWC's Mercury On-The-Go Solid-State Drives. The drives, which come in the same miniscule transparent drive enclosures used by OWC for the rest of the bus-powered drive line, use SSD technology to provide users with more shock resistance and higher read speeds than traditional "spinning platter" hard drives.

OWC provided a demo unit for TUAW to try out, and I had an opportunity to use the drive in both day-to-day Time Machine backup work and for backing up some large video files. While the drives, which come in 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB sizes, are more expensive than their hard drive counterparts, they do offer benefits that may be critical for some users.

I'm pretty paranoid about making sure that backups are done on all of my Macs. That's why I carry a small Western Digital MyPassport hard drive with me wherever I go with my MacBook Air, since I do at least one Time Machine backup a day -- even when I'm on the road.

This is my second MyPassport drive. That's not saying that anything is wrong with the Western Digital drives; it's just that the first one I owned fell off of a classroom desk while a backup was in progress, pulling out the USB cable and dropping about three feet onto a hard floor. The drive appeared to be OK, but never worked again.

That's why I was happy to hear that OWC announced the Mercury On-The-Go Pro series of portable bus-powered SSD drives yesterday. Solid-state drives, since they have no moving parts, can put up with a lot more abuse than traditional platter-based drives. They also offer better read performance than regular hard drives, and are often less power-hungry.

The drives come in three different capacities -- 64 GB (US$279.99), 128 GB (US$449.99), and 256 GB (US$729.99) -- and all offer 64 MB of cache, as well as Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Being bus-powered, they don't need an AC adapter, making the On-The-Go Pro series perfect for road trips.

While SSD drives are still more expensive than traditional hard drives, they're definitely more rugged, and in the long run that might be less costly than replacing a dropped hard drive. I've had extremely good success with OWC's products in the past, making this a doubly-attractive proposition. Of course, making sure my students don't cause my drives to take a dive off of a desk is a cheaper solution!

There's a thread on Apple's Discussion Boards this week regarding trouble with the latest MacBook Pros with 7200RPM drives. Specifically, the machines are clicking (most users report the click as coming from the drive's location) followed by a beep that's, as far as anyone can tell, not coming from the speaker, as demonstrated above. It's quiet in the video, so crank up the volume and listen closely. Finally, its occurrence is unpredictable.

No clear answer has been reached yet, but Other World Computing (OWC) shared some relevant information with MacNN:

"The issue may be with Seagate's Momentus 7200.4 G-Force hard drives ... Affected units are said to spin up and down frequently, which may be generating the sounds reported by users ... The G-Force technology is said to be mostly irrelevant on Macs in the first place, as a result of pre-existing anti-shock protection."

No one at the TUAW offices has one of these machines, so we haven't experienced the problem. If you have, let us know in the comments and we'll see what we can dig up. Thanks, and good luck.

Are you wondering what to do with the 2.5" SATA drive that you yanked out of your MacBook or Mac mini so you could replace it with a SATA Solid State Drive? For $19.99, the OWC Express USB 2.0 bus-powered enclosure provides a new home for that old drive so you can use it as a backup or spare drive.

The Express enclosure is just slightly larger than an iPhone at 3.07" x 5.12" x .55" (78mm x 130mm x 14mm), and weighs just 2 ounces (56g) empty. Just toss in your old 2.5" SATA drive and you have a bus-powered USB 2.0 drive that easily fits in your pocket. You can also shop around for new bare SATA drives; a 500GB, 5400 RPM drive can be had for as low as US$97 (I'm sure you can find them for less!), making for a low-cost and portable backup solution.

There are other similar USB 2.0 enclosures out there; MacAlly's PHR-250A (US$19) and StarTech SAT2510U2 Infosafe (US$17.96) are about the same size and weight as the Express, while the Vantec NexStar SX NST-285S2-BK (US$22.02) and Sabrent EC-UST25 (US$14.97) are larger and heavier.

What's your favorite use for disk drives that you've pulled out of your Macs? Leave a comment below.

There wasn't too much that was truly new and exciting on the Macworld Expo showfloor this year. Don't get me wrong, there was a ton of neat stuff but nothing huge. Nothing that is, other than the ModBook. We've covered it before, and now we have a video tour of the hottest item (other than the iPhone) on the showfloor. A little birdie tells me that OWC got lots of preorders for this baby, and I know their booth was packed for most of the Expo.

Update: Some folks are complaining about the Netscape player, and the video quality. For all of these videos, if you head over to the Netscape page you can download the video in iPod format, or the original uploaded version. Here is the iPod version, and here is the original version (.mov) of this particular interview.

OWC this afternoon unveiled its answer to a Macintosh tablet. Going by the moniker of ModBook, the device was specially engineered by OWC and Axitron (a company created just for this purpose). When all is said and done, the ModBook is essentially a MacBook with a Wacom Graphire digitizing tablet built over the screen, a few select shareware titles to better the tablet experience, and for some reason foreign to this blogger, integrated GPS. The ModBook is available in multiple configurations starting at a special Macworld Expo discount of US$2199.

Check out the gallery for more pics.

We got a tip that some pics of the ModBook, the Macbook-based tablet product from OWC and Axiotron, have surfaced on the MacResource Forums. How convenient for us!

Just one pic that I can find and it's a rendering, not an actual product shot. From the looks of it, it's a "clamshell" mod that essentially flips the display over on the MacBook/MacBook Pro. I'm thinking it won't come cheap, but I bet many people will probably still salivate over it.

Now pardon me while I go wipe the drool off my chin...

Laurie posted OWC's announcement of their upcoming ModBook Mac tablet just as I began rounding up commentary from some Mac notables as to why a tablet from Apple simply doesn't make sense. OWC's announcement indeed makes things a bit more interesting, but I think some of these thoughts from Steven Frank (of Panic, Inc. fame) and David Sobotta, one of Apple's own former sales managers, can shed some light on why Apple is likely to stay away from this market.

Mr. Sobotta tells a longer story over at The Guardian of his 20 years of experience at Apple, and Steven Frank more or less rounds up the bullet points in a Macworld rumor call-out post. To sum things up: the idea of a tablet Mac is cool - really cool - but the fact of the matter is that the tablet PC market sucks. And by 'sucks' I mean "it's downright horrendously dismal." Steven also reminds us that Apple hasn't really been making products for unidentified markets for about a decade now. Sure, there are a big handful of Mac Photoshoppers that would love to be able to craft their next Fark submission with a Mac tablet on the couch, but the unfortunate reality is that Apple - already a niche company - would need a *lot* more interest in an über-niche product like this to make it profitable. To make matters worse, already established industries (like the medical field) *still* aren't touching the tablet PC products that have been on the market for over two years now.

Steven lists a lot of other good obstacles that simply don't seem ripe for Apple to tackle anytime soon, and Mr. Sobotta certainly offers some commentary from behind Apple's well-guarded veil as well.

Which brings me back to the intriguing ModBook announcement from OWC. Apple hasn't made the idea of a tablet Mac work just yet (though who knows: maybe next week could prove everyone wrong), but OWC apparently has. Next week should be a very interesting one, to say the least.

A Mac Tablet? Seriously? Seriously!

OWC is well known for their iPod solutions, Mac CPU upgrades and Firewire hard drives, but they will now be known as the folks who brought us a real Mac tablet solution. On Jan 9th they, along with their manufacturing partner Axiotron, will unveil the ModBook, a "high-end slate-style notebook computer solution" featuring WACOM Penenabled hardware that is fully compatible with Apple's Inkwell handwriting and gesture recognition technology, allowing you to write and draw directly on the screen. There's even a built-in GPS option available!

Full details won't be available until their press conference at Macworld Expo on Jan 9th, but here's the official teaser to hold you over: "Engineered in the U.S. by a renowned team of German and American designers, the ModBook's condensed form factor and integrated pen-based user experience makes it the ultimate solution for applications and situations where a keyboard only gets in the way. Ideal for: Mobile Users, Business Professionals, Artists, Students, and Technology Leaders!"

We will be at the unveiling, of course and promise to have lots of pics and details as they unfold! And if you're attending Macworld yourself, you can stop by Booth: S2218 for a hands-on trial!

UPDATE: We hear from OWC that the ModBook will initially be offered as a turnkey solution., but it will be offered fas an after-market mod solution at a later date (TBA). The turnkey ModBook will come standard with a 1 Year Warranty similar to Apple's and with a similar Applecare like extension program offered as well.

[obDisclaimer: I have close ties to OWC, but my excitement about this product is quite sincere!]

Well I think I found one of the reasons why no one replied to my recent plea for help with my PowerLogix card. It seems that PowerLogix has just been acquired by OWC. Other World Computing is a company that sells a mix of its own gear and  third party hardware (including PowerLogix and other manufacturers). OWC will acquire the "exclusive rights to all PowerLogix proprietary hardware designs and software code, as well as copyrights, logos, brand names, and web domains."

I hope that this means older PowerLogix hardware will continue to be supported after the buy out, if not I am really out of luck.

[via MacNN]