Daily Archives:September 20th, 2006

The latest in disk labels

FireLite XpressThe new FireLite Xpress is a portable hard drive with a difference.
It has a cholesteric LCD display on the front.

These displays are generally low-resolution, monochrome and exceedingly slow to update. So what’s their raison d’être? It’s this: once the image is on the display, you don’t need any power to keep it there. This means that they can be used for static information on things which don’t have a battery.

The display can be set to show a variety of useful stuff – the label of the disk, the amount of free space, the date it was last updated, and so forth. Just under 100 quid in the UK. A very nice application of the technology.

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser