Fujitsu has finally released its color e-book. The device features an 8-inch XGA screen capable of displaying 260,000 colors, along with Bluetooth, WiFi and up to 4GB of storage via SD card. It measures less than half an inch thick.

Color isn’t the only thing. Fujitsu is promising 40 hours of continuous use. The unit can be operated by its touchscreen or the function buttons. The Japanese version of the device even includes Windows CE 5.0. FLEPia ships on April 20th in Japan for about $1,010.

For a long time now digital cameras, phones and other devices have relied on SD cards for storage. The capacity of normal SD cards topped out at about 4GB and opened the door for SDHC cards with much more storage capacity. The SDHC card is now hitting its capacity limit opening the door for SDXC cards of the future.

The SDXC card can put as much as 2TB of storage inside a tiny card that looks like a SDHC card. The two formats are not compatible because SDXC uses exFAT file system compared to SDHC’s FAT32 file system. Pretec is showing off the first SDXC card at PMA in Vegas this week. The card has 32GB of storage space and has a read/write speed of 50MB/s. In the future read/write speeds will be as high as 300MB/s.

After CES comes and goes the next big consumer electronics show happens in Germany and is called CeBIT. CeBIT 2009 will be kicking off this month and a slew of new computers, computer accessories and consumer electronics devices will be debuted at the show.

Among the new devices will be a line of external hard drives from Rocstor called Eagleroc. The Eagleroc drives are available with versions supports USB, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA. Some of the drives use small 2.5-imnch notebook HDDs and some use larger 3.5-inmch drives.

There are endless options to choose from when it comes to portable hard drives, but the IDrive Portable is a little different. For one, it’s the “thinnest and lightest portable USB drive in its class,” and the 0.3 pound device will give you 320GB of space on a 5,400RPM HDD. It’s also compatible with Windows / OS X machines.

Like many, there’s a one-click backup option for storing data outside of your PC, but this one also gives you the option to backup online for still more protection. That feature will cost you up to $4.95 per month, but it’s just a question of how much your data is worth to you. he unit itself will cost you $119.95.

When you first get your DVR from the cable or satellite provider its 10 or 20 hours of recording time sounds like an eternity. Then you quickly realize that you can’t get your full season of Oprah and The Price is Right without running out of room for necessities like Celebrity Rehab.

Apricorn has announced a new DVR expander called (wait for it) the DVR Xpander that offers 1.5TB of storage space. With that much storage, you can record 843 hours of SD programs or 187.5 hours of HD programs. Surprisingly the price for the 1.5TB version isn’t even that high at $239.

So you’re an old school kind of guy or gal. You miss those retro floppy discs and refuse to use Cd-Rs for anything but a coaster. Well, this Floppy CD-R disc will make it all right. They look like a standard 3.5″ floppy, but the underside has the shiny spankable bottom of a CD-R.

Since it’s square, it won’t be able to hold the standard CD-R amount, but that’s okay. 200MB is still 138 times more than the original floppy. The $10 price tag is a bit steep, but at least you can mesmerize your friends with your inability to let go of the past. A 4-pack will cost you $28, so you can save some money buying more than one.

The ioSafe Solo External Hard Drive is great for those who need to protect their data from every eventuality. It will survive a fire for 30 minutes as well as being submerged in ten feet of water for 10 minutes. I’m not sure that will do you much good in your everyday life, but if the inhabitants of Atlantis had had these, their secrets would have survived. Maybe. So let that be a lesson to you.

For $199 you can get a 500GB model, but, since this thing is pretty bomb-proof, you’ll have a hard time upgrading the drive in there so you may want to go straight for the $349 1.5TB model. Early adopters will get $50 off.

One of the problems with backing data up to an external hard drive for many users is that they either forget to execute the backups or they don’t know how to choose the files to backup to the hard drive. Some drives include software that automates the backup process, but the user still has to choose the files that are backed up.

Clickfree has a new cable that connects to your PC via USB and then the external USB hard drive connects to the cable. Once installed the cable automates every aspect of the backup process from selecting the files to actually starting the backup itself.

One of the products that I see a lot of each year at CES is external storage solutions. The usual companies like Seagate and other places offer a full line of external solutions, but it never ceases to impress me at the number of small firms I have not heard of that offer external storage.

One of the smaller firms, which I have heard of before, called Verbatim has announced a pair of new external hard drives that feature fast 7200 rpm 3.5-inch hard drives inside small enclosures. The drives feature quad interfaces and work with Mac and Windows computers.

There are a few common threads in the SSD market no matter the maker of the device. These threads include price premiums and better performance. For some markets, the high price of SSDs has kept them from being popular despite the performance benefits.

RunCore has announced a new line of SSDs that are 1.8-inch PATA drop in replacements for many portable notebooks that use standard 1.8-inch HDDs. The SSDs come in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities retailing for $69.99, $119.99, $199.99, and $389.99 respectively.

External storage can get expensive, but for keeping data safe, an external storage system is important. You can buy your own external hard drive ready to use form places like Seagate, or you can roll your own and save some cash.

StarTech has announced a new storage enclosure for those looking to build their own external hard drive. The enclosure accepts 3.5-inch SATA I or SATA II drives and connects to the PC via USB. The enclosure is physically small to make it easier to fit on a desk.

Ahhh. The floppy disk. It once housed all of our data, but now they reside in landfills and in the closets of pack-rats everywhere. Or on the desks of those who are stuck in the past. They held just over 1 MB each. I bet you feel nostalgic for them, just like when you see an 8-track tape.

They could become relevant once again. This one is a USB floppy disk that can be plugged into your USB drive and can store not just MBs but GBs worth of data. Check out that built-in stand that flips out. And it remains the size that you remember. Old tech is never dead, it just needs an upgrade.

When it comes to our mobile devices we all want more, more features, more performance, more speed, and especially more storage. Music phones today can hold thousands of songs, but mobile users are always on the lookout for more storage space.

SanDisk announced the largest capacity microSD and M2 format memory card you can get. Both formants are now available in 16GB capacities. The cards require mobile phones and MP3 players that support microSDHC or M2 formats.

External storage is important for backing up your files and other content on your computer. If you take lots of digital photos or video that you archive, you can eat through lots of storage capacity very quickly. It’s always best to buy as large an external hard drive as you can afford. Today SimpleTech has announced upgrades to connectivity and capacity for some of its external HDDs.

Both the SimpleTech Pro Drive and the SimpleTech Duo Pro Drive have been upgraded to include eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0 connectivity options. SimpleTech also offers a PCI expansion card for computers that lack eSATA connectivity.

The music industry is not happy that consumers have abandoned physical media for their music in droves. Profits on physical media are much higher than profit from digital tracks and the move to digital tracks has greatly impacted the bottom line for music publishers around the world.

To try to recapture some of the lost profitability several of the major music publishers are backing a new physical medium for music called slotMusic. The physical format is nothing more than digital tracks stored on a microSD card with 1GB of storage space.