Blu-ray recorders with integrated hard drives are no big deal, but Panasonic is offering something different in their DMR-BR30 that was announced for the Japanese market. It features a slot for swappable hard drives. The idea must be to mimic VHS cassettes. It’s not a bad idea really.

The problem is that you won’t be able to swap just any hard drive. You’ll need to buy Panasonic’s DY-HDD500 500GB hard drives for $240 each. It connects via a USB connection and is only supported in this recorder. Users will be able to copy videos from Blu-ray discs or DVDs to the hard drive or vice versa. But only if you have that hard drive.

Samson has a new mic that looks all cool and shiny, called the Meteor Mic. It looks pretty retro and the stand adjusts and can fold up or be adjusted into different positions to hold the mic exactly how you want it. The Meteor comes with the USB cable and a soft carry pouch.

You won’t need to install any drivers to use it and it has a headphone jack so you can monitor what is being recorded. Other features include a 25mm diaphragm and a cardioid pickup pattern. The frequency response is 20Hz to 20kHz and it records in CD quality.

Samsung has unveiled their new 13.3-inch 9 Series laptop, which is said to be the “thinnest and lightest 13-inch notebook available.” The duralumin machine weighs just 2.89 pounds and measures .68 inches thick. The 13-inch MacBook Air, it’s competitor, measures 0.11 to 0.68 inches thick and weighs 2.9 pounds.

Samsung has jammed some power into that thin build. There’s no optical drive, but it does have Ethernet, HDMI, and USB ports and a headphone jack. Inside you’ll find a brand new Core i5 2537M processor, 128GB SSD, and 4GB of RAM.

Acer has announced its latest Predator Series gaming rig, the AG3600. This beast looks great. Some of the specs include a 2nd generation Intel Core i5 2300 CPU, with Intel’s H67 chipset and Turbo Boost 2.0, discrete NVIDIA GeForece GT 420 graphics, 8GB of DDR3 SDRAM, and a 1.5TB SATA hard drive.

Aside from that it also packs in a multicard reader, three PCI Express x1 slots, 10 USB 2.0 ports, three audio ins, mini HDMI, DVI and a D-SUB port. And you can get it fast since the Predator AG3600 is available now for around $899.

Buffalo is launching three new USB 3.0 DriveStation storage devices: The DriveStation Axis, DriveStation Duo and DriveStation Quad. The last two are RAID devices that are aimed at small businesses and professionals, who will find them useful because it can use several hard disks to speed up storage performance or increase the safety or your data.

The maximum transfer speed of the DriveStation Quad is 235MB/s and it supports up to 8TB of storage, while the DriveStation Duo is 225MB/sec. Of course, all the drives are still compatible with USB 2.0.

This USB flash drive from the Spanish company Deego is too cute for words. It’s clearly not the sort of robot that kills. He’s more the kind you find in a retro toy chest. He’s styled like an old classic toy robot figure.

This robot is USB 2.0 compliant and compatible with Windows 98SE, Me, XP, 2000 Pro, Vista, Mac OS 9.x and 10.2.8. It’s available in 2GB and 4GB versions. The price starts at €18,90 EUR ($25). Totally worth it. I might have to get one for myself.

Yesterday we showed you a cool Canon EOS 350D savings bank. Today we have another Camera based oddity. This DSLR-themed speaker and MP3 player cleverly dances around the copyright issue by calling itself ‘Caoon’ instead of Canon. Even though it’s a near perfect replica of one of the company’s DSLRs.

It won’t take pics, but will serve as an external speaker for any device connected to the 3.5mm audio port, or as an MP3 player loading content from an SD card or USB flash drive. The buttons to the left of the display are playback controls. It will cost you $82.99.

I don’t know about you, but I’m used to using external hard drive enclosures that are quiet. Oh well, looks like Thermaltake is about to change that with its new Max 5G dual-fan enclosure. It sports dual fans and LED lights that can be switched either on or off.

It also sports a USB 3.0 plug and supports high-end 3.5-inch SATA 3.0 drives. The fans are added to protect your hard drive and help it’s life just a tad more. The enclosure is available for pre-order right now for $52. We don’t know when it will be released yet.

Dell has dropped the price of the Adamo 13 and they have also given it a major speed increase to keep it ahead of the MacBook Air. The price of the system has fallen from $1,099 to $899 while giving it the same specifications as the previous high-end model. Gone is the 1.4GHz, ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo from the old versions and it has now moved up to the faster 2.13GHz chip.

Other specs include a 128GB solid-state drive, 4GB of RAM, 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, two USB ports (one with eSATA), Ethernet and DisplayPort. The six-cell battery is built in, but can last for as much as five hours.

The iTwin USB storage device has finally begun shipping, but the first batch is limited to just 50 units. Just plug these into two PCs, and they create a network through which they can share data between each other over the Internet. If you remove one, the connection is broken and the data sharing stops.

The iTwin USB Drive lets you transmit data between the computers via a network between the two devices using 256bit AES encryption, so everything will be safe and secure.

Chances are that you own several SD memory cards as well as USB flash drives. If you carry important data on either and want to share your USB device or SD memory card over the network, Planex has a new solution. The new MZK-SNG02US.

It is iTunes and DLNA compatible and will allow you to access the content stored on any SD memory card or USB hard drive to any DLNA-compatible device, whether that’s your computer, smartphone or game console. The device features a Gigabit Ethernet port and FTP support.

Here’s a flash drive for those of you who like to whine and play the tiniest violin in the world. Well, we aren’t sure if this is the tiniest, but it is small. The Violin USB Flash Drive will cost you just $19.

It’s perfect for holding all of your classical music and digital sheet music and whatever else you violin players have. It comes in a 4GB capacity and is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000 and Mac OS. Great gift for the music lover.

The Panasonic VIERA TH L42G3 is a 42-inch HDTV with an IPS LED-backlit full HD display and an SDXC memory card reader. This allows you to record HD television shows directly to the card for later playback. SDXC cards support up to 64 GB in capacity and will give you 5 hours of full HD content.

But that’s not all. You can also connect an external hard drive into the USB port to record more content. Of course what you record can only be viewed on the VIERA set, which is sad. You also get an Ethernet port, two HDMI ports, VIERA LINK, and DLNA support.

The Scooterputer takes portability to a whole new level. It comes from modder Stephen Popa. This is basically a Thermaltake Element V case with plenty of gaming power sitting on a 24v rechargeable electric scooter that has been stretched a full 11 inches to maker room for the computer.

The computer case has an Intel i7 processor inside, along with 4GB RAM, GTS 250 graphics card, three RAIDed hard drives, USB 3.0 port, dual layer DVD burner, Thermaltake TR2 1200 Watt power supply and it’s water cooled with Thermaltake Big water 850I kit.

Super Talent’s latest USB 3.0 Storage Pod is an ultraslim black box that contains a 500GB hard drive. It will transfer files using SuperSpeed USB, which is about ten times faster than USB 2.0. And you won’t need a power adapter since it’s completely bus-powered.

The company claims that it’ll zip files around at up to 90MB/sec. If you like what you see, you can get one next month for $99. Not bad for 500GB and super fast USB 3.0.