SmartDisk Introduces FireLite XPress Portable Hard Drive

[BJ_M]

Fort Myers, Fla., May 15, 2006 -- SmartDisk Corporation today introduced FireLite XPress, the portable, palm-sized hard drive that includes a unique cholesteric liquid crystal display. The award-winning, always-on display is readable without power, identifies the drive by a user-designated name, indicates the last date that information was recorded and provides a table of contents for the drive. The display provides excellent readability even in direct sunlight, allows for wide-angle viewing and exhibits high brightness and contrast.

“Content explosion is sending the personal storage market to new highs,” states Charles Klinker, Vice President-Marketing for SmartDisk. “Whether it’s your music collection, pictures of the kids or your favorite videos, the need for portable hard drive storage is climbing sharply. Until now, determining information about the portable drive has required an arduous connecting and technical-viewing process.”

“Our new, patent-pending FireLite XPress USB portable hard drive incorporates a viewing window for determining capacity, available space and content without connecting the drive to the personal computer or powering the drive up,” says Michael Battaglia, President and CEO for SmartDisk. “You can verify what files, music, videos and photos you have stored without plugging it into your PC. This is the most innovative, customer-oriented advance in portable hard drives in years.”

SmartDisk FireLite drives are designed for users who require convenient, portable storage to backup critical data, transport and synchronize data between multiple computers, and want to free up valuable hard disk space on existing computers. FireLite drives are ideal for transferring large files between home and office, for storing hours of superior quality video or warehousing huge graphics files. Featuring sleek, metal casings for durability, FireLite drives are palm-sized and weigh about six ounces. All FireLite drives are “Mass Storage Class” peripherals, requiring no driver installation when used with operating systems like Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, Windows XP and Windows Me. All FireLite drives, including the new XPress, feature BounceBack Express backup software.

Pricing and Availability
Available in June, FireLite XPress can be purchased through retailers and distributors, as well as through the company’s Web site at http://www.smartdisk.com. Suggested retail prices are: $199.99, 60GB; $299.99, 120GB.

[ROF]

Very convenient. Although I would like to see other external case manufacturers build a case like this that would display the information about data stored in any drive installed. I do not own any drives in the capacity of these drives so I can not see me spending this amount of money on such little space.