Olive's music players are the kind of crazy high-end AV hardware that peasants like you and I shouldn't even be reading about, let alone contemplating. The 4 HD rips CDs to its huge 2TB hard drive, in addition to streaming from a PC, to be played through crazy high-end speakers. It's got a nice 4.3-inch touchscreen, and it's pretty nice-looking. So what's new? Well, the ports are all gold-plated, and the 4 HD adds a DAC the Opus N4 didn't have:

* Proprietary, high resolution DAC featuring Texas Instrument's 192khz/24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1792A.
* DAC may be used as an outboard DAC for any digital music source. With 24-bit/192kHz oversampling, noise and distortion are ultra low resulting in incredible purity in both high frequencies and low-level detail.

Basically it's a super simplified music player (just music, mind you, no other media) for incredibly rich old people for whom the CD is something they've just gotten comfortable with in the last six months or so. It's pretty, we'll give it that, but it seems like the kind of thing you'd see in SkyMall, not your buddy's entertainment center. It's available now for $2,000. [Olive]

The company—which has been deleting messages from customers reporting on the problem left, right, and center—has offered a software fix, but it's saying that people are not entitled to any other kind of compensation or replacement. I smell class-action lawsuit. [The Inquirer via Electronista]

At its core, the system is a dual-fan USB-powered laptop cooler with extra USB ports. Enter Brando, and this simple device gets injected with a rear-loaded 2.5" SATA hard drive dock to add extra storage. It's hard to believe that the average laptop USB port can power two fans, a SATA drive and three additional USB devices, but it looks like there's AC power to back up the system (the product description was a bit light on this point).

The USB Notebook Cooling Pad + 3-Port Hub + 2.5" HDD is available now for $33. Live it up. [Brando]

Yes, that would be a great reason to buy a Zune, but keep in mind that the question could refer to using the Zune simply as a means to upload pictures and audio tracks to the 360 (although that would be ridiculous because nobody would give a damn). And, of course, it may mean nothing at all. We shall have to wait and see if Microsoft does the smart thing here. [Zune Survey via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

Fabrik Ultimate Backup is designed to run in the background, sensing when CPU usage is low, and using that time to upload data to their central server. Because the software isn't built into the drive, Fabrik Ultimate Backup onkly works when the computer is running. A variety of parameters, such as file types or specific folders, can be used to determine what gets backed up and Ultimate backup constantly scans for new updates. The files can be reverted to a saved state up to 30 days prior and can be accessed remotely from the web. But it should be noted that files can only be accessed from one computer.

Each Fabrik hard drive purchased comes with a lifetime allocation of 2 GB of online backup. Unlimited backup space is $4.95/month and is compatible with any hard drive, not just Fabrik models. But you do need a PC to run the software. The Pro line of hard drives range between 250GB-2TB of space and will cost between $100-$800.

Head over to the forums to find out which drives and enclosures have been confirmed to work—which should be updated frequently—and various other gotchas you should look out for when doing your own upgrade. Brian will get right on it as soon as he's done cleaning the bodily fluids off. – Jason Chen

Series 3 Upgrade FAQ [TiVo Community]

He sent along these two pictures (click on the gallery below for enlargements) showing the results of his hard drive upgrade, with a promise to tell us how he did it later on today. Watch this space.  Charlie White

Update: Here's the full step-by-step guide.

(Thanks, Jonathan!)

How does this work? You screw your hard disk into the swings, mount it into an empty 5 1/4" bay, and fire up your PC. By cushioning the contact between your disk and your case, the X-Swing takes out (from xsreviews' test) all the noise generated by vibrations. You can still hear the disk spinningit's not meant to stop thatbut everything else is dead silent.  Jason Chen

Product Page [Noiseblocker via XSReviews]

Sifting through the crap that is the horrible press release, the 1TB models can use that Gigabit Ethernet connection to connect directly to your router, which then allows you to access your data from anywhere without actually having to turn on your PC. Essentially a cheap NAS, these WD My Books could be a decent way to let your family members access your photos without going through something like Flickr.  Jason Chen

Press Release [Western Digital]

"First of all, Mean Time Between Failure rates mean nothing.
"Secondly, SMART hardware monitoring missed 36% of all uh-ohs.
"Third, overworked drives fail similarly to standard drives after the first year.
"Fourth, Hard drive age means less than you think.
"Fifth, failure does not go up when temperatures are higher than usual (unless super high.)

Google even has insight on which brand that had the longest life.

But decided to leave it out because that data "wasn't useful in understanding the effects of disk age on failure rates."

That's the main jist of it. Some of this you probably knew, some of this may be myth-busting, but regardless, this is definitely important information that needed to get out to the general public. It's nice to see an impartial group that has the resources to perform a large-scale study like this shed light on this topic.Alexander Yoon

Failure Trends Study(pdf) [via StorageMojo]

Of course, having 12GB of your personal files and pictures on this means you'd better hold onto this or else run the risk of having your "vacation" pictures posted on the internet.  Jason Chen

Update: You can buy one here for $169. Thanks Michael!

Pocketec to present 1-inch portable data storage with 12GB memory capacity [AVING]

Even though it's a lot faster, Seagate's updated Savvio hard disk is more power efficient than most, consuming just 5.8 watts when idle, compared to the 8.4 watts consumed by most desktop drives. And how fast is it? Its data access time of 2.9ms is faster than any other, at least for now. It's beginning to ship in HP ProLiant servers in capacities of 36GB or 73GB. Charlie White

Seagate claims world's fastest hard drive [electronista, via CrunchGear]

The only problem after you take out the screw and slide out the plastic coverings is finding a suitable 1.8-inch HD. We see some 80GB HDs floating around for about two hundred bones.  Jason Chen

Exposing the HDR-SR1 Hard Drive [Sony HDR SR1 - Thanks jason!]

Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn.

Don't forget pirating media, Bill.  Jason Chen

Seagate CEO: I help people "watch porn" [CNN - Thanks Blair!]

I'm the first to admit that sometimes we can all get a little snobby about tech. This is just a standard hd, and the speed at which it continuously functions is unbelievable.

Of course, when they fail and I lose all my data...that can be pretty unbelievable too. – Mark Wilson

[digg]

The drives come in 60, 80 and 120GB sizes, can be connected via USB 2.0 and Firewire, and is bus powered, so you can power it off whatever connector you use. Prices range between 70 ($130) for the low end and 160 ($298) for the high end.  Jason Chen

Product Page [Formac via Tech Digest]