Blu-ray too expensive for PCs

Blu-ray may have a future in the living room, but its prospects in the PC market appear bleak, reports PC World.

A new study by market researcher iSuppli shows only 3.6% of PCs this year will ship with Blu-ray high-definition optical drives, a figure that will rise to just 16.3% by 2013.

Michael Yang, an iSuppli senior analyst, says consumers can't find a compelling reason to pay extra for a Blu-ray drive, in part because of the anaemic selection of Blu-ray movies.

As sales of notebook computers continue to outpace desktops, demand for 'notebook essentials', such as bags, stands, and mice, is seen to grow exponentially, according to Inquirer.net.

Mouse pointing devices, in particular, are enjoying higher sales especially among users who prefer the feel of a mouse than a trackpad.

This is followed by bags, Web cams and headsets, with notebook stands also set to grow as more people buy notebook computers over desktops.

Data protection specialist, Iomega, has unveiled the next generation of its quad-drive desktop network-attached storage (NAS) appliance, the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d, states eWeek.

The appliance, aimed at small to medium enterprises, provides up to 8TB of networked storage that integrates with existing infrastructure for expanded storage, file-sharing and backup of business data and offers features such as iSCSI block-level access, device-to-device replication to network targets and multiple RAID configurations.

The 2TB StorCenter ix4-200d NAS appliance is compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux PCs and comes with Iomega QuikProtect backup software.