Helium drives have arrived on the consumer market, in the form of an eight-terabyte drive from Western Digital.
Sealing mechanical hard drives with helium gas inside reduces air friction, which in turn reduces power consumption as well as wear to the drive. Western Digital subsidiary HGST has offered helium-sealed drives since 2013, but until now, consumer drives under the Western Digital label have not offered the technology.
That’s changed: You can get your hands on a helium drive right now, assuming you’re looking for an external drive. Helium 8TB drives are already included in the My Book line of external drives, and the My Cloud line of network-connected storage. Both are available now, with 8TB editions costing $300.
RAID versions of these externals are currently available for pre-order: the 16 TB network-attached My Cloud Mirror ($900) and the 16TB desktop enclosure My Book Duo ($550) both offer two 8TB drives with RAID capability for redundant backups.
Internal drives are coming as well: the WD Red 8TB, designated for use in NAS devices, and the WD Purple 8TB, designed for always-on security systems, are both coming soon. We couldn’t find a price for these drives, but considering an enclosed drive costs $300 we’d guess a price slightly lower than that. Edit: The 8TB WD Red is priced at $350
Western Digital is in the middle of a slow-paced merger of operations with HGST, a firm renowned for its long lasting, enterprise-grade hard drives. Observers have long wondered how long it would take for HGST’s innovations, including helium drives, to make it to Western Digital’s consumer lines.
Western Digital’s announcement comes just a few months after Seagate announced a helium-filed drive of its own, though without providing a lot of details. Seagate’s 10TB drives were expected to cost around $800, and are aimed at the enterprise market.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.