Remember when E-Ink was introduced in the late 1990s? Speculation on its uses mostly centered on how the technology would change publishing. Although e-book readers from Sony and Amazon employ e-ink for their displays, we haven’t seen applications for everyday electronics such as hard drives – until now. Western Digital announced its My Book Elite and My Book Studio USB will offer e-ink displays.
The displays – part of a 12-character screen – help label the hard drives’ contents. What is intriguing and turns a ho-hum story of hard drives into a gadget phenom is that the e-ink displays can be read even when the HD’s power is off. This makes the Western Digital hard drives different than the boatload of other storage devices using LEDs that go blank when no juice is flowing.
With all the warnings about your TV’s “ready” light and other so-called ‘electricity vampires,’ E-Ink may have stumbled into a profitable area. But you may want to hurry if you want one of the hard drives. “Everyone is going to want this,” according to CrunchGear.
The E-Ink Western Digital drives come in two flavors: a Firewire and USB My Book Studio ($300 for up to 2T) for Mac users and a $280 USB My Book Elite.
[Via CrunchGear, Gadget Lab and Western Digital]
