Addonics Technologies has released a new USB CD-RW portable device aimed at laptops and iMac owners. The new device is very small and referred to as a Pocket device by the company. According to Addonics:
Addonics Technologies today announced a compact CD-Record/CD-Write (CD-RW) drive with PC Card and USB interface.
Called the Pocket CDRW, the PCMCIA drive enables notebook PCs or USB-equipped desktop PCs or iMacs to record and playback digital quality sound and video, or to rewrite and backup data onto CD-R or CD-RW media.
The drive, which measures 6.4" x 5.4" x .8" and weighs around 14 OZ, is one of the smallest CDRW drives available in the market. The drive works with CD-R and CD-RW media discs. Each disc can hold about 74 minutes of audio or about 650MB of data. The Pocket CDRW is suited for many personal and business uses such as: archiving data; software distribution; recording or playing personalized CD-audio discs or running CD-ROM applications. By writing data in the UDF (Universal Disk Format), the CD-R or CD-RW media can be read by other CD ROM drives. With this data compatibility, the CD-RW becomes a viable replacement for floppy drives and a very attractive large capacity removable storage alternative.
Addonics is including the excellent Adaptec Toast CD mastering software package with the Mac version. The retail price is set at US$529 for this version. The company has not yet added information for the new product to their web site.