- Apple iPod Mini

Apple have today announced the new cut-down version of their highly successful iPod mp3 player, specifications can be read here. Physically it's slightly smaller than the original iPod, and comes with 4gb storage capacity. As a result, it's also somewhat cheaper at $249US, although not quite as cheap as many were anticipating. Oh, and this time around you can choose from five different colors for the casing too, huge wow factor there eh?

Everything you love about iPod just got tinier. iPod mini lets you bring along enough music for a three-day weekend getaway in a package so small you'll forget you're carrying it. Until people ask you about it, that is. Available on Mac and Windows for just $249.

- Samsung SP1614N 160 Gig 8MB Cache

The folks at Gideontech have reviewed one of Samsung's latest Spinpoint hard drives and also compare it to a couple of Western Digital drives for measured performance. Evidently their new Spinpoint series drives are proven several times over to be winners, both in speed and quietness.

Samsung was nice enough to provide us with one of their new SpinPoint Hard Drives. The particular drive that they provided us with is Model # SP1614N 8MB Cache, 160 Gig's of ATA-133 goodness.

Since I like to see how drives compare against each other and against benchmarks, this review will be composed of 3 hard drives, the Samsung 160GB, a Western Digital 120 GB SE 8MB Cache, and one of my personal favorites, a Western Digital 20 GB ATA-66. The benchmarks that we will be using to evaluate the drives are Ziff-Davis WinBench99, Simpli Software's HD Tach, and SiSoft Sandra. Now that you know the players, let's introduce the star, the Samsung SP1614N.