Other World Computing has announced the launch of its Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini 1TB portable hard drive. The company claims it is the first-ever 2.5-inch 1TB drive to ship with a quad interface (e-SATA, USB, FIreWire 400, and FireWire 800). Although the specs are impressive, OWC leaves quite a bit of room for improvements on the marketing front.

OWC has been providing quality hardware products and support to the computer industry since the late ‘80s. The company’s portfolio includes one of the largest online catalogs of computer, iPod, and iPhone enhancement products through an e-commerce portal. Its latest offering: the Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini, a portable, quad-interface, 1TB hard drive, which connects via FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0, and eSATA. It supports data-transfer speeds of up to 300MB/s, according to OWC, and features a brushed aluminum, impact-resistant, heat-dissipating, super-quiet fanless enclosure. Other key features are listed in the product’s fact sheet.

“Built from the award winning lineage of the desktop sized Mercury Elite-AL Pro, with the highest quality drive mechanism and super-quiet fanless operation, this shock resistant portable 2.5" aluminum enclosure is ready to go wherever you need an A/V, Digital Photography, Professional Music, Graphics, General Data, and Time Machine ready storage solution,” OWC says.

So far so good. On the OWC site, we see an impressive list of specs, while an admirably large array of benefits is presented by the manufacturer. So large, that it includes references to Snow Leopard, Magic Mouse, and Time Machine, although Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini has almost nothing to do with these products – OWC is simply using them as marketing materials, and poorly too. Have a look at the imagery.


Picture #1: OWC suggests its new HDD is the perfect companion for Mac users who back up their data using Time Machine
Picture #2: Note the lame “mouse not included” account just below the Magic Mouse
Credits: OWC
Needless to point out, pretty much every external hard drive out there will support Time Machine backups made with Snow Leopard. The fact that OWC’s Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini can hold this kind of information on it doesn’t make it any more Snow-Leopard compatible than other external drives that connect via USB, or FireWire to a Mac.

But that's nothing compared to the promo material showing the respective drive in all its glory next to the Apple Magic Mouse (picture #2). From what we gather, OWC desperately wants the public to regard this device as targeting Macintosh computers. It’s either this, or OWC believes Apple’s multi-touch mouse makes the ad really stand out.

While its new hard drive does look like a decent Mac accessory – and we mean this from a design point of view –, just sliding a Magic Mouse in there has "lame" written all over it.

Update: this article has been slightly modified to include an additional reference to "external" drives. An account suggesting that the scond banner had a Magic Mouse "photoshopped" inside the image has also been corrected. According to OWC, Apple's mouse was physically present next to its advertised product at the time the picture was taken. This, of course, doesn't change our point of view on the company's marketing strategy (at least for this product).