14 DAY TRIAL // Other World Computing, or OWC for short, is a company that specializes in providing Mac users with a number of accessories and peripheral products. All of them are designed to be compatible with Apple's iMac, but sometimes they can provide support for Windows users as well. One of its latest products will offer customers a means by which they can improve storage capacity, by simply connecting an additional external storage device.
The Neptune drives have been introduced by OWC yesterday and will provide users with a maximum storage capacity of 1TB. The lowest capacity model sports 80GB of storage and has a maximum platter speed of 7200RPM, a feature common to all Neptune drives. The entire range of external drives is fully compatible with Apple's Time Machine back-up software. That is why the drives feature two six-pin FireWire 400 ports, and come bundled with a FireWire cable and pre-loaded software for plug-n-play usability.
The casing of the drives is colored blue, with the front Blue LED indicating when the drive is working. According to OWC, the new products incorporate its Oxford chipset and heavy-duty power supplies that are also found on OWC's Mercury Elite series of external drives. However, unlike the latter, the new Neptune drives are more affordable, with the highest capacity model being priced at $230. The 80GB model will cost as little as $85, according to the listing on the OWC official site.
The technical specifications of the new drives includes an 8MB data buffer for the 80GB-250GB drives, 16MB for the 320 and 500GB models, and double that number for the newly added 750GB and 1TB models, which sport a 32MB buffer.
The new drives are available for order directly from OWC's webpage. Considering their price tags and overall specifications, they should become an important storage upgrade for Mac and even PC users.