With everything being pushed to the cloud of late, evolution of cloud based operating systems, optical media has taken a backseat. Although I would trust a DVD backup far more than say, uploading it to my DropBox. The reason is plainly that these services are still in their infancy, and we are yet to see if they fare as well as they advertise. Getting back to the point Samsung has come up with the  SE-218BB DVD / CD writer, which the company claims is the world’s thinnest external ODD. The device measures at 14mm tall which according to the company is “18 percent thinner than conventional DVD writers” and eight percent less weighty than a standard DVD ODD.  The unit connects via USB, and will work with Macs, PCs and devices running Android 3.1 and up. You’d have to pay $60 for this svelte companion to your tablet or ultrabook. So, is having a title of world’s thinnest external ODD enough to warrant a second look, that’s for you to decide ? Press release with more details, after the break.

Toshiba’s Thrive tablets were hugely panned for short battery life and cheap plasticky feel of the build. Fear not, Toshiba has listened out come, none one, but three tablets that belong to the new Excite family, the Excite 7.7, Excite 10 and Excite 13(Yup ! Its a 13 inch tablet). More after the break.

The new iPad is said to be suffering from intermittent WiFi connectivity issues if Apple Discussions and an AppleCare document are to be believed. The issue seems to be affecting the Wifi only model, the 3G+WiFi model is safe due to its black antenna panel. The employees over at AppleCare have been instructed to check if the issue is due to software and rectify them, otherwise return units to engineers for an in-depth checkup. More after the break.

Google Play now hosts the updated Gmail app for Android, which adds some much awaited features from its ICS counterpart to Honeycomb. The update adds swipe to move between newer and older conversations, tap to access Recent labels, set custom notifications for individual labels and sync the last 30 days of messages so you can read and search messages faster both online and offline. For Android 2.2 and 2.3 users it adds a new Labels API which can be accessed by third party developers, something that went missing when the Gmail updated to version 2.5. Head on over to the Play Store to update to the latest version if it hasn’t been updated automatically.

Yes folks, its that time of the year again, when speculations about the new iPad take over our lives. The iPad 3 might be released on Feb 24th(Steve Jobs’ birthday), Feb 29th or the first week of March. Speculations point to a Feb 29 release date. Read past the break, for what we know about the industry-ruling tablet as of now.

Its finally happened, some people have finally gone crazy with Tablet addiction. Lenovo is planning to release a 23-inch tablet for “home” use in the latter half of 2011. Feel this is ridiculous, keep reading.

The iPad 2 is finally here. Its leaner, meaner, faster and well better. As for any new announcement, to everyone’s astonishment Steve Jobs was at the unveiling and he was looking mighty good. The iPad 2 has a dual core Apple A5 processor which is said to be twice as fast as the first generation iPad and provides nine times the graphics performance. The battery too still lasts the same at 10 hours. The price has also been left unchanged at $499. Read on fore more coverage and press shots.

Boy oh boy, is this going to make Microsoft regret dumping its Courier project. First it was Toshiba with the Libretto W100 and now Acer. It seems like dual-screen laptops would be the next major thing in mobile computing. From the images, the laptop looks like a laptop integrating a tablet to get touchscreen keyboard and trackpad. The source who passed on the images to TRS noted that the dual screen laptop was merely a prototype and was sluggish. At this moment, details about the distinct functions of both screens haven’t been divulged or leaked. More pictures after the break.