We shall focus our commemoration on the IBM ThinkPad, which hit the business world in 1992 and quickly became a design favourite.The clamshell-styled black laptop was apparently modelled on a cigar box and famously incorporated a tiny red nipple joystick - officially called a Track point - for navigation around the screen.IBM sold the brand in 2005 to Lenovo and today, almost 25 years on from its launch, the ThinkPad is still black and still features the red nipple - a somewhat retro feature in 2016. We are all perfectly happy with our existing high-end technologies and aren't planning to upgrade any time soon.That's according to Accenture, which carried out a survey of 28,000 people across 28 countries, and found sluggish demand for the most popular consumer electronics.Not that we've stopped buying them: just 48 per cent of us plan to buy a new smartphone in the next year – still huge demand but demand that has fallen 20 per cent from last year. Likewise, across the board, only 30 per cent of us are planning to get a new TV, tablet or laptop: a drop of roughly 10 per cent on last year.Why are we noticeably less excited about these consumer devices? Because we're satisfied with what we've got. Most satisfying is the TV – 56 per cent; then the laptop with 49 per cent, smartphones with 47 per cent and lastly tablets with 36 per cent.

This is all very depressing for Accenture, especially since its survey is called Igniting Growth in Consumer Technology.The slowdown in the consumer technology market is irrefutable, serious and global, the group's managing director of high tech Sami Luukkonen said. The market is not about the glitzy gadgets any more – rather, it's about providing secure, innovative and practical digital services and more open collaboration.And so in a bid to keep those dollars coming in, it turned to: the internet of things! And was equally disappointed.Demand for smart goods is increasing, but only slightly (one per cent), which is not nearly enough to offset the drop in traditional electronics. So while 13 per cent of us are apparently planning to get a smart watch this year, all those Apple Watches are not going to fill iPhone-sized gaps.It's good news for smart thermostats: nine per cent of consumers are planning to ditch their beige box and pay the premium for things like the Ecobee and Nest. Eight per cent said they were planning to get virtual reality headsets – presumably because they've heard that 2016 will be the year of VR.

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What's promising is that the most famous of them – the Oculus Rift – will be going into pre-order on Wednesday. What's less encouraging is that still, no one knows how much they will cost, which almost certainly means too much.And price is the biggest factor stopping us from purchasing IoT goods, according to Accenture: a whopping 62 per cent of us aren't sure they're worth the price tag. Second biggest obstacle is privacy and security concerns: 47 per cent of us aren't sure we want our highly personal information out there just waiting for a poorly patched server to provide it to the world.And there is a roughly 15 per cent uncertainty aspect with this new wave of devices: they're too complicated, they don't work right, they're clunky.Oh how IoT manufacturers must long for the day that consumers don't buy their goods because they're satisfied with what they've got. The Backup Plus Ultra Slim is claimed to be the world's thinnest 2TB mobile hard drive, being a thinner version of the existing Backup Plus Slim, which has a 2TB capacity as well.For file-sharing purposes, 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage for two years is included. The BPUS has Lyve software bundled with it which helps users to protect ... photos and videos from their digital cameras and smartphones and automatically organises them into a single unified library accessible from any mobile device or computer.

There is additional software – the Seagate Dashboard, which offers users either one-click on-demand or customisable, scheduled backups for their devices.The BPUS box is 9.6mm thick, and Seagate says it's more than 50 per cent thinner than other 2TB drives on the market. It has a golden or platinum metal finish, designed to complement the looks of stylish computers, tablets and phones.The drive inside is likely Seagate's Ultra Mobile Technology product, which was announced as a technology in September, 2015, with two platters, a 7mm thickness, 2TB capacity, and 3.17oz weight. The rotation speed was unspecified but we think it's 5,400rpm.The LaCie Chromé is a mirror-finish desktop external drive sitting at an angle on a rounded base:It's a Neil Poulton design; he's designed other LaCie external drives, and features 2 x 500GB M.2 SATA SSDs inside the aluminium casing, with USB 3.1 gen 2 technology (10Gbit/s) with USB-C connectivity and a flash drive inside. The SSDs are in a RAID 0 configuration and the bandwidth is up to 940MB/sec.Seagate suggests two hours of 4K GoPro footage could be written to the drive in a little over one minute. You could edit hi-res video stored on this drive. It does not have a Thunderbolt interface by the way.

The USB-C connector has no up or down side and the connectors at both ends of the cable are the same. It is compatible with standard USB 3.0 (Type-A) ports via an included adapter cable.There is a fan to introduce cool air and a heat sink that draws hot air away from the SSDs.As usual with LaCie and Neil Poulton drives, the launch blurb goes into design rhapsody mode:This signature device has been designed in collaboration with acclaimed industrial designer Neil Poulton to bring uncommon sophistication to a workspace. The elevated form is an homage to a 1935 bronze statue from Constantin Brâncuși, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century.
Once machined, the enclosure is hand assembled, then chromed to a mirror polish. Forged from solid chromed zinc, the stand securely docks the product with powerful neodymium magnets – and detaches for easy transport.Enjoy this Neil Poulton quote: The LaCie Chromé is a concept reduced to its essence: a rectangle tilted onto its corner, melting into its base like quicksilver.LaCie's Porsche Design external mobile and desktop drives also use the USB-C connector to hook up their aluminium rectangular slabs to desktop or laptop hosts. The design house is Porsche Design Group (Porsche Lizenz- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, not the VW-owned Porsche cars business).There are mobile drives in this set with 1, 2 and 4TB capacities. The desktop versions have 4, 5 and 8TB capacities.

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The rounded corners, high-polish beveled edges and a sandblast finish combine to form the distinctly Porsche Design modern and elegant style.
Since 2003, LaCie and Porsche Design have worked closely to deliver products with flawless functionality in its purest form. The sports and luxury-lifestyle brand and the leading technology company complement one another, with technical influence from LaCie and an exclusive and impeccable design presented by Porsche Design.Discerning consumers value elegant design in their devices and accessories, said Dr. Christian Kurtzke, CEO, Porsche Design Group. These new drives meld high-tech materials with the sleek visual purism of Porsche Design's iconic style.If the drive is connected to its own power source then it will power a connected and compatible* notebook and charge its' battery. That's a property of the USB-C connector used.The 1TB LaCie Chromé has a 2-year limited warranty that can be extended and upgraded. It includes complimentary web-based resources, in-house technical support and worldwide repair and/or replacement coverage.

Its MSRP is a cool $1,100.00 and this shiny little desktop exec toy should be available this quarter through the LaCie Online Store and LaCie Resellers.The Porsche Design drives have a 2-year extendable warranty like the Chromé product. A 1TB Porsche Design mobile drive starts at $109.95 while a 4TB desktop version starts at $209.95. Buy them from the LaCie Online Store and LaCie Resellers as well as Porsche Design Stores and online. * When the product is connected to a standard electrical wall outlet, it delivers up to 30W of power to charge compatible laptops such as Apple’s MacBook.Ohio's Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) slipped out a quiet end-of-year confession that it has lost a backup DVD with information and documents on 50,000 individuals.The loss was discovered on November 10, 2015, but only made public on December 31. RITA's statement says the agency was preparing a bunch of backup DVDs for destruction when it noticed that one of the cases was empty. The backups had been stored offsite at a third-party vendor's secure facility.By November 17, the agency had worked out what data was held on the missing DVD: copies of income tax documents, as well as names, addresses, social security numbers and possibly dates of birth.Individuals who may have been affected will be offered a year of free credit monitoring by Experian.News website Cleveland.com notes that it's not the first time RITA has mislaid data. In 2006 a laptop belonging to the agency was stolen from an employee's vehicle.

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