Brand: MacNews

Shares of PC maker Gateway plummeted nearly 25 percent today, after the company issued an earnings warning yesterday evening. Gateway is presently in the midst of consolidating and reorganizing operations, as well as its focus in general, in an effort to reduce costs and return to profitability as a result of the difficult economic environment. In contrast, Apple has said countless times that it is “innovating itself” out of the recession.

Brother today announced two new laser digital copiers, the DCP-1000 and DCP-1400, both of which also function as a laser printer and flatbed color scanner. The Mac-compatible devices offer copy/print speeds of up to 10 pages per minute and 15 pages per minute, respectively. Other features include printer resolution of 600×600 dpi, an optical scanning resolution of 600×2400, and USB connectivity.

SONICblue today unveiled the Rio Riot, a 20GB portable MP3 player that holds more than 5,000 songs. The Mac-compatible device features a 10 hour Lithium Ion battery, FM tuner, USB connectivity, and iTunes support. Rio Riot is currently available for preorder for US$399.95 and is expected to ship by the end of February.

LaCie today announced two new high capacity FireWire drives in capacities of 120GB and 160GB. Both drives feature transfer speeds of up to 35MB/sec, with the 120GB drive spinning at 7200 RPM and the 160GB drive operating at 5400 RPM. The drives will ship in February for US$399 and $449, respectively.

SmartDisk today unveiled its new FireLite portable FireWire hard drive, which is even smaller than the company’s VST Thin FireWire drives. The bus-powered drive will be available in February for in 20GB (US$279.95), 30GB ($349.95), and 40GB ($429.95) capacities. SmartDisk will be demonstrating the drives at booth #1544 at Macworld Expo this week.