Product Design Through Blogging

[Michael]

I was just passed along a notice from the director of business development at Icy Dock that they have now started blogging, to seek input from the community on the design of their external enclosures.

The most recent focus is on:

Does today enclosures consumer market prefer with or without build-in fan? The fan function for enclosure will cool down the device, but the noise level is annoyed at times. If you obtain a enclosure without a build-in fan the consumer might think the HDD is under massive of heat and might damage the date that cause HDD malfunction.

What do you prefer as consumer? Should modern day "ENCLOSURE" have or shouldn?t have building fan?

Will this be the new way for engineers to seek consumer input? It will be interesting if any other PC hardware manufacturers follow suit. Icy Dock's community blog can be read (and commented) @ http://www.icydock.com/blog.html

[Rob Williams]

It depends what you are looking for really. Quiet operation, or your hard drive running at it's coolest? Personally, I just mount a 120mm above my HDD's to keep them very cool. If I was looking for peace and quiet, I will prefer the enclosure to be more of a heatsink than an enclosure with a fan.

"Will this be the new way for engineers to seek consumer input?"

Very cool idea... I hope to see more of it.