Seagate announces 1TB encrypted hard drive

About a month and a half ago, Seagate officially unveiled its 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 3.5″ hard drive. The drive squeezes a terabyte of capacity onto four platters that spin at 7,200RPM, all complemented by a hefty 32MB buffer. Seagate has now announced a new 1TB Barracuda hard drive, this time featuring the encryption technology it introduced with its Momentus 5400.2 FDE mobile hard drive over a year ago.

According to Seagate, the Barracuda FDE series will be the world’s first 3.5″ hard drive lineup to feature native AES encryption technology. In systems powered by the drive, logging on “requires a pre-boot user password that can be buttressed with other layers of authentication such as smart cards and biometrics.” Barracuda FDE drives will have 7,200-RPM spindle speeds and will launch in 2008 with capacities up to 1TB.

In addition to its terabyte FDE disk, Seagate also intends to roll out new Momentus 5400.4 2.5″ mobile hard drives. Those drives won’t have encryption functionality, but they’ll combine capacities of up to 250GB with 5,400-RPM spindle speed and 300MB/s Serial ATA interfaces.

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Motorola Begins Selling RAZR 2

While the now $399 Apple iPhone will dominate the news Thursday, Motorola has chimed in to remind everyone that its RAZR 2 is now available through wireless carriers across the United States. But its $299 to $349 price tag won’t likely bring out long lines.

The RAZR 2 V9 is offered by AT&T while the CDMA V9m is sold by Verizon, Sprint and Alltel. T-Mobile will likely sell the RAZR 2 V8, but the phone is not yet listed on the carrier’s Web site. Motorola is hoping to bring back the glory days of the original RAZR by adding features such as Windows Media Player, 2GB of on-board memory and a full-HTML browser. But the company faces stiff competition from LG, Samsung and now Apple.

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Movie download service Vudu launches

Silicon Valley startup Vudu will start taking orders tomorrow for its proprietary set-top box, which will allow users to stream or download up to 5,000 movies onto their TV sets over a broadband Internet connection.

The box is priced at $399 through www.vudu.com and Amazon.

Vudu operates similar to a peer-to-peer service. In a P2P network, movies or other large files are downloaded from a number of fellow P2P users with a computer connected to the Internet that already have the file on their computers. This means files can be sent faster than those downloaded from one central server.

On Vudu’s service, files will be transferred across a private network. Vudu will send bits of files of popular movies to different users’ Vudu boxes. When a user clicks to watch a movie, the file is then sent from those other Vudu boxes. Since the files are sent between Vudu boxes only, the company says they can provide better copy protection and ensure a file is sent with the pieces in order so the user can watch right away.

The Highlights of Apple’s New iPods

A hands-on look at some of the distinctive features of the iPod Nano and iPod Touch.

Palm-sized Nano

Leading up to Apple’s grand unveiling of its refreshed iPod line, the chatter was all about the so-called “phat” iPod Nano. Turns out the “phat” Nano is anything but: Sure, it’s wider than the previous slim Nano stick; but, its form is actually svelte, stylish, and lightweight. The new Nano is packed with more capabilities–namely, video playback and casual gaming–than its music-only predecessor. Plus, it carries a rated battery life of 24 hours for audio, and 5 hours for video–about enough to get you through the first two installments of The Pirates of the Caribbean series.

How Far We’ve Come?

In early 2005, the second-generation 6GB Apple iPod Mini, seen at left, shipped. That model sported a 1.67-inch monochrome display, weighed 3.6 ounces, and measured 3.6 by 2 by 0.5 inches. At the time, its size was considered fairly compact. Fast forward more than two years later to the new iPod Nano (the first Nano replaced the Mini in Apple’s lineup), seen at right. The tiny Nano is a marvel, with a 2-inch color screen and less than half the Mini’s weight and half its depth. The Nano weighs just 1.7 ounces, and measures 2.8 by 2.1 by 0.26 inches.

Stack o’Colors

The new Nano comes in 4GB and 8GB capacities, and carries an attractive price of $149 and $199, respectively. The Nano ships in five colors: The 4GB model only comes in silver, while 8GB model ships in the full color spectrum of metallic teal and metallic pale green, silver, black, and Apple’s socially conscious (Product) Red. Notice the Nano’s remarkably slim profile in this view: It’s barely more than a quarter-of-an-inch thick.

iPod Touch

The iPhone’s most innovative features characterize the best of the iPod Touch: The 3.5-inch multi-touch display for slide-and-glide and pinch-and-squeeze navigation; Cover Flow music navigation; an accelerometer that automatically detects the device’s position and orients the screen accordingly; integrated YouTube; 802.11b/g wireless and the full-on graphics of the Safari Web browser. Even better, it does so in a device that’s lighter and thinner than the iPhone–the Touch is just 0.3 inches thick. The 8GB version will sell for $299; the 16GB version will sell for 16GB.

Choose Your Own Headphones

The iPod Touch uses a standard 3.5mm headset jack, which means you can use the headphones of your choice with this model, no adapters required. This is an improvement over the iPhone, which has the headset jack inset into the unit, and requires an awkward dongle in order to accommodate a headphone other than the one the unit ships with. You may want your own headset of choice for all that music you’ll be listening to: Apple rates the Touch for up to 22 hours of audio play, and 5 hours of video play.

Coming Soon

The iPod Nano and the newly dubbed iPod Classic (80GB for $249, a gargantuan 160GB for $349) will ship soon. The Nano could be in stores by Friday, this weekend–or even Monday. According to Apple’s online store, a Nano ordered today would ship out for delivery on Monday, at the earliest. The iPod Touch is expected to be available by September 28.

Apple unveils new iPod touch, "fat" iPod nano at special event

Observers have been expecting a significant revamp to Apple’s iPod lineup, especially after the release of the iPhone in all of its touch-screen glory. So when Apple announced today’s special event—as we predicted—with the tagline “The beat goes on,” we knew the time for an iPod refresh had come. We weren’t disappointed, as Apple announced an all-new line-up of iPods from top to bottom, including a new “fat” iPod nano, a “classic” iPod, and the much-anticipated iPod touch with WiFi, Safari, and a touch-screen interface—an iPhone without the phone capabilities.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs began by announcing that Apple had distributed over 600 million copies of iTunes, that the iTunes Store is the top online music store in 21 countries, and that Apple has sold 95 million TV shows so far.

The first major announcement was that a new version of iTunes to be released later today will support ringtones as well as the other new products Apple has on tap. Ringtones will be available for 99¢ in addition to the 99¢ song price. Users can create custom ringtones from over 500,000 songs.

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F-Secure Internet Security 2008

The beta period is complete. The official release of F-Secure Internet Security 2008 was launched on September 3rd! You can download and try it now.

F-Secure® Internet Security 2008^TM provides a complete and easy-to-use protection against all Internet threats, whether they are known or previously unidentified. It includes an award-winning antivirus, an easy-to-use personal firewall, an improved antispyware and a new technology, F-Secure DeepGuard^TM, that constantly monitors the very heart of your computer, ensuring that no malicious programs can take over your computer even if you do not have all the latest updates. In addition, the product filters unwanted spam and so-called phishing attempts from your e-mail, and with the parental control, you can block access to websites with questionable content.

Key Features

• Protects your computer against viruses, worms and unknown attacks
• Detects and removes spyware from your computer
• Protects your computer against hackers
• Helps you stay free from spam e-mail and phishing attempts
• Protects your children against unwanted Internet content.