Intel enters flash drive business

Intel has entered the flash drive business by announcing its Z-U130 flash drive, reports TG Daily. Using NAND flash technology, the drive will come in 1, 2, 4 and 8GB sizes and use a USB connector.

Intel says the drive will be speedy and will read at 28MBps and write at 20MBps.

Since the drive has no moving parts, Intel says the seek times will also be quick at up to 22 times that of a regular hard drive.

Seagate Technologies has released a laptop hard drive with native encryption capabilities, which protect data if a machine is lost or stolen, reports Computer World.

While there are many software-based encryption technologies available, Seagate's Momentus drive is the first to employ firmware-based encryption at the laptop drive level, which is less expensive than encryption software and does not eat up CPU cycles, said Melissa Johnson, head of product marketing at Seagate.

Seagate's Momentus 5400 FDE.2 drive, with native 128-bit AES encryption, can also be purchased with Wave Systems Embassy Trust Suite management software.

A MacBook user says his laptop came close to burning his house down after the battery exploded and burst into flames, reports The Register.

The MacBook, which was less than a year old, was charging with the lid shut when it spontaneously ignited at about three in the morning while the user and his girlfriend slumbered.

"My girlfriend said she heard it hissing like a steam valve, then smoke started pouring out of it and a couple of seconds later, a very large flash fire started," he wrote in the Australian Web site MacTalk.

Microsoft is close to acquiring privately-held Tellme Networks, a maker of products that bridge the worlds of speech recognition and the Internet, reports CNET News. The deal is expected to be completed and announced later this week, the report says.

Tellme is best known for its service that lets people get Internet information over the telephone, but the company also has a variety of services that businesses can use to offer automated data and directory assistance information via the phone.

A Microsoft representative said the company does not comment on rumours and speculation.

While Microsoft officials say the worst of the problems regarding the daylight-saving time change that took place on 11 March have passed, some customers still complain of "nightmare" issues with Outlook and their calendars, reports eweek.

This year, daylight-saving time started three weeks earlier than customary, and will end a week later than usual on 4 November.

This is causing problems for some IT administrators running Microsoft software, as many of the software programs running on their users' systems need to be individually patched to reflect the change.