Terabyte desktop mainstream by 2007

Japanese firm Hitachi is introducing hard drives that provide up to a terabyte of storage in a 3.5-inch drive size.

The main key is the perpendicular recording system instead of the traditional horizontal recording method used in today`s normal hard drives. With this new technique, it is possible to produce 230GB of recording space per square inch, compared to 120GB with today`s current hard drive systems.

Hitachi says a group of its employees is testing the technology.

According to Boersenreport, Hitachi expects to release a 1TB drive by the end of the year, and analysts predict perpendicular recording will become mainstream by 2007.

Anti-virus vendors have identified another variant of the Cabir worm that targets cellphones based on the Symbian platform, reports ExpressNewsLine.

According to security vendor F-Secure, Mabir.A appears to be written by the same author using the same source code as Cabir.

Mabir.A spreads by searching for an active Bluetooth connection and then sends a copy of the worm to that phone. The new variant can also wait for an SMS or MMS message to arrive, and then send a copy of itself to the sender posing as an MMS reply message.

Less than 20% of North American companies have adopted Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), a survey of 251 businesses has found.

The results of the survey, conducted by asset analysis company AssetMetrix, have been released a week before Microsoft makes such downloads automatic on PCs which have been configured for auto updating, says AssetMetrix research labs MD Steve O`Halloran.

"To date, more companies are tending to hold back on SP2 than accept it as a standard."

SP2 is an important update that patches any number of Windows holes. However, the hesitance about the upgrade points out a basic conundrum about Windows security as it stands, which, reports XinhuaNet, is that patching is ultimately a poor way to get a more secure computing platform.

Some 29% of the 22 million Americans who own MP3 players, such as the Apple iPod, have downloaded "podcast" files, according to a new survey by The Pew Internet & American Life Project.

These results were gathered between 21 February and 21 March 2005 from 2 201 people, reports DailyFinanceNews.

"Podcasting" is a Web-based broadcast medium in which files are made available online in a way that allows software to automatically detect new files (generally via RSS), and download them. A podcast can be thought of as an audio magazine subscription, in that a subscriber receives regular programmes without having to remember to go get them, and can listen or watch them at leisure.

The word "podcasting" is a portmanteau of the words iPod and broadcasting.