Category: General

Western Digital Ships 320GB 2.5-Inch Drives for Laptops

Paul1 Reply

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It’s official: you can now buy a 320GB drive from WD for your laptop, and for just $200. The WD Scorpio SATA drive spins at 5400rpm and has a 8MB cache. The press release says it’s “extraordinarily quiet while running at cool operating temperatures.” I hope that doesn’t mean it’s extremely loud while running at super high temperatures. The important thing is, this timing coincides with the arrival of Mac’s Time Machine and the Windows Home Server, two easy ways to offload your laptop’s entire contents, swap out the internal drive, then restore your old image without a lot of tinkering. I know some of you like tinkering, but this is the future. [WD]

Nice now we can have even more space on the Laptop!!

The Google Phone: The Story So Far, Some Launch Details & What’s Next

Paul

The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on Google’s mobile phone efforts and how it is beginning to draw some interest from carriers, especially in the United States. Sprint (S) and Verizon (VZ) are in talks with Google (GOOG), according to the Journal, and an announcement by the company is expected sometime in November. Here is what I have been able to gather from my sources:

  • An announcement will likely be made Nov. 13th or Nov. 18th.
  • Handset makers will use a Google Mobile OS platform.
  • Google Mobile OS uses a highly optimized Mobile Linux; developers will be able to use a Java Development Kit. Google is said to have developed a highly optimized Java running on top of the OS. (Read our previous post, Five Facts about Google Phone.)
  • Most major handset makers, with the exception of Nokia (NOK), have devices with Google Mobile OS under development; Samsung and Motorola (MOT) are being linked to it as well. (as are HTC and LG Electronics, according to the Journal.)
  • The operators who are likely to be part of the big announcement will be T-Mobile’s USA division and Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest cellular carriers.

And interesting article about the Gphone, I think it is a possiblity and I believe it will happen. Go read the full article and I’ll let you decide!!

Leopard’s Revamped Terminal Sports Tabs and More

Paul

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Mac OS X 10.5 only: Command line-lovers who’ve upgraded to Leopard will also love its new tabbed interface and fine-grained window control. To create a new tab, hit Cmd+N Cmd+T, and to cycle through tabs, use Cmd+} and Cmd+{. You can also drag and drop an existing tab into its own window, configure and save window groups, and skin Terminal windows using prefab or custom themes. After the jump, see the theme options (“Pro” pictured here.)

Go Check out the full article, I thought this was a good article to show people!!

Auto-Hide Your Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar

Paul

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Firefox only: Love the bookmarks toolbar but only want it there when you need it? Reader Andy writes in with a tweak that makes the toolbar hide automatically, unless you mouse over it (like auto-hiding your Windows taskbar or Mac Dock.) To turn on auto-hiding you have to edit your Firefox profile’s copy of userChrome.css Here’s the code you need:

/* Pop-up bookmarks toolbar */ #PersonalToolbar {display: none;} #navigator-toolbox:hover > #PersonalToolbar {display: -moz-box;}

If you haven’t edited userChrome.css before, here’s a primer on doing so. The ChromEdit Plus extension makes user-specific tweaks easier.

A few other bookmark toolbar tweaks:

For more space-saving, here’s how to consolidate Firefox’s chrome. Thanks, Andy!


Hmm, I nice little way to hid those bars!!

Blu-ray Copy Protection Cracked, Disk Copying Software Out by Year’s End

Paul

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Slysoft, the makers of AnyDVD, CloneDVD, and many other disc-copying software apps, have just cracked the Blu-ray BD+ copy protection. This means, if Slysoft’s predictions are correct, a commercially-purchasable suite to copy Blu-ray movies will be available by the end of the year. However, Blu-ray blanks—especially dual-layer ones—are still so costly right now ($40+ for a writable) that it’s not financially feasible for people to be duping their own movies. You know, unless you really enjoy the blank disc look over the professionally done Blu-ray disc with the proper case and materials. Weirdo. [Golem via Inquirer]

I wonder how long this takes before they dump Blu-ray Disc!!