Price Check: DVD burners

With blue-laser technology imminently promising to revolutionise our idea of optical formats, we thought it timely to look once more at the cost of DVD burners. It seems incredible that what cost several hundred pounds a couple of years ago can now be had for the price of a meal out. The cheapest DVD burner we turned up is Samsung's internal TS-H552U at ?28. ...more

BitBop plays Brit Pop

A new piece of software has entered a beta release that aims to give Internet users what they want - access to free music. Audio Mill software has recently unveiled its new BitBop Tuner software. The small application acts like a radio tuner, but it scans a number of Internet radio stations for your favourite artists. ...more

Microsoft updates home user security

Microsoft has added an email alert service for home users, to keep non-technical types up to date with the latest security alerts and patches for Microsoft products. Starting this month, the Microsoft Security Update newsletter will be sent out to subscribers to give them timely information in a 'clear and concise format'. 'We are pleased to see an increased interest in computer security among our customers. ...more

Fujitsu drives in a spin

Fujitsu has introduced its MAM series of hard drives for high-end workstations and servers, spinning at 15,000rpm. With current drive speeds at the 7,200rpm mark, this more than doubling of speed allows a much greater data transfer rate, as much as 88.9Mbytes/sec. ...more

Google's Picasa takes on Yahoo!'s Flickr

Google is updating its Picasa online photo management service to include 'web albums'. The new features will enable users to share their pictures with other people on the Internet. The new functions bring Picasa into line with the highly successful Flickr photo sharing and community site owned by Yahoo!. ...more