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Seagate steps strongly into the solid-state market with four new SSDs

Seagate's involvement in solid-state storage market shifted into high gear today as the company unveiled four new drives: the Seagate 600 SSD, the Seagate 600 Pro SSD, the Seagate 1200 SSD, and the Seagate X8 Accelerator.

Among these new drives, the Seagate 600 SSD is the first from the storage vendor that's designed for general consumers; the rest are geared toward enterprise use.

The Seagate 600 SSD comes in both 7-millimeter and, for the first time among SSDs, 5-millimeter thicknesses. The drive retains the 2.5-inch laptop design, supports SATA 3 (6Gbps), and offers up to 80,000 … Read more

Microsoft sells more than 100M Windows 8 licenses in 6 months

Microsoft officials said Monday that Microsoft has surpassed the 100 million Windows 8 licenses sold milestone -- a number on par with the number of Windows 7 licenses the company sold in its first six months on the market.

(Windows 8 and Windows RT went on sale on October 26, 2012. So the exact six-month mark was April 26, which was 10 days ago.)

"If there had been more touch devices in the market, it would have been even more," said Tami Reller, the chief financial officer of Microsoft's Windows client team. That said, "our sell-through … Read more

Asus CEO 'very optimistic' about Windows 8 tablets

Look for Windows 8 tablets to have a strong year, says Asus CEO Jerry Shen.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in an interview published today, Shen said that his company is "very optimistic about sales for Windows 8 tablets this year," adding that he believes Microsoft's support for 7-inch slates will be the central move in the platform's success.

Windows 8-based tablets currently measure 10 inches or more in size. Microsoft and its fellow tablet makers reportedly are planning to launch 7-inch slates later this year that can still run the company's Windows platform. … Read more

Windows 8.1 reportedly updates apps silently

Updating apps in Windows 8.1 will apparently be a simpler process than it is in Windows 8.

Users who installed the latest Windows 8.1 build, known as 9385, discovered that several apps had automatically updated themselves in the background, according to blog site Winbeta. One of the apps that took care of its own update was a new one called Movie Moments, which lets people create and edit short video clips.

The new update process could be an improvement over the one in Windows 8. Currently, people are notified of new app updates but need to venture into … Read more

Review: Rip DVDs to your hard drive for backup with Mp4DVD for Mac

Those with large DVD collections may want a program to back them up on their computer hard drives. If so, you'll pass on Mp4DVD for Mac, which didn't work well for us.

Available as freeware, Mp4DVD for Mac downloaded quickly and installation did not require any user interaction. It also didn't include any user instruction, and technical support did not appear to be available. Fortunately, the user interface was easy to use, albeit dated. The program asks the user to drag and drop a DVD icon into it for ripping. There are no options available for file … Read more

Review: Protect passwords and other personal data with Concealer for Mac

Keeping personal information like credit card data or Social Security numbers safe is becoming ever more important. Concealer for Mac is fairly well designed, making it an adequate option for users trying to store their private information securely.

Concealer for Mac offers a free trial version with a storage limit. The full version is available without limitations for a payment of $19.95. Despite the lack of a native installer, the program downloaded and installed quickly. After initiating the program, it brings up a menu for tutorial videos, although none of them loaded. After closing this menu, the program requests … Read more

Acer to launch Win 8 tablets with smaller screens this year

Acer plans to launch Windows 8 tablets with smaller screen sizes in the second half of the year, an executive said Friday.

Such devices will feature touch screens smaller than 10 inches, Emmanuel Fromont, Acer president for the Pan America region, and Sumit Agnihotry, Acer vice president of product marketing, told CNET in an interview following an Acer product launch event in New York.

They likely will cost below $400 -- the typical entry point for Windows tablets today -- and will be pushed as productivity devices that link to the traditional PC world more easily than Android devices, the … Read more

Windows 8 Wikipedia page vandalized

Every time I see a squirrel squashed, a house painted yellow, or a discarded condom on a sidewalk, I wonder what sort of human might have perpetrated such a deed.

Was it someone angry, someone merely tasteless, or someone who simply hasn't been educated in even the most basic elements of human decorum?

I found myself with somewhat similar feelings on discovering that a human being, or beings, took to the Wikipedia page for Microsoft's Windows 8 and attempted to pervert the course of truth.

For a random visit to this page revealed this notice from the Wikipedia … Read more

Latest Windows 8.1 build beefs up IE developer tools

Developers who need to peek at the code behind Web pages in Internet Explorer will find more robust tools in Windows 8.1.

A leak of Windows 8.1 Build 9385 reveals an overhaul to the developer panel in IE. Pressing F12 in any current version of Internet Explorer displays a panel that allows you to examine the HTML and CSS code, scripts, and many other elements. Developers can use this feature to analyze the code behind third-party Web sites or to troubleshoot problems with their own Web pages.

Windows 8.1 has upped Microsoft's browser to Internet Explorer … Read more