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On Monday, Fujitsu Computer Products of America announced the Fujitsu MHZ2 CJ series for business notebooks that features full disk encryption. The new 2.5" 7,200RPM SATA hard disk drive (HDD) incorporates the AES-256 encryption standard at the hardware level without the need for additional software.

Unlike encryption with Windows Vista BitLocker, which requires the operating system to be present, the new Fujitsu drive performs its encryption entirely within the BIOS during power on. Encryption performed within the BIOS prevents the keys from being stored in the clear anywhere on the drive.

According to Fujitsu, "the key … Read more

In the '90s, when the MP3 was new, it was difficult to predict the medium's effect on the music industry and our culture. Today, the results of the MP3 revolution are starting to show, and I sometimes wonder what we won.… Read more

The day I bought myself a LightScribe DVD drive was the day I put away my Sharpie marker forever. Sure, it takes upwards of 20 minutes to burn a custom label on a LightScribe disc, but the results are vastly superior to my chicken scratch.

Newegg has the Samsung SH-S202N 20X internal DVD burner with LightScribe technology for just $26.99. It's a new unit with no rebates, free shipping, and mostly positive reviews.

If you've never done it before, swapping out an optical drive is a piece of cake. Unplug the power and interface connectors, slide out … Read more

If you've ever wondered how a media room can run up a $300,000 tab, try this on for starters: a Blu-ray Disc player that goes for $17,000.

Switzerland-based Goldmund has upgraded its "Eidos 20" media player with the victorious video format, claiming that it's the first Blu-ray player from a high-end audio-video equipment maker. As with all such products, one can't help but wonder how the exorbitant price can be justified, though Goldmund claims "the finest AS-Curator power supply circuit and magnetic damping for ultimate sound and video reproduction with least amount … Read more

Things have gone from bad to worse for HD DVD in the space of one week.

Wal-Mart Stores announced on Friday morning that it, too, has chosen a side in the battle for high-definition video supremacy: by June, it will stock only Blu-ray Disc players.

A buyer in Wal-Mart's video division wrote this morning on her Wal-Mart Checkout blog that the retail giant had made the decision following Netflix and Best Buy's high-profile announcements that they will exclusively stock Blu-ray products.

Wrote Susan Chronister of Wal-Mart: "By June, Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware … Read more

Toshiba may have taken a huge hit recently, but the HD DVD supporter is striking back.

Barely a week after Warner Bros. announced it would no longer put out movies on the HD DVD format, of which Toshiba is a primary supporter, the company announced it is lowering the prices on all three models of next-generation DVD players.

The entry-level model, the HD-A3, now goes for $149.99, the HD-A30 for $199.99, and the HD-A35 for $299.99. That's about $150 to $200 worth of discounts on all models.

The new pricing from Toshiba is well-timed, according to … Read more

You can finally chuck that stomper and paper label. Someone's come up with a standalone CD/DVD printer that can actually output up to 1,200dpi graphics directly onto your CD or DVD. We've seen disc printers featured in printers, but the Dymo DiscPainter claims to put a new spin on the process.

If you have $280 to throw away and a crate of discs to label, according to Uncrate, this little USB device is the way to go. It uses RadialPrint technology, which spins the disc while it prints everything in full color, directly on discs, from … Read more

An Israeli start-up has created a way to store a whole lot of data on optical discs using fluorescence.

The TeraDisc looks like a regular CD, except it's chartreuse and see-through. Mempile says its disc will start off able to store 600GB to 700GB and in a year will be able to write 1TB worth of data. There are two physical layers of plastic, but 200 virtual layers on the one-sided disc. That means 250 hours of high-definition content or 300,000 digital photos. HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc can currently hold about 50GB of data on dual-layer discs. … Read more

We editors and reporters here at Crave hear a lot of product pitches. Some are right up our respective alleys, but we have to refuse a lot of them for various reasons. One of my favorite refusals was when I had to explain to the nice PR man that I wasn't going to review his CD filing solution because it didn't require power and, you know, have chips in it. But I have to eat my words right now, because I finally opened the Disc Eraser device that's been sitting on my desk for months.

The Disc … Read more