Low-key UK launch for PlayStation 3

Around 100 people who slept overnight in London's Virgin Megastore to buy the first units of Sony's PlayStation 3 games console were rewarded with a free 46in HD TV set for their troubles. While early demand for the long-awaited successor is expected to be high, the launch, some four months after the games console went on sale in the USA and Japan, did not generate the scrums that surrounded the sale of the first Nintendo Wii units in December. Whether this is due to the PS3's price - in the region of ?425, ?260 more than the Wii - or to the fact that units are readily available around the country, while the Wii was in short supply, remains to be seen. ...more

File-swapping gets the OK in LA

Federal judge rules file-swapping apps are not responsible for the uses to which they may be put. A federal judge in LA has ruled against the music and movie industry, stating that makers of file-swapping applications cannot be held liable for any copyright infringement resulting from their use. US District Court Judge Stephen Wilson wrote that Grokster and Streamcast Networks (parent companies for the Morpheus file-swapping application) are no more guilty of copyright infringement than the makers of other products that are generally accepted as being used for copying, both legally and illegally. ...more

Samsung turns to Flash new hard drive

Samsung has unveiled a prototype storage unit that combines a hard drive and 128MB of Flash memory. Developed in conjunction with Microsoft, the Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD) was designed for laptops running Longhorn, the next version of Windows. By writing data to the Flash memory, the hard disk does not need to be spun up as often, reducing power drain by as much as 10 per cent and prolonging the life of the drive. ...more

Tumbleweed loses PC Pro Recommended award

PC Pro has stripped Tumbleweed of its Recommended award for its MailGate NAS appliance (reviewed in the November 2004 issue). We were informed at the time of review that the MailGate would be on sale from ?1,000, but it's come to light that the system was never on sale for this price. Tumbleweed claims this was due to an upgrade to the specification, but the price is now approaching ?4,000. ...more

A joint standard for next-generation Wi-Fi in sight

The two groups bidding to have their specification accepted as the next-generation Wi-Fi standard have finally put their differences aside and agreed a joint standard for IEEE 802.11n. Forty companies voted unanimously to back the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC) specification, which will raise the maximum wireless speed for wireless networking to 600Mbps, 11 times the top speed currently provided by 802. ...more