Skype's Free Phone Call Plan Will Soon Have Annual Fee

The New York Times is reporting that Skype has said it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones within the United States and Canada. From the article:

"As a promotion, Skype began allowing its users to place free domestic 'SkypeOut' calls from their computers to traditional and mobile phones last May. At the time, the company said the promotion would extend only through year's end. The company is offering a half-price subscription to those who sign up before Jan. 31. Calls from one computer to another have been and will continue to be free."

Read more...

Microsoft pulls Mac security update

A security update issued Tuesday for the Mac version of Microsoft Office was posted in error, the software maker said. The company encouraged consumers to uninstall the patch, which is still being tested.

"Due to human error, they were accidentally published to the public Web sites before our full testing release process was complete," a Microsoft security official said Wednesday on the company's Security Response Center blog. "As soon as we discovered the error, we moved quickly to address it and remove the pre-release binaries from our public sites."

Read more...

Fujitsu prepares 300GB notebook drive

Fujitsu is planning to release a 300GB hard drive for notebooks, which it says will set a record for SATA (serial ATA)-based 2.5-inch drives.

The vendor argues that the capacity of these kind of drives is now so high that they can replace the need for 3.5-inch desktop PC hard drives, which traditionally have offered greater storage capabilities.

Fujitsu will utilize perpendicular recording to achieve the new level of 300GB. Its 2.5-inch drive, called the MHX2300BT, is scheduled for release in February 2007.

Read more...

Al Shugart, hard-drive pioneer, dies at 76

Al Shugart--the man who founded Seagate Technology, convinced his pet dog to run for public office, and favored Hawaiian shirts over business suits--has died at age 76.

The California native passed away at a hospital from heart failure Tuesday, a Seagate representative said.

Shugart played an integral role in the development of the hard-drive industry. He was part of the original team of engineers at IBM that developed the first hard-drive storage system, which came out 50 years ago this year.

Read more...