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Buffalo Technology seems to have won the race as the first vendor to actually ship a USB 3.0 hard drive.

Buffalo's new USB 3.0 hard drive

(Credit: Buffalo Technology)

The company announced Tuesday that it is shipping its new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external DriveStation HD-HXU3. Tapping into the speed of the new USB 3.0 spec, the drive can push data at least three times faster than a USB 2.0 drive.

Available in 1-terabyte, 1.5TB, and 2TB capacities, the drive is backward-compatible with existing USB 2.0 computers, said Buffalo. The company is also releasing a two-port USB 3.0 PCI card, so users can upgrade their desktop PCs to take advantage of the drive's higher speeds.

Since the USB 3.0 Promoter Group finalized the new USB 3.0 standard about a year ago, vendors have been pushing to get their new products out the door.

Buffalo had been dueling with Netherlands-based company Freecom to actually deliver the first USB 3.0 hard drive to consumers, ... Read more

The new Rocket 622 and Rocket 620 SATA 3.0 controller cards from HighPoint.

(Credit: HighPoint)

In September, Seagate made the first 6Gbps SATA hard drive available. The new Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive offers twice the throughput speed of existing popular 3Gbps SATA hard drives. Now you're about to get the chance to take advantage of the new drive's performance with your current PC.

HighPoint, which makes controllers for storage devices, announced Monday the availability of the first SATA 6Gbps (or SATA 3.0) host adapters, the Rocket 600 series, which are based on PCI-Express 2.0 technology.

SATA 3.0 is the next generation of the SATA storage standard. Currently most computers use the second generation of this standard, the 3Gbps SATA (or SATA 2.0). At its full potential, the SATA 3.0 standard could theoretically transfer entire contents of a CD (about 800MB) in just one second. According to HighPoint, its new controller cards, however, offer the sustained speed of up to 500MBps.

HighPoint's new series of controller ... Read more

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Whether CULV thin-and-light laptops will ever fully find a spot between the Netbook world and the full-featured laptop world, they are most definitely a category that's growing every day. Dropping an optical drive and throwing a low-voltage processor alongside a long-lasting battery is the trend of 2009, although the low-voltage laptops we've seen so far have often sacrificed either build quality, performance, or value-for-dollar.

It's relieving to say, therefore, that the 13-inch Asus UL30A-A1 is a thin-and-light that we'd gladly carry around in our bag for a long time to come. With a sturdy frame, a decently-performing new Core 2 Duo CULV processor as opposed to the disappointing single-core Core 2 Solo CULVs we've seen, and really good battery life, it's close to a complete package for a sub-$1,000 laptop that doesn't resort to an Atom processor.

While we've seen similar-looking products here before,

The availability of instant digital downloads from services like iTunes, Amazon, or Netflix has made it convenient for me watch TV shows on my time, without the commercials. Isn't it obvious? I choose when to watch a show and I save about 15 minutes worth of useless advertising.

(Credit: TV.com)

Similarly, one might use a DVR to record shows and watch them at a later time, with the liberty of fast-forwarding through ads. Although there are those who don't mind commercials, most would probably skip them. So it's not surprising that TiVo reported "nearly all of the television shows that won 2009 Emmys showed higher levels of ad-skipping than the averages for their respective genres." The one exception: "30 Rock."

NBC broadcasts commercials during "30 Rock" that have tactfully cast its very own Tina Fey, resulting in a fluid show-to-commercial transition. I've seen Bravo use a similar strategy, placing a micro clip of the show in between commercials, forcing me to sit through ads while I wait to see NeNe and Kim ... Read more

OS X 10.6 includes Boot Camp 3.0, a new collection of software drivers that make Windows run much better on Mac hardware.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Every time I see the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads on TV, I can't help but wonder, "Why not both?" And it has never been a better time for that.

Overall, personally, I found that while the new Mac OS doesn't warrant a "wow," it's still definitely worth the $29 upgrade price. Snow Leopard offers an even more streamlined Mac experience than Leopard and noticeably faster interface responsiveness. The application performance, however, is slightly slower than it is with Leopard, at least on the MacBook Pro we used as our test machine. As the OS is now a pure 64-bit operating system, expect the application performance to improve over Leopard as you add RAM or use it with a high-end desktop.

Mac users can read more about Snow Leopard in my colleague Jason Parker's full review. On the other hand, for Windows users, especially Windows 7, the release of Snow Leopard is straight-on great news.

Boot Camp 3.0 enables Windows to read files from OS X's partition.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

I recently blogged about running Windows 7 on a 15-inch Unibody Macbook Pro, which required some tweaking with Boot Camp 2.1. Snow Leopard comes with Boot Camp 3.0, which makes installing and running Windows on a laptop a much more pleasant experience.

First of all, the new Boot Camp includes all the drivers necessary to run both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 smoothly on the Mac hardware.

(Note that you only need to run the Boot Camp Assistant, BCA, if you want to dual-boot OS X and Windows on the same machine. The utility will then create a new partition for the installation of Windows. In this case, make sure you run the BCA first when the computer boots up to avoid file errors. If you want to run just Windows and skip OS X altogether, you can boot from the Windows 7 install DVD and start the installation the way you would install the OS on any PC from scratch.)

After the installation is done, Boot Camp 3.0 can be installed from the Snow Leopard DVD. Then, without further ado, you got yourself a great Windows computer.

Facebook 3.0 introduces new navigation, notifications, events, and more.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

The third major edition of Facebook for iPhone has just crept into the iTunes App Store. It's a huge update, with numerous advanced features that make Facebook more interactive than before and which bring the app as close to the desktop experience as it's ever been.

Facebook for iPhone opens on your news feed as usual, but the upper left corner now sports a tiny grid icon that serves as the main organizing feature for this new build. Click it to see a screen equipped with a search bar on top, a notification alert area on the bottom, and a grid of nine activities you can perform in the middle. These include the news feed, your profile details, your message in-box, Facebook chat, friend requests, events, photo albums, and notes.

Those who use Facebook on the iPhone frequently will notice that quite a few of these actions are brand new, like viewing events and submitting an RSVP from your phone. You'll also be able to view friends' birthdays and upload photos to any album. Anyone sporting an iPhone 3GS gets the added bonus of uploading video.

Photos received a lot of attention in this update. You'll now be able to zoom into photos, create albums and delete them, as well as upload and delete photos and photo tags, all from the Facebook interface. In addition, you can upload a new profile picture.

Facebook has also poured energy into how it deals with friends. ... Read more

A video posted recently on YouTube demonstrates, on an iPod Touch, a potential security risk for users of iPhone OS 3.0. The bug allows e-mails that have already deleted to be viewed by searching for the title of the deleted message.

The results of the search display two copies of the message. Selecting either one of these the first time will cause Mail to crash. The second time you select the messages, the iPhone may display the original message or you may get a warning that states: "Message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted." You should note that the message is displayed in Mail as "1 of 0" and it is "partially downloaded." The download button used to retrieve the remainder of the message doesn't work.

Fortunately, one developer said this problem appears to have been resolved in iPhone OS 3.1 beta 3, since the developer was not able to recreate the bug after upgrading.

Update 08/19/09 at 8:19 PM PDT: The ... Read more

The iPhone OS 3.0 Camera Roll is running out of film for some iPhone users. A handful of photographers on Apple's discussion board are reporting that pictures taken with the iPhone camera and screen captures are disappearing from the iPhone's onboard photo library.

The bug, according to these reports, occurs when the photo names generated by the iPhone reach IMG_10000.xxx or higher, where the xxx represents either a JPG for photos, PNG for screen snapshots, or MOV for videos. Once you've reached this 10,000 mark milestone in your iPhone photography career, the Mobile Photos app no longer displays additional media files. Luckily, however, the photos are still there--they simply don't display on the phone.

Some users found help using the Phoneview utility from Ecamm on their Macs--the free demo version worked long enough to uncover the missing photos. PC users may be able to find their shots via iPhone Browser.

Now that the iPhone OS 3.0 firmware has added stereo Bluetooth functionality to the Apple iPhone, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit stereo Bluetooth and what it promises.

Motorola Rokr S9 HD with iPod adapter

(Credit: Motorola)

Stereo Bluetooth, or A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), is essentially a Bluetooth profile that lets you stream music from one device to another without the use of wires. The technology has been around for years, and almost all music phones have this feature. In fact, it was quite a big letdown that the original iPhone and iPhone 3G did not have this built in when they first launched, considering the iPhone's iPod heritage. Still, it's better late than never. The iPhone OS 3.0 update also brought stereo Bluetooth to the iPod Touch 2nd gen. If you have a music player instead of a phone, you can also purchase additional stereo Bluetooth adapters, like this Motorola D650 iPod adapter.

Stereo Bluetooth headphones come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some, like the Motorola Rokr S9 HD, are meant for active lifestyles, as it's shaped to hug the sides of the head. Others, like the Samsung SBH-600, are meant for serious audiophiles, especially with its promise of surround sound and bass boost. We also like the mono-to-stereo headsets, like the Plantronics Voyager 855, that can change from a mono headset to a stereo version simply by connecting an additional ear bud. One of the more popular stereo headsets among our readers is the Jabra BT3030, which isn't really even a headset so much as it is a pendant that you can use with any pair of 3.5mm-compatible headphones.