In an attempt to reduce customer frustration and volume of calls to HP’s call centers for support, HP announces to sit tight on XP SP3 to wait for a fix.  As AMD-XP users that have become frustrated after installing SP3, Microsoft tries to work with OEM’s to get the issue(s) resolved.  The problem originated from sysprep’d XP Service Pack 1 utilizing Intel hardware from OEM’s.  This practice has led us here today where yet again, customers are the ones that suffer.  Why didn’t this issue surface from the beta or release candidates prior to release?  Quite possibly because most beta testers are enthusiasts and build their own machine’s, therefore, never had a sysprep’d image from an OEM in the first place.

Although there’s currently no benchmarks or reviews to test the statement, Greenhouse has announced a new SSD drive that is currently the fastest SSD in the industry.  The DH-SSDGS series are supposed to read up to 130MB/s and write up to 67MB/s.  The capacities range between 16GB to 128GB at 2.5 inches.  The SATA flavors are supposed to be available late May in Japan.  No word on release dates in the US or pricing.

In another moveto keep their heads above water, AMD fires two executives, EVP of Computing Solutions Mario Rivas and Chief Talent Officer Michel Cadieux in addition to 1600 workers laid off worldwide.  The new engineering group will oversee the development and execution of AMD’s product roadmaps throughout their business units.  AMD seems to be focusing more on their business unit now as the Opteron series will be the bread and butter until the consumer sector picks up.  Hopefully the next iteration of processors due out later this year will pickup where the Phenom’s have been lacking to compete against Intel.

It was a matter of time for Dell to realize that their acquisition of Alienware would compete directly with their Dell XPS market share.  So why double up on the overhead and battle two fronts against yourself?  Dell finally comes to their senses and announces that the XPS gaming series will be no more.  The XPS series has been cheaper than Alienware models of similar specifications even before the acquisition in 2006.  Does this mean Alienware will release a more affordable model to replace the XPS line?  I guess we shall find out once all of this takes effect.

Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has been in talks with Hewlett Packard (HP) to be acquired for $12-13 billion.  EDS was founded on June 27th, 1962 in Plano, Texas.  Their revenue for the 2006 year was $21.3 billion and have 136,000 employee’s.  EDS has a wide range of services broken up into three service portfolio’s which are Infrastructure, Applications, and Business Process Outsourcing.  This acquisition will better place HP to go head-to-head with IBM.  If the acquisition is to go through, it will be HP’s largest acquisition since the $19 billion buy-out for Compaq Computer in May 2002.  EDS shares surged as much as 28% while HP’s shares fell 5.7% when the buyout was first reported minutes ago.  Marketwatch.com reports.

As the Web 2.0 era rages on, Microsoft is late in the game with its Messenger TV service.  Take what You Tube currently offers but transform it into a real time chat and viewing of videos with your friends.  You will be able to watch the same video in sync with users on your messenger list and comment about the video in real time chat.  Pretty cool concept except it has been launched in 20 countries except the United States.  Although the guys over at Arstechnica fixed that by changing the language option in IE to en-CA(Canada language preset) and were able to use the service.  Imagine watching your favorite TV show, in real time, with friends, family, and co-workers.  Surely a distraction for everyone to turn the service off!  Just kidding.  I’m sure porn buff’s will love this service though.

The Asus Eee PC 900 has hit the online e-tailers today for purchase.  Engadget reports that Buy.com and ZipZoomfly have the units readily available on their sites for purchase.  ZipZoomfly has the XP version for $600 while Buy.com has the Linux version for $566.  As of this writing, Newegg.com has yet to put them on their site for sale.  If they sell like hot cakes and the demand outstrips supply, be prepared for price hikes in the short term.

There have been complaints in Austrailia that the XP version is selling for $50 cheaper than the Linux version according to Technewsworld.com.  Not sure what exactly this is about but I’m sure the details will surface soon.

Google will be launching its very own data portability service called Friend Connect.  This service allows website owners to easily integrate social services by entering a snibbit of code anywhere on the site and they can offer the Friend Connect features to their visitors.  Visitors will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends or with the API’s to connect with existing friends on Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.  Essentially turning any website into a social networking site.  Welcome to Web 2.5 Beta 1.

The press release from Google further explains how site owners can drive traffic to their site from visitors looking at friends bookmarks and have the option to publish the content to their own social network or blogs.  Google’s Friend Connect is currently a preview release, meaning it’s beta and is not officially a full blown Google service to the public.  They’re testing the waters to check the adoption rate and of course to smooth out any bugs.

Check it out at http://www.google.com/friendconnect (UPDATE: This link won’t work until after Campfire One  tonight)

I have been reading these articles about the failure of Microsoft merging with Yahoo and can’t help but think if Microsoft really is in trouble.  Not so much in the short term but in the long term.  Rob Enderle, the President of Enderle Group, believes that Google’s strategy is to kill Microsoft.  Google has been slowly taking over the Windows desktop with Google Search, the Google Toolbar, and the Google Sidebar.  They have been adding features to the Windows XP platform that disinterest users from upgrading to Vista.  Not to mention, Google Docs, allows users to freely create and distribute documents/spreadsheets that they normally would have to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars to purchase their Office Suite.  Furthermore, Google diluted the Yahoo deal by allowing them to advertise in the Google ad network during the Microsoft-Yahoo fiasco.  It was like Google gave Microsoft the finger and said go ahead, buy Yahoo!  But Google wanted to delay the merger for as long as possible, hopefully either ending in a hostile takeover or take a serious drain on Microsoft as the deal falls through.  All the while, Google is trimming Microsoft’s revenue streams down to give Microsoft no breathing room while they would be busy allocating all of their resources merging Yahoo and Microsoft together.

Google will need to take on Microsoft’s Enterprise sector head on by innovating new suites to run corporate networks.  Although they have been knit-picking the Windows desktop and Office suite market shares, the Enterprise is where Microsoft also gets a big chunk of profit.  Google would need to attack on all fronts in order to succeed taking out the giant.  But what would that mean for consumers and businesses?  Usually when you have one big corporation with little competition it invokes greed and laziness.  I hope Google and Microsoft can survive together as competitors to help drive the market instead of shifting a technology monopoly from one company to another.

If anyone remembers the original USB 1.0 spec released back in 1995 it was a mess.  Intel released the spec and it was completely proprietary under their guidelines.  Then the USB 1.0 spec was thrown out and USB 1.1 fixed all the compatibility issues by starting over from scratch by the end of 1998-beginning of 1999.  USB 1.1 was a globally recognized standard along with 2.0.  USB 2.0 was released as a standard from the beginning separate from Intel and it was a smashing hit with peripherals.  Now, Intel is at it again, releasing a new and improved USB 3.0 but is pulling the same B.S. they did with USB 1.0.  Any company that qualifies as a competitor to Intel, this includes any motherboard, chipset, or CPU manufacturer(including mobile devices), will have to wait 6 months until after Intel comes out with the spec.  Any company that will make an actual USB 3.0 device, memory sticks, camera’s, printers, sex toys, whatever, will be able to get them now.  Of course any company that does not have access to the specs cannot make any devices for it.  We would of thought we could expect better from Intel nowadays but I guess history repeats itself.

The MSI Wind, which is an ultra portable notebook spanning a screen of 10″ has gotten a price tag of $610.  The specs include a 1.6GHz processor which is supposed to be an Intel Atom.   1GB of ram, 80GB Hard Drive, and Windows XP.  The price of $610 really isn’t that impressive considering its competition in this market.  HP, Dell, and Acer all have compact notebooks in this price range and will continue to fuel their ultra portable arsenal in the near future.

According to this article over at The Reg, hundred’s of users on forums have reported endless system reboots after installing the recently released Windows XP Service Pack 3.  Personally, I have installed Windows XP SP3 on 3 PC’s and so far so good.  I’m 3 for 3 and hope I don’t run into this issue.  Most likely the users complaining about this issue have some sort of driver installed on the PC that’s conflicting with an update part of the Service Pack.  You would think, with all the beta’s and release candidates of this SP that they would of caught it in time before release.  Oh well, Microsoft can’t win for losing.

Let’s face it, the WiMax technology has been no picnic for any company large or small.  After repeated failed attempts around the world from multiple companies WiMax may finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The WiMax joint venture, which is expected to be announced today is official.  Sprint’s WiMax division is merging with Clearwire to form a single WiMax company called… Clearwire!  But Spring will own most of it.  Google, Intel, Time Warner, and Comcast will also be contributing in ways to help out the project.  Besides chipping in a cumulative $3.2 billion they will contributing in a bunch of other ways which are explained more in the press announcement.  You can check out the press announcement here.

Microsoft has finally released Windows XP SP3 on the Microsoft Windows Update and Download Center sites.  The Service Pack was delayed due to compatibility issues with Microsoft’s Dynamics RMS retail management package.  Apparently they haven’t fixed the issue yet and only implemented a work around that detects whether the machine has Microsoft Dynamics RMS installed.  If it finds RMS on the machine it will not show the update on the website, at least not for now.

OFFICIAL DOWNLOAD LINK: Microsoft Download Center

An internal memo within AT&T told itsemployee’s that they can’t take any time off from work next month because of an anticipated “heavy selling period” resulting from a Summer Promotional Launch.  AT&T is blocking off June 15th to July 12th this summer for the new product launch.  This of course is speculation at this point but as The Reg said in the article, what else could this be?  Especially since rumors have surfaced about a new 3G iPhone being released this summer.