Fujitsu apparently has been dumping loads of cash into the Research & Development sector to come out with some new toys.  They have come up with the world’s first zero-watt monitorin standby mode.  As opposed to every other LCD in the world where the monitors use 4-10 watts or more in standby mode.  Nifty idea but still won’t hold up against OLED monitors when they start coming out in a year or two.  Apparently these new LCD’s from Fujistu also feature the “DisplayView AutoBright” function which automatically adjusts brightness along with the ambient light inside the room.  This is supposed to accumulate additional power savings.  Could it be that Fujitsu released these units as the last generation LCD’s before the OLED’s roll out?  Time will tell.

Nvidia may have a long 2008 fiscal year if they don’t get their act together with these G84/G86/G92/G94 chip failures.  The Inquirerreports that the problem spans with all laptops with these chips from HP, Dell, Apple, Asus, and Lenovo.  Dell has been reportedly sending full replacement laptops to customers with these arising issues still under warranty.  Nvidia has been light with press releases regarding the issue.  Either they’re trying to soften the public blow to their image or more likely, they don’t know what the problem is yet or how to correct it.  Do you think Dell, HP, etc. will be stuck with the bill of these costly warranty exchanges?  I think not.  So on top of scrambling their engineering department to figure out this mess, they will have to cover at least most of these costs to the OEM and laptop manufacturers.  If and when the issue rolls into the desktop market, look out.  ATI, AMD now has one of the biggest opportunities in the past decade to gain market share.  I’m not more for one or the other, but they both need to stay in this business to keep competition up and costs down for the consumers sake.

VIA has announcedthey will be quitting the motherboard chipset business.  All I can say is, its about time!  Ever since the KT400 series chipsets Viahas been down hill.  Plagued with compatibility problems with memory and not to mention the whole Creative Labs fiasco.  Where most Creative Labs sound cards caused lockups and instability with Via chipsets.  Via says that they are not entirely exiting this market but only the chipsets for Intel and AMD processors.  Via has their own Nano processors that in direct competition with Intel’s new Atom chips.  The Inquirer reports.

I guess a big sigh of relief can come now.  The 65,000 employee’s that were on the verge of going on strike has now come to a close.  A new 3-year contract has been signed and the Unions are having their happy hour.  The workers just got an 11 percent pay increase over the course of the contract.  Additionally, 600 techs in the Verizon Business division will be unionized.  RTT News reports.

We have been hearing about the benefits of WiMAX technology for years and they might be here sooner rather than later assuming there’s no more red tape.  Arstechnica has an article with Clearwire’s CEO, Ben Wolff, spouting off that AT&T’s main goal is to either delay the merger of Clearwire and Sprint’s Xohm unit or get the FCC to modify the spectrum cap limits for AT&T’s own benefits.  Wolff says the main reason they want this merger is to promote competition by providing 4G mobile WiMAX as “wholesale access”.  This wholesale access is to be resold(licensed?) to other providers.  How is this competition if Clearwire will be the one controlling the main network?  It’s almost like back in the late 90s where Verizon owned the POT systems and licensed out the CO’s to other providers for DSL services.

In any case, this upcoming WiMAX network is supposed to be “wholesale friendly” which means that it’ll be a free-for-all between carriers, manufacturers, and developers alike.  Clearwire currently has a 440,000 subscriber base and of course hope to accelerate growth from the merger.  They hope to have 6Mbps download speeds for mobile users across the US with unlimited access for a flat fee.

The idea and the affordability of mini-PC’s in non-laptop form have been around for years.  HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Acer have slim tower desktops but the recent trend has been going even smaller.  Technewsworld.com has an interesting article that points out some of the recent trend changes in the small computing world.  They call these new PC’s “Crossover systems” which is not to be confused with vehicle crossovers of course.  Some of these machines actually have started using laptop hardware in a desktop oriented computer box.  This not only cuts down on its footprint size but also on your electric bill since they are power sippers.

Another company has gone another route though.  HP has come out with the TouchSmart series which combines all of the normal desktop hardware into an all-in-one touch screen desktop PC.  So far, most people that see these PC’s are intrigued and even like the styling over Apple’s trend setting desktops.

Asus also has been attacking this front with their Eee PC’s starting a very attractive price of $349.  They dont come with a CD drive and only come with XP Home but these refinements make up for its incredibly small size, about the size of a softcover book.  It even comes with a bracket to hang it on the back of a monitor or TV.

Check out the article at Technewsworld.com for a more in-depth analysis of this trend.

We already knew the security features were useless right?  Of course we did!  Just a ruse to push hardware sales and decrease memory prices!  Just kidding.  At the Black Hat security conference this week, two researchers will discuss what they have discovered which may shoot Microsoft Vista’s new and improved “security features” to hell.  Microsoft has been spending millions of dollars promoting Vista as the most secure operating system yet but what else is new?  The exploits allow bypassing of Vista’s Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP, and several other security “features” by simply loading malware from a web browser.  The Inquirer reports.

Verizon Communications is three days away from the extended deadline for union contract expiration.  65,000 employee’s will go on strike if their conditions are not met.  That’s about 1/3rd of Verizon’s workforce.  How will this impact their customer support?  FIOS rollouts?  What about Enterprise users that use wireless devices for emails, calendars, etc.?  I haven’t had any problems with my FIOS but curse them if I have to go back to Comcast!

Intel has announced the official name for the upcoming Nehalem processors.  The Core i7, regardless of the processor or speed, will have a whole new model naming scheme.  Intel will debut 3 Bloomfield SKU numbers in Q4 of this year.  The benchmarks look promising, outperforming the currect Core 2 Duo architecture, but there’s a drawback.  There will be a completely new socket, no more backwards compatibility like in the previous processors and socket LGA 775.

On the green eco friendly front, Gizmodo has some tid bits about a battery free “wind up” universal remote control.  While this seems like a really cool and green/eco/hippie/friendly idea, can you image trying to wind this thing up while you’re drunk?  I’d drop the damn thing every five seconds.  Then throw it across the room because I can’t watch my porn!

I honestly didn’t know Transmeta was even still around.  I remember them trying to go head-to-head with Intel’s processors years ago but this is some interesting news that Nvidia is acquiring their power management technology.  The technology God’s surely know Nvidia can use some help in this arena, especially with their 8000, 9000, and newly 200 series GPU’s.  Interestingly, Vanguard Group sold 140,278 (-98.47%) of their shares of Transmeta Corp (TMTA) recently.  Perhaps even after $25 million from Nvidia, Vanguards investors aren’t falling for it.

Apparently, it looks like Nvidia can’t get a grasp on energy efficiency when it comes to their chips.  They’re always ranting about how powerful their multicore chips will be and how they will revolutionize the computing industry, but if it significantly affects your power bill at the end of the day then less people will buy it.  Especially with the recent rise in energy costs.