AMD officially launches the Phenom II processor.  Their first 45nm processor lagging behind Intel.  There’s good reason why AMD is so behind though.  The acquisition of ATI took a while to absorb and now they finally have the resources put together, they can focus on moving forward.  The new Phenom II’s are poised to match up between Intel’s Core 2 Quad and Core i7 processors.  PC Worldreports more details regarding the performance vs. Intel’s counterparts and states that Intel still holds the performance crown.  AMD will have to focus on a price war against Intel’s new Core i7.  Most likely the Phenom II’s will be around 15-25% cheaper than Core i7 Counterparts.  I’m sure AMD will release a faster 2nd revision of the Phenom II during Q3-Q4 of 2009.

The new AMD Phenom II processors are shipping to distributors starting December 29th.  They will be available for purchase by the 2nd week of Jan 2009.  Softpediareports that there will be two flavors, Phenom II 940 at 3GHz and Phenom II 920 at 2.8GHz.  Didn’t Intel already go through 920 and 940 naming schemes with their Pentium D lineup a couple years ago?  Oh well, hopefully they’ll finally hit the nail on the head this time around, unlike the first Phenom’s.

For a whopping $999.95 you can own the Kodak 7.6″ Wireless OLED Digital Photo Frame from Amazon.com.  Great technology, once its reliability and production costs are reduced in a couple of years we can actually afford some decent sized TV’s! Engadget.com reports.

EDIT: I found it cheaper at Provantage, $752.62 at time of this writing.  Link

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.

I find this bit of news humorous.  It’s no longer a surprise when a company will announce they’re very skeptical about transitioning their systems over to Vista.  But according to the Inquirer, there was an internal memo circulating that said Intel will not use Windows Vista in any of their internal corporate computers.  Now what is even more interesting is that Intel has full access to Vista’s source code and may even know it better than Microsoft since the operating systems need to work fully with Intel’s processors.  Does Intel know something more in-depth about the operating system than meets the eye?

What will Intel use for their own computers?  The other two options are Linux and Mac OS.  Microsoft’s Windows 7 is still about 1.5 years away from release and even with that Intel is not holding their breath.  Was this a wise decision by Intel leaving Microsoft out in the cold?  Time will tell.  As they say, the bigger they are the harder they fall.

Nvidia rolled out its next generation 200 series GPU’s today.  The GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280.  These GPU’s are fabricated on a 65nm process that uses 1.4 billion transistors.  Nvidia claims that the new GPU’s average a 1.5x performance boost over GeFrorce 8 or 9 GPU series.

Now these numbers may be impressive but I can only imagine what the power consumption on these beasts will be.  The rest of the world is trying to be more conservative in terms of reducing dependency on oil and becoming more ‘green’ friendly but these units will definitely drive the electricity bill up.  Nvidia should push into the 45-55nm process arena like ATI to reduce the additional power overhead.

HP’s VoodooPC sister company has announced the Envy 133.  Debuted as just 1.75cm thick compared to the Apple MacBook Air’s 1.90cm thickness.  The Envy 133 will be available to market on June 20th of this year and will become the worlds thinnest consumer based notebook PC on the market.  Sporting a 13.3″  1280 x 800 LED back-lit screen with an ExpressCard 34 slot, 80GB 4200RPM Hard Drive, and an HDMI port.  Apparently the unit also comes with a USB 2.0 port and a combo eSATA/USB 2.0 connector but appear to be integrated on the AC adapter.  The AC adapter port also seems to be flexible and has the ability to addon a multi-format DVD writer.  Additionally, the Envy 133 has Bluetooth and 802.11n built-in.  The battery that comes with this unit seems to only have a battery life of 3h 45m compared to the Apple MacBook Air claimed 5 hours.  Still, this is not a bad alternative to the MacBook Air.  They could try to tweak a better battery life into the next revision.  Maybe switch over to a solid state hard drive to conserve power.  Needless to say, at least it has a removable battery, unlike the MacBook Air!

The rumors have been manifesting throughout the blogworld about an upcoming Dell Inspiron “Mini”due out later this summer.  We can only assume this model would fight the Asus Eee for market share in the ultra portable segment.  Judging by the picture’s at Gizmodoit appears the unit will have an 8-10″ wide screen display.  Although Dell has been tight-lipped about any specifications or even acknowledgement that this unit even exists, most likely it’ll sport the new low powered chips from Intel.  The Intel Atom along with Windows XP would be especially ripe considering Microsoft’s Windows XP extension for portable computers and licensing.

Intel today announced a super-small34nm process based 32Gb flash chip in a joint venture with Micron.  Intel plans to integrate the chip into solid state drives in the 80GB-160GB arena.  Unfortunately with the declin(ed)ing economy consumers will not be willing to pay extra hard earned cash for the more expensive SSD units with minimal performance enhancements.  Intel’s flash memory business has been in the dumps lately but they’re hoping this technology takes off in the enterprise sector first to drive down prices for consumers later on.  As soon as the units reach the sub $1/GB price arena with significant performance increases over standard hard drives then the consumers will jump on board.

I saw this article over at hdguru.com and thought it was worth a post.  The article explains how to research and haggle the HDTV of your dreams to an affordable price.  The members over at hdguru.com are not fans of extended warranties, accessories like overpriced Monster HD cables, or any of that nonsense.  Apparently, local and regional chain stores are the best bet as the salesmen are paid on commission.  Here you can actually haggle the price if you walk in the store knowing exactly what you want.  They all want to make a sale so chances are they will work with you.  Keep in mind, they’ll lower the price of the HDTV to lure you in but make up that lost profit by trying to sell you the extended warranty, delivery, installation, accessories, etc.  Read the article over here for more.

Google Android project leader Andy Rubin did not officially announce this type of online store but he almost guaranteed that it’s on the way.  The Android community will be a field day for open source developers but the Android store is supposed to allow consumers to purchase these applications and forward those funds to the applicable developers.  A perfect harmony of buyers and sellers uniting in one happy open source world or so we think.

“It would be a great benefit to the Android community to provide a place where people can go to safely and securely download content and where a billing system would allow developers to get paid for their effort,” he said. “We wouldn’t have done our job if we didn’t provide something that helps developers get distribution.

Of course, if Google opens an Android app store, there’s no guarantee it will actually show on every Android phone. There’s no guarantee any of Google’s tools will actually show up on phones.”

Samsung has announced the fastest 2.5″ SATAII 256GB Solid State Disk drive in the world.  Boasting impressive specifications that blow any other SSD on the market out of the water.  It can also hold its own on the performance side with a 200MB/sec sequential read speed and a 160MB/sec sequential write speed putting on top of even standard 3.5″ hard drives out today.  Samsung showed off that it is also the thinnest SSD unit to date with a very low power consumption of 0.9 watts while active.  SSD will eventually revolutionize the computing and mobile industries to make them faster while consuming less power.  But we are still a few years away as the prices are still out of the realm of consumers.  Samsung expects mass production of these units by the end of this year and a 1.8″ equivalent is expected by Q4 of 2008.

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.

Last month, a destructive fire at an LG plant in South Korea sent inventories of batteries up in smoke at about the same time the demand for notebooks and portable PC’s went up.  A senior executive at Simplo Technology admits the shortages of Lithium-Ion batteries are badly affecting portable PC sales and will do so until Q3 of 2008.  Most likely these shortages will affect the smaller portable PC manufacturer’s as battery manufacturers have to fulfill contract quota’s with their bigger accounts.  But with this technology rat race who can tell if it will affect all laptop manufacturers in the near future.  This could possibly drive up portable PC sales this summer in addition to the rising fuel and transportation costs.  The Inquirer reports.