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.

A few days ago, two teens that dropped out of high school hacked Comcast’s domain.  Comcast’s registrar holding the Comcast.net domain is Network Solutions.  The two teens said they found a “flaw” on Network Solutions website allowing them into Comcast’s account to change the domain configuration.  They called the technical contact at Comcast to tell them they found a flaw in their system but the guy hung up on them.  They then proceeded to change the DNS settings for the Comcast.net domain to point it at their own servers.  Although a lawsuit is probably eminent they should hire these two as security consultants.  Unfortunately the incriminating picture on Gizmodo’s website may not allow them to land the job!

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.”

Originally brought to attention by Gizmodo, I thought the video was worth a post.  Don’t try this at home kids.

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.

Gamestop has announced they will discontinue selling the Microsoft Zune multimedia player due to lack of sales.  Microsoft has sold 2 million Zune’s since their inception in November 2006.  Apple has sold 10.6 million iPod’s last quarter alone.  TechCrunch reports:

“We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated,” said a GameStop spokesperson. “It (also) did not fit with our product mix.”

Steven Spielberg is jumping on the social network bandwagon by creating a niche social network.  A social network catering to the paranormalities of Ghosts and UFO sitings.  It has been dubbed with a name called “Rising” or “The Rising”, both domain names have been registered while they figure out which to call it.  They’re probably sifting through trademarks and corporate catch phrases to make sure they don’t get sued first.  This social site will be a feeding ground for paranormal activities with users having the ability to share stories as well as upload photo’s and movies of such events.  The site is dubbed to be launched at the end of the summer.

Control Lights with Twitter from Justin Wickett on Vimeo.

So someone found another use for Twitter besides looking at some one’s everyday boring life.  This guy was able to to setup an INSTEON light switch hooked into his computer to turn his room lights on and off by text messaging “lights off” from his cell phone.  A useless setup for most(and i mean most by 99.9%) of all users because unless you have a dedicated machine(home server?) setup for this by the light switch, this just isn’t going to catch on.  Now if INSTEON or some other Home Automation maker happens to integrate this type of technology into their switches(802.11b/g integration maybe?) then I can definitely see this becoming popular.

The boys over at Engadget have spy shots of the upcoming Palm Treo 850.  Not a bad looking unit although when brisking through the comments some say it resembles Research In Motion’s Blackberry units.  But what do you expect?  Most cars on the road have the same usable features in roughly the same spots too.  In any case, the Treo 850 will be sporting a 400MHz CPU and 100MB of RAM as another contender in the Windows Mobile arena.  Now if only you can install Linux on it.

The health care system in the United States is out of control.  Exactly the same reason why there’s so many credit problems right now because the credit system is also out of control.  Perhaps the first step in redefining the health care system here in the states is by giving some of that control to the people.  Google Health Beta launched yesterday(5/20/08) with the intentions of just that.  It gives everyday people a platform to help them track their medical records, prescriptions, allergies, medical conditions, and so on.  Perhaps in the future Google will add additional features like a Google Health Analytics.  Such a feature could have an analytic and graphing system that tracks your blood pressure, sugar levels, PSA levels, white blood counts, and so on all on a easy readable pie or bar graph with a time line.  So every time you go for a checkup this information updates with the new data.  Did I mention Skynet is self aware?