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There is no denying that the initial news about Windows 7, Vista’s successor, weren’t especially great for Microsoft. Vista is by far not as successful as Microsoft would have hoped and Windows 7 will have to carry the company until a completely new operating system, speculated to be code-named Midori, will be available. So, will Windows 7 be another Vista? Will it lag behind OS X Snow Leopard? Is multi-touch UI really as great as Microsoft claims it will be?

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Toshiba today announced its “near HD” DVD player, which effectively succeeds the company’s HD DVD players that were removed from the market earlier this year. Toshiba’s first XDE player will debut later this month, are promised to offer better image quality than standard DVD players for a price that is twice that of other 1080p upconverting DVD players, but only half the price of Blu-ray players.

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Opinion – Ok, so we adjusted our hopes that Windows 7 will not become that revolutionary operating system we hoped it would be. But the ongoing flow of news suggests that we should downgrade our expectations even further, as Microsoft’s recently updated server roadmap indicates that there will not be a Windows 7 server, suggesting that Windows 7 indeed will not be what Microsoft would call a major operating system release. Sounds to me like Windows 98 SE all over again.

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According to Microsoft, Windows Vista is on a path of success and the operating system is flying off OEM and retail shelves. However, a new survey questions how many of those actual Vista licenses are actually in use, as a new survey claims that a substantial portion of PC buyers chooses to downgrade to Windows XP. 

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Opinion – IDF is just around the corner and Intel will provide a flood of new information about its upcoming Nehalem (Core i7) processor as well as its 32 nm and 22 nm successors, new architectures such as Larrabee, the ready-to-launch WiMax mobile platform, CE processors such as Tolapai and new partners such as Dreamworks. IDF’s marketing machine typically buries anything from AMD, but this year, AMD is reverting to a strategy from the past: AMD is setting up its camp in a hotel nearby in an effort to balance Intel’s messages. A first briefing discounting Intel’s current product line was given to journalists earlier today. And if the tone of this briefing is any indication, then Nehalem feels like Core 2 Duo all over again.

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T. Boone Pickens did not look not so green after the LA Times busted him for funding California’s Prop 10. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal decided they too wanted to dig into the matter and revealed some interesting details.

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Market research firm NPD today released its July game console shipment estimates, which shed some light on how well each manufacturer travelled through the month with typically weak sales. All three manufacturers saw their unit numbers decline, with the Xbox 360 remaining the weakest of the three major consoles on the market today. 

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IBM and its chip development partners made a stunning announcement today, apparently beating Intel in the successful production of the first functional 22 nm SRAM cell. 22 nm processors are still three years out in the future, but IBM’s news is a good sign that chip manufacturer will be able to easily scale to this new level by the end of 2011. It appears that, for the first time in several decades, Intel may have to put some extra time into its research and development efforts to make sure it can keep its manufacturing lead at 22 nm and beyond. But then, Intel has a different opinion what this announcement really means.

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Comcast has begun to quietly, but very aggressively pitch an “economy tier” Internet service to its customers – a service that is generally “not recommended”, but squarely aimed at dial-up users and perhaps one or the other DSL Internet users. As all Comcast residential Internet services, this entry-level service also comes with the firm’s mysterious bandwidth cap.

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DoE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) claim to have set a new world record in solar cell efficiency: A new photovoltaic device can convert 40.8% of the light it is exposed to into electricity – which is more than twice as much as average solar cells can achieve today.

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Many iPhone 3G owners don’t quite experience the twice as fast, half the price cellphone they were promised. Connectivity problems are reported to be impacting the 3G experience, ranging from a weak 3G reception and connectivity, speed declines to EDGE and even dropped calls. Although lots of fingers pointed into AT&Ts direction initially, we are now learning that users in European countries are experiencing similar problems. Some analysts believe that Apple may have programmed the iPhone 3G chipset too conservatively, suggesting that firmware update should fix the issue. However, engineers highlight possible manufacturing problems caused by the substantial manufacturing ramp that reportedly is beyond actual capacity.

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Once again, it is an exclusive game title that is the decisive factor in console sales. In this case, it is worth a special note, as the Xbox 360 sold almost three times more units as the PS3 over the course of one week. Nationally and internationally, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 seem to be involved in a dead heat with sales advantages shifting almost every month. Who will make the winning move?

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Most, if not all problems the Xbox 360 console had over the past several years were related to the fact that Microsoft chose a cost-effective, but very weak cooling solution. If you're willing to void your warranty, Lian-Li has a solution for you.

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Ray-tracing is one of the big topics gamers and graphics enthusiasts should pay special attention to these days. AMD already demonstrated Transformers and Ruby Ray-traced demos using pre-rendered and real-time rendered voxels, Intel is busy working on its own ray-tracer, and now we are seeing much more obvious ray-tracing material from Nvidia as well.

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Remember AMD’s promise to return to profitability in the third quarter of this year? You may be wondering how this will be possible considering the fact that the company has lost money over the past seven quarters, including $269 million in Q2 2008, and no big bucks advances against Intel are in sight. But we are certain that AMD in fact will report a huge profit for the third quarter that may not originate from hugely increased product sales, but will create the foundation for the much anticipated announcement of AMD’s “Asset Smart”.

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While most people would be happy just to own a solid state drive, BitMicro says it can now make SSDs with an amazing 6.5 TB of capacity.  At the Siggraph trade show held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, a company representative told TG Daily that the custom made drives can have up to 55,000 input/output instructions per second (IOPS) and can have sustained transfers of up to 230 MB/sec.

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Escalating music royalties could put Internet darling, Pandora, out of business.  In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Tim Westergren, the founder of the online radio station, says royalties could approach 70% of revenues and that the company is approaching its “last stand”.  Last year, the Copyright Royalty Board ruled that song royalties would increase from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2010.

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Intel is expected to unveil new products within its solid state disk (SSD) drive family. Following its joint venture partner Micron, which recently introduced new RealSSD drives, Intel-branded versions should make their debut during IDF next week.    

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GraphOn, a software company that offers remote application access software, said it has filed a patent infringement suit against Google. If GraphOn is right, the Google’s Google Base, AdWords, Blogger, Sites and YouTube services could be colliding with four patents, forcing the search giant to pay GraphOn damages as well as license fees for past and future usage.