Motorola plans to push sales of Linux-based handsets in the US and European markets starting in 2007, with a plan being for Linux to support over 50% of the handsets released by Motorola, according to sources at Taiwan handset makers that are familiar with Motorola's handset roadmap.
Markham (ON) - ATI today announced two new high-end and two entry-level graphics cards. The Radeon X1950 series carries the firm's brand-new R580 graphics chip and introduces GDDR4 graphics memory running at 2 GHz to enthusiasts. The manufacturer claims that the new cards X1950 XTX flagship card beats the performance of rivaling dual-GPU solutions.
Lenovo today added to its existing line of EVDO wireless broadband-capable notebooks two Thinkpad T60 models that can be ordered with built-in support for Cingular's UMTS/HSDPA network.
Hong Kong (China) - Just how low can USB flash stick prices go? Try $12.99 for a 1 GB USB flash stick. Starline International Group is selling USB sticks as a promotional offer, but the average consumer can't exactly run out and buy them. A minimum quantity must be ordered and the company requires several days of lead time to produce them.
Santa Clara (CA) - This afternoon, senior Nvidia spokesperson Bryan Del Rizzo disputed the likelihood of reports emerging from Dell that the first Pentium D 900-series-based XPS 700 units being shipped do not contain Nvidia's top-of-the-line nForce 590 chipset as advertised, but instead a solution reached in Dell's own laboratories. "Based on my understanding," Del Rizzo told TG Daily this afternoon, "they are in fact using the Nvidia nForce 590 SLI MCP."
Reports that trials of the $100 laptop project will kick off in Thailand alone have been quashed by Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association.
Sales of draft 802.11n wireless access points boosted general wireless sales last quarter according to a recently released report by the Dell'Oro Group. The market research firm said 802.11n routers took 8 percent of the router market revenue during the 2nd quarter. Overall revenues were up 30% from the same quarter in 2005.
Santa Clara (CA) - The latest round of seasonal CPU charts updates from Tom's Hardware Guide reveals what we expected, now that we've had a chance to test Intel's Core 2 Duo E6400 dual-core CPU: At $247 average selling price, according to today's figures from PriceGrabber, it could be the most powerful CPU you can buy today for the fewest dollars...at least until figures from the E6300 are tallied.
BFG will is gearing up to offer its first SLI motherboard. The company today announced that it will be launching an Nforce 590 SLI-based motherboard in October.
Milpitas (CA) - Beating Apple to the punch by a month, SanDisk - which battles for the #2 MP3 player spot with Creative Labs - announced this morning it is boosting the maximum on-board flash capacity of its Sansa e200 series from 6 GB to 8 GB, and capping the new e280's price at $249. Prior to today, you could find the 4 GB e260 selling for $249; now, its MSRP has dropped to $179.99.
The impact of a combined AMD-ATI Technologies has begun to be felt in Taiwan, with motherboard makers likely to reduce or even suspend their efforts to develop Intel-based motherboards built utilizing chipsets from ATI, while switching more resources to manufacturing models with ATI's AMD-based chipsets, according to sources at Taiwan motherboard makers.
Lite-On IT, the largest maker of optical disc drives in Taiwan, announced it is developing half-height (H/H) HD-DVD burners, with a volume production target set for March 2007.
ATI today released a new version of its Catalyst driver package. The eighth update for this year focuses on OpenGL and Direct3D applications which improve game performance by up to 30%, ATI claims.
Abit announced its AW9D and AW9D-MAX motherboards which can be used with Intel's current LGA775 processors such as the Pentium D and Core 2 Duo as well as future quad-core versions of the Core 2 Extreme CPU ("Kentsfield").
Renesas Technology anticipates that its dual-core microcontroller (MCU) for automotive vehicles could hit the market by 2010 at the latest, and possibly as early as 2008.
