Introducing a more personal, intuitive and entertaining computing experience for consumers, HP today unveiled the sleekly appealing HP TouchSmart310 PC, which features the most advanced version of the company's exclusive TouchSmart software to date. The company also announced the HP TouchSmart Apps Center for one-touch access to free and subscription-based applications, as well as the HP Omni100, which offers the performance users demand from a tower and monitor in an all-in- one design.

HP also is helping businesses make touch an integral part of the customer experience through relationships with American Airlines, ESPN and the National Football League's San Francisco 49ers. "Each generation of TouchSmart is a reflection of what HP has learned from its customers, complemented by the latest technologies," said James Mouton, senior vice president, Desktop Organization, Personal Systems Group, HP. "The TouchSmart PC's unique interface lets users do more than just basic computing - it acts as the anchor of one's digital lifestyle, encouraging creativity, organization and a truly immersive experience."

Gigabyte is readying a new socket LGA-1156 motherboard, the GA-P55A-UD4. Bearing resemblance with the GA-P55-UD4, the motherboard features upgraded connectivity, with support for USB 3.0, and SATA 6 Gb/s. The new model also features an upgraded CPU VRM, with a 12+2 phase design compared to the 8+2 phase design on the GA-P55-UD4. USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s features are provided using additional controllers on board. A Marvell-made SATA 6 Gb/s two-port controller replaces the familiar Gigabyte GSATA2 controller, while an NEC-made controller provides two USB 3.0 ports on the rear-panel. The USB 3.0 ports are color-coded blue, and share the port cluster with the lone gigabit Ethernet connector, while the SATA 6 Gb/s connectors are color-coded white, next to the usual six SATA 3 Gb/s ones the P55 PCH provides.

The rest of the feature-set remains largely same, with four DDR3 DIMM slots to support up to 16 GB of memory, two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (electrically x8 when both are populated) supporting ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI, Dolby Home Theater supportive onboard audio, among other standard issues. The Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 will not replace GA-P55-UD4 from the market, it will coexist, albeit priced higher. It remains to be seen if this is the only "P55A" motherboard Gigabyte sells.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Video Players today expanded their Turbo NAS lineup with the addition of the TS-210 desktop NAS server targeted specifically at the SOHO and Prosumer market segments. The TS-210 supports up to 2 3.5" SATA hard drives with up to 4TB of total capacity (using 2TB drives) and features a Marvell 800MHz CPU and 256MB DDRII memory which provides sustained high performance with low power consumption. The TS-210 can be configured to RAID 1 for high data redundancy. The TS-210 also supports iSCSI Target service with Thin Provisioning and a Gigabit LAN port, features generally found on much higher end NAS servers. The TS-210 is equipped 3 USB ports (1 front, 2 back panel) for expanding the storage capacity, printer sharing, or data backup to an external storage device.

The TS-210 is a smart choice for installation in home or home-based business as it is fully compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and UNIX networks. It features a built-in UPnP/ DLNA media server (with TwonkyMedia enabled) supporting a wide range of DLNA media players such as Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming consoles. By installing the DLNA/ UPnP application on your iPhone or iPod touch, users can access the TS-210 on the home network and play the videos, music, and photos from the server over the network. In addition, the high-speed PC-less Download Station with the unique QGet utility enables users to manage the BT/ FTP/ HTTP download tasks remotely over the local network or the Internet. The TS-210 can perform centralized backups of all computers attached to the network to protect valuable paid downloaded music and video content, digital pictures, and documents.

Marvell Semiconductor has come up with a marvel: the SheevaPlug computer software/hardware development kit (SHDK). The initiative puts to use the company's Sheeva ARM processor in a compact unit the size and form of a retro wall-mount AC-DC adapter. Consuming no more than 5 W of power, the unit can function as a full-featured PC, driving Linux. It packs a 1.2 GHz Sheeva ARM processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 512 MB of flash-based fixed storage.

Throwing open the development kit would mean companies wanting to build similar devices based on Marvell hardware. The SheevaPlug is built around the Marvell 88F6000 Kirkwood SoC design that makes use of Feroceon and XScale architectures, both of which are derivatives of ARM. Gigabit Ethernet and USB ports add to the connectivity. With several industry heavyweights such as Microsoft and Google predicting a bright future for cloud-computing, companies such as Marvell can only help but gain interest in developing inexpensive devices that drive the client-side machinery for it. Take a guess on how much SheevaPlug costs: US $100 in single unit retail quantities. What's more, it could be bought in bulk for as low as $50 a piece!

Are you a fan of superhero video games? If so, I've got some good news for you! The Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Thor are all coming to various consoles. This is because Sega and Marvel have agreed to partner up to help milk the franchises to their limit make the best video games possible. With the comic genius of Marvel, and the programming prowess of Sega, we should see some seriously impressive games coming from Sega studios soon. Unfortunately, we're not going to see these games for a while. We're only at the "agree to hand over licenses of characters" stage. Actual programming of the games will happen over the course of the year, and we should start seeing new games by June 2008.