With Micro-Star International (MSI) expected to officially launch its 10-inch Wind series notebooks and Acer planning to launch an 8.9-inch Aspire low-cost PC in Europe priced at 299 euros (US$469.49) over the next few weeks, Asustek Computer has decided to rush forward plans to launch a 10-inch version Eee PC, according to notebook industry sources. The Eee PC 1000 is now expect to be launched on June 3 along with the Eee PC 901 and Asustek is also preparing lower priced versions of current models, the sources noted.

We are encouraging site administrators to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8, as there will be a beta release in the third quarter of this year targeted for all consumers.

abit is a well established and strong brand within the enthusiast and high-end motherboard and components industry. In fact, particularly over the past 12 months we have been able to considerably increase market share not only in traditional markets such as Western Europe, but even stronger so in emerging markets such as East Asia as well as in the Middle East. Therefore, the broadening of our product lines into the Consumer Electronics (digital photo frames with integrated photo printer [FunFab] and MIDs) segment represents a stronger commitment to the overall brand and the continuation of our motherboard concept into other products. abit stays committed to motherboards and has a broad lineup of motherboards ready, as you will see in during Computex.

Abit's has failed to meet the expectations of parent company Universal Scientific Industrial (USI) in its ability to compete with fellow second-teir makers in terms of performance, or first-tier makers in terms of pricing in the mid-range and entry-level market, and so the company is evaluating whether to quit the market and start developing other products for the Abit brand, noted the sources.

In 2007, Abit shipped 2-3 million motherboards and had set a goal to ship six million units in 2008. However, the company's current shipments have actually decreased. Abit will determine whether to stay in the market after evaluating its shipments performance of P45-based motherboards, added the sources.

• GeForce GTX 280 will feature 602MHz/1296MHz/1107MHz core/shader/memory clocks, 240 stream processors, 512-bit memory interface, and GDDR3 memory as already mentioned.
• GeForce GTX 260 will come with 576MHz/999MHz/896MHz reference clock speeds, 192 stream processors, 448-bit memory interface and GDDR3 memory

The baneling is a creature so bloated with fluid-filled sacs that it can barely walk; instead, it moves itself by tucking into a tight ball and rolling. However, this ungainly appearance belies the fact that the baneling is an extremely dangerous organism, one of several new zerg specialists recently seen on the battlefield. When a baneling gets close enough to an enemy, the creature triggers a reaction within its volatile chemical payload that causes it to explode with devastating force and shower the immediate surroundings with searing acid.

Gigabyte, without a full understanding of ASUS' engineering design and methods, has made false accusations against ASUS motherboards' EPU features and the quality of ASUS' motherboards' components.

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Due to the nature of the shared folder data corruption bug (KB #946676) a broad beta test program with sufficient time for feedback is required. The time line for a final release will depend on this feedback and testing, in order to deliver a fix of the highest quality. To meet our goals for the beta test we need the number of beta testers who are actively using and testing the Power Pack 1 beta to ramp up very quickly

Yes, it's finally coming - the NVIDIA GPU client we have all wanted since first seeing and tasting the power of the ATI GPU Folding@Home client

• Allows up to 10 unique profile's, and ability to assign hotkeys to these profiles to allow in-game
• Ability to view temperatures in the system tray
• Core/Shader Clock Link/Unlink capability
• Fan Speed manual or auto adjustment
• Real-Time on-screen display support for ingame temp, framerate, and clock monitoring
• Logitech Keyboard LCD Display support
• In-app temp/clockspeed monitoring of GPU's (up to 4 supported)
• Information button shows device, driver, memory size, BIOS Revision and SLI mode
• Ability to choose different skins, with more coming soon

The CPUs will have model numbers of X9100, T9600, P9500, T9400, P8600 and P9400 and be priced at US$851, US$530, US$348, US$316, US$241 and US$209, respectively, in thousand-unit tray quantities. In the third quarter, Intel will launch the quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX9300 priced at US$1,038 for the enthusiast market, and will follow up with a more moderately priced Q9100 in the fourth quarter, added the sources.

GIGABYTE UNITED INC., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards would like to respond to recent statements by our competitor alleging GIGABYTE has made false claims against them. These statements were made in response to a report GIGABYTE detailed for the media which compared GIGABYTE's 4-Gear and 6-Gear Dynamic Energy Saver technology to our competitor's non-phase change and 2-Gear Phase changing energy saving technology. In addition, direct comparisons and testing results were reported between the GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L motherboard and our competitor's P5K-SE EPU.

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The performance-level Core 2 Quad Q9650 with a core frequency of 3GHz will launch priced at US$530 in thousand-unit tray quantities, while the Core 2 Quad Q9550 will drop around 40% from its original price of US$530 to US$316. The Core 2 Quad 9450, currently priced at US$316, will be phased out of the market to be replaced by the Core 2 Quad 9400 at 2.66GHz and a price of US$266. The Core 2 Quad Q9300 and Q6700 will both be phased out at the same time too, leaving the Q6600 as the only 65nm quad-core CPU left in Intel's lineup, and which will drop from US$224 to US$203. For dual-core CPUs, Intel will launch the Core 2 Duo E8600 at 3.33GHz and US$266, and will phase out the Core 2 Duo E8300. The company will also drop pricing for the Core 2 Duo E8500 and E8400 from US$266 and US$183 to US$183 and US$163, respectively. Intel will also add the Core 2 Duo E7300 at 2.66GHz and US$133 to its entry-level line and to drop the price of its Core 2 Duo E7200 from US$133 to US$113.

EA's offer price remains unchanged at $25.74 per share and our offer is still subject to conditions that include regulatory approval. As stated earlier, we retain the right to terminate the offer if the conditions are not satisfied.

After two quarters of evaluation, Asustek believes the WiMAX market will not reach maturity in 2008, and has therefore decided to push WiMAX only in its 14.1- to 15.4-inch notebooks, mainly in the US market, noted the sources. Asustek will keep to its original plans to launch WiMAX-based VX2, U6 and V1 notebooks before the end of this year, however, the cancellation of the WiMAX Eee PC is likely to impact the company's original goal of having WiMAX featured in 15% of notebook shipments in 2008.

Now, the Alien invasion has continued, with the addition of the Area-51 m9750 to the Dell gaming laptop web site lineup.

Looking at the Dell Gaming Laptop page, you can see both of these beautiful machines [Alienware Area-51 m15x and Area-51 m9750] ride alongside of the XPS m1730 highlighting the way two great brands can team up to deliver the best gaming experience in the business.

It has come to our attention that a certain Taiwanese Motherboard Manufacturer has made false claims against ASUS motherboards. These claims have given rise to false information being communicated in both the mainstream media and technology channels. ASUS wishes to clarify the issues and so avoid any further confusion. After investigation, it is clear that this company in question made use of a sponsored gathering of local and international media to deliberately spread information that we consider both untrue and without credible verification. This "disinformation" is not only extremely damaging to ASUS but also completely misleading to the consumers.

ASUS reserves the right to take legal action against any individual, organization or corporation which creates or spreads such rumors.

AMD has just confirmed the marketing name for RV770 yesterday which is no surprise to anyone, the Radeon HD 4800 series. RV770PRO is Radeon HD 4850, RV770XT is Radeon HD 4870 and R700 is Radeon HD 4870 X2. AMD will be shipping RV770 GPUs to AIB by end of this month and you can expect different card designs from the manufacturers at launch. AMD is set to launch the Radeon HD 4850 on June 18th and it is definitely a hard one with retail availability on the same day. Radeon HD 4870, however, will be launched a week later on June 25th with retail availability in July due to GDDR5 availability. Radeon HD 4870 X2 will come later in Q3. As for the clocks, we won't be revealing them yet but the RV770XT core clock is not going anywhere above 800MHz.

Although Hector Ruiz, CEO of AMD did not mention any plans to outsource production during the company's recent investors conference, the industry sources revealed that TSMC has already started testing procedures for a SOI manufacturing process in order to land manufacturing orders for AMD's Fusion CPUs. The increase in outsourcing could allow AMD to sell off some of its manufacturing equipment and help lower the company's operating costs, noted sources at AMD's partners. AMD's current goals are to return to profitability in the first half of 2009 and to grab back a 30% worldwide market share by the second quarter in 2009, noted the sources.

It's not your granddaddy's AMD system. We're talking top-of-the-line quad core.

• Intel Bloomfield is a 45nm quad core processor that supports 8 processing threads and use LGA 1366 Socket
• Bloomfield CPUs will come with 8MB of shared L2 cache
• Bloomfield supports IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) and triple-channel DDR3 RAM
• Bloomfield supports QPI and adds seven more SSE4 instructions.
• Motherboards with Intel X58 chipset that will support Bloomfield processors will utilize PCI-e 2.0 slots working in dual x16 or Quad x8 configurations.

Overclocking Intel's P45 is said to be more complex than it has been on previous boards - you're going to need to do a lot of specialist fine tuning. After spending time today talking in depth to a couple of MSI's P45 engineers and considerably more to Tony Leach from OCZ Technology, who spends a lot of time QAing BIOSes for companies like Asus, DFI and MSI, it looks like overclocking is going to become an increasingly more complicated art with the release of Intel's P45 chipset, as it mirrors many of the tweaks the current high-end X48 chipset offers.

Google plans to switch some of its servers over to solid-state drive-based (SSD-based) storage supplied by Intel in order to lower electricity consumption, according to sources at memory makers. The more power efficient SSDs will be installed at severs at Google's US headquarters. Intel will supply flash chips and Marvell the corresponding controller ICs, the sources detailed. Shipments are slated for late second quarter, they added. With the increasing use of SSDs in server applications, a shortage for 16Gb and 32Gb NAND flash chips could become a possibility, the sources commented.

• Added tray icon temperature monitoring feature
• Added set of synchronization protocols aimed to improve Precision usage safety in conjunction with third party hardware monitoring tools
• Added exception handling to PLL clock frequency monitoring routines
• Precision settings are now stored in display adapter model specific profiles to allow keeping the settings when installing new version
• Now the uninstaller allows you to keep Precision settings
• Compact graph mode is enabled by default now
• Now Precision reverts to default skin if corrupted skin is selected

OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates ODF 1.2 support, Microsoft Office 2007 Import Filters, charting enhancements, improved note capabilities in Writer, new icons, enhanced pdf export, multi-monitor support for impress, and a start center. For Mac OS X users, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will now run without the need for X11 to be installed. In addition, there are several bug-fixes and other minor features that make up this beta release.

id Software is looking for talented, ambitious and passionate individuals eager to join its accomplished team of developers working on the industry's most innovative and anticipated games. For a complete listing of available positions, visit www.idsoftware.com. Resumes can be submitted via email to jobs@idsoftware.com. All applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers' experience with the operating system. This white paper summarizes what is new in Windows XP SP3.

Today we have one of the first functional P45 motherboards in the world. We took it into the lab and ran some tests to see how it stands up to the predecessors, and what makes it worthy of the Deluxe suffix. Beside the raw benchmarks, we've also done some quick overclocking tests and take a peek at ASUS' new Memory OC Charge technology.

As we have stated, we have no plans to introduce a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360,

Games are what drive consumers to purchase game consoles, and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster games available.

Some DRAM makers have started allotting more capacity for commodity DRAM, especially SO-DIMMs for notebooks, the sources said. Capacity for GDDR has started to strain amid the strategic capacity allocation, they noted. As DRAM makers are expected to reserve capacity priority for commodity DRAM for 1-2 quarters, a price revision for GDDR is thus likely, they said. The sources indicated that a price hike is likely to be seen from the second half of May, as some system makers are expected to completely digest their inventory by then.

We remain focused on maximizing shareholder value and pursuing strategic opportunities that position Yahoo! for success and leadership in its markets,

From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft's offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market.

With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users.

We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo! and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo! was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees,

• Added desktop shortcut creation feature to the installer
• Fixed problem with instance checking in the installer
• Added display driver version detection for Vista x64

Pegatron Technology, an OEM subsidiary of Asustek Computer, has secured orders from Microsoft to assemble Xbox 360 consoles equipped with a Blu-ray Disc (BD)-ROM drive, with shipments to begin in the third quarter of 2008, according to the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) newspaper.

The estimated retail price for the model with a 20-gigabyte hard drive was cut Tuesday 19.5% in Singapore to 499 Singapore dollars ($366), while in Taiwan it was cut 17% to $10,360 Taiwan dollars ($341). The unit price in Hong Kong fell 10.7% to $2,499 Hong Kong dollars ($321), while in South Korea it will be cut 5.1% to 369,000 won ($369) on Thursday. In Singapore, Microsoft also cut the price of its Xbox 360 Arcade model, which lacks a hard drive, by 13.1% to 399 Singapore dollars. The price for the Xbox 360 Elite model, which comes with a 120-gigabyte hard drive, was cut 12.5% to 699 Singapore dollars.