ASUS Launches P5E3 Deluxe with Embedded Linux

ASUS’ forthcoming enthusiast mainboard called the P5E3 Deluxe has all sorts of features that you’d expect to find on a high-end mainboard powered by the Intel X38 chipset. The board features dual PCI Express slots, DDR3 memory and more.

A feature that you don’t expect to find on a mainboard is an embedded Linux environment. Phoronix says that the Linux environment is complete with a web browser and a Skype VoIP client. The Linux environment is ready to run within seconds of powering the mainboard up and requires no software installation.

A screen asks you if you want to boot into Linux or another operating system. The software that supports this Linux environment is called SplashTop, which is an instant-on Linux environment being developed by DeviceVM.

The included web browser is a stripped version of Firefox that includes support for flash. The OS loads into your RAM, however, Phoronix says that your settings are recalled for the next time you use Linux. Support for Live Bookmarks is included but you can’t open local files on SplashTop.

Seagate Hybrid Drive ships

The first Seagate hybrid hard disk drives are now shipping but the reviews will disappoint.The Momentus 5400 PSD line is shipping in capacities of 80 GB, 120 GB, and 160 GB of magnetic storage combined with 256 MB of flash. The manufacturer’s specifications state a 44 MB/sec sustained stransfer rate and 8 MB of that oldschool cache. The average seek time is 12.5 ms with an average latency of 5.6 ms. Combined with Microsoft Windows Vista’s ReadyDrive technology hybrid hard drives are supposed to improve system performance, hold increased reliability, and reduce power consumption and/or increase laptop battery life.

However, the first impressions of the first hybrid hard disk drives are leaving consumers with those familiar “empty promise” feelings.

iPod update fixes jiter animations

Apple’s iPod Classic and iPod Nano has been updated to 1.0.2 via iTunes.

The new update comes without any description, but a couple of early reports:

- Improved Cover Flow
- Faster menu navigation
- Compilation Album Art displayed only once in Cover Flow
- Video Out Fix

Overall, it appears to address many of the performance concerns that many had when the Classic iPod first came out.

Microsoft and Toshiba to battle it out for HD-DVD

The two companies said that they will form the Advanced Interactivity Consortium (AIC), an “open forum aimed at the promotion of superior interactivity for a wide range of next-generation consumer devices, digital content and distribution scenarios “, i.e in simple words make people adopt HD-DVD faster.

AIC will bank its prospects on HDi, the feature that brings PiP (picture in picture) commmentary.

Sony announces 40Gb PS3

Sony today announced that they will be releasing 40Gb PS3’s in the market with the price tag of €399 .

Sony wouldn’t sell their consoles for cheap would they ? well to keep the costs down the number of usb ports have been reduced 2 from 4 , with no memory card reader and to top it of they have removed support for PS2 titles .

100Gb Blu-ray discs from Hitachi

Today the guys at hitachi released a 100Gb quad layered discs for the Blu-ray optical media. These new 100Gb discs willl be compatible with the current Blu-ray drives after a fimware update has been done. These discs would soon be released into the market after their signal quality is improved.

Seems like this could tip the result of future optical media in favour of the Blu-ray camp but for this to be realised hitachi would have to keep check on the manufacturing costs of these discs.

Suing Apple ??

Apple’s latest iPhone moves (deActivating the iPhone)may have earned it a new class-action law suit. Some people had even posted this on the Apple’s iPhone forum (no surprises here that the mods deleted the posts asap ). But Apple might just get away with this because of the long pages of legal material that they have crammed up in their manuals and online TOS. iWonder when will people actually stop buying their products(they do look cool but sometimes these are not just worth it).

New Zune on its way , Zune 2.0

One of the things that the new Zune 2.0 will offer is a thinner profile than the chunky first generation Zune players. Microsoft is rolling out a new flash based Zune at the press event sized along the lines of the iPod nano at 3-inches by 1.25-inches.

These small flash-based Zune’s are reported to be video and WiFi capable and will have higher storage capacities than competing products from Apple. One could gather from that last statement that the flash based Zune 2.0 would be available in 8GB and perhaps even in a 16GB capacity.

Microsoft will reportedly manufacture about 2.4 million Zune 2.0 devices for the holiday season. Two thirds of these devices are expected to be the flash based players. The new Zunes are expected to be available in November along with Microsoft’s new line of Zune accessories. Pricing information on the new Zune products is unavailable at this time, but expect pricing to be very competitive with similar offerings from Apple.