It appears that 50-year old industrial-supply company Systemax, parent of TigerDirect is drawing a lot of negative heat these days over their rebates.  Here’s an example of a deal and the problem: A 17” ViewSonic Monitor going for $139.99 sounds great.“But you’d have to read the small print to learn that TigerDirect’s quoted price assumes you collect the $50 manufacturer’s rebate. That’s no small assumption, given the widespread complaints about TigerDirect’s failure to pay rebates.”The sheer volume of

Video: Inno3D GeForce 8800 GT i-ChiLL Review @ NVNewsAMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 @ Hard Tecs 4UGigabyte 6Quad GA-P35-DQ6 Review @ GamePyreA pair of Radeon HD 3870 X2 Cards (AMD/ASUS) Reviewed @ Boot Daily.comHIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 1 GB @ techPowerUpGECUBE Radeon HD 3870 X2 Graphics Card @ TweaktownMSI NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC review @ Tweak.dkATI HD 3870 X2 Review @ OCCAMD’s Radeon HD 3870 X2 video card @ The Tech ReportATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 Dual GPU Video Card @ [H]AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 – AMD R680 Dual GPU Arrives @ PC

Ask a teenager to send you an e-mail, and you’ll get the same look you’d give someone if they asked you to send them a self-addressed stamped envelope to reply to a post-it note.  As far as communication goes nowadays, get instant, or get out. But there are still prehistoric pockets of people out there that are discovering e-mail like cavemen discover fire: Doctors. Doctor Howard Stark is leading the way out of the medical communication wilderness, no longer having a handful of clerks overbooking his time

Many of us are familiar with the “Butterfly Effect,” the phenomenon described as the beating of the wings of a butterfly on one side of the world causing a huge storm on the other side of the world. We may be seeing the high tech version of that; it’s snowing a lot in central and eastern China, and that’s where a great deal of the world’s printed circuit boards are manufactured. Will snow in China cause a shortage of ones and zeros halfway around the globe?Some makers have only 30-40% of their capacities running,

Ah yes, as technology advances, so do surveillance techniques.  So this should surprise no one – should it?Classified documents from September 2007, leaked last week by the German political “Pirate Party,” show one particular system that Bavarian police could have in place by February, and its high operating cost.The system, provided by a company known as Digitask, is called a “Skype Capture Unit,” and is essentially a malware client installed onto the surveillance target. It intercepts Skype voice and

With all the buzz around VIA’s recent announcement of their next generation low power Isaiah mobile processor, we thought it would be a good idea to get together with some of VIA’s top architecture and design brass in a “fireside chat” sort of venue.  The idea was to provide a little more insight into what the team at VIA feels will be the real value proposition of their ultra low power Isaiah mobile X86 processor and how the product will differentiate versus current and future offerings from the likes

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday to extend the U.S. government's antitrust oversight of Microsoft Corp for two more years, but stopped short of granting a five-year extension sought by states accusing the company of continuing monopolistic behavior.

District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she will extend the government's oversight of Microsoft until November 12, 2009, two years after its original expiration date, due to delays by Microsoft in filing technical documents to software licensees. The consent decree settled the landmark U.S. antitrust case against Microsoft in 2002. The decree covers the company's ties to computer makers, how its software works with other types of software and enforcement to ensure it does not repeat past practices.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will need to work some magic to hit his sales target of 10 million iPhones this year. Since the iPhone's launch in June, Apple has sold about 4 million devices, including 2.3 million during the important holiday season. To reach the 10 million mark, it needs to average 2.5 million phones in sales a quarter over the next four quarters — or 200,000 more than what it sold during the big holiday season.

Some analysts say Apple will have to cut deals with more phone carriers outside the U.S., upgrade the iPhone and most importantly, drop the price in order to reach its ambitious sales target. Apple's sales efforts have been stymied by a sour economy that could put these pricey $400 phones beyond the reach of some consumers. There's also the problem of some 1.7 million “missing” phones — the difference between phones that were sold by Apple and those that were activated by AT&T, the telecom carrier with exclusive rights to the iPhone.

Yahoo announced plans to cut 1,000 jobs Tuesday – its largest layoff since the dot-com bust – as the economic slowdown and fierce competition from Google buffeted its Internet advertising business.

Yahoo's strategy involved becoming a one-stop Internet portal, featuring everything from mail to finance. Google copied Yahoo, but added superior technology, focusing first on lucrative Internet search advertising and later offering highly praised mail and finance, as well as productivity applications and other features. Yang said he was optimistic about the future. “We are not tinkering around the edges,” Yang told analysts Tuesday afternoon. “We are making significant, and what we believe are game-changing, investments in Yahoo's future.”

Three more Taiwanese chip makers plan to spend significantly less money on new factories and equipment this year as a DRAM (dynamic RAM) glut and uncertainty about the global economy weigh. Lower capital spending forecasts in the chip industry are a sign the global IT industry is on edge about future demand. Analysts have expected DRAM makers to cut back on spending for a long time due to falling chip prices. Prices for mainstream DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) chips remain below production costs, and most DRAM makers have reported losses for the fourth quarter.

Powerchip Semiconductor, Taiwan's largest memory chip maker, Wednesday said it plans to spend NT$35.1 billion (US$1.09 billion) on new chip factories, technology and production line equipment this year, less than half the NT$86.3 billion it spent last year. Powerchip's smaller rival on the island, ProMOS Technologies, also more than halved its projected 2008 capital spending to US$800 million, down from US$1.84 billion last year. The company also put the expansion of its fourth 12-inch factory on hold pending a rebound in the DRAM market. United Microelectronics (UMC), the world's second largest contract chip maker, forecast its 2008 capital spending at US$500 million to US$700 million, down from US$900 million last year.