Microsoft signaled confidence to a rattled stock market by raising its full-year earnings outlook above Wall Street targets and reporting a 79 percent rise in quarterly profit on Thursday.

Microsoft Corp. today announced second quarter records for revenue, operating income and diluted earnings per share of $16.37 billion, $6.48 billion and $0.50, respectively. Compared to the year ago period, these figures represent growth of 30%, 87% and 92% for revenue, operating income and diluted earnings per share, respectively. Results in the prior year were impacted by the deferral of $1.64 billion of revenue and operating income and $0.11 of diluted earnings per share from the second to the third quarter of fiscal 2007, due primarily to technology guarantee programs. Without these deferrals, second quarter growth rates for revenue, operating income and earnings per share would be 15%, 27% and 32%, respectively.

The iSkin revo is designed to keep your Apple iPhone safe and also reduces the growth of microbes since the silicone has an embedded anti-microbial agent. Produced with the finest grade materials, the revo covers all vulnerable surfaces, ports and controls giving you the peace of mind you expect from an iSkin protector. The revo also helps to protect against shock and surface damage caused by accidental drops.

Hewlett-Packard Wednesday introduced a business desktop with a slim form factor that packs a flash-based solid-state drive, giving the system faster boot times than PCs with hard drives. The HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Business Desktop, dubbed by HP as its smallest enterprise desktop model, provides improved power efficiency and support for tools, including Intel's vPro, that makes it easier to manage PCs.

A 16GB SSD will be available with the system, although users can select hard drives with storage capacities of up to 160GB when buying the product. The system includes support for TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 1.2, a hardware-based authentication technology for system security. The Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Business Desktop runs Intel's Core 2 Duo, Celeron D or Pentium processors, and supports Intel's vPro technology, a platform that helps service and manage PCs. It comes with Gigabit Ethernet and an integrated Intel graphics media accelerator. Users can select between the Windows Vista, Windows XP or FreeDos operating systems. Pricing for the desktop, which is available now, starts at $1,258 with the solid-state drive.

According to techPowerUp, NVIDIA has informed their partners that the launch of the GeForce 9600 GT has been pushed back by one week from February 14th to February 21st due to a voltage issue with the reference cards, which may cause some systems to hang in certain situations. Legit Reviews has contacted NVIDIA about this claim and has not heard back from them.

Here's the notice: We've seen a small percentage of 9600 GT NVTTM boards exhibiting a voltage transient on the NVDD power supply during certain applications

Samsung has announced a Windows Mobile 6 Standard upgrade for the SGH-i607 “BlackJack” Smartphone. The upgrade is free and can be downloaded from the Samsung web site. It should be noted that the updater is NOT compatible with Windows Vista, so if you need the update and you’re a Vista user, you may need to make a new XP friend.

It's hard to believe that two months have passed since the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 and the Radeon HD 3850 video cards, but it has been that long. ATI has been busy the past couple months getting the Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series out the door and today is the day! Read on to see how these $49-$99 Radeon HD graphics cards do when we put them to the test!

The Touch seems to be a big hit among the CDMA carriers. Sprint and Alltel have already adopted the handset, and now a third is jumping on the bandwagon; Verizon Wireless will soon begin selling the HTC Touch as the Verizon XV6900 Touch. 

Are you running out of power? I am taking a look at the ToughPower 1500Watt power supply from Thermaltake. My first thoughts before testing this huge PSU was to find second job to pay the electric bill, but it seems that the ToughPower 1500Watt PSU is very power effecient. The cables are all modular (apart from the main atx power cable) which is great seeing you would only have to connect those needed to run your system instead of having to tie down all the access cables which you dont use. Some say size does matter, well in this case it’s true. A normal PSU has a length of about 16cm, the ToughPower 1500Watt takes up 20cm. Will it fit in a case?

The Motorola Q 9h Global surpasses its predecessor in almost every respect. While it is a bit thicker and heavier than the original Q, it more than makes up for this with solid performance, good battery life, a wide range of features and truly excellent call quality. [Read Full Review]

Diamond released ATI Radeon HD 3870 and Radeon HD 3850 graphics cards back in November when they originally came out, but they were based off the ATI reference design and were the same as everyone else's. Diamond went back to the drawing board and came up with an Radeon HD 3850 that would be unique to them and be directed at overclockers and enthusiasts. Read on to check out the Diamond Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition Video Card!