Sprint customers who’ve been waiting for the HTC Touch Pro2 won’t have to wait much longer. This hot new phone will be available on Sprint’s network beginning September 8 for $349.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year agreement. The Touch Pro2 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 and the TouchFLO user interface. The latest version of HTC’s TouchFLO 3D user interface makes it easy to switch from email to a call with a single touch. The phone also supports many of Sprint’s entertainment applications including Sprint

Internet auction and services company EBay Inc has reached a deal to sell its online telephony unit Skype to a group of private investors, the New York Times said, citing two people briefed on its plans.

Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture capital firm headed by the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, is likely to be among the investors in the group, the paper cited the people as saying. London-based Index Ventures and Silver Lake Partners may also be involved in the deal, one of the people told the paper. The paper added that the value of the deal, which is likely to be announced later on Tuesday, had not been disclosed.

SAPPHIRE Technology is equipping two of its new product lines with exclusive near silent cooling solutions developed specially by Swiss cooling solution provider ARCTIC COOLING. The new cooler known as Accelero L7 was developed in an OEM project by ARCTIC COOLING exclusively for SAPPHIRE. It is already being employed on the newly-launched model SAPPHIRE HD 4770 and the latest version of the
SAPPHIRE HD 4670. Together with the PWM function, the Accelero L7 delivers quiet cooling at all time reaching a noise level of only 0.4 sone at full load.

The Accelero L7 has a very stylish look and offers nearly inaudible cooling to the SAPPHIRE HD4770 and HD4670 graphic cards, he continued. With significant GPU temperature reduction, the Accelero L7 can extend the service life of these valuable cards, as well as to boost their overclocking and graphic performance to
a new level.

Writing on The Windows Blog this morning, Stephanie Ferguson, Microsoft Mobile Communications general manager, marked October 6 as the day that we’ll “have a bunch of new Windows phones to choose from.”  Windows Phone is Microsoft’s new marketing term for Windows Mobile 6.5 (and above) smartphones.  No other device details were revealed, although the post did name HP, HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung and Toshiba as participating manufacturers.

“On Oct. 6^th, you’ll see new Windows phones designed for a variety of tastes, needs and price points – with or without keyboards, with or without touch screens, as well as your choice of GPS, accelerometer and high resolution camera. There are a lot of great options and we can’t wait to show them to you.

We doubt we’ll actually be able to buy any of these upcoming phones on October 6 – though it is possible – but at least we know we don’t have long to wait until we see some (hopefully) interesting new Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets.

Solid State storage products continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Over the last year or so, solid state drives, or SSDs, specifically targeted at PC enthusiasts have transformed from buggy, generally underperforming products to the preferred, high-end storage solution for performance hungry enthusiasts. Available capacities have increased, cost per gigabyte has decreased significantly, and a number of useful features have been introduced that enhance or otherwise optimize performance. We have already covered

WD (NYSE: WDC) today announced that it is now shipping desktop 7200 RPM 2 TB hard drives and is qualifying with OEMs enterprise-class hard drives based on WDs 500 gigabytes-per-platter technology. The popular family of WD Caviar Black drives, now led by the new 2 TB capacity, is perfect for gaming, high-performance desktop systems and workstations; while the WD RE4 2 TB is suited for servers, network attached storage and storage networks. The WD Caviar Black 2 TB GB (model WD2001FASS) hard drives are available through select distributors and resellers. Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Caviar Black 2 TB drive is $299 USD. The WD RE4 2 TB (model WD2003FYYS) drive is currently being qualified by OEMs. Both drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty.

WD Caviar Black 2 TB hard drives maximize the features and functionality of power computing applications such as gaming, photo editing, user generated multimedia and video, said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of WDs client storage systems. With the selection of WD Caviar Black hard drives, WD desktop customers receive the best possible mix of capacity, performance and reliability that is required for intense desktop computing.

VIA Technologies today announced the VIA ACE-CNX security service, helping customers harness the power of the Advanced Cryptographic Engine (ACE) embedded at the core of all VIA processors. The Advanced Cryptographic Engine provides a range of crucial security features that can be used as the center of an infrastructure where data is made secure through a rigorous and virtually unbreakable cryptographic algorithm. This is entirely unique to VIA; no other processor on the market today can support these security features from within the CPU.

ACE-CNX is all about working in tandem with the customer to create a tailor-made solution that takes advantage of our unique hardware-based security engine, said Daniel Wu, Vice President, VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA is seeking to empower our customers with a more rational security infrastructure that offers a compelling alternative to todays software driven solutions.

X58 Motherboard Roundup Review @ OCC and other reviews from around the web can be found by visiting our forums!

“The overclocked scores give us a better idea of how each board performs. In Apophysis, MSI's X58 Platinum takes first place by one. The top performer in WinRAR is another MSI board. In just about every benchmark the MSI Eclipse Plus outperforms the competition. For this round I'd say the MSI Eclipse takes the cake, hands down, for both the stock and overclocked scores let's move on to the next set of benchmarks.”

You know those times when you think: “Why didn’t someone think of this earlier?” Yeah, this is one of those times. MTV Networks and Harmonix have teamed up to show just how brilliant their respective marketing teams are by pushing Rock Band into a place that just seems so fitting: bars.You heard right. Rock Band is stepping out of the living room and into the watering holes of the world starting this month, as the two companies have joined up to outfit bars with equipment to give tipsy patrons the ability to

Nintendo announced a slew of releases today, including the launch of Wii Fit Plus and new colors for the DSi.Starting Sept. 13, Nintendo will sell white and pink versions of the DSi system, in addition to the blue and black already out there. Perhaps they figured more girls would be likely to buy if they had pink? Unclear, but just like the original colors, the two new hues will have two cameras and interactive options allowing users to “create and manipulate pictures or sound in fun and creative ways.” No extra