AMD Closes “Asset Smart” Transaction – Fulfills Vision to Create Two Leadership Companies Capable of Delivering Transformative Innovation and Impact to the Global Technology Industry            — AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Company form well-resourced U.S. based global semiconductor manufacturing services company —                    — Strategic partner

MSI Computer has just announced the GT725 Gaming Notebook. MSI outfitted the GT725 with Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology (Intel 45nm Penryn P9500), the ATi Radeon HD4850 video card, a Blu-ray player, a 9-cell battery, and a 17 1080P HD LCD to create the ultimate mobile gaming experience.

GT725 is our flagship gaming notebook, said Andy Tung, Vice President of Sales, MSI US. Graphically speaking it is in a class by itself the brilliant 1080P HD display and 4GB of DDRII allow the GT725 to run 3-D titles that few other gaming notebooks could handle. MSI built the GT725 in its brushed aluminum gaming case with stamped aluminum sheeting for increased protection and durability. However, despite the rugged case and a standard 9-cell battery, the GT725 weighs just over seven pounds.

Wow, talk about a power play. Asus is pulling out all the stops at CeBIT this year, introducing a flood of new motherboards and now, a flood of new notebooks. The most notable newcomer that will be showcased this week is the LAMBORGHINI VX5, a 16 inch speed demon of a laptop that was inspired by the limited edition Lamborghini Reventón. The machine will get powered by a potent Intel Core 2 Quad processor and will feature 4GB of memory, a 1TB SSD (yes, 1TB!), a Full High Definition LCD, NVIDIA’s 1GB (GDDR3) GeForce

General Imaging, the worldwide exclusive licensee for GE branded cameras, unveiled its first cameras in March 2007. And while the brand may not have quite the same name recognition in the world of photography as Canon or Nikon, General Imaging definitely offers some feature-rich cameras at affordable prices. This year at PMA, General Imaging added ten new models to its digital camera lineup. All of the new models feature at least 9 megapixels of resolution, and seven of the new models boast of 12 megapixels

Long Zheng at istartedsomething.com has posted an interesting article defending the often maligned honeycomb, the scattered hexagonal arrangement of icons used in the updated Start Menu of Windows Mobile 6.5.

Long clearly describes the logic of the hexagonal icon layout:

“Contrary to popular belief, the tip of human fingers is not squared, but in fact circle-shaped when depressed against a hard surface like a touchscreen. When you’re space-constrained as you are in something like the applications menu – where there’s a fine balance between how many icons can be displayed at one time and how easy it is to hit the icons, large circular hitareas makes it easier for users to touch the desired icons and avoid accidentally hitting nearby icons.

“A grid is the most efficient method to pack as many squares into an area as possible, but not for circles. The mathematically most efficient method to arrange non-overlapping circles – a problem called “sphere packing” – is actually and as you might have guessed by now, hexagonal.”

I have my qualms with WM6.5, along with a healthy dose of “wait and see” skepticism. But I’m also ever watchful for writers defending Microsoft’s mobile choices, if for no other reason than they are so often sitting (and typing) alone.  I like the honeycomb, at least on paper, but irrespective of personal likes or dislikes, Long mounts an excellent defense of its use.

The ability to have a PC turn on instantly, providing immediate access to the operating system, files, applications, and network connections has long been a pipe dream. This pie-in-the-sky concept has only recently started to see some traction with alternative, “instant-on” operating systems (OS) that come built into the firmware of some newer systems. Today, however, system management tools provider, Xandros, introduced a new instant-on OS called Presto, that can be installed on virtually any Windows XP or

MSI Announces GT725 – World’s First Gaming Notebook to Feature ATi Radeon HD4850 and Deliver Desktop Gaming Performance with a Single GPUGT725 features 17” 1080P HD LCD Monitor, Blu-ray Player and 9-Cell Battery CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – March 02, 2009 – MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is excited to announce the GT725 Gaming Notebook.  MSI outfitted the GT725 with Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology (Intel® 45nm Penryn P9500), the ATi Radeon

If your Windows 7 Beta experience has been a bit rough so far due to unfriendly graphics drivers from NVIDIA, the company is finally stepping up with a solution. Today, NVIDIA has made available new graphics drivers from its website that apply to GeForce GPUs involved in Windows 7 Beta setups. This also marks the start of regular NVIDIA driver updates for the forthcoming operating system from Microsoft. Needless to say, NVIDIA is pretty excited that Win7 will be the first Windows OS to fully integrate and take

Intel Corporation and TSMC today announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on addressing technology platform, intellectual property (IP) infrastructure, and System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions. Under the MOU, Intel would port its Atom processor CPU cores to the TSMC technology platform including processes, IP, libraries, and design flows. The collaboration is intended to expand Intels Atom SoCs availability for Intel customers for a wider range of applications through integration with TSMCs diverse IP infrastructure. With this joint effort, Intel intends to significantly broaden the market opportunities for its Intel Atom SoCs and accelerate deployment of the architecture through multiple SoC implementations. At the same time, TSMC extends its technology platform to serve the Intel Architecture market segments. Intel stock is down and TSMC stock is up after the announcement.

We believe this effort will make it easier for customers with significant design expertise to take advantage of benefits of the Intel Architecture in a manner that allows them to customize the implementation precisely to their needs, said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. The combination of the compelling benefits of our Atom processor combined with the experience and technology of TSMC is another step in our long-term strategic relationship.

Last week we were given the heads up that on Monday, March 2nd Intel and TSMC will be making a strategic announcement at the Intel executive briefing center in Santa Clara. The event is taking place right now and is being hosted by Intel execs Anand Chandrashekar and Sean Maloney and TSMC execs Rick Tsai and Jason Chen. During the conference call Anand Chandrashekar announced that the Intel Atom Processor will be made in TSMC fabs. Outsourcing chip production is an unusual move for Intel, as they have taken great pride building their own processors in-house. With Atom now being built by TSMC it would only make sense that the upcoming Intel Larrabee (GPU) be made by them down the road. Intel said that they have been working on this deal for 2-3 years and has no plans on not becoming a manufacturing company. They believe that down the road that manufactures will need to expand into more areas than they are now and by joining forces with TSMC they will be able to expand and better adapt to the market by opening up the door to new designs that they can build internally.

TSMC created the semiconductor dedicated foundry industry when it was founded in 1987. It continues as the market leader by steadily increasing its capital spending and by out performing all other market competitors. TSMC posted annual sales of US$9.83 billion in 2007 and currently employs over 20,000 people worldwide. To serve and support our customer's manufacturing needs, TSMC maintains account service offices in China, India, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan and the United States.