Just a reminder everyone – our latest sweepstakes is still going on and you’ve got a great chance to win!  In conjunction with our friends at Diamond Multimedia and Smooth Creations, we’ve got one hot rig to give away this month! We have announced a new sweepstakes where you could win a full AMD Phenom X4 9750-based system, complete with a Diamond Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card and slick, custom painted Smooth Creations case. This machine is definitely a head turner, and it could

There was a fire in LG Chem’s plant in South Korea in March of this year. “So what?”  you might ask. Well, that plant makes lithium-ion batteries, and that’s helping to limit the supply of laptop computers. “I think maybe the battery shortage may hurt every brand,” said J.T. Wang, chairman of Acer, at the company’s investor conference two weeks ago.But the head of the world’s largest independent notebook battery maker, Simplo Technology, said he expects the lithium-ion supply to return to normal in the

Microsoft has walked away from their takeover bid for Yahoo!, and today is the day when the market will have its say about the wisdom of Yahoo! chief Jerry Yang’s frantic actions aimed at avoiding being folded into Microsoft at any cost. Kara Swisher at All Things Digital rang up some executives at Yahoo! after the deal disintegrated, and their reactions had none of the bluster and high-fives in evidence in the Yahoo! boardroom when the deal fell through.So, here’s a sampling of the feelings, none of which

Only a demotion? My, they’re certainly lenient in Japan.  A Japanese civil servant was demoted for logging more than 780,000 hits on pornographic websites on his office computer over nine months, an official said Friday.The man, a Kinokawa city government employee in western Japan, visited porn sites from June 2007 to February 2008, city official Tomiko Waki said. The man’s name was withheld.City officials said the number of hits discovered on his computer’s internal log was so high in part because one

Why wait to play with someone else’s Microsoft Surface multi-touch tabletop display, when you can build one yourself! Apparently a big hit at this last weekend’s Maker Faire, was an open-source design for tinkerers to inexpensively build  their own multi-touch tabletop display with off-the-shelf components. The design comes from Eyebeam, a self-described, “art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital research and experimentation.””…engineers at Eyebeam…

Some folks step into the ring ready for battle with a round-house kick and a 1-2 jab-cross.  Still others would rather enter the arena with a plasma cannon, link gun or sniper rifle.  It all depends on whether your prefer the real or virtual octagon.  Then again the octagon could be more of a circle of death too.  How uplifting.  Perhaps in the latter case you might bring something with you cut from a similar geometrical sphere of influence.  Enter the FPS “Circle of Death” keyboard…

Apple recently came to an agreement with a group of film studios including the 6 largest that would enable the Cupertino firm to release movies via iTunes the same day that they are available on DVD.   The problem is that Apple might actually be taking a loss on them for the short term:“Apple said that starting this week, iTunes customers will be able to purchase newly released movies for $14.99, while most catalog titles are $9.99.The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is paying the studios nearly $16

Despite reports on Friday that Yahoo! had been brought to the bargaining table by a higher Microsoft offer, Microsoft issued a press release on Saturday indicating it was walking away from the deal.“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders

While we typically like to say happy birthday to just about anything technology related, this week we have a less than auspicious birthday to note: that of spam turning 30.“The first known spam email was sent 30 years ago on Saturday.But the message sent on May 3, 1978 by a marketer for the now defunct DEC computer company to around 400 people on the west coast of the United States wasn’t called spam, and the sender dispatched it without ill intent.”The date we really look forward to celebrating would be the

Video:Sparkle GeForce 9600 GT PX96GT512D3-HP review @ TWEAK.DKDiamond’s Radeon HD 3870 1GB video card @ The Tech ReportnVidia GeForce 9800GTX Triple SLI @ t-breakAsus EN9600GT Silent Video Card Review @ I4UMotherboards and Chipsets:Surprises from ASRock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+: Good and Bad @ X-bit LabsECS A780GM-A Black Series Motherboard Review @ Motherboards.orgGigabyte DES X48T-DQ6 Motherboard Review @ HardwareLogicXFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard Review @ Legit ReviewsMemory and Storage:Eagle Tech I Series