Apple CEO Steve Jobs is now an even wealthier man, and it has nothing to do with iPod sales. Disney is indeed buying Pixar, the computer animation studio Jobs bought off George Lucas, for a rumoured $7.4bn.…
Lexmark, the printer maker, is ending production of inkjet cartridges in Rosyth, Scotland and is transferring manufacture to a cheaper, unnamed country. Up to 1,000 jobs could be affected.…
Review The ATI Radeon X1800 XT will go down in history as one of the shortest-lived flagship 3D graphics products in history. Launched three scant months ago, in October 2005, the lengthy delay in its introduction - said to be due to production problems with the R520 graphics processor that powers it - means that it's set to be replaced this month, January 2006, by the next generation of high-end ATI GPU.…
Acer is to embed 3G mobile-phone technology into its future notebook PC products, kicking off with a pair of Centrino Duo-based machines, the company said this week.…
AMD has licensed a memory chip technology that could allow it to increase its processors' cache sizes fivefold without changing the size of each chip's die.…
Review There's an interesting story behind the U10. Apparently, the head of River got together the whole design and engineering team in Korea and told them to that they needed to change their thinking. He told them to go back to the drawing board and come up with something new, to make a complete U-turn with their thinking. A U-Turn, or a U10, geddit?!?…
Nintendo will ship its next-generation games console, Revolution, in the US in time for the Thanksgiving November holiday sales period, the company's president has pledged.…
Nvidia last night extended its GeForce 7 GPU family down into the mainstream market, pitching the 7300 GS at entry-level systems. The 7300 GS is also Nvidia's first 90nm GeForce 7 chip.…
Apple has updated iTunes 6.0.2's MiniStore feature to display an explanation panel describing what the facility does the first time a user activates it.…
Microsoft may not offer an external Blu-ray Disc drive for the Xbox 360 after all. The software giant this week said it remains "fully committed" to HD DVD and has "absolutely no plans to support other optical formats".…
Monster Core Duo-equipped Inspiron 9400 goes on sale
Dell has unveiled its first Core Duo-based notebook, the Inspiron 9400. The 17in-widescreen monster is a Centrino-branded machine, and ships with either a 1.83GHz Core Duo T2400 CPU or a 1.67GHz Core Solo T1300 chip. Upgrades to the Core Duo T2300, T2500 and T2600 processors are available on a build-to-order basis.…
Microsoft is planning its third Windows XP Service Pack (SP) for release in 2007, three years after the last SP, in order to concentrate engineering resources on Windows Vista.…
Lower than expected PC chip sales forced Intel into a rare revenue miss during its fourth quarter. Investors then punished the chip-maker in the after-hours markets, sending Intel shares down as much as 10 per cent.…
Tiger Telematics, Gizmondo's parent company, has pledged the patent and other intellectual property rights of its Smart Adds subsidiary - plus all the shares - against the company's ability to raise $75m in funding by 31 March.…
VIA today took its x86-compatible Eden processor family into the 90nm era by extending the series with two models derived from the company's 'Esther' core, also the basis of its C7 processor product line.…
Chip maker keeps mum on mobile virtualisation support
Exclusive Intel's Virtualisation Technology (VT) may not come to the mobile market until the chip giant releases the Core Duo 2700, The Register has learned.…
Review Since the dawn of time three questions have preoccupied mankind. Is there a God? Are we alone in the Universe? And, how do I wear headphones without getting tangled up in the cord?…
Posh London department store Selfridges is to begin charging punters £65 for a 40-minute one-on-one iPod tutorial later this month - almost as much as it costs to buy the cheapest iPod.…
Roadmap Intel's fourth-generation Centrino notebook platform, 'Santa Rosa', will take the hardware's frontside bus speed to 800MHz when it ships, provisionally sometime in H1 2007.…
Exclusive Intel is preparing to launch a 2.33GHz Core Duo chip, the T2700, The Register has learned. The chip giant's product pipeline also includes faster Core Solo chips, speedier low-voltage Core Duos and the introduction of an ultra-low voltage Core Duo, the 1.06GHz U2500.…
Another day, another iPod accessory from Griffin Technology. Today's is the iClear a transparent polycarbonate shell developed to keep your iPod Nano safe from scratches.…
Fujitsu today said it plans to break into the 1.8in hard disk drive market, part of a strategy to double the company's unit sales by 2009 and grab third place in the HDD market in the same timeframe.…
Research in Motion (RIM) has licensed third-party utility PocketMac for Blackberry and will provide the $30 software to Mac-based Blackberry owners free of charge.…
Company's 'commitment' to Mac users doesn't go that far
Microsoft hasn't updated the Mac version of Windows Media Player since 28 November 2003, and it doesn't look like it's going to do so ever again - despite the software giant's plan, stated this week, to continue developing Office:Mac for the next five years or more.…
Track selection monitored but not stored, apparently
Apple has denied that it retains any of the information that the latest update to its hugely popular jukebox software, iTunes, creates as it monitor users' listening selections.…
Analysis What an ungrateful bunch you are. This week Apple began its transition to Intel processors six months ahead of schedule, and all you can do is carp. Don't you know you're supposed to swoon over every shiny new piece of kit?…
35mm film has come to the end of the roll, Nikon has said. The camera maker this week revealed it is focusing its efforts solely on digital photography products.…
If you can add one external drive (HD DVD), you can add another (BD)
Microsoft has said it may ship a Blu-ray Disc drive for its Xbox 360 games console should consumers prefer that next-generation optical disc format over HD DVD.…
Microsoft has committed itself to supporting Office on the Mac for at least the next five years, the head of the software giant's Macintosh Business Unit said this week.…
So the delegates have gone home, the halls are emptying and, yes, Gates (and Elvis) have left the building. The gadget fest that was the Consumer Electronics Show 2006 is now history. Yet before we bury it for good, here's our list of the ten best gadgets to emerge at the show (in no particular order)...…
Review "This is a truly historical meeting of the established and new media," said Les Moonves, the head of CBS, about his network's new video partnership with Google. Um, no, Les. So far, it's just a really crap web site.…
Security researchers have discovered four critical vulnerabilities involving Apple's QuickTime media player software and the download application for Apple's iTunes music store. The flaws create a means for hackers to take control of affected systems, according to eEye Digital Security, the firm that discovered the bugs.…
Tired of waiting for Apple's long-rumoured tablet Mac to ship? Then US-based hardware mod project site, ThePlaceforitAll.com, may have the answer. It today offered the first of 100 12in iBooks re-tooled as a tablet, complete with stylus and touch-sensitive screen.…
Controversial computer company Atom Chip has said it will open the claims it makes about its ultra-compact memory technology and its 6.8GHz notebook CPU to independent scrutiny.…
Neuros is to update its MPEG-4 Video Recorder with a new industrial design and an integrated hard-disk drive. It is also preparing to revive its Digital Audio Computer (DAC) line of MP3 players, basing both systems on both a common hardware platform and open-source firmware.…
Review I've long stopped listening to portable music players on London's Underground. You have to turn the volume so high to rise above the background racket, it quickly gets uncomfortable. I began to worry about my hearing.…
A University of Leicester psychologist has concluded that modern listeners don't value music as much as their 19th-century counterparts did - and he blames the iPod and music downloading.…
Is that an iPod in your pocket or... oh, forget it
Jeans-maker Levi Strauss has designed a pair of denim trousers with an integrated iPod remote control. The jeans also provide an iPod dock and retractable earphones.…