eWeek now says Microsoft is working together with HP on a fix. An HP spokeswoman told eWeek, "We are of course working diligently with Microsoft on a software update and will be proactively distributing a patch to customers this week through our automated HP Update service that will prevent this error from occurring." Users will also be able to head to hp's website and search for patch SP37394. "When the update is available, the search results screen will list the update with instructions for downloading and installation," she added.

Next year, VIA's processors may have much in common with Intel's current Core 2 Duo CPUs: dual cores, an out-of-order architecture, and 45nm process technology. Quoting sources at VIA, DigiTimes reports that the company will introduce its first 45nm, dual-core processors "by the end of 2009." The chips will most likely be based off VIA's new Isaiah core.

What's new in Virtual PC 2007 SP1
This update for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 includes support for the following additional Host and Guest Operating Systems:

Additonal Guest Operating System support:

• Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Server® 2008 Standard
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

Additional Host Operating System support:

• Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

Scibettra said Nintendo was pleased no infringement was found with the motion-sensing technology used in its wandlike Wii and Nuncheck controllers, which mimic movements by users in games such as tennis and boxing.

Attorneys for Anascape did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tyler-based Anascape also sued Microsoft Corp. for patent infringements on game controllers but reached an agreement with the company before the start of the trial against Nintendo, The Lufkin Daily News reported.

Microsoft said in a statement that terms of the settlement reached May 1 were confidential.

Jesper Johansson, once a program manager for security policy at Microsoft and currently an MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) who works at Amazon.com, posted a link to the tool on his blog yesterday, beating his former employer and Hewlett-Packard Co. to the draw. Neither company has yet come up with a fix or patch for the weeklong snafu.

Johansson's small, 16K VBScript (Visual Basic Scripting Edition) file checks whether the PC is running a processor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), and if so, examines the Windows registry to see if a device driver meant for Intel-based machines is set to load.

The tool is the latest in the weeklong problem some users have encountered after upgrading Windows XP to the new service pack. Last week, just a day after Microsoft added XP SP3 to Windows Update, reports accumulated of "endless reboots" crippling machines running AMD CPUs. Many of the users said that the out-of-control PCs were from HP.

According to users, Johansson and most recently, Microsoft itself, the problem can be traced to the disk image that HP used to factory-install Windows XP on AMD-based machines. HP, said everyone concerned, used an image created on an Intel-powered PC to install XP on AMD systems; Microsoft had advised computer makers against doing that as long ago as 2004.

Television company CBS has agreed to buy technology news and entertainment website CNET for about $1.75bn (£900m).

CBS said that the purchase of CNET, which owns sites such as ZDNet and Gamespot, would help to boost its online presence.

CBS has offered $11.50 a share in cash, which is 45% more than CNET's closing price on Wednesday.

The companies said the combined group would have "significant additional exposure" to online advertising.

The deal will make CBS "one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States", with 54 million US users and 200 million worldwide, CBS said in a statement.

The deal is subject to approval by regulators and CNET shareholders.

Other CNET sites include News.com, TV.com, Mp3.com and MySimon.

CBS will combine them with its own websites such as CBSSports.com and CBSNews.com.

May 12, 2008 (IDG News Service) Hewlett-Packard Co. said this morning that it has signed a deal to acquire IT outsourcer Electronic Data Systems Corp. for $13.9 billion, or $25 per share.

The deal has been approved by both companies' boards of directors and is expected to close in the second half of this year. HP said that acquiring EDS will more than double its services revenue to an annual total of $38 billion.

At last! After a six-month lull during which it focused solely on GeForce 9-series graphics cards, Nvidia has finally released new ForceWare drivers for older GeForce 6, 7, and 8 offerings. Numbered 175.16, the new drivers are available for Windows Vista x86, Windows Vista x64, Windows XP, and Windows XP Pro x64. These drivers also support new 9-series GeForces and 8-series "motherboard GPUs," effectively closing the gap between Nvidia's software support for new and old hardware.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures @ GamesRadar , IGN & AtomicGamer
Alone in the Dark @ GameSpot.
Stronghold Crusader: Extreme @ VideoGamer.com.
Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition @ Gameguru Mania.
Turning Point Fall of Liberty @ Crispy Gamer.
SBK-08 Superbike World Championship @ GameSpot.
War Rock @ RPG Vault.
The Agency @ the Seattle Times Newspaper.
Trials 2 Second Edition @ Out of Eight.
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War - Soulstorm @ Gas Bandit Gaming.
Napoleon’s Campaigns @ The Wargamer.
XIII Century: Death or Glory @ Crispy Gamer.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate @ Neverwinter Nights 2 Vault & WarCry.

Following its purchase of Alienware all the way back in May 2006, Dell has continued selling high-end PCs for gamers under its own XPS brand name. That's about to come to an end, says Engadget.

Quoting a report by the Wall Street Journal, the gadget site claims Dell is about to shelve part of its XPS line and rely solely on Alienware for high-end, gaming PC sales. The change will reportedly come into effect next month, when Dell will discontinue "four models of XPS performance PCs." The move may very well hit the XPS Gaming Desktop range, which includes four models: the XPS 630, XPS 720, XPS 720 H2C, and XPS 730.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- May 12, 2008 --AMD (NYSE:AMD) today introduced the industry’s first energy-efficient x86 server processors with four processing cores and an integrated memory controller all in a low 55-watt ACP thermal envelope. Blade and rack systems based on five new low-power Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ HE (Highly Efficient) processors are now widely available from global OEMs and solution providers.

“Our new Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processors were designed to help datacenter managers who see power consumption and virtualization as the keys to solving their overall performance equation,” said Randy Allen, corporate vice president and general manager, Server and Workstation Division, AMD. “These new processors which feature AMD’s advanced power management and virtualization innovations offer a compelling platform for power-conscious datacenter managers who are changing the way they think about performance.”

Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processors are available in both the 2300 and 8300 Series for two-, four- and eight-way rack servers and blades. The new processors have set new performance records among comparable x86 energy-efficient processors, such as top scores for SPECfp_rate2006 in both two- and four-processor configurations, offering businesses of all sizes the exceptional scalability and efficiency benefits of AMD’s unrivaled Direct Connect Architecture.

Making sure every possible niche is covered, Asus provides AMD users a high end, SLI capable motherboard with several unique features. The Asus M3N-HT Deluxe dishes out goodies like the brand new 780a chipset, 3-way SLI capability, Hybrid SLI, ESA, HyperTransport 3.0, PCIe 2.0 and the sexy Cool Mempipe. Is this the motherboard you've been waiting for? HardwareLogic straps the M3N-HT onto the test bench and drops the knowledge on you, raw and uncut.

While basic features of Intel’s next-generation desktop platform based on code-named Bloomfield processors are commonly known, more precise, but still rather general, specifications were kept under wraps. Apparently, the chipset that will enable Intel’s forth-coming high-end platform is called Intel X58 and will support one physical central processing unit (CPUs) as well as up to four graphics processing units (GPUs).

According to slides, which resemble those that come from Intel Corp., published by Expreview web-site, Intel’s next-gen high-end desktop Intel X58 chipset will consist of X58 PCI Express bridge as well as ICH10 input/output controller hub. The X58 is projected to feature four PCI Express 2.0 memory controllers to support two graphics cards with two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots or four graphics cards with four PCIe 2.0 x8 slots.

A few months ago, the American company Advanced Micro Devices – AMD, as the second biggest manufacturer in the processor market, launched the new K10 microarchitecture onto the market, in the form of a server solution codenamed Barcelona. Barcelona is the new Opteron which brings many novelties in the fields of virtualization, multi-socket scaling, as well as many improvements in multithread software synchronization.

The launch of a new microarchitecture is always an exciting event. The K10 processor generation is a new architecture, even though it may be based on the previous one. Therefore, it’s not all down to increasing cache memory, speeding up the bus, reduction and improvement of the manufacturing process and similar cosmetic treatment. The entire success of this processor family is depending on its basis. Common practice shows that a good architecture (with good potential) can be well differentiated into lower product categories which are more competitive on the wider market. A high-end processor with a high number of operations per cycle is very fast at a relatively low clock. A processor with less cache and transistors is usually easier to make in large quantities. It is pretty certain that the actual generation of K8 processors will soon be fully replaced by newer and more efficient derivatives of the K10 processors in different pricing categories.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures @ GameZone.com.
Aliens: Colonial Marines @ Gameplayer.
Europa Universalis: Rome @ Boomtown.
Penumbra: Black Plague @ 2404.
Mass Effect on GameSpot, GamesRadar, & IGN.
The Tomorrow War @ Hooked Gamers.
Dead Space @ the Official Blog.
Empire: Total War Empire @ GamesRadar.
LEGO Indiana Jones @ Eurogamer.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King @ 1Up, GameSpot, GameSpy, GamesRadar, & IGN.