alterego writes "Digital Photography Review is reporting that SimpleTech has announced 2, 4, 5 and 8GB Type II Compact Flash Cards utilizing its patented IC Tower stacking technology. This comes just a month after Hitachi announced its 4GB HD in under an inch, and less than one year after Lexar announced the first 4 GB CF card, marking a huge leap in drive density. And at only $5,999 it is sure "to meet budget and performance requirements.""

my_LART writes "Information Week reports that WiFi access is becoming a free commodity. Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) has recently dropped its pay-per-use model and has installed free access to the WLAN in the food court and will be expanding access to the gates. On a similar note, Choice Hotels International is planning a WLAN rollout at its 370 Comfort Suites and 140 Clarion properties by the end of May. Choice Hotels International plans on expanding the rollout to two more of the company's brands by the end of the year. While this is great for us Road Warriors, how can this make financial sense? Choice Hotels can certainly markup the cost of the rooms by a few dollars per night, but how is PIT planning on reclaiming the costs? Regardless, lets hope other airports and hotel chains follow suit."

mmortal03 asks: "Not until recently, by living with a roommate in college, had I noticed how annoying mouse clicks and keystrokes could be to someone who is trying to sleep. Often, one of us will be up using our computer while the other is tring to catch some z's. Whether it's just to do some late night browsing, type a draft of a paper, read an important email, or whatever else, the clicking of the mouse and typing at the keyboard can drive the other up the wall. Some temporary solutions have been using alternate keyboard strokes instead of mouse clicks, and going to use the school's own computer labs, but those are only open so late, or so early. I would like to hear from Slashdot users as to what their solutions have been, in the dorm rooms, for this matter. Besides the clicks and taps, another bother is that, when the lights are off, our monitors light up the room like small lamps. Outside of handing each other earplugs and eye shades, are there any available input devices that lack the noisiness, or screen filters that dim the light output of monitors outside direct viewing, that might solve this problem? Any other ideas?" We've touched on this subject tangentially, twice in articles from December. Do you have other hints or suggestions you want to pass on?

EagleEyez asks: "We're running a wireless network (802.11g) in our apartment: four computers connecting to a Linksys wireless router. But living in a high-rise building in a major city (NYC) there are at least 3 other wireless networks nearby, plus numerous microwaves and cordless phones in the apartments around us -- all of which make the wireless network less than stable. We've pumped up the signal strength on our router, but we lose the connection from time to time disrupting our internet connection and LAN games. What other options are there to help ensure a consistent and reliable network connection? We've tracked the channels the other networks use and chosen one that doesn't conflict, but there's little we can do to prevent the interference from cordless phones, in other people's apartments. As more and more people go wireless, especially in denser urban areas, there has to be some sort of solution..." If you've run into this problem before, did you find any way to solve (or at least mitigate) the outside interference?

deminisma writes "Hilarity abounds as 'analyst' Rob Enderle gushes over his new Ferrari/Acer laptop. The laptop apparently even plays the sound of a car revving up while booting, which Enderle seems to think is all the rage at meetings."

freitasm writes "Geekzone is reporting on Ike, made by Surveylab. Ike is a handheld data capture device that integrates GPS, an electronic compass, a laser distance meter, an inclinometer, a digital camera, and a Pocket PC 2003 handheld in a single unit, ideal for GIS and other surveys."

Richard W.M. Jones writes "This fascinating article, published anonymously, dissects the Transmeta TMS5xxx architecture, revealing how to access and modify the code-morphing code, how the instruction set works, and tells why you won't be able to run Linux directly on this chip."

An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has admitted that four of its handsets (6310, 6310i, 8910 and 8910i) have multiple security vulnerabilities that can allow an attacker to read, edit and copy the contacts and calendar entries using Bluetooth. This admission comes after a ZDNet UK article published earlier today. the spokesperson advises customers to switch off Bluetooth in public places!" For more information, see the bluesnarfing site pointed out by reader profet.

An anonymous reader writes "The differences between LCD, Plasma, DLP, LCOS, D-ILA, and CRT are revealed, as well as their associated advantages and disadvantages, as Audioholics post a new version of their Display Technologies Guide With advances companies like Intel (LCOS) and Texas Instruments (HD2+) are making in chip technologies and cost reductions, one wonders just how soon CRT based TVs will become an antiquity we discuss with our grandchildren as they install their new high resolution, lightweight, affordable displays on their walls."

louismg writes "Data storage giant EMC announced upgrades to their storage hardware family this morning, and claimed performance increases of 25% to 100%, with increased capacity and disk speeds. This comes two weeks after competitor BlueArc announced Titan, the world's biggest ever NAS box, which claims throughput of 5 Gbps and 256 terabytes in a single hardware file system. How much is enough, and as IT administrators, what is the answer to today's issues - improved hardware, or software?"

jpatokal writes "CNN reports: Nokia has bought out Psion's share of Symbian, pushing its stake in the mobile phone OS to a dominant 63%. This means rivals like Siemens and Samsung may now pretty much be forced to choose between proprietary Nokia or Microsoft technology. Symbian may be the more open of the two, but GPL it ain't - does Linux now have an edge?" We reported on a rumor to this effect late last year.

An anonymous reader writes "A stock Microsoft Xbox has a 733 MHz Intel CPU with 128KB L2 cache. On Valentine's Day, Friendtech will launch the DreamX-1480, a modified Xbox with a 1.48 GHz Tualatin-core CPU with 256KB L2 cache, promising better framerates and more stable network gaming. FiringSquad has the review."

Guylhem writes "Are you still wondering why you should prefer an handheld running free software over one running Palm OS or Windows CE? Here's a short article to explain the main reasons you should consider. The most important are sustainability and freedom: you don't want your applications to break when you update your handheld OS or hardware, and you certainly want to decide what *you* may do with your data. Palm and Pocket PC's DRM protected and obscure formats stand in your way. That's another good reason to prefer free software: you have the source code so you can develop plug ins to read such obscure formats. Even better - you can stick to standards formats such as divx which are poorly supported on handhelds running proprietary software." On the topic of handhelds, tanmay submits brighthand.com's small chart of some upcoming handhelds and smart phones that may be launched in the coming months.

comforteagle writes "I've just written up an interesting find: Linux engineers at Dell have started their own Linux site and weblog about Linux at Dell. From the announcement: "Welcome to the Dell Linux Community Web. This site is dedicated to providing any information that may be useful regarding your usage of Linux on your Dell equipment. While Dell primarily works with and officially supports Red Hat Linux, many of our customers choose to run other distributions." And perhaps more importantly it appears that the new site and weblog is run and maintained by the engineers themselves. It certainly has that 'made with vi' look." And kudyadi points to this PC Magazine interview with Michael Dell, in which Dell talks "about Dell's expanding product line, the company's late entrance into the Media Center space, and where the PC giant and the industry go from here." He touches on Linux just a bit, too.

Combuchan writes "This article from internetnews.com caught my attention: While Linux lawsuits gobble up the IT community's mindshare, a lesser-known legal action is being fought seeking billions of dollars from five PC vendors. Patriot Scientific, a small, San Diego-based seller of embedded microprocessors for automotive and scientific applications, is suing Sony, Fujitu, Matsushita, Toshiba, and NEC, alleging infringement of a Patriot patent for what it calls 'fundamental microprocessor technology.'"

Cocooner writes "Infoworld has an article explaining how AMD received $683 million in grants from Germany and the state of Saxony for its next-generation microprocessor wafer facility. The new plant will be located in Dresden, adjacent to Fab 30 and will be called Fab 36. It will be the first AMD 300mm manufacturing facility."

prostoalex writes "Japanese subscribers will be able to get 70 television channels with a new cell phone, currently developed and tested by Samsung. Using an ARM microprocessor, Samsung makes it possible to receive satellite TV transmissions in 2.6 GHz range. No dish is required, however, for clarity of the signal the company is currently installing a network of repeaters. This could substantially increase the number of satellite TV subscribers, which in the United States is still a distant second to cable television."

Burianski11 asks: "After searching for a phone that syncs with my PIM for a few months now, I'm stumped. I've seen phones that sync with Exchange Server and others whose web-based phone book will sync with a web-based PIM (Sprint has this). Are there any phones out there that will sync easily with PIM software, be it Outlook, Evolution, or something else?"

Balthisar asks: "Like so many others, my wife and I have recently made the move to pure mobile telephone use, and have disconnected the landline permanently. Today, I turned on the TiVo and received a stern warning that only three days of the program guide remained! I screwed up. Anyone have a good emergency way of refreshing the program guide while I wait for my TiVo networking card to come in? An additional concern is DirecTV: I never use Pay Per View, but it's not connected, either. Any horror stories about not having your DirecTV connected to a phone line? If you don't have any advice, at least take this as a cautionary tale to make a good checklist before taking the leap of eliminating your terrestrial line!" This topic was handled in a previous article over 2 years ago. What suggestions do you have for others, that find themselves in this position?

May Kasahara asks: "Seeing as how my Unreal Tournament buddies are considering upgrading to UT2004 soon, I thought I'd check out the system requirements ahead of time. I thought that I'd have no problems, seeing as how UT2004 is mostly just UT2003 with new content, but upon looking up the specs online, I found quite a different story. My PC runs on a 733mHz Pentium III, just meeting the minimum system req.'s for UT2003 (which runs very smoothly on my machine, BTW), but UT2004 requires at least a 1gHz processor for the PC version. Curious, I checked out the UT2003 system specs listed on the official site, and found much the same info-- specs that were quite different from those listed on the retail box in my storage closet. Naturally, I got to thinking about other games and apps, and what I want to know is: what gives? How accurate/trustworthy are system specs listed on a box? Are they artificially inflated to sell more hardware from companies that these publishers are affiliated with (nVidia in UT's case), or is there a more logical explanation?"