S. Blocher writes "Ars Technica has a great article up, 'Understanding Moore's Law', that I think most geeks should read. The misrepresentation of Moore's Law in the media has always been a real pet peeve of mine, and this article does a great job of looking at the flipside of the 'bigger and faster' thesis to show how the Law isn't really just about doubling computer power."

los furtive writes "As of March 1st $799 will get you this Lindows 2.9lb subnotebook with a VIA C3 933MHz Processor, 256 megs ram and a 20 gig HD, a 12inch screen, USB 2.0, firewire and of course the Lindows OS. Pre-orders have already started."

Hirsto writes "Found this interesting story about breakthrough research on next generation drives. Here is a link to the NSF press release on this technology which supposedly enables storage densities of greater than 1 terabit per square inch. Devices might be on the market in 7 years, give or take."

Sander Sassen writes "Wondering about the performance of AMD's Athlon-64? Want to how well it runs in 64-bit mode? Hardware Analysis managed to run a few benchmarks on a AMD Athlon-64 demo system using the 64-bit version of Epic' Unreal Tournament 2003. There's also an update with the latest about Athlon-64, Opteron and mobile Athlon-64 including streaming video and pictures of a quad Opteron server."

Bill Kendrick writes "ZDNet, Geek.com and others are reporting IBM's decision to choose Trolltech's Qtopia (the embedded version of their Qt library, used by the Sharp Zaurus PDA) in their forthcoming devices. See the announcement at Trolltech's website, and an earlier press release at IBM.com." Here's an earlier post about the new IBM reference platform.

SailorBob writes "A research team at the University of Minnesota has demonstrated a technique using DNA crystals to build 20 angstrom 1 bit single electron memory cells. The researchers claim that this technique could be used to build memory with a 10 trillion bits/cm2 density, which would mean a 6.4 Terabit DRAM."

Chromose asks: "Being a system administrator by day, and coder/artist/gamer by night, my hands and wrists get their fair share of exercise around the clock. I've had lumps on the back of my hands off and on for a couple years now and just recently discovered they are ganglion cysts. And although pain and stress has been minimum up to now, I worry of what continuing everyday keyboard and mouse stress will lead to. Introducing FingerWorks. I stumbled across their iGesture Pad on ThinkGeek the other day and started digging for reviews. What reviews I have found exclaim how remarkable the products work, but not many reviews could be found. It sounds like the answer to my search for relief, and it sounds too good to be true. So I'm asking, who out there has used these things and are they truly a revolution in the making?" Yes, ThinkGeek is part of the Sinister VA Software Kieretsu, but if you aren't worried about it, then neither am I.

An anonymous reader writes "Toms Hardware has an interesting review of 65 processors ranging from 100 MHz to 3066 MHz. They spent more than 300 hours benchmarking and recording the scores. Worth a quick glance, especially for the Unreal Tournament 2003 scores on the 100 MHz pentium!" CT: Yeah yeah. It's a dupe. Funny that not a single reader emailed me in almost 2 hours to tell me.

lotech writes "lik-sang has a review with full photos of the new Nintendo Ganeboy Advance SP. Not just supplying heaps of photos they have even beaten the pack on voiding the warranty and include heaps of internal photos. The handheld market is heating up with new releases from Nokia too and also the feature packed GP32. Oh and maybe then there maybe some Sony competition soon?"

socram writes " Tom's Hardware posted an interesting article, describing and benchmarking 65 kinds of CPUs from 1994 to 2003. Opinions on what constitutes "adequate computing speed" vary greatly from one user to the next. While one person may be perfectly content with an old Pentium 133 system that stores stamp club membership details in a DOS program in "real-time mode", there is another group at the other end of the scale - video fans who must have the latest and greatest and who will clamor for more and more Gigahertz and gigabytes."

MeatWad writes "Sony has announced the SJ33 Palm OS 4 model with a high res color screen and mp3 player for $299. At the same time the FCC has leaked info on the next Palm OS 5 Clie with bluetooth and an integrated keyboard called the TG50. Sony can sure crank out the cool gadgets."

axxackall contributes a link to Richard Black's report on BBC suggesting that "Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells such as bacteria. Scientists 'have described how wires can now be made by yeast organisms, and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges. Researchers believe these kind of technologies will be essential if we are to continue to shrink the size of electronic devices.' But 'Computers made with these natural processes are not just around the corner -- it will be many years before the technologies can be developed that far.' While scientists think about small sizes and environmental benefits, I also think if it would be possible to implant such bacteria for additional computational power in human brains -- just in case we have to upgrade them." Update: 02/17 20:23 GMT by T : I chopped out that link accidentally, sorry.

Billy Stephens writes "Few people knew about the CEE2003 event put on by Chaintech this year. They flew some of the top media analysts and resellers out to Spain to show off their new K8 motherboards and Nvidia Geforce FX based video cards. Unfortunately there was a lot of bad news to be had as well. AMD pushed back their Athlon 64 CPU until September so there were no motherboards based on it to show off, and Nvidia announced they would only release around 4,000 of their Geforce FX GPUs, primarily for preorders only. It looks like ATI has rattled Nvidia more than what people thought. Monkey Review has a great summary of this event with plenty of pictures. Overall I am impressed with the quality Chaintech has put into their products from an aesthetic point of view, it's a shame that both Nvidia and AMD are having product issues."

KiranWolf writes "I ran across this page doing some research on a local historical landmark. It has detailed histories and photos of more than 500 abandoned and little used airfields throughout the U.S., many of them dating back to the heyday of aviation. It's rather amazing how many small unknown airfields dot the landscape."

UVwarning writes "I submitted a review to Slashdot about a month ago complaining about various problems with Philips' streamium MCi-200 (an Internet micro hi-fi system). The main gripes being that Philips controls which Internet radio stations you can listen to and that the PC-link software (which is used to serve MP3s from your PC to your Streamium) only runs on Windows. I managed to fix both of these problems by reverse engineering the PC-link protocol and writing my own pc-link server in perl, which can be run on practically any OS, *and* can trick the Streamium into playing any Internet MP3 stream that you want! This is a must-have for any Streamium user. Here is a more detailed article along with the perl script and an outline of the PC-link protocol."

metamatic asks: "I'm planning to buy a notebook computer in the near future. Currently I'm looking at an iBook; however, they're a bit larger and heavier than I'd like. PC users are always telling me that PCs are faster and cheaper, and I'd be happy enough running Linux for what I want the notebook for. So: I'm looking for PC notebook computers that outperform the iBook. Must have USB and Firewire, built-in ethernet, and 802.11b support somehow (via a PC card slot is OK). Small is important, lightweight is important, long battery life is important. I don't care about screen size so long as it can do 800x600. Performance isn't a major concern, as I'm not going to be playing 3D games on it. Sounds easy? Here's the catch: I will not purchase Windows!" After all that this industry has gone through in recent years? Does one still have to pay the Microsoft tax when purchasing a laptop?

AmbushBug asks: "The new Tablet PCs have been out for a while now and I was wondering if anyone has had any luck running GNU/Linux on them? I've found that its running on the Pacebooks and there seems to be some success with the Compaq TC1000. Has anyone tried running it on the Motion Computing, Toshiba, Gateway, or others?"

An anonymous reader writes "A group at the University of Saarland in Germany has been busy developing a Linux-based networked multimedia home entertainment system. The project consists of two parts: the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), to provide a common framework for audio and video playback using open source software, and the Multimedia-Box, a Linux box outfitted to be a TV receiver (digital and analog), video recorder, and a CD-, DVD-, and MP3- player using the NMM. Screen shots of the inside of the Multimedia-Box and the user interface are available, as well as videos and a detailed description (PDF) of the hardware and software used throughout. Can't wait to stick one of these on my network..."

jules asks: "Trying to do some programming on an iBook the other day brought to my attention the fact that despite the constant improvements to the design of computer hardware and software, the keyboards we use are still a throwback to the early 1980s. I mean - my Mac doesn't have room for page up/down or home/end keys, but it devotes a whole key to a sort of double-S shape that I will never press. And my PC keyboards all waste plastic on a backwards-apostrophe key and a scroll-lock (+ LED!), while functions that you use all the time, such as switching between windows, cut/copy/paste, back/forwards, undo/redo etc, all have to double-up with other keys.. Have any organizations actually tried to re-invent the keyboard recently? (..not counting the manufacturers who stick a few 'multimedia' keys along the top for consumer PCs). Would this be doomed to failure because of the tens of thousands of legacy apps that expect things to be the way they are? What sort of keys would you include in your fantasy keyboard layout?" It's not just the keys on your keyboard that are important, it's also how you arrange them. What kind of keyboard arrangements might we see in the future?

Roonster asks: "I've just moved into a new house and I am now lucky enough to have a separate room to use as a computer room/office. I have been searching for a new computer desk but most of the standard offerings seem to be lacking in imagination and design. I also tend to sit in a reclined position with my feet up on the desk beside the monitor, this eliminates a lot of the corner and U shaped designs. Have any of you come up with unique yet functional desk setups? I remember seeing some really wild (and expensive) workstations a few years ago, but have been unable to locate them recently. Any Ideas?" This topic was last discussed some 2 years ago. I figured it was time for a rehash.