soundsop writes "CNET News.com reports that Dell is poised to enter the PDA market. Michael Dell states that announcements for US PDA products are coming "really soon". Will I have 50 configuration options on my Dell PDA?"

Jason Weill writes "MSNBC has a slightly premature review of Palm's brand-new Tungsten models. These models, currently (as of 11:10 PM EST Sunday) unavailable on Palm's own web site, are the Tungsten T and Tungsten W. The Tungsten T includes a fold-out Graffiti area, new cross-key keypad, 144 MHz ARM processor, Palm OS 5, a 320x320 full-color screen, and 16 MB of on-board RAM. At $499, it's more expensive than most handhelds currently on the market. The Tungsten W replaces the Graffiti area with a thumb keyboard and includes GSM/GPRS phone capabilities. Unlike the Handspring Treo devices, the Tungsten W only works with a handset -- you can't put it up to your ear. The Tungsten W will cost $549, although most American service providers will subsidize at least part of the cost. These models will officially be unveiled Monday, October 28."

division21 writes "Geeks rejoice -- DivX Enabled DVD Players finally surface! (With all the goodies: MP3, SVCD, etc.) I remember when MP3 compatability appeared back in the day -- And it looks as though DivX Compatibility could be a real possibility for the mainstream ..." And if you can live without the compression, cherrypi points out this surprisingly favorable review of perhaps the cheapest (under $200) portable DVD player with a built-in screen.

aravind writes "The Communications and IT Minister, Pramod Mahajan, has launched India's indigenously developed low-cost handheld Personal Computer -- Simputer -- at an IT and Communication expo, SMAU 2002, in Milan. A low-cost handheld PC on GNU/Linux working through a browser for international markup language IML, priced at Rs9000 (less than $200). 200Mhz StrongArm processor, 32MB DRAM, 24 MB flash, touchscreen, speakers, USB, text-to-speech, MP3 capability ... " Look here for some of the previous stories we've run on the Simputer.

cr0sh asks: "I have a question that I am hoping someone can answer - today I was looking into cheap handhelds - I first looked at Palm, then at Handspring, then at something called LinuxDA, which seems to be a company offering not only an embedded Linux for handhelds, but also a device with it pre-loaded as one of their products. Looking at each of these companies offerings, I began to notice how they all seemed to be identical, hardware-wise (case, processor, button-layout, memory size, etc), so my question is - is there some company in Asia making the hardware, which each of these companies now source from, with the difference being the software on the platform? Handspring was kinda "spun-off" (not in the traditional sense) of Palm, but what is LinuxDA? The hardware they have looks the same, and their software can run on Palm devices. They surely didn't design and built their own hardware, and besides, each of these companies having such similar designs would cause them to lob trademark infringement lawsuits around - but they aren't - that only leaves the option of one of them acting as the source for the hardware, or an outside supplier. Basically, I want to know where I could get the bare hardware..."

Greg Smith points to this ZDNet story on new Intel chips aimed at blade servers, writing "Proprietary blade servers are coming on strong from IBM, Dell and HP. Where are the open blade servers? How did Google roll out 10,000 servers at such a low cost?"

Tweaker writes "We just posted the first installment of an ongoing article dedicated to the latest designs and innovations for cooling your PC. The Next Generation Fans roundup starts off with five different models from four different manufacturers." I would have liked to have seen the dB rating for each fan- I've had some fans that really were great, provided I was wearing noise cancelling headphones while sharing a room with them. I have the Antec Tricolor fans they review in my case- they are gorgeous, but audible.

SpinnerBait writes "Overclocking the Personal Computer has gotten considerably more elegant over the past few years and there is now an entire industry dedicated to it. One of the latest innovations is super cooling processors down to sub zero temperatures with standard vapor phase refrigeration, in an effort to allow clock speeds to crank far beyond manufacturer specifications. This article takes a look at the Asetek Vapochill, a Vapor Phase Refrigerated PC Case, that chilled a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 down to -7C and allows it to run stable in a workstation environment at 3.3GHz and beyond."

Andrew_Cronin writes "This is a nice project that some one did at MIT on building some logic computation systems without using electrons.. So why not use water..."

Izzard asks: "As a network engineer, I sometimes have to spend many hours in other people's server rooms. One in particular has a good few servers, DVD jukebox, plenty of monitors and switches etc. It's a thick, stone-walled room with a big door. It would get very, very warm were it not for the two huge air conditioning units in there. Someone has decided that these units will be set to maintain a constant air temperature of 17-18 deg. C (62-64F). After an hour or so of sitting in the air stream from these units my legs go numb and fall off and I can't type. Now my guess is that it would be fine to set the units to maintain, say, 21-22 deg. C (70-71F) to make it more comfortable for those of us who have to work in there. This argument comes up a lot, and my position is that the room doesn't need to be refrigerated, *per se*...it only needs to be prevented from overheating. Consequently I maintain that a *consistent* temperature of 'pleasant' for the room is almost as good a consistent temperature of 'a bit nippy'. Is there a definitive answer to this?"

An anonymous reader writes "Cnet is reporting that BestBuy is selling a porsche designed widescreen ultra thin laptop the looks almost exactly like a Tibook. Sadly, it runs windows so no one will actually want to use one for real work, but it looks pretty cool for minesweeper. Ah, I guess that the TiBook is no longer a status symbol if you can run Windows on it. It has all the trimmings, like those "made for windows 2k stickers" that get the screen all nasty when you close it."

nevershower writes "I found this while reading MacOSXHints. It's a firmware script for Radeon iBooks that allows them to use monitor spanning! DO NOT run this script if you have a Rage iBook. It might permanently bork your laptop." Borking is bad, especially if it is permanent.

swimfastom writes "Yahoo! News reports that sales of flat-panel computer monitors will top sales of bulkier traditional models this year, signifying a long-expected turning point in the computer monitor market. Flat-panel screen sales are expected to grow at a 49-percent compounded annual growth rate from 2001 through 2006, giving them an 82-percent share of the desktop computer market."

NewtonsLaw asks: "I'm in the process of building a TiVo-like PC that uses off-the-shelf technology to implement video timeshift, MPEG recording, MP3 recording, etc along with Net-radio functionality. Over the past two months I've effectively replaced VHS video tapes with CDRW disks. Once a program has been captured on the PC in (S)VCD MPEG format, I can either watch it by playing back the recorded file or dump it onto a CDRW and watch it on my DVD player, before blanking the disk and returning it to the 'empty' pile. What I've noticed is that most of the CDRWs I've tried only last about 30-40 rewrites before they start showing significant data dropouts (almost always at the start of a recording). Since disks in (S)VCD format don't carry the same level of error-checking/correction as disks written in regular data format, such dropouts are more noticeable than they would otherwise be (of course the up-side is that you get to store 805MB on a 700MB CDR/RW without overburn). What I want to know is -- how many rewrites do most people expect from their CDRW media? I seem to recall seeing a figure of a thousand rewrite cycles being touted by some manufacturers. Is this realistic? Thirty rewrites makes a $2.50 RW disk an economic medium for this purpose but it seems a hell of a long way short of 1,000."

solferino writes "'Anything you can make for $100, we can make for $40,' Chen says, summing up his commercial philosophy. An interesting profile in Wired magazine of the computer hardware manufacturing 'hot zone', situated around the pearl river delta in mainland china, just outside Hong Kong. The factories are mostly financed and operated by Taiwanese business interests. The article looks at life and business in the city mainly from the point-of-view of these 'foreigners'."

BugNuker writes "If your CD/MP3 player wasn't enough, you have to check this out. Sony has released this all in one media device that can play mp3's, wma's, cd's, and DVD's... yes, DVD's. It can be hooked up to your computer, and be used as a CD-RW and then hooked up to your TV, and play your favorite DVD's. But can it play my mp3's recorded on my DVD? Ultimate media device I would say, same size as a personal cd player. Comes with a Memory Stick expansion slot, a rechargeable battery and a USB 2.0/1.1 interface." There's a picture. It's cute. And expensive.

KeggInKenny asks: "I have the opportunity to engage in a research project involving large-scale asynchronous logic circuits. After evaluating possible tools for hardware description, simulation and implementation, I'm finding there's very little targeted toward asynchronous logic. VHDL is little changed from the 1987 standard which is not nearly as suited for large designs as it's name would suggest, and Verilog is too synchronous (or at least it's too easy to fall into the 'synchronous assumption' trap because of Verilog's C-style structure). Specifically: we are designing a low-power microcontroller for portable (read battery-powered) devices, and hoping that through asynchronous logic, we can greatly reduce power consumption. I'd like to see what the hardware gurus from the Slashdot community have to suggest for VLSIC design focusing on asynchronous research. What tools did you use to design the chips, did you run into synthesization problems, and did you find yourselves focusing on many local clocks, as seems to be the current async trend, or true unclocked hardware?"

zdryer writes "The Newton refuses to die! John Anderson has released nSync Public Preview 1, a Newton sync program designed for Mac OS X 10.2. It's rough right now (only supports serial connections, only syncs clock and AddressBook), but Anderson has big plans (TCP/IP connections, iCal support) and an open plug-in architecture. Also, once he sells 300 copies @ $34 each, he's going to release the source under a BSD-style license."

bfries writes "Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. It uses Sharp's continuous grain silicon (CGS) technology and should be used on some products in 2005."

Nilatir asks: "Here at the University where I work we're checking out Dell notebooks to the students in the library and our main lab. While this is proven to be good for the students I'm having a hard time managing the batteries for the notebooks. By eliminating the floppy drives and using wireless APs to access network shares we were using two Li-Ion batteries in every Latitude and getting almost 8 hours of life a day from them. But, due to some students undying dependence on floppy disks, we were forced to drop down to one battery which will only last half the day at best. We now have an extra battery for each notebook with no way to charge them (even Dell's docking station has no charging bay). Have any slashdotters run into a problem like this and how you all resolve it? Does anyone know of external battery charging station for notebook batteries?" Will laptop makers ever learn that this is one of those accessories that would sell like hotcakes?