Greg Searle asks: "I'm going to be in the market for another PC soon, and have been watching the prices drop and the power go up over the years. There are a lot of 'bargains' out there, but then I heard that the best and least expensive PC's are 'white box' systems that are custom build by small, local companies. This got me thinking, I know how to put together a PC from scratch, why don't I just do it? This should save me quite a few bucks, and I get the exact system I want. My question to you: Where is the best place to order the parts (case, MB, drives, etc.) over the web? I am familiar with sites that sell typical consumer products, but have no idea where to start to get raw parts. I'd prefer one site that sells everything, but wouldn't be surprised if there are some specialty sites that provide the most bang for the buck for a particular piece. What do you think?"

prostoalex writes "Apparently an Israeli company figured out the way to put a 376x296 digital camera into cell phones for less than $15." We've done previous stories about a PDA/phone with included camera, but this could be integrated into a regular phone so that your conversation partner could get a nice real-time view of your ear.

An anonymous submitter writes "According to BBC News, researchers at Princeton have developed a die-stamp method for chip fabs. The Princeton site claims they've got to 10nm already. The professor in charge has told BBC News Online that they're '20 years ahead of Moore's Law.' Dubious claims aside, it looks like a handy way to bring down prices even if it doesn't improve ultimate top speed."

anzha writes "It seems Cray is alive and kicking at least. They might even be making a come back after its very rough time as a part of SGI. The big news? Cray seems to have won the Red Storm contract - Sandia's newest supercomputer procurement - from Sandia National Labs. Check out the press release here. I'd say that this is probably an SV2, but the press release is a bit scant on details."

a lonely moose writes: "It looks like Toshiba basically copied Apple's iPod. They got cheap on screen size and unit weight, and without iTunes, it'll be darn hard to handle as elegantly as the iPod. Anyway, check out MacCentral's article and the smoking forum at the bottom."

jonesy writes "The Tech Report has put together a pretty decent six-card sound round-up that covers the most popular audio controller chips around. DACs, ADCs, DSPs, and the other important acroymns are explained. One interesting revelation: Creative's Audigy card doesn't do 24-bit/96KHz sound, despite Creative's claims. Gaming benchmarks are provided, and the authors even take a crack at the subjective side of audio, although they seem aware of the difficulties in doing so."

krswan writes: "AlphaSmart, which has built proprietary 'mini-laptops' for education in the past, has released a Palm Compatible device with a full keyboard, built in rechargeable batteries, 2 USB ports, and two Secure Digital and Multimedia Card compatible slots - all for $399. It is only about 2 lbs and the screen resolution is 560X160. As a teacher, I would love 30 or so for my classroom. More details at the Dana website." It's basically still more a glorified keyboard (like the older AlphaSmart products) than a laptop, but that's not a bad thing.

scubacuda writes "Here is an interesting tale about a Boy Scout who went a little too far in trying to achieve a merit badge in Atomic Energy. From smoke alarms, lantern components, the paint from radio clocks, and a little help from the Nuclear Regulator Commission, David Hahn attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his mother's shed. Regarding his excessive radioactive exposure, Hahn says, "I don't believe I took more than five years off my life."" While this is an oldish story (1998) it is not the pathetic self congratulatory lame princeton story.

danamania writes "A Japanese site is the first to publish pics of disassembling an eMac. These pages are all in Japanese, but the photos are easy enough to understand. It's an eMac stripped completely; it shows the fan, curious looking heatsinks, heat pipes... everything!"

c0d3po3t writes "An article on CNet tells us that two Singapore programmers have developed a system to allow one handheld operating system to run any application - Windows or Linux. Sounds like a good idea, but will their idea of network emulation be solid?" I can't really see the use for this except environments where your handheld has network access (the system is network based) and you have multiple legacy systems to deal with. It just doesn't sit right beyond the gee-whiz factor for me.

Dhrakar writes: "Now, I know that normally press releases are imediately round-filed, however, as this is the first NEC^H^H^HCray SX-6 to be installed in the U.S. it is newsworthy. The 8cpu, 64Gb system has been installed at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center for benchmarking and other testing. See either ARSC or the NY Times (sub. required. Yada, yada) article."

Alicia (ad454) writes "A new sub-notebook was released in Japan today, the JVC InterLink Victor MP-XP7210, which is one of the smallest notebooks around in recent years that does not have a Transmeta emulation processor. It has a true Pentium-III 800MHz processor, weighs only 885 grams, and is only 225x152x28mm in size. It also comes with 256MB ram (384 max), 30 GB harddrive, 1024x600 TFT display, SoundBlaster Pro compatable audio, V90 56kbps fax/modem, 10/100 ethernet, USBx2, IEEE1394 (ilink/firewire), cardbus type 2 PCMCIA, and SD memory slot. You can get the specifications, which are in Japanese; you can use Alta Vista to translate it. A number of stores in Tokyo are selling it for (JPY)209,800. It would be interesting to hear what type of opensource Unix (NetBSD, Linux, etc.) and X-windows driver support exists for it. Although some may find the keyboard and screen too small, many of us find it quite useable, especially when compared to a PDA."

Mike writes "This Wired article mentions that research firm SRI International has come up with a nifty way to lessen the need for the ugly cell towers that you see popping up everywhere (I love the ones here in Atlanta that are oh-so-cleverly dressed up to look like pine trees). Their PacketHop software would create a sort of peer-to-peer network, utilizing the unused power in phones in the vicinity as miniature relays, with your voice/data hopping from one phone to the next until it reaches a relay tower and its final destination."

Dino writes "You can actually pre-order a new IMSAI here. These folks bought the rights to produce the IMSAI in the late seventies, and provided the unit used in Wargames. It has a genuine S100 bus, but also has modern features as well, the most interesting being a driver that will allow you to access an ATX motherboard via the parallel port as a disk drive."

An Anonymous Coward writes "The BBC has this story about Scots company Applied Generics and their plan to use cellphone location data to determine where there are traffic jams and (presumably) generate (and sell?) evasive routing tactics for drivers. They are using both passive cellular traffic (what you get when the phone is switched on) and active (drivers phoning up to say they'll be late - in standing traffic, I hope) to look for clusters of immobile cellphones along major routes. The whole idea has a sort of "why didn't I think of that?" neatness. Personally I wouldn't mind my own traffic being used wholesale (aggregated with thousands of other users), but how do other /.ers feel about a company profiting from data emitted by the cellphone that they paid for?"

MikeD83 writes "A wireless alliance has formed between the likes of Nokia, Microsoft, Intel, Walt Disney Co., and almost 200 other companies. Their mission is to develop an open standard for how wireless phones can be used on any network." Whoo-hoo! DRM for cell phones! The group's website has some more information.

jonerik writes "The June issue of the Atlantic Monthly has this account of the history of the Joint Strike Fighter competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin (which the latter company ended up winning this past fall, with Boeing now touting its expanding line of unmanned aircraft as the true future of tactical aviation). The article does a fine job of showing how the competitors dealt with the challenge of producing an aircraft (now dubbed the F-35) that the Air Force, Navy, Marines, RAF, and Royal Navy could all live with. Funniest part: Boeing's X-32 entry, with its enormous pelican-like jet intake, had some questioning whether the plane's bizarre appearance didn't hurt its chances more than its performance. 'Helpful as my contacts at Boeing were, no one was eager to claim credit for the design of the plane,' says the article's writer James Fallows." Fascinating article.

randomErr writes "Earthweb/Internet.com has this article about a new ultra slim camera for $130. It has no flash, zoom, or LCD monitor, and takes snapshots instead of spectacular pictures. The advertised resolution is 1.3 megapixels with and actual resolution of 640 by 480. But it's the size of a credit card, half an inch thin, with all-day battery and image capacity."

Ian Bell writes: "Designtechnica has just posted a review of the Terapin Mine. This handheld device has a 10gb hard drive, ethernet port, PCMCIA port, USB 2.0 and a front display. On top of all this it has a Linux OS installed complete with scandisk and defrag. You can hook this unit up to your television to view pictures as well. I know that the stats on this unit sound great, but you would be surprised by just how usable it is. Click Here for the full review." Whether it's 10 or 20 gigs (the review mentions both figures) doesn't really affect the reviewer's conclusion.

geekindustries asks: "Looking around auction sites I have seen a fair amount of old pen-based computers for really cheap. These machines usually run a pen-based version of DOS, Windows 3.1, or Windows 95a. However, I feel that these machines would be much better off running Linux as opposed to a bulky Microsoft OS. Has anyone heard of pen-based Linux solutions and how to get them working on old hardware?" Larger than a PDA, but smaller than a laptop, these resemble webpads or Star Trek like PADDs. They've been around for a while, but hasn't quite broken into the consumer market, yet. Which pen-based platforms, old and new, work best with Linux?