Via Details Credit Card-Sized Motherboard

Taiwan's Via Technologies released details of its upcoming motherboard, which opens the door to very small PC designs.

Taiwan's Via Technologies Inc. Thursday released details of its upcoming Pico-ITX motherboard, which is roughly the same size as a credit card and opens the door to very small PC designs.

Measuring just 10 centimeters (cm) by 7.2 cm, the Pico ITX is designed for Via's C-7 and Eden microprocessor families, and uses chipsets like Via's VX700, which packs the memory controller, integrated graphics, and I/O hub into a single chip instead of two. The motherboard has a single memory slot that can hold up to 1G byte of DDR2 (double data rate 2) memory.

Via hasn't announced precisely when the new boards will be available, but said it plans to release its first Pico-ITX product "shortly."

In the meantime, Via has published a detailed overview of the motherboard's specifications, hoping to win device makers over to the new motherboard form factor.

Via is the third-largest supplier of x86 processors, trailing far behind Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. But the Taiwanese chip company has blazed a trail to PCs that are smaller and consume less power than anything seen before.

Five years ago, Via began shipping the first Mini-ITX motherboards, a form factor designed by the company for embedded applications that caught on with enthusiasts interested in making smaller PCs. Measuring 17 cm by 17cm, the Mini-ITX is significantly larger than the Pico-ITX.

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Dell brings back XP for encore

Attempting to reinvent itself in the face of declining fortunes, PC heavyweight Dell has brought back Windows XP to a range of notebooks and desktops, setting itself on a collision course with Microsoft which wants vendors to bundle Vista with all new hardware.
It appears that Dell, which has slipped to the number two PC maker in the world, is determined to follow the advice of consumers on its IdeaStorm website and see where it takes them. The novel approach has already led Dell to commit itself to bring pre-installed Linux computers to market and the latest move pits the powerful PC vendor against the might of Microsoft.

Dell will sell XP Home and Professional on six PC models including two desktops and four notebooks.

Although Microsoft has said publicly that it will stop offering licences for XP to PC vendors from January 2008, Dell could well be buoyed by the fact that most business users globally have so far expressed little intention to move to Vista. An XP to Vista upgrade is viewed by many businesses as a major operation that they would prefer to avoid as long as possible.

Consumers, however, would be expected to accept Vista more readily, an assumption that appears to be contradicted by the views that appeared on IdeaStorm.

Microsoft's public response so far has been little more than a shrug and a claim that the pro XP views expressed on IdeaStorm represent a small minority of PC users.

With Dell rumoured to bring PCs loaded with a popular Linux distribution to market as early as this month, it will be interesting to see whether the what the users say goes approach will succeed in turning the company's fortunes around.

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MySpace Enters the News Biz

MySpace's news service, dubbed MySpace News, aggregates articles much like Google News does, and, in Digg-like fashion, lets users vote to rank the stories. MySpace News relies on technology the company added to its arsenal when parent company News Corp. acquired Newroo last year. News Corp. also owns Fox News and several other outlets.
MySpace's news service, dubbed MySpace News, aggregates articles much like Google News does, and, in Digg-like fashion, lets users vote to rank the stories. MySpace News relies on technology the company added to its arsenal when parent company News Corp. acquired Newroo last year. News Corp. also owns Fox News and several other outlets.

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Sony responds to poor March figures

PlayStation as a brand is doing really well says Sony.

layStation 3 is not doing well in North America, the latest NPD figures for March show the console languishing in third place by some margin compared to Wii and Xbox 360.

But Sony is putting a brave face on the figures. According to the company, "a 24 percent increase in retail dollars generated year-over-year for the PlayStation brand in North America with total sales of $447 million, due in part to the addition of the PS3 platform as well as the strong launch performance of God of War II for PS2 at retail."

With PS3 not doing so well, the focus is on the PlayStation brand as a whole as PlayStation 2 and PSP continue to sell like hot cakes.

"PS3 saw a month-over-month increase of 2 percent with sales of 129,638 units, we continued to find ourselves supply constrained in March due primarily to the shift in manufacturing focus to the PS3 PAL version to support the launch of the system in Europe," said Sony.

What supply issues? PlayStation 3 is well known to be widely available in the US. If you want one there's no trouble walking into a store and picking one up

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In March Nintendo Wii Was Again No.1

The physically interactive Nintendo Wii pushed Sony's ballyhooed PlayStation 3 into third place in the gaming console battle. According to NPD Group, Nintendo Wii was again No. 1 in the current-generation video game console market. NPD Group said that in March consumers bought 259,000 Nintendo Wii. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is on the second place with sales of 199,000 units. Sony is lagging behind its competitors with only 130.000 PlayStation 3 consoles sold in March.

Sony's last-generation PlayStation 2 continued to see strong sales with consumers picking up 280,000 units.

Nintendo Wii was launched in US in November 2006. According to NPD, Nintendo sold in November 2006, 476,000 units, which was more than double compared to PlayStation 3 units. (Sony sold only 197.000 units in November). During November 2006, Microsoft sold 511,000 units of its Xbox 360, according to NPD.

In February 2007 the New York-based NPD Group reported the Wii was the top-selling console video game system in February, with an estimated 335,000 units sold, outpacing the Microsoft Xbox 360 with 228,000 and the PS3 with 127,000.

The figures appeared to vindicate Nintendo's revolutionary approach which emphasized fun games aimed at casual players who could control the action using an innovative motion-detection remote control unit. In contrast Microsoft and Sony both offer higher powered and more expensive machines that feature better graphics quality and are far more expensive. Both companies also positioned their consoles as the centerpiece of a digital entertainment system.

Nintendo’s future seems better then ever as the research company IDC has predicted in a study released at the beginning of March that Nintendo's Wii will outship and outsell the 360 and PS3 in 2007 and 2008.

IDC said that Microsoft's Xbox 360 was the best selling current generation console for 2006 because it enjoyed a full year lead in the market. According to IDC’s study, called Worldwide Videogame Console Hardware and Software Forecast 2006-2011: Ready for a New Game, Nintendo, is the only one of the three manufacturers working to grow its total accessible market for its hardware and software by broadening its audience beyond the traditional market.

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Microsoft aims to add 1b users by 2015

Microsoft, trying to meet its goal of doubling the number of computer users to 2 billion by 2015, promised to cut its software prices to governments in developing countries that provide free computers to school children.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced the program at a news conference in Beijing.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it plans to offer a software package called Microsoft Student Innovation Suite for $3 to governments purchasing and giving Windows-based computer to primary and secondary students.

The software bundle, which will be available in the second half of 2007, includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail desktop and other programs.

"This is not a philanthropic effort, this is a business," Orlando Ayala, senior vice president at Microsoft's emerging segments market development group in an interview before the official announcement.

In many emerging markets, Microsoft has seen its software pirated and sold at a fraction of the price of a genuine product. Microsoft said the technology industry must also adapt business models to developing nations.

The company is working with retailers and computer makers in Brazil to test a pay-as-you-go system, because that model has been successful with mobile phones in the country.

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