Dell's plans for Alienware and the XPS line are getting a little clearer, even as rumors swirl -- a post on the company's Direct2Dell blog today says that the XPS and Alienware dev teams are going to be integrated, and that the XPS line will go in "new directions," hinted at by the m1330 and XPS One. Furthermore, you can now buy the Area-51 m9750 gaming laptop direct from the Dell website in addition to the Area-51 m15x, which doesn't seem all that wild to us -- we're more interested in why Dell picked the super-geeky XPS brand to be its "premium" line. Ever heard of friendly, guys?

[Via CNET]

Nothing seems to be official just yet, but it looks like VIA is set to both adopt an always-desirable 45nm manufacturing process for its processors and roll out its first dual-core processors by the end of 2009, at least if the "sources at the company" DigiTimes has heard from are to be believed. Unfortunately, there's apparently no further details on either of those tantalizing possibilities just yet, but the company has done a bit of bragging about its current CPU shipments, saying that it expects its shipments in the first half of 2008 to equal its total shipments in 2007 -- a number that only seems set to go up if Isiah's benchmarks are any indication.

NVIDIA had already heard enough about AMD's ATI Radeon 4800 series to bump up the launch date for its GeForce 9900 series cards, but TG Daily has now apparently turned up some more launch details for the mid-to-high-end cards, the first of which is reportedly now on track for a release in mid-June. That first card will be the Radeon 4850, codenamed "Makedon," which will boast 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, single-slot cooling, CrossFireX support, and a price tag between $189-$219. That'll be followed in July by a pair of Radeon 4870 cards (dubbed "Trojan"), with one boasting 512MB of GDDR5 memory and the other boasting a full 1024MB, the latter of which will come with a dual-slot cooler. Look for those to cost between costing between $249 and $279. The whole lot of them will also pack "game physics processing capability," along with 7.1 channel audio via HDMI support, DirectX 10.1 support, and, as you might have guessed, some pretty heavy power requirements, with a 450 watt power supply needed for a single card and 550 watts needed for a CrossFire setup.

We've seen the Splashtop instant-on OS demoed on ASUS gear in the past, and now it looks like the company is making the love official: it's going to start shipping it on all its motherboards. ASUS is calling the platform "Express Gate," but it's the same instant-on, ready-to-browse environment we've known about since October: an embedded Linux distro that runs Firefox and Skype off a memory chip linked directly to the BIOS. You might want to hit that link and check out the screenshots, actually -- with ASUS set to ship over a million mobos a month with the feature, chances are it'll be on a machine near you relatively soon.

Look, you never know when you'll be 820 feet away from your gorgeous duo of dual-link displays, audio inputs, six USB 2.0 ports and piping hot cup of joe, but Matrox is here to make sure that's never a concern you'll have to sweat. Upping the ante from last year's Extio F1220, the Dual-Link Extio F1240 now plays nice with those swank 30-inchers that are gracing your desk and extends of all the aforesaid parts some 250 meters via a single fiber-optic cable. Better still, the whole thing is fanless, and there's even a mini-Toslink audio port, VGA sockets and stereo audio in / out connectors to boot. Mum's the word on a price for the currently available unit, and just FYI, that whole transfer of coffee thing is totally not recommended.

[Via BIOS]

Despite the shortcomings, it's hard not to get excited about VIA's Pico-ITX offerings: who cares if the capabilities are limited, they're just so adorably small we want to pinch their cheeks. Now VIA is making things even more efficient with a 500MHz board that can be cooled solely with the heatsink -- no fan required. Naturally, that step down in processor speed from the PX10000 won't exactly be much help to the folks sticking Ubuntu on these things, but the PX5000EG should be a boon to the embedded market and reliability nuts. Video is after the break.

Oops, looks like the Wall Street Journal was getting a bit of ahead of itself calling for the end of Dell's XPS lineup. While Dell will definitely "invest like crazy" in its Alienware brand, XPS systems and indeed, XPS gaming systems "will remain an important part of our gaming product portfolio." There won't be an early phase-out of the XPS brand as reported by the WSJ. So there you have it, Dell XPS, resurrected after just one day in the tomb. Michael Dell truly is a savior.

[Via c|net]

The OS updates are coming fast and furious these days, and the latest off the block is Fedora 9 Sulphur. Improvements include better KDE Desktop 4.0.3, better Bluetooth support, a revised Anaconda system installer, support for persistent Live USB key installations, and lots more. Should be all over the torrents now -- get downloading and let us know how it goes!

[Via Digg]

Hot on the heels of the news that Dell is axing its XPS gaming line to focus attention on Alienware, we've got word that Alienware will intro a new, low-end model soon. Clearly aiming for a bigger chunk of the market, the eyeball-shattering-system makers will offer a $1,699, AMD-powered desktop, featuring 4GB of RAM, a 2.2GHz quad-core 9550 Phenom X4 CPU, and two ATI HD 3870 X2 graphics cards. The system will be based around the AMD 790FX chipset, which will be served up on an ASUS motherboard. In a feat of absurd cliché, Alienware spokesman Marc Diana claimed, "It's not your granddaddy's AMD system. We're talking top-of-the-line quad core." The PC will be available sometime in the next two weeks, so stay alert.

We've got some news that'll make a PC gamer or two weep: the Wall St. Journal is reporting that as of next month Dell will be dropping four models of XPS performance PCs to focus solely on pushing Alienware. Certainly no surprise though, we've been waiting for this move since they picked the company up back in 2006. Of course, there will be certain challenges, namely how Dell will keep its Alienware brand separate (read: pristine) -- as its done since the acquisition -- yet be able to offer performance PCs on its site alongside the rest of its machines. It's also unclear what will happen to is XPS line of laptops, since those are big sellers as well, but we'll all have to wait patiently for the bomb to drop before knowing for sure what Dell's cutting and what they're not. [Warning: subscription required]

Update: Not true says Dell -- XPS systems and gaming rigs will live on.

Not like this is the first time we've seen a finalized product look noticeably worse than the concept preceding it, but it's a shame ASUS' Eee PC desktop won't be nearly as pretty as we were led to believe. According to Chile Hardware, the picture you see there to the side is a bona fide Eee Box B202, which weighs in at less than one kilogram (2.2 pounds) and packs an Intel Atom processor / 945 chipset, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, an 80GB hard drive and a Linux-based operating system. No clue how legitimate those specifications are, but hopefully the unit itself looks way sexier from the other side.

Well, Microsoft finally got SP3 out the door for you stubborn Vista-resistant XP users, and we're dying to know how you like it. That's right, you. See, our resident guinea pig intern hasn't felt any performance improvement, we've received tips from people who have seen a speed bump, and problems have cropped up as well -- we've heard reports of sporadic reboots and crashes, some of them AMD-related. But hey, forget all of them... how has SP3 changed your life?

So, we hear you're edging ever closer to pulling the trigger on a shiny new XPS 420, huh? Lucky you, as it looks like Dell just opened up your options. While the only processor choices on the XPS 630 are the E8500 and the absurdly expensive QX6850 (it's an $850 addition), the XPS 420 now has a half dozen CPUs to pick from. Most notably, users can now get their rig equipped with a Core 2 Quad Q9300 / Q9450, both of which provide much more oomph than the baseline chips while not forcing you to refinance your home and pick the QX9650. So, when can the aforesaid 630 expect similar selections?

[Thanks, Evan]

MSI's been making some noise with the Wind lately, but the company is still busy turning out solid-but-uninspiring PCs as well, like the new Titan 700. The mini-ITX PC features a VIA CN700 processor at 2.0GHz, 1GB of RAM, dual-layer burner, and a 120GB 2.5-inch drive, all in a 2.7 x 7.2 x 9.5-inch package with Gigabit Ethernet and 4 USB ports. The only thing you won't be getting for your £234 ($458) is an OS -- you'll have to supply your own. Of course, for $500 you can probably get a slightly-larger computer with much more powerful processor and an actual OS, so unless you're somehow taken with the Titan's industrial-chic case, you're probably not too sad that this thing hasn't been announced outside of the UK yet.

[Via TrustedReviews]

Although NVIDIA's pledged to simplify its lineup for consumers and ATI's been getting better, the current state of the graphics card market is still a pretty wild alphabet soup of model numbers and specs lists, so the crew over at The Tech Report decided to break things down using the only stat that matters: price. While the results aren't exactly shocking (surprise: more dollars equals more FPS), what's interesting is that multi-GPU rigs are really quite cost-effective, delivering performance on par with higher-end cards at significantly lower prices. For example, two Radeon HD 3850s run nearly as fast as a single Radeon HD 3870 X2, even though they cost a fair bit less, and two GeForce 9600 GTs can potentially outgun a GeForce 8800 Ultra. That's always been the promise of SLI and CrossFire, and it looks like it's paying off -- any system-builders out there care to share their experiences?