Clock for clock, the 3GHz Barcelona / Phenom X4 should beat a Core 2 Quad at 3GHz, so this would mean that 3.24GHz from AMD should be enough to fight Penryn at 3.33GHz, at least in theory.

This board is a fine addition to everyone, as long as you can live with a few issues. Operation is stable and it consumes much less power compared to the ASUS P5K, especially in idle mode. We liked the fact that it overclocks well and works really stable.

In the lawsuit, 3M complained that several vendors, which also included Panasonic, CDW, Batteries Com, Total Micro Technologies and Matsushita Electronic Industrial, violated several patents for lithium-ion battery designs that were filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2005 and 2006.

The US chipmaker last month announced plans to shed 1,100, or 5% of its global work force as part of a restructuring program. But now Micron's president and CEO Mark Durcan said his company aims to reduce its global work force by another 5% within the next 12 to 18 months.

Google's plans to bid for a portion of America's airwaves were dealt a blow last night when the US Federal Communications Commission refused to approve two of the Internet company's conditions.

United Test and Assembly Center (UTAC) has reported a 12%fall in first half profit to US$32 million. This is despite a 61% increase in sales to US$359 million. For the second quarter alone, earnings fell 10% on year to US$13.8 million.

Samsung Electronics is restructuring its handset division to better cope with growing global competition, a media report said Wednesday.

With the appearance of PNDs, the car navigation market seems likely to split into two camps: high-priced HDD-based systems and low-priced PNDs. The PND market is presently driven by TomTom of the Netherlands, Garmin International of the US and Mitac International of Taiwan. Of these, the first two firms command 60% or more of the market, and together with Mitac International hold about 80%.

As a sponsor to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China Netcom will have to surrender its rights in providing WiMAx to China Mobile, which in turn has been given the authorization by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games to construct a WiMAX network in Beijing, sources said. This development may come as a disappointment to China Netcom, as the company loses its opportunity to expand its wireless sector in China.

Even without standards, though, Nokia has taken an early lead in the global race. The DVB-H standard promoted by the EU has gained support from some 200 companies, including US giants Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments, and is the only standard being supported by all major handset manufacturers, says Mark Selby, Nokia's vice-president of sales and multimedia.

Microsoft recently announced that the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) is considering standardization of the company's HD Photo file format.

Sony has already been slapped with patent suits over the construction of its PlayStation 3 Blu-ray discs and the system's digital security technology. Now the electronics giant is being taken to court over the parallel processing Cell chip that powers its latest console.

The US Federal Communications Commission recently set rules for an upcoming sale of airwaves that may reshape the wireless industry, handing Google a partial victory in its push for open access.

With the introduction of the Odin power supply product line it seems that Gigabyte has jumped in with both feet and introduced something quite a bit beyond a mediocre AC to DC power conversion device.

Wikia has purchased the Grub Web crawler tool from LookSmart to develop its open search engine. Wikia also has released Grub under an open source license.