The history of the EU's antitrust battles with Microsoft date back to March 24, 2004, when the "EU says Microsoft broke antitrust law by denying technical information to competitors and bundling its Media Player software with Windows" and forced them to pay a 497 million Euros fine. These legal battles ended for the time being on January 15, 2009, when the "EU sends preliminary charges to Microsoft, saying it believes the inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows is illegal."

Apparently though, the European Union wants to change its previous course of action and diverge from punishing violators of EU laws with steep fines and move to a new round of sanctions:

"Rather than forcing Microsoft to strip its Internet Explorer from Windows, people close to the case say, the EU is now ready to try the opposite measure: Forcing a bunch of browsers into Windows, thus diluting Microsoft's advantage.

The sanctions would come from an EU investigation that began last year. In a sign of how rapidly the case is progressing, these people say, the possible penalty has emerged as a key focus in discussions between the parties.

The potential action would be a sharp parting blow by Europe's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, as she enters the waning months of a term marked by aggressive enforcement. This month, Mrs. Kroes hit semiconductor maker Intel Corp. with a record antitrust fine of $1.48 billion.

The EU hasn't made a final ruling on Microsoft, and likely won't for at least several weeks. An EU spokesman says any sanction against Microsoft "would be based on the fundamental principle of unbiased choice."

Yeah, I know. One might say I watched too much Star Trek when I was a little kid, but stuff like this just makes me really excited. During last week's Google I/O event, the popular search giant's annual developer conference in San Francisco, California, Google presented "a contraption it calls the "Holodeck," for event-goers to experience. Basically, it's a near-360 degree way to view Google Street View in fast motion, high definition video."

But have a look and judge for yourself:

As many of you might know, previous SSDs which incorporated JMicron's JMF602 flash controller experienced stuttering problems during random write operations, and their follow-up chip, the JMF602B, only partially fixed the issues, forcing companies "to combine two JMF602B chips and an internal RAID chip from JMicron to boost performance."

It seems that JMicron learned from those mistakes though and is going to unveil "a new NAND flash controller for use in Solid State Drives (SSDs) in the near future. The JMF612 chip uses an ARM9 core in a 289-ball TFBGA package, and will support the use of up to 256MB of DDR or DDR2 DRAM as an external cache.

The JMF612 chip is designed especially for a new generation of NAND flash chips built using smaller process geometries that will be entering the market soon. The new flash chips will be smaller, faster, and cheaper to manufacture. IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, is already building 34nm NAND, while 32nm NAND from Samsung and Toshiba will soon be entering production. The use of a cheap single-chip controller and new higher density flash chips could cut prices in half by the vital Christmas shopping season.

The first terabyte SSDs on the market could end up using this controller chip. It uses eight memory channels to access its storage quickly and without lag."

Well, this is a weird yet new concept. JVC will release the Xiview LT-42WX70 which is a 42-inch class 120Hz 1080p LCD TV monitor that targets digital imaging professionals and enthusiasts using high-end digital SLR cameras, allowing them for the first time to see the subtle colors, details and textures of their images faithfully reproduced.

The JVC Xiview LT-42WX70 monitor features expanded color space capacity encompassing 100 percent of HDTV broadcasting

A leak Saturday morning on Sony's own PlayStation forums has confirmed major details of the PSP Go now expected to debut at E3. Spotted in a Qore episode slipped out early, the device is as rumored and switches to a slider design that renders it much more portable. It now also has 16GB of internal memory (plus a card slot) that gives it a much greater role as a media player and signals a shift to download-only PSP games; the PSP Go drops the UMD drive entirely.

Newly spotted in the video is built-in Bluetooth support that lets users voice chat in games or Skype with any Bluetooth headset. The company also says it will be possible to tether the PSP Go to a cellphone over Bluetooth, though what features would be allowed through the link aren't known; it implies support for taking calls from the phone through the PSP itself.

Supporting the latest rumors, a Sony spokesman in the video says the Go won't replace the existing PSP for at least its initial launch and will be an alternative for those who don't depend on a library of UMD-based games. A price and a ship date aren't given.

The escaped details all but confirm an aggressive about-face for Sony in the portable world, where it has regularly struggled against its obvious competitor the Nintendo DS but has been facing added heat from the iPod touch. Although the Apple and Sony devices have different interfaces and different primary focuses, the iPod touch has been increasingly marketed as a gaming device by Apple and has long had more advanced media playback.

With Dell's Alienware line, you can be at the elast enjoy a decent gaming experience wrapped up in aa portable package, and their latest addition to the family would be the Dell M17x laptop. This Alienware laptop will start from $1,799 upwards, where the base 17" model will feature the following :-

• 1GB nVidia GeForce GTX260M GPU
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz P8600 processor
• 4GB RAM
• 250GB 7200-rpm hard drive
• Slot-loading DVD-RW drive
• 9-cell battery
• nVidia GeForce 9400M G1 GPU with HybridPower technology
• 802.11n Wi-Fi

Of course, you can always upgrade the DVD-RW drive to a Blu-ray model by throwing in more dough, but that would also mean including the optional 1,920 x 1,200 resolution edge-to-edge LCD upgrade as well in order to take full advantage of it.

Ehm, naah I'll stick to a PC that is upgradable .. thjanks anyway :-)

Verbatim is back in da house with a brand new TuneBoard Keyboard, and dude it comes with built-in speakers to get you started right out-of-the-box, although don't expect this to blow your mind away with the audio quality it produces.

Apart from integrated speakers, the TuneBoard Keyboard even comes with iTunes control keys, switchable backlighting and bass boost, alongside connectivity options to hook up a pair of headphones and microphone.

Do you think $70 for the Verbatime TuneBorard is worth the money?

Ok let me just say that I am the biggest Onkyo fan when it comes to their high-end AV receivers. In fact I own their Onkyo TX-NR905 for my home coinema needs, and it was prolly one of the best purchases in my entire life.

As it seems though they are slowly expanding their product line. As such, Onkyo is now offering LCD monitors as well. And these are not exactly sexy looking.

Onkyo Japan is going to release its new 21.5-inch LA21TW-01S widescreen Full HD LCD monitor in the Land of the Rising Sun June 1st for

Regardless of the underlying operating system, HTML5 promises the ability to run applications platform-independant. Already being confirmed to be supported by Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla it is more than likely that all major browsers are going to feature an updated interpreter for the new version of the web programming language.

HTML 5 is currently in the developing stage and more than likely to remain in it for a few more years. Despite that, "its focus on running applications within the browser is an important driver of interest in cloud computing, where applications live somewhere off on the Internet and are delivered by the browser.

The focus of future browsers will shift from "going places" to "doing things." This will be a boon to free operating systems, which will increasingly be able to hide themselves under the browser user interface. While Windows and Mac OSX won't go away overnight, the pressure on them will be to innovate beyond the browser, perhaps through a common set of extensions for HTML5 applications to use."

Tim Berners-Lee, who is considered the father of the World Wide Web, talked about the next version of the WWW as he envisions it, at this year's TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference at the Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, California.

"For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together."

Just a couple of days ago, we reported that Mafia 2 would be delayed and promptly a new trailer hits the web. This video showcases new in-engine footage and is an early E3 2009 trailer. This really makes the waiting so much harder...

Earlier on we reported that Microsoft would be enforcing a three-application limit on Windows 7 Starter edition. This particular limitation would hinder the user running more than three applications at once.

Microsoft seems to really want to do it right with Windows 7 and Via the Windows 7 Team Blog, Microsoft today has confirmed that the limit will not exist in the final version of the operating system:

There of course will also be Windows 7 Starter edition, but based on the feedback we