Stories by: Anush Yegyazarian

Anybody looking for a computer that will help get critical work done, and needs superior graphics power, may want to forgo a standard desktop in favour of a different class of system, such as HP's xw4400 Personal Workstation.

Comdex is dead, long live CES: Las Vegas will be packed this week with products ranging from humungous TVs to home entertainment servers, smart cars, portable music and video players, and wireless devices. The 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show will draw over 120,000 attendees and more than 2400 exhibitors. Only the massive CeBIT show in Germany exceeds the sheer volume of attendees, exhibitors, and announcements expected at the 2005 CES show, which opens Thursday and runs through Sunday.

June will see the first double-layer write-once DVD drives and media to hit Australian shores.

Two separate courts — one in California, the other in New York — have issued orders for 321 Studios, maker of DVDXCopy, to stop selling its software. That software includes DeCSS code, which circumvents the copy protection mechanism in commercial DVD movies -- an action that is expressly forbidden by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), no matter what the circumstance.

Intel is keeping the pressure on its low-power processor rival Transmeta, launching today a handful of new speed upgrades to its increasingly confusing array of low-voltage products, and throwing in a new standard-voltage mobile Celeron for good measure.

Intel has announced its latest addition to the Pentium III line, a 1.13-GHz model that makes it -- for now--the fastest CPU available for desktop PCs.