The low cost Intel Atom processor has created a lot of buzz along with a host of compact products from a variety of vendors. Intel's smallest processor boasts the world smallest transistors. It offers very low energy consumption and throws off very little heat compared to Intel's more powerful Core Duo processors.

Palm will release the much anticipated Palm Pre Smartphone on June 6th. Sales to enthusiastic Palm users is expected to be strong despite of the stale economy. The vast improvements to hardware, features and available software is at the heart of the anticipated demand.

Windows 7 is receiving the finishing touches that will allow release to partners in the near future so they can tailor their products to the new operating system according to sources close to Microsoft. Part of this is a feature that will allow the new version of Windows to run in a pre-Vista XP Mode. This capability, however, may be subject to a variety of hardware considerations.

The Conficker Worm is no April Fools joke. It's serious enough for Microsoft to offer $250,000 to anyone tracking down the perpetrator. The worm may already be planted on as many as 12 million systems waiting to to do it's damage until a specified date; in the case of the Conficker that is believed to be tomorrow, April 1st.

Hard Drive upgrades are common for many Windows XP users who are taking advantage of the multitude of multi-media gadgets from digital video recorders to iPods but bought their systems before large inexpensive hard drives became the norm. Currently, you can expect to pay about $90 to $130 for drives ranging in size from 500 GB to 1,000 GB [or 1 Terabyte]. But first you have to determine the type of drive your system can use.

Verizon provides the GT704WG Wireless Modem / Router from Actiontec with your Verizon DSL subscription. It is disappointing that they are still shipping a product with the wireless "G" standard when "N" has been out for some time now and many laptops ship with the newer standard. Other than that it is a versatile gateway with wireless "G" and a 4 port switch that does the job.

Google entered the browser wars in October with the launch of Chrome. Now it seems they may be fighting to get Chrome placed on the desktop. Murad Ahmed makes the claim in a November 20 TimeOnline article titled "Google mulls pre-installing Chrome browser on computers".

OpenOffice.org, with Sun Microsystems as it's primary sponsor and code contributor and with IBM, RedHat, Google and over 400,000 people around the world adding more, has delivered an office suite with everything you would expect with OpenOffice 3. This amazing open source project runs on all major platforms including support for Mac OS X in this latest rendition.

Android is Google's Operating System [OS] for mobile devices which launched today coupled with an offering of a smart phone from T-Mobile called the "T-Mobile G1." The hardware is provided by HTC who also delivered Sprint's popular Mogul running Windows Mobile 6. Previously know as the HTC Dream this handheld device combines Web 2.0 services, mobile Internet and a robust Linux based OS along with a growing number of applications.

There are a wide variety of backup utilities, each with their own particular nuances, features and limitations. There is Windows own backup and those that come with a particular external backup drive such as Iomega, Western Digital and the like. But most have limitations as to what you can back up to, the sources you can back up from, or the format in which the backup files are stored in.