Intel has been fighting a vicious antitrust battle in Europe for years, is battling AMD in US court, and now New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has opened up an American front in the Intel war by filing an antitrust suit against the chipmaker. The allegations in the suit will be old hat to veteran PC market watchers, because there's almost nothing in the 87-page filing that Intel hasn't been accused of at least once over the past decade, either openly as part of the EU proceedings, in the course of AMD's antitrust lawsuit, or discretely in the form of gossip at industry conferences.

The complaint itself is actually a good read—it's not dry at all, and it provides a great introduction to how the PC market actually works for those who don't follow it. In fact, if you read this filing, you'll know more than 90 percent of those who mouth off online about computers. But for those who don't want to read the whole thing, here's the CliffsNotes version (via Jane Austen).

It's the NVIDIA rumor that won't die: no, not the one where the GPU maker buys tiny VIA, but the other one, where it jumps feet-first into competition with both Intel and AMD by producing an x86 processor of its own. The idea has cropped up again in an analyst note from Doug Freedman of Broadpoint AmTech, in which Freedman claims that NVIDIA has been hiring former Transmeta engineers to work on a secret x86 processor that will appear sooner rather than later. In the note seen by the EE Times, Freedman emphasizes that NVIDIA not will take on Intel's Core i5/i7 lineup. Rather, the company's plan is to it attack the mid-range to low-end market, possibly competing with AMD in the value segment.

Our recent look at the idea of using ARM processors to pack large numbers of low-power, high-density Web servers into very little physical space generated quite a bit of interest, and it seems that a lot of people are thinking along these lines. Indeed, every time we cover the so-called "physicalization" fad—i.e., placing multiple tiny systems in a rack unit, instead of running multiple virtual machines on a single 1U system—we get a fresh wave of feedback on just how seriously datacenter builders are taking this idea.

Faster and dramatically more power-efficient than rotating magnetic media, solid-state disks (SSDs) are one of the longest-awaited and most eagerly anticipated technologies in the past two decades of computing. The theoretical underpinnings of mass storage with no moving parts have been with us for decades, but the improvements that have put solid-state in economic and technological reach of ever larger segments of the storage market have been slow in coming. As the tipping point draws nearer with ever-increasing momentum, let's take a look back at the long journey to the practical SSD, and a look forward at the likely future progress of this technology.

Intel's new firmware and toolkit for its new X25 line of solid state disks (SSDs) delivered a massive improvement in their already blisteringly fast performance this week, with increased write speed and a near-elimination of usage-induced performance degradation. The update also included support for the Windows 7 "trim" feature, which will boost SSD's speed and lifespan. So with a 40 percent performance boost and extra Windows 7 goodness, what's not to like about this update? Try data corruption, which some users have reported, causing the update to be pulled not long after it was released. This latest in Intel's uninterrupted streak of firmware foibles will probably be resolved as quickly as the prior two, but it may fuel ongoing doubt about the stability of the SSD as a reliable storage device.

Not only is Microsoft reselling select Windows 7 PCs normally sold by its hardware partners, but the company is making sure they come only with the software it wants. Yes, that means that if you buy a PC from Microsoft, it won't come with the usual "crapware," though it won't be a clean install either. Microsoft is still bundling its own software, including Windows Live Essentials and Microsoft Security Essentials, as well as Adobe software.

Last Thursday when Windows 7 officially arrived, Microsoft opened up its first store in Scottsdale, Arizona (a second store is to follow in Mission Viejo, California). As expected, the store was stocked with Windows 7 PCs from various OEMs, and Microsoft even went the extra mile by selling them at its online store, though only in the US. It didn't become clear until recently, however, that Microsoft was doing more to these PCs than just picking them up and putting them on display.

The God Box takes an unusual step in this update: it becomes substantially more simple. That's overstating things a bit, but AMD's Radeon HD 5800-series cards make the graphics choices very simple, we figure out a more workable motherboard, and with power consumption coming down below the stratosphere, the power supply choices get better.

That doesn't mean the God Box is becoming any less godly, though. It now packs almost twice the storage of before, perhaps the most (or close) video card power it's had, and has the most ridiculous looking (yet elegant) memory setup we've done. If only we could find a chassis we liked better, we'd be golden.

The Budget Box is an all-around box for those on a budget, and this includes gamers. For a more purist, truly minimal box, look at our occasional Ultimate Budget Box instead, which omits any pretense at gaming ability and keeps costs as low as reasonably possible.

As the most value-oriented of the main three-box System Guide, the Budget Box aims to stay under $800 with monitor, mouse and keyboard. Lately we've found that we can aim more towards $700, although we do spend a tad more than needed in a few places simply because we think the value is better. The wide choice in dual-core, triple-core, and quad-core processors is one example, as is the improved performance of video cards for just a few bucks more.

This update fails to stay around $700, instead creeping back up towards the upper $800 price cap, mostly due to a substanial increase in CPU power (and cost) that is starting to be used in more and more applications. A secondary issue is a jump in memory prices away from their record lows that marked the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009, a jump that put them easily at three times more than their lowest point. Consumers may weep, but we adapt as the market demands. Several other sight tweaks, including a chassis with a more efficient power supply, also raise the cost a smidgen. It adds up, so read on and see what makes the most sense for your individual build.