Change seems to be pretty constant in the Hot Rod. Last update was to the Core i7 on the LGA1366 socket; this update saves a few bucks yet maintains performance with Core i5/i7 on the newer LGA1156 socket, and ups the video card to AMD's brand-new DirectX 11 cards, the Radeon HD 5800-series.

The upside of these changes is saving a bit of money while maintaining or dramatically improving performance, and we can't complain about that. It also gives unprecedented flexibility in the Hot Rod should you have a little extra money available. We omit a few nice things such as SSD's and Crossfire that would otherwise fit in the budget because we feel that making them optional and up to individual builders works out better, plus the Hot Rod as spec'ed is actually quite in line with our goals of a high performance yet value-oriented system.

Over at Microsoft.com/Windows/PC-Scout, Microsoft recently launched a Flash audio guided tour for buying a Windows laptop. The Windows PC Scout is a three-part buying escort: Laptop 101, Recommendation, and Selection. The first teaches you about laptops, the second asks you what you will use your new laptop for and gives you a few recommendations, and the third allows you to make a final decision and buy your new laptop.

When we asked the IT pros in the Server Room to name the number one barrier to solid state disk (SSD) adoption in the enterprise, "price" was the near unanimous consensus. SSD storage is still significantly more expensive than rotating magnetic media, but with datacenters becoming ever more constrained by power and cooling considerations, the overall price picture for SSD vs. HDD keeps getting better. Sure, at the level of an individual drive, the cost/GB difference between SSD and HDD is still huge, but at the level of the overall datacenter, with floor space, power, and cooling factored in, the delta now looks a lot smaller.

The latest large datacenter to make the leap to SSD is MySpace, a division of Fox Interactive that has recently been shrinking a lot more than just its server footprint—user base, revenues, and staff come to mind. The struggling social networking site has a mandate to boost efficiency, so it turned to FusionIO, makers of PCIe-based SSDs with insanely high sustained read and write bandwidth numbers to match their stratospheric prices (80GB will set you back around $3,500—and it only gets worse from there).

It has been obvious for some time that integrated graphics processors (IGPs) will move from the chipset onto the processor die, and that this development will leave NVIDIA with no market for its chipsets. Such an eventuality is, in fact, the reason behind the oft-mooted skunkworks NVIDIA x86 project (the thinking goes that NVIDIA will try to compete with CPU/GPU combo chips from Intel and AMD by producing a CPU/GPU combo of its own). Regardless of whether the secret, NVIDIA-made x86 processor will ever see the light of day, it seems that NVIDIA has not only resigned itself to the eventual loss of its chipset business, but they've also decided not to blow any more money fighting a losing battle with Intel in that space.

Today brings word that the GPU maker is bailing on the chipset market for Nehalem, and opting to halt development of future chipsets that might work with Intel's recently announced Core i5/i7 PC architecture. It's also looking like NVIDIA will quit developing new AMD chipsets, as well. NVIDIA has released a slew of statements to different press outlets, including Ars, pining the blame for this decision on the company's ongoing patent dispute with Intel (see below for more on this).

The conventional wisdom on DRAM error rates is that errors are rare, and the majority of the errors that do occur are so-called "soft errors"—randomly corrupted bits that have been flipped by incoming cosmic rays. But a recent, large-scale study of DRAM errors released by Google turns this wisdom on its head, and in doing so reinforces the importance of error correction coding (ECC) and regular hardware replacement for datacenter machines.

Believe it or not, Windows 7's successor(s) have been in the planning and early development stages for a while now. We haven't posted anything about any of them yet, but we've been watching closely to see if anything really interesting turned up. Exactly two weeks ago, it did. A LinkedIn profile, which has already been taken down, for a Robert Morgan, Senior Research & Development at Microsoft, has shone a sliver of light on the possibility of 128-bit support coming to Windows 8. Morgan has been with the software giant since January 2002, but we're more intrigued with what his profile (first paragraph) and his status (second paragraph) recently stated:

Microsoft Research and the Applied Sciences Group have developed five input device prototypes that combine a variation of multitouch sensing to the standard capabilities of a typical computer mouse. Microsoft believes these prototypes have the potential to set a new standard for "expressive interaction." Each device explores a different touch sensing strategy via a different form factor. Microsoft sent us a short five-minute video that demonstrates each of the five prototypes. The prototypes shown are really cool so we've embed the video for your viewing pleasure:

A growing number of hardware vendors are adopting instant-on Linux platforms and bundling them alongside Windows on new computers. The function of these lightweight Linux environments is to make it possible for users to get online quickly and perform a number of common computing tasks without having to boot Windows.

Splashtop, which is made by DeviceVM, is one of the most widely-used instant-on Linux systems. It's said to be available on over 200 different laptops, desktops, and motherboards from a variety of mainstream hardware vendors. It comes with an assortment of popular applications, including Firefox and Skype. Splashtop has generally been targeted at the regular consumer market, but DeviceVM is now preparing to offer a new variant specifically for business computers.