You know the feeling: opening up your e-mail to find hundreds of messages of varying importance. Some are automated reminders from your favorite sites, some are newsletters you have subscribed to, some are actually from real people trying to contact you, and so on. Separating the wheat from the chaff can be overwhelming much of the time, and even the most carefully crafted filters don't keep up with the ever-changing nature of what's important to you.

Google is hoping to address that problem with a new feature in Gmail called Priority Inbox. Aimed at providing users a way to get through their inboxes as efficiently as possible, Priority Inbox tries to learn your e-mail habits in order to decide which messages are important to you, and move them up to the top where you can see them first.

Roku announced today that it is dropping the prices of its line-up of set-top boxes. The pricing changes come just days before Apple is rumored to be unveiling a major revision to its Apple TV set-top box based on streaming content.

Roku currently sells three models of its digital video player: the basic Roku SD, the mid-range Roku HD, and the top-end Roku XR. The Roku SD is now priced $20 less at $59.99, and the Roku HD and Roku XR are priced $30 less at $69.99 and $99.99 respectively.

The Roku SD only streams in standard definition and is limited to analog output. The Roku HD is the original device, and includes both analog as well as HDMI and digital audio output for streaming up to 720p content. The Roku XR adds 802.11n WiFi and a USB port, and will be able to output 1080p with a firmware update scheduled for later this year. The company noted that most content providers will still be streaming at 720p, but the increased resolution should come in handy for a new USB streaming "channel" currently in testing.

Apple is holding its annual music-related media event this Wednesday (don't miss our live coverage of the announcements), and persistent rumors have suggested that Apple will announce—along with new iPods—a major update to the Apple TV. The device is said to be built around Apple's A4 processor and will run a variation of iOS. The new device also expected to ditch the included hard drive in favor of sufficient flash storage to stream video directly from iTunes. Apple may change the name to "iTV" (the original name before the product launched in 2007), and rumors have pegged the price of the new device at $99.

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In addition to releasing the most security bulletins ever on this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released a number of non-security updates, the majority of which are for the latest versions of its client and server operating systems. All the patches are available on Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center and most will require a restart. With the exception of the last patch, they're all for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Most of these updates will be rolled into Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Testers got the first Windows 7 SP1 beta build two months ago, but just today Microsoft sent out build 7601.17077 to selected PC and Technology Adoption Program partners, according to ZDNet.

The first patch (KB2028560) is vaguely described as one that delivers "new functionality and performance improvements for the graphics platform." 

The second patch (KB2249857) describes an issue that occurs on 2TB+ hard disk drives. If the OS is configured to save dump files to a volume of such an HDD, some of the dump file is offset at a disk offset greater than the 2TB address, and Windows is either put into hibernation or crashes, volumes on the HDD may be corrupted, and data is lost. If the corrupted volumes include the system partition, the computer will no longer boot. 

The third patch (KB982110) fixes a problem when running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. If the application uses the QueryPathOfRegTypeLib function to retrieve the path of a registered type library, it may return the path of the 64-bit version of the type library instead of the 32-bit one. 

The fourth patch (KB2272691) is for a game, application, or firmware that is either installed incorrectly, causes system instability, or has primary functions that do not work correctly. The update will either prevent incompatible software from running (hard block with third-party manufacturer consent), notify the user that incompatible software is starting to run (soft block), or improve the software's functionality (update). It lists just a single application (Sensible Vision FastAccess) as being affected.

The fifth patch (KB2203330) solves a problem when installing a third-party application for the multiple transport Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) device or for the Windows Portable Device (WPD). Connecting an MTP or WPD device may result in an APC_INDEX_MISMATCH stop error message because of a race condition in the Compositebus.sys driver. 

The last patch (KB979453) is for Windows Home Server and addresses five separate issues that were found since the release of WHS Power Pack 3.

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Your gaming hardware is expensive, used often, and there is no easy way to crack it open if something goes wrong. "The game console industry is hostile to consumers: goliath manufacturers have shipped hundreds of millions of units to consumers with no information on how to maintain or repair them," the folks behind the website iFixit claim. "Console owners are left with few options when their warranties expire, causing many to throw away broken units."

So iFixit has decided to push into a largely untapped market: gamers who want to open their systems, work on the innards, and keep them alive. It's a combination of information and products, mixing how-to manuals with specialized tools and replacement parts. (If you're dealing with PS2 disc read errors, Ars has you covered.)

Mozilla has announced a new alpha release of its Fennec mobile browser for Android and the Nokia N900. Fennec offers support for add-ons and has tight integration with Firefox Sync, a browser synchronization service that was formerly called Weave.

The support for Firefox Sync is arguably Fennec's killer feature, especially because Mozilla is planing to include the synchronization features out-of-the-box in Firefox 4. Users will be able to have access to the their bookmarks, browsing history, and tabs across all of their computers and supported mobile devices.

We tested the latest Fennec alpha build on a Nexus One running Android 2.2. The browser has matured a bit since our last test earlier this year, but its performance still doesn't match that of Android's own native WebKit-based browser. Scrolling remains sluggish at times, particularly when pages are still loading. Starting up the browser takes too long and it still has issues properly preserving state between uses.

On a positive note, Fennec's large 30MB install footprint on Android is a bit less troubling now because a chunk of the program can be trivially moved from internal storage to an SD card. This capability, which is accessible from the Android application manager, was made possible by some new functionality that was introduced in Android 2.2.

The Android port of Fennec is still obviously at a relatively early stage of development, but it shows some promise despite its weaknesses. We're a bit skeptical that Mozilla can truly close the performance gap on Android between Fennec and Google's native browser, but that ultimately might not matter. The synchronization features and powerful add-on framework might be enough to attract users to Fennec despite the browser's other limitations.

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