From PC World: Sharp will soon put on sale in Japan a first-of-its-kind laptop that replaces the traditional trackpad with an LCD panel with an embedded optical sensor.

The 4-inch LCD panel packs optical sensors between the screen's pixels so it can both display an image and sense fingers or pens placed on its surface. The use of optical sensors instead of a touchscreen overlay on the small screen means it retains its brightness -- and multiple fingers can be sensed simultaneously. Most touchscreens can manage just one or two fingers at once but the small screen in the new laptop can sense up to four.

In its most basic mode the small screen acts as a conventional mouse trackpad, but hit an on-screen button and the small screen displays a menu with shortcuts to features like Web bookmarks, dictionaries, e-books, photos and games.

Tap the bookmarks icon, for example and a list of your favorite Web bookmarks comes up. Choose one and the browser launches in the main window with that chosen Web site. That's a neat enough feature but the technology really starts to come into its own with more complex pen input.

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From CNET News.com: IBM's quarterly revenue fell by a bigger-than-expected 11 percent as the slowdown in corporate spending hurt even one of the healthiest U.S. technology companies.

But higher margins helped IBM's first-quarter profit beat Wall Street estimates, and the company affirmed its full-year earnings outlook -- helping to limit the fall in IBM shares to 1.6 percent after hours.

"These were decent results in light of the challenging economy. Certainly the top line is being impacted by the weak economy," said Andy Miedler, analyst at Edward Jones.

"IBM is managing the business well, focusing on expense control, and its movement to software and services is clearly evident in the increasing profitability. Net-net we think this is a decent quarter."

IBM said on Monday that first-quarter revenue fell to $21.71 billion from $24.50 billion a year earlier. That compared with analysts' average forecast of $22.56 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

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From DailyTech: Microsoft, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach, shooting for volume despite sinking prices, something other analysts favor. Microsoft is aiming to conquer the ultra-low and low-cost markets, which primarily revolves around the netbook and MID (mobile internet devices) industry.

After netbooks flirted with bringing Linux adoption to the masses, Microsoft quickly pounced on the opportunity, pushing copies of its lean, proven Windows XP operating system onto the market. Today, over 96 percent of netbooks ship with a Windows-based operating system. And the move couldn't have come too soon, if Microsoft wants to retain its dominant position. Estimates by leading market researcher Gartner Inc. predicts that 21 million netbooks will ship in 2009, growth of 80 percent, while overall PC sales sink 11.9 percent.

What is impressive, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, is just how low Microsoft is willing to price its OS's to stay in the netbook game. The report cites that Microsoft is offering netbook manufacturers licenses for $15, far less than the standard OEM price of $50 to $60 per Windows Vista license. The estimate even falls far below Microsoft typical Vista Starter Edition prices of approximately $30 per license.

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From DailyTech: The roots of the "Ad wars" began years ago when Apple first launched a smarmy commercial spot -- the first "Get a Mac" commercial, which depicted Windows PCs as inept and ineffectual, a message made especially insulting given that many interpreted the PC character as a caricature of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. After a few years of ad beatings, Microsoft decided to respond in like with its laptop hunter commercials, which featured normal Joes and Janes eschewing Macs due to their high prices, in favor of bargain PCs (and often making snide comments about Macs in the process).

The ads were certainly effective in stirring up the internet tech community and they officially kicked off what can only be described as "ad wars". Now, on heels of criticism of the Microsoft commercials by an Apple spokesperson and pro-Apple blogger, Apple has launched its own counterstrike against Microsoft, airing four new "Get a Mac" commercials.

The commercials feature the tried and true odd couple of John Hodgeman and Justin Long. The banter is as witty as ever, if a bit vague and factually inaccurate.

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From Tom's Hardware: It's unknown whether or not the images are leaked, officially released, or completely fake, however Expreview posted three AMD slides highlighting the company's chipset roadmap. The slides are comprised of the south bridges, performance north bridges (IGP and discrete), and mainstream / value IGP north bridges. As it stands, the SB850 chipset will be available in Q4 2009 as well as the RD890 and the RS880D chipsets. AMD's slides also reveal that the 785G chipset will actually be released in Q3 2009, however no specific dates were set.

According to the images, the SB850 will be the last south bridge chipset using the new SATA 3 controller with speeds of 6 GB/s this year. Reports speculate that the chipset will only support AM3, and offer Gigabit MAC, AHCI 1.2, 6 SATA 3 interfaces, 14 USB ports, and RAID 5 and possibly the second generation PCIe 4X.

The RD890 north bridge chipset, on the other hand, offered no details in the provided chart, however it may support HT 3.0, 2x16 PCIe, and enhanced Quad Crossfire X 4x8 support. As for the RS7880D, this chipset will include the RV620 GPU (Radeon HD 3400) with a core clock of 700 MHz, and also offer support for DirectX 10.1, UVD 2.0, and CrossFire 2x8.

Finally, the AMD 785G IGP chipset will be the last of the "700" series to launch this year and was designed by ATI for Phenom processors. The AMD 785G shares similar traits to the AMD 780G released in Q2: both chipsets offer PCIe 2.0, HDMI, and possibly the Radeon HD 3200 (clocking at 500 MHz). However, the 785G will support DirectX 10.1 and UVD 2.0.

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From X-bit Labs: Intel Corp. is projected to release its first six-core microprocessors for desktops in the second quarter of 2010, nearly two years after the company began shipments of six-core chips for high-end x86 servers.

Intel Gulftown processors – which will be drop-in compatible with LGA1366 infrastructure – will have six physical cores with Hyper-Threading technology enabled, thus, capable of processing up to twelve threads at the same time. According to a news-story by HKEPC web-site, which cites mainboard makers, the code-named Gulftown processors made using 32nm process technology, will be launched in Q2 2010, a year from now.

The Gulftown chip belongs to Westmere family of microprocessors that have some micro-architectural advantages over currently available Core i7 processors that belong to Nehalem family. Gulftown will significantly boost performance of the microprocessors while staying in the same thermal envelope of 130W.

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From InfoWorld: Microsoft will deliver a release candidate of Windows 7 in little more than two weeks, the company's Web site revealed Saturday.

According to a page posted on Microsoft's partner program site, Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) may be available to paying subscribers to Microsoft's developer and IT services before May 5. Partners will be allowed to download the release candidate on that date, the first Tuesday of the month.

"Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now," the page read Saturday afternoon. "Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009." The link to the download, however, shunted users to the TechNet download page, which did not list Windows 7 RC as one of the available files.

This is the second time in just over three weeks that Microsoft's Web site has leaked information about Windows 7 RC. In late March, Microsoft published a page that said it would launch a public release candidate sometime in May, but did not specify a date. Microsoft later yanked the page.

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From PC World: The UX-series netbooks are based on the N280 version of Intel's Atom chip that the chip maker began shipping in February, and come with 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard disk drive.

The display is a 10.1-inch LCD with 1,024x600 pixel resolution. Toshiba's previous Atom-based machine, the NB100, sported a similar resolution but on an 8.9-inch LCD. Many netbook vendors have been switching to the larger displays as consumers prefer them.

Battery life has also been extended in the new machines. Toshiba said the standard battery should last up to about 4 hours, compared with 2.9 hours for the NB100.

Despite its larger screen the new model is smaller, at 26.3 centimeters by 19.2cm by 3.1cm. The computer weighs between 1.2 kilograms and 1.3kg depending on the configuration.

The UX-series computers will be launched in Japan on Friday and follow in other markets, although precise international launch dates have not been decided, said Toshiba. Prices for the computers range from around ¥60,000 to ¥70,000 (US$606 to $707) in Japan.

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