Scott M. Fulton

Microsoft is working on a trio of technologies that will utilize flash memory as supplemental memory rather than as storage devices. Collectively referred to as "PC performance accelerators," Microsoft will debut SuperFetch, ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive to store and access frequently used data from peripheral flash devices and hyrbid hard drives.

It was listed as a requirement for Vista mobile systems as far back as last November; then, at the beginning of the year, it was back-burnered to "if-implemented" status. Now, hybrid hard drives with time-saving Flash memory on-board, are once again listed as a requirement for the Vista Premium logo for June 2007 forward, we learned at TechEd today.

This morning's key announcement at TechEd 2006 may be Microsoft's introduction of server-based application customization tools for Office Enterprise 2007, the high-end distribution of the company's applications suite.

The "Day Zero" keynote speeches from Microsoft's Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia on Sunday night were full of promises, including four that may become company mantras as the year progresses. But there was little specific product news besides the introduction of the Forefront brand for security solutions - among the missing items was any mention of "Windows Server 2007."

During the first unofficial day of Microsoft's TechEd 2006 conference in Boston, we got a first idea how programmers will be able to embed their own .NET functions, such as from Visual C#, directly in the new ribbon of Microsoft Office 2007 - one of Microsoft's first applications ever to completely replace the venerable menu bar.

A provision that would have amended legislation under consideration in the US House of Representatives, making it illegal for Internet service providers to offer different tiers of service to selected groups of customers - informally called the net neutrality provision - was defeated, with a 269-152 vote to kill debate on the measure.

A series of reports from technology analyst firm iSuppli suggests that the road to obsolescence has finally been paved for the cathode ray tube. Liquid crystal display panels, iSuppli's projection research analyst Sweta Dash predicts, will eventually displace CRTs as the leading type of television display produced worldwide.

Demonstrating that conventional parallel recording technology isn't quite dead yet, Samsung today announced it has increased the storage capability for its new best-in-class hard disk drive from 100 to 133 GB per platter.

The early word is, prices for the first consumer renditions of Nvidia's GeForce 7950 GX2 start at just under $600, with accelerated units at as high as $775.

Both Iogear and Wisair are showing UWB wireless USB hub technology which they claim will be capable of transmitting up to 480 Mbps, enabling up to four simultaneous wireless connections to such high-bandwidth devices as printers, scanners, and external hard drives.

Nvidia's new top-of-the-line graphics card, announced this morning in time for Computex, is literally a card-and-a-half: The 7950 GX2 combines two 7900 GTX cards in a single package for a single PCI Express slot, albeit one that consumes the volume of two cards.

Yesterday's announcement of AMD's opening up of its AMD64 HyperTransport CPU connection for OEM development, creates the possibility for manufacturers to remake their hardware not as expansion cards, but as co-processors. Imagine add-ons that bypass the PCI Express bus altogether. We spoke with AMD's corporate vice president Randy Allen.

During a quieter portion of today's AMD conference call with analysts, the company introduced an expansion of its HyperTransport-based AMD64 architecture with far-reaching implications. Code-named "Torrenza," it would effectively open up HyperTransport as though it were an API, enabling OEMs to build hardware that literally fits in the spare CPU slot like a co-processor.

Apple seems to be getting the hang of this small, portable, infinitely useful device thing. Today, it unveiled a 13" version of its Intel Core Duo-based MacBook, with a 1.83 GHz dual-core CPU, a respectable feature set, and a price that does not shout the word "premium."

While Intel expects a significant performance gain for its new Core 2 Extreme processor, over its predecessor Pentium Extreme, the company warned us late yesterday that the 40% numbers that had been quoted earlier apply to Core 2 Duo specifically . That doesn't mean the final numbers won't be 40%, or thereabouts, but there are some intriguing factors to consider.

At a highly anticipated national users' group conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, IBM this morning demonstrated for the first time OpenDocument functionality in its next version of Lotus Notes, code-named "Hannover." For the company that at one time shunned ODF, IBM could be the company that makes it a real contender against Microsoft's Office Open XML.

Reporters eager to see the Wii during Wednesday's early morning preview session for the media, were astounded to learn the Wii display was being kept under wraps until the general attendess were let in.

In the first indications that the weight of the world may indeed by shifting hemispheres after all, technology analysts at iSuppli reported today that the surge in DRAM sales at Germany-based Infineon Technologies AG helped it to leap two spots on the firm's global DRAM rankings list, knocking down Korea-based Hynix Semiconductor and US-based Micron Technologies.

The terabyte hard drive era came about 50% closer to becoming a reality this morning, as Seagate announced the availability of what it's calling the industry's first 750 GB 3.5" hard disk drive. But will performance problems that turned up in the 500 GB 7200.9, in Tom's Hardware Guide tests, also plague the "dot-ten?"

Paramount Pictures made it official this morning: J. J. Abrams, the director of popular television series such as Lost and Alias , and most recently the director of Mission: Impossible III , has been signed on as the lead producer - probably the executive producer - of that last great certainty in the entertainment business, the next Star Trek feature film sequel.

While the consumer electronics industry worldwide is still poised for growth, industry analyst iSuppli says its rate of growth will slow to the single digits for 2006. The reasons, however, are not the two hot points that others tend to focus on: confusion in the high-definition video industry on account of two near-identical formats, and delays in the next generation of video game consoles.

The first Blu-ray Disc burner drives are making their way to Japanese store shelves this June, it was revealed today. They will carry the Panasonic brand name, and they will have all the bells and whistles that Blu-ray has promised since the beginning, including dual-layer (50 GB) support, and a complete suite of downward compatibility support with DVD. Nothing is being held back.