HP recently announced that they would be extending their netbook line to include the 1101, 110 XP and the 110 Mi.

All three of the new netbooks will have a 10.1-inch LED widescreen display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor standard (with the option of a 1.66GHz N280), GMA 950 graphics, VGA output, a three or six-cell battery, and 802.11b/g.

The 110 XP will feature 1GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD or a 32GB SSD, and a Broadcom Crystal HD Enhanced Video Accelerator which, according to HP, will let you watch 1080p video smoothly. The Mi version of the 110 will run Linux, and give you the option of up to 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD. The 110 XP and Mi will start at $329 and $279 respectively.

There are no discernable differences between the 1101 and current Mini netbooks, but it will arrive June 1 at a price point of $329.

RussianMac is the latest company ballsy enough to tempt fate, and enter the fake Mac market.

On their site, they state that all of their machines come with a full version of Mac OS X Leopard pre-installed. They also state that the operating system will be able to receive automatic updates from Apple once everything has been installed. However, Apple has been able to dominate the Mac market because the OS X End User License Agreement (EULA), which clearly states that no one may install their software on hardware that hasn’t been sold by Apple. This clause has successfully shut down the entire Mac clone market.

But, in a twist, RussianMac claims that since they have bought the OS directly from Apple, they’re not in violation of the EULA (though, they are yet to explain how they’ve installed it on Apple’s hardware). It should be noted that the German company PearC was able to use that defense in order to sell machines in Germany, so perhaps this defense could work in Russia as well?

Building on their Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand, Asus recently announced the OC Station, a hardware-based, bay-mounted device that will allow users access to a slew of overclocking parameters.

The OC Station will fill up two 5.25-inch bays, and will feature a 3-inch TFT-LED display on an adjustable faceplate (movable up to 30 degrees). There is also a large rotary switch on the front, which is where the real business will take place. Users will be able to adjust fan speeds, change system voltages and frequencies in real time – all without having to use the BIOS. It will also let users check out their system information and change ROG-exclusive settings such as CPU Level Up and the Asus EPU-6 Engine.

No word yet on pricing or availability. But, if you’re interested in this type of thing (and I know you are), check out a leaked gallery of pictures here.

For those of you that are rocking Windows Vista, don’t you know what the Windows 7 release candidate is out? Well, at any rate, Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for Vista to the public today.

SP2 will include Windows Search 4.0, the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, the ability to record data on Blu-ray media natively, Windows Connect Now (to simplify Wi-Fi configuration), and other security and optimization-minded upgrades.

If you’re looking to download Vista SP2, you can get it here (for 32-bit users) and here (for 64-bit users).

It’s official, spam now accounts for 90.4 percent of all e-mail sent, so if you think your spam folder is beginning to look bigger, it’s not just you.

In a report released by Symantec, they state that 1 out of every 1.1 emails is junk, and spam shot up 5.1 percent from April to May. Though, it would appear that spam has taken a more diabolical angle as of late using older more, trusted sites in order to host malware.

“Spammers using better-known and thus more widely trusted Web sites to host malware is reminiscent of the spammers who rely on well-known Web mail and social networking environments to host spam content,” stated Paul Wood, Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst. “The trustworthy older domains can be compromised through SQL injection attacks while newer sites are more likely to be flagged as suspicious--a temporary site set up with the sole purpose of distributing spam and malware--and thus faster to get shut down.”

So, remember ladies and gents, surf safe! The odds are very stacked against you.

While the netbook market is already mighty crowded, NEC has decided to enter the fray with their UltraLite Type VS.

The Type VS will pack a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540, 1GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD. Along with this, it’ll have a 10.6-inch 1208x768 screen, three USB ports, Ethernet, an SD card reader and weigh roughly a pound and a half.

As for the price, it’ll run the average Japanese consumer ¥176,000 ($1,850). While it does pack some pretty solid hardware, that price is awfully hard to condone in the netbook market.

Google has long been an advocate of saving energy where possible, and now they’re bringing that same policy to their users with the recent introduction of the Google PowerMeter, a gadget that allows you to track your home’s power consumption.

The gadget will track your juice use by pulling information from your power company, just so long as it’s one of their partners. Their partners include: San Diego Gas & Electric (California), TXU Energy (Texas), JEA (Florida), Reliance Energy (India), Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (Wisconsin), White River Valley Electric Cooperative (Missouri), Toronto Hydro–Electric System Limited (Canada), and Glasgow EPB (Kentucky).

Currently the feature will only be handed out a small group of customers with each utility company, but this is purely for testing. They plan on making it more available once this process is taken care of.

If you’re interested in finding out more, be sure to check out the PowerMeter home page here.

Earlier this week Hitachi Ltd. and Hitachi Vehicle Energy Ltd. announced a new battery that they claim has the world’s highest power density.

The new lithium-ion battery has 4,500W/kg power density, a number that clocks in at about 1.7 times the output of their current batteries. The increase in power allows for smaller size, and is thanks to a new manganese cathode and a unique battery structure. The structure employs thinner electrodes, a new power collection method, and more effective configurations.

Hitachi plans to make this technology available for notebooks and cell phones once the automotive industries have had a chance with it, but there’s no official word as to when we could see this technology implemented on a grand scale.

It’s expected that Microsoft’s search engine rebrand will soon make its official debut.

The official announcement for Kumo is expected to come at the D: All Things Digital Conference next week, where CEO Steve Ballmer is currently scheduled to appear onstage.

With the rebranding Microsoft hopes to gain a new foothold in the search engine market that they currently only have an 8.2 percent market share in. They’ve got some pretty stiff competition as well, considering that Google’s search engine market share is a whopping 64.2 percent.

Chances are good that if you’re a fan of streaming music online, you’ve heard of Pandora. And, apparently users of the service like it so much that they’ve actually been asking about ways to pay the company to guarantee its survival. At long last those (strange) questions have been answered, with the introduction of Pandora One.

Pandora One is a subscription-based model allowing users that shell out $36 a year access to some premium options. First off, premium users will no longer have to put up with ads of any kind (this includes the in-stream audio ads). Secondly, and most notably, they’ll gain access to a Pandora desktop app that includes high quality streaming audio (bumped up to 192 kbps), a personalized look, a mini player, and extended player time outs.

For many of us, the free-to-use service is just fine as is. The ads that are currently keeping it alive aren’t very invasive (even the audio ones), and with apps such as OpenPandora out there it’s admittedly a tough sell. But, for those looking to show their love for their favorite online streaming service, $36/year isn’t too bad a price.

According to Google’s co-founder Larry Page, Twitter has them beat in the race to meet web user’s demands for real-time information – by a long shot.

Instead of gearing up for some heavy competition in this market, Google’s Search Engine Chairman and Chief Executive, Eric Schmidt, has hinted towards them becoming a partner of Twitter. “People really want to do stuff real time and I think they [Twitter] have done a great job about it,” said Eric Page. “I think we have done a relatively poor job of creating things that work on a per-second basis.”

No official word yet on what the partnership could be, but it’ll surely be an interesting situation to watch.

While AirTran claimed that they would be the first to implement Wi-Fi on all of their flights, Virgin America just beat them to the punch.

Yesterday Virgin officially announced that they would feature Wi-Fi on all 100 of their daily flights. Costs clock in at $12.95 for three hours and over, $9.95 for less than three hours, $5.95 for red-eye flights, and $7.95 if you just want to use a handheld device (such as a cell phone or a DSi).

Sure, the prices might seem a little beefy, but when I’m given the mental option between watching the inevitably bad movie that’s playing on the screen in front of me, or surfing the net on my own accord, I’ll opt towards the latter every time.

Thanks to a recent report, a new worst-case scenario has been proposed that details the downfall of the modern GPS system, as we know it.

The report, distributed by the Government Accounting Office, states that our nation’s GPS could begin to fail sometime next year. Our GPS system has supposedly been extremely mismanaged, and when the aging equipment used to keep it all running begins to fail there will be no new satellites to take their place.

“If the Air Force does not meet its scheduled goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that… the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to,” says the report.

It also notes that the Air Force has failed to build successful GPS satellites within the cost and schedule constraints provided to it.

Google’s translation tool, which makes translating entire web sites extremely easy, is making its way to Gmail labs this month. Finally, you can find out exactly what those Japanese “happy pill” emails in your junk folder say!

The translation tool reportedly works in just a few seconds, and will translate both the subject and the body of the email while keeping the original intact. You can swap between both versions of your message by clicking a link.

Translated items won’t stay translated though; you’ll have to re-translate a message every time you wish to read it. And, the translated words don’t get cycled into Gmail’s search engine, so if you’re trying to track down a foreign email, make sure you remember how to type the characters type a required key word.

Most mobile devices have their own operating systems. The iPhone, among others, is a prime example of this. But, one device that many haven’t created a specific OS for is the netbook. Instead of mobile devices they’re being treated as full sized computers packed into smaller containers – enter Intel, with Moblin 2.0.

The Moblin 2.0 OS has been designed to work specifically with netbooks, and will supposedly work with thousands of Linux applications without any porting or middleware. It’s designed to take advantage of the smaller screens, and in turn allow users to have longer battery life, shorter startups, and quick access to media and social networks.

If you’re interested in finding out more, check out this video that Intel has made promoting it. It’s only lasts a little less than two minutes, so it’s worth checking out.

Update: Gizmodo has already debunked this rumor. Sorry guys.

Reports have claimed that Microsoft is currently in the developmental process of creating a mobile platform that mixes many elements of the Xbox and Zune – earning it the nickname “xYz.”

The rumored handheld is reported to be “unlike anything on the market today … think of a mashup of the Sony Mylo, the PSP, and the iPhone… errr, the iPod touch; [the MS handheld] doesn’t need access to a phone network. Although the Microsoft handheld is definitely a converged device, this is not a Zune Phone. Microsoft won’t compete with its Windows Mobile customers.”

The device will supposedly be based off of Live Anywhere, for the most part. “There will be a single online marketplace; the lines between the Zune, Xbox Live and Sky marketplaces will blur when the handheld launches.”

Given that both Nintendo and Sony have strong footholds in the handheld gaming sector, it seems like a natural progression for Microsoft to move here as well. Let’s just hope that this rumored handheld takes less pages from the book of Zune and more pages from the book of Xbox.

It would appear that EA’s latest Sims title has fallen prey to the piracy that they so desperately tried to prevent for Spore, and only a few weeks before the game’s official release.

Now, while we won’t officially report on the game leak’s status (because you can’t confirm news like this without engaging in illegal acts), reports have stated that the files are real and working fine. A note included with the torrent is said to read, “Support the software developers. If you like this game, BUY IT!” Seems a like a strange place for morality to come into play, but hey, why not?

Unfortunately for EA the game doesn’t require any type of online activation to play, due to its disc-based copy protection, so pirates will be almost impossible to stop. They have stated on their official site “We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.”

At a panel about the future of filmmaking Michael Lynton, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s CEO, had some choice words to say about the Internet and what it has done for his business.

“I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet. Period.” His complaints are stemmed from the belief that the Internet has “created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”

Wow, some pretty brash words. What’s most surprising is that this man is a CEO of a very successful company that no doubt uses the Internet to conduct business on a daily basis. Though, I suppose if you want to get in a pissing match over piracy, being quotable is more important than being correct.

Google recently announced that they have planned to retake all of their photographs for the Japanese version of Street View thanks to their cameras being too high for most resident’s fences.

The new images will be taken from 16 inches lower than before, and will blur out license plates to protect the privacy of those potentially in the camera’s view. Japan Probe argues that the height difference will make little to no difference, because many images that have been deemed inappropriate weren’t behind fences. Examples include a high school girl’s chest being touched, a man who has passed out in his own sick, and a couple entering a “love hotel.”

Given what passes for a game show over there, I’m surprised that this is what people are having issues with.

Just this quarter Acer beat out Dell for second place among laptop shipments worldwide thanks to the gigantic influence of netbooks on the PC market.

In the first quarter of this year HP continued to hold the number one spot with their market share growing to 24.1 percent (more than 7.3 million units shipped). But, the number two spot, which was previously held by Dell, was handed over to Acer thanks to their 18.8 percent market share. Much of this is comprised of netbook shipments, a market that Acer has 30.5 percent of.

31.6 percent of Acer’s shipments were netbooks, while others such as HP, Dell, Toshiba and Lenovo shipped out less than 10 percent of their volume as netbooks.