Daily News Brief: Roadmap Shows Quad-Core Notebooks in Q3

Intel Quad-Core Notebooks Coming

If the roadmaps hold true, Intel will offer a range of quad-core processors come third quarter, likely in June. The new additions to Intel's Montevina lineup look to carry a TDP of 40W+. Digitimes has the scoop on these and other additions here.

IBM Faces Toxic Waste Suit

Last year saw no shortage of high profile environmental lawsuits in the tech community, and 2008 looks to be no different. Kicking off the New Year, IBM is under fire over toxic waste. The suit, filed by 90 residents of Endicott, New York, alleges IBM knowingly discharged toxic materials causing birth defects and other health problems. IBM spokesman Michael Maloney responded to the accusations saying "they have no basis in science or law and IBM will defend itself vigorously."

Sony BMG Joins Amazon's Lineup

Sony earlier this week announced they would begin selling DRM-free music as part of their Platinum MusicPass service, making them the last of the four major music companies to sell digital songs sans copy protection, and now the music label will also be featured in Amazon's digital music store. The deal makes Amazon the first retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels, which includes Sony BMG, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and EMI.

QuickTime Vulnerability Exposed

Luigi Auriemma, an Italian security researcher, has posted a proof-of-concept zero-day exploit vulnerability for the latest version of Apple QuickTime, currently 7.3.1. Auriemma described the bug as a buffer-overflow where "the return address can be fully overwritten so a malicious attacker could use it for executing malicious code on the victim." Both Windows and Mac OS X versions are affected.

Online Video Booming

According to a new study by Pew Internet & American Life Project, daily traffic to video sharing sites like YouTube has nearly doubled in the past year. While 8 percent of surfers at the end of 2006 said they had visited a video sharing site the day prior to the survey, that number jumped to 15 percent in the latest survey. The number of users who have ever visited a video sharing site also jumped, going from 33 percent to 48 percent. More numbers and details can be found here.

Games and Notebooks Drive Best Buy Sales

Best Buy today said its comparable-store sales rose 1.5 percent in December, thanks in large part to strong sales of video games and laptop PCs. While not as good as last year's results, they're much better than rival Circuit City, who recently stated same-store sales fell 11.4 percent in December. Part of the difference can be attributed to strong growth sales in Canada and China.