According to The New York Times, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom -- both of which have been struggling -- plan to join forces in a merger that would create the largest mobile operator in Britain.

As part of the 50-50 venture, the third and fourth largest operators would combine to form a single entity 28.4 million customers strong while gobbling up 37 percent of the market share, putting them ahead of current market leader O2 (27 percent) and Vodafone (25 percent).

"We evaluated all options over the last months and came to the conclusion that this would have the most value for our shareholders," Timotheus Höttges, the Deutsche Telekom chief financial officer, said. "This will give us a stronger foothold in the U.K. market than we had before."

 If approved, the venture would generate around $5.7 billion in savings.;

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but so what, they have 9 lives anyway. And because of some curious folks who did some digging on HP's website, we now know what the OEM has in store for its fall notebook lineup, and it starts with a Core i7 laptop.

Dubbed the dv8, HP's 18.4-inch desktop replacement will be one of the first portable PCs to use Intel's mobile Core i7 processor (we've seen Core i7 notebooks before, but none that have used the mobile variant). The quad-core chip will come clocked at 1.6GHz and be able to scale up to 2.8GHz when ramping down one or more cores. It's also likely the system will ship with a 4GB of RAM, 640GB of storage, and a Blu-ray drive.

On the other end of the mobile spectrum, HP will also launch a pair of CULV-based notebooks in the form of the 11.6-inch Pavilion dm1 and 13.3-inch dm3. The former will sport 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, while the latter beefs things up with 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive.

Other upcoming models include an updated Voodoo Envy 15 and an Ion-based Compaq Mini 311c.

Sony on Wednesday announced its new VAIO X ultraportable laptop during the IFA 2009 expo in Berlin, Germany. The 11.2-inch ultrathin lappy bests Apple's MacBook Air in portability by measuring just 0.55-inches thick compared to the MacBook's 0.76-inch frame.

Official specs are still being finalized, though the one being shown off at the expo boasted an Intel Atom processor. Sony says its ultrathin will come with built-in 3G wireless and a new all-day battery that "will set the new standard for stamina," which supports the notion that the final version will come with an Atom chip inside.

Other details are few and far between. It has a carbon fiber chassis and weighs about 1.5 pounds, but other than that, there isn't much else to go on, including price and availability.

Nokia last week confirmed plans to release a netbook under the 'Nokia Booklet 3G' moniker, but other than a claimed 12-hour battery life, the handset-maker has kept tight-lipped about what's inside its first netbook. Until now.

Under the hood, the Booklet 3G will sport an Intel Atom Z350 processor (1.6GHz), 1GB of DDR2-533 memory soldered to the motherboard, and a 120GB hard drive with 8MB of cache. Other goodies include 802.11 a/b/g/n, 3G/HSPA with hot swappable sim card, an HDMI port, 1.3MP webcam, and a 16 cell battery.

On the software front, Nokia's netbook will be built around Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 OS and come pre-loaded with a couple of trialware apps, including MS Office Small Business and F-Secure Internet Security 2010.

More details here.