March 28 - 9:55am EDT   Living up to an earlier promise, Dell started the weekend by introducing what it says is the first notebook below the $1,000 mark to come with a Blu-ray drive. The 15.4-inch Inspiron 1525 now has the option of either a Blu-ray combo drive limited to burning DVDs and CDs or else a full Blu-ray burner; with the former option, the system price can dip as low as $879 while still supporting HD movies at 720p, Dell says. [full story]

January 2 - 11:50am EST   Qualcomm will avoid a potentially damaging Broadcom-related ban through its own inventions and a special exemption-, both a federal judge and Qualcomm itself have revealed. After failing to dismiss claims by Broadcom of patent infringement for video compression and network technologies, Qualcomm is required to stop selling some chips in the US which use the WCDMA technology at the heart of AT&T's 3G network. However, the federal court has now granted a stay that will let Qualcomm sell some of these chipsets through January 2009 as long as it pays royalties for the technology. [full story]