July 2 - 7:15am EDT   Gateway's budget label eMachines today served up three new desktops that it says ought to appeal to students heading back to school in two months' time. The W3653 is the most complete system of the group with the company's 17-inch, 1440x900 bundled with the tower; the system also packs a relatively new 1.6GHz Celeron Dual-Core processor, 1GB of memory, and Vista Home Premium stored on a 320GB hard drive. The system sells for $500 at retail shops. [full story]

June 30 - 11:15am EDT   After having left the market for several years, Lenovo today returned to home desktops and launched the IdeaCentre K210. The mini-tower is a parallel to the IdeaPad notebooks and borrows design elements from the portables, including face detection security when paired with a BrightEye add-on webcam that clips to most LCDs. The image recognition system also dynamically adjusts brightness based on proximity to the screen. [full story]

May 6 - 2:50pm EDT   Dell this afternoon introduced a rare variant on its home notebooks. The Inspiron 1525 Mike Ming Editions each get graffiti-influenced artwork by their Brooklyn-based namesake on the outer lid, personalizing the systems beyond the solid colors and stock prints that are normally available for the 15.4-inch notebooks. Regardless of the trim level, users can either pick from the monochrome-effect "Bunch O Surfers" or the multicolored "Sea Sky." [full story]

May 6 - 9:20am EDT   Gateway this morning revamped the core of its desktop line to take advantage of newer processors. The FX7026 and the higher-end FX541 series replace earlier models in Gateway's gaming line and all focus on quad-core as well as fast 3D. The base FX7026 starts off with a 2.5GHz Core 2 Quad, 4GB of RAM, and a factory-overclocked GeForce 8800 GT for video. It also includes Western Digital's new 640GB Caviar drive at its $1,100 price point. The FX541 series adds an SLI-capable mainboard with two GPU slots; a stock $1,200 model is similar to its lower-end sibling, while the FX541XT at the very high end includes an overclocked but unnamed CPU as well as dual GeForce 8800 ... [full story]

April 21 - 10:30am EDT   Intel late yesterday refreshed its processor line with a combination of new chips and price cuts. Among the new lineup, the Celeron E1400 is unique as the semiconductor firm's first budget processor to crack 2GHz while also offering dual cores; the refinement is a significant boost from its 1.6GHz predecessor but occupies the same $53 price point as the earlier design, making it feasible for budget desktops. It should be available today and will see the price of the older chip drop to $43. A single-core, 2.66GHz Celeron 570 ships for $134 and contributes to a price drop on the 1.8GHz Celeron 430 to $34. [full story]

March 27 - 4:10pm EDT   Memory producer Rambus today revealed that it will petition for an injunction against industry rival Hynix, barring the latter from shipping RAM that allegedly infringes on Rambus patents. The action was requested after a federal court green-lighted legal efforts against Hynix as well as fellow memory producers Micron and Nanya, saying that the move to enforce patents would not tread on US antitrust laws. Rambus has said it would be willing to license the patents in exchange for royalties for memory sold. [full story]