In yet another price drop for HD DVD, Best Buy and Circuit City are now offering Toshiba's latest third-generation A3 player for $199, $100 off the original price. Although the older A2 player can be picked up for $98 while supplies last at a number of retail outlets, the A3 has only been out for one month, making the sale quite a surprise.

Further enhancing the $199 deal, the A3 includes 7 free HD DVDs - two of which can be selected instantly and another 5 sent via mail-in offer. Sears previously announced plans to sell the A3 for $169 on just the day after Thanksgiving, but Best Buy and Circuit City's sale doesn't appear to be limited, and units are in stock online and at stores. Blu-ray plans to offer discounts for the holidays as well, but Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow said prices of Blu-ray players will not likely fall below $400.

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Apple on Thursday quietly pushed updates to its MacBook line of laptops, giving them integrated video, a faster front side bus, and slightly faster processors. The white models will be bumped to 2.0 and 2.2GHz, while the black model gets the 2.2GHz processor. All the chips now are based on the Santa Rosa architecture, Macrumors reported. In addition, all models come with an 800Mhz front side bus, and GMA X3100 integrated video.

Customers may also choose to upgrade their MacBooks to 2.6GHz processor for $250 extra, according to the product pages. Overall, the bumps provide only marginal speed enhancements, a less than 10 percent increase from their predecessors. Silent upgrades to its products are common Apple practice: the company often upgrades the internals with little, if any notice to the press.

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Not to be outdone by rival retailers that have dropped the price of Toshiba's A2 HD DVD player to just under $200, Wal-Mart is knocking another $100 off the price this Friday, but only for one day. Wal-Mart shoppers can pick up the Toshiba A2 in stores for $98.87 from 8am to midnight. Best Buy is now offering the A2 for $99.99, although it appears to be out of stock at most stores.

While it has been replaced by the Toshiba A3, the A2 is fully capable thanks to firmware upgrades that keep older HD DVD players current. Although it's only a temporary sale, such low prices for HD DVD players will surely drive sales from those on the fence about whether to invest in high-definition movies. Blu-ray has yet to respond to the price drops, which could hurt the format's adoption this holiday season.

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Filling the growing demand for larger mobile storage options, Western Digital announced Wednesday it has begun shipping a 320GB 2.5-inch hard drive for laptops and portable devices. The drive features a Serial ATA interface with transfer speeds of 3Gb per second.

Called the Scorpio, WD's drive comes in a speed of 5400 RPM, which might scare off enthusiasts, but is more than capable for most situations. Acer and other laptop manufacturers are expected to begin offering the drive shortly, and it can be purchased directly from WD for $199.99 USD.

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A scant few months after the Google Earth's KML was deemed a best practice by the Open Geospatial Consortium, Microsoft has joined the OGC as a principal member.

The Open Geospatial Consortium consists of 345 companies, government agencies, and universities. Their aim is to build a consensus around the development of the OpenGIS Specification.

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Apple has a new set of hackers to contend with: a group of developers on the OSx86Scene forum have published instructions on how to install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on a standard PC. The move will no doubt bring Apple's legal team a knocking very soon, but for the time being, the instructions are still available on the organization's website. Not all features are available to those who install the OS, however it is apparently stable.

Apple is not only fighting hackers who wish to bring the company's OS to the PC, but also those who are trying to break into the iPhone and iPod Touch. An application called Jailbreak has been released, and Apple in updates have specifically tried to fight back through "bricking" hacked devices.

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Apple said Tuesday that it sold over two million copies of Mac OS X 10.5, known as Leopard, on Friday when the operating system went on sale and over the weekend. That tally makes Leopard the most successful Mac OS release - at least if looking only at the first weekend.

Available for $129 individually and $199 for a five-user license, Leopard introduces over 300 new features, according to Apple, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Most critics say it's faster and easier to use than Windows Vista thanks to additions like Time Machine for backups and a single retail version compared to Vista's four.

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No doubt in an effort to build up its own recently launched Hulu service, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker criticized Apple yet again over its unwillingness to work with the company.

At a Syracuse University benefit, Zucker claimed that NBCU had only made $15 million off of its video deal with iTunes, and said it was unfair that Apple had made millions off of iPod sales and was not sharing any of the revenues with content providers.

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Acer's acquisition of Gateway has had a definite impact on its overall market share, its chairman said Friday, and forecasted the manufacturer would be able to ship 25 percent more computers in 2008. The boost should allow the company to claim an 11 to 12 percent share during the next year. Analysts have said that Acer likely took over the third spot behind HP and Dell from Lenovo following the deal.

Third quarter profits at the company surged 58 percent behind strong demand for its laptops and growth in emerging markets. Acer expects its fourth quarter numbers to be equally as good, as it hasn't seen any slowdown in demand for its products. Fourth quarter shipments of Acer products are expected to be 10 percent above third quarter numbers, the company said in a conference call.

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To coincide with its "Rock Opera" launch party held last night, Opera Software has released the first beta of version 9.5 of its eponymous Web browser. Company developers say hundreds of bugs have been fixed since the first alpha, with speed and compatibility the primary focuses.

New features in version 9.5 include the ability to search the browser's full history, restore closed windows, better UI integration on Mac and Linux, support for Mac OS X's VoiceOver technology, new skins and a revamped Opera Mail client. Download Opera 9.5 Beta from FileForum and tell us what you think.

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While HD DVD may be trumpeting the success of Transformers, the format is still struggling to take the lead back from rival Blu-ray. Sony's format has seen sales of 2.6 million discs from January 1 to September 30, compared with 1.4 million discs sold on HD DVD.

Home Media Research, a division of Home Media Magazine, released the figures Tuesday, which were in line with analysts expectations. Industry watchers expect HD DVD to gain some ground in the 4th quarter thanks to a move by Warner Bros. and Paramount to begin selling all movies as combo discs, which have the standard DVD on one side. Expanded special features and Web enabled content not yet found on Blu-ray titles could also help push HD DVD ahead.

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While computer makers have for the past year been rolling out laptops with built-in 3G broadband services, customers were forced to make a choice between HSDPA, used by AT&T and soon T-Mobile, or EV-DO, used by Verizon, Sprint and Alltel. Qualcomm aims to change this with its new "Gobi" chipset.

The Gobi chip is compatible with both technologies, which could lead to its quick adoption by manufacturers - and potentially drive more consumer adoption of 3G services. Qualcomm says the chipset is available now, and expects consumers to see laptops with the dual capability by the second quarter of 2008. Gobi does not, however, support WiMAX, which is currently being tested by Sprint as a better -- and faster -- alternative to cellular-based 3G offerings.

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As expected following news Monday that Microsoft would finally comply with the European Union's requirement that it make parts of its Windows source code available for distribution to developers, the Redmond company has officially dropped its appeal of the original 2004 antitrust ruling, as well as an appeal of the fine imposed in July 2006.

Seemingly eager to put the matter behind the company once and for all, Microsoft says it paid that fine of 280.5 million euros in October 2006. Microsoft had also appealed a provision of the 2004 decision that required it to freely open certain Windows protocols to open source developers, but that effort was struck down last month, leading the company to file another appeal. The company said that appeal was now unnecessary due to the deal with the EU Commission announced Monday.

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Although Mac OS X version 10.5, known as "Leopard," won't pounce into retail stores until Friday at 6pm, a purported final copy of the new operating system is already making the rounds on the Internet. Windows Vista leaked out before its launch as well, but there is one key distinction in that Leopard includes no activation requirements or other anti-piracy restrictions. Mac enthusiast sites are using the leak to prepare early reviews of Leopard.

In preparation for Leopard's launch, Apple has pulled the beta version of Boot Camp, which allows owners of Intel Macs to install Windows and dual-boot between the operating systems. It's unlikely that Apple will provide further updates to Tiger owners, instead encouraging them to spend $129 on the upgrade to Leopard, which ships with Boot Camp built in.

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Although Google's popular webmail service has long offered POP support, accessing an account via IMAP was not possible until today. Gmail users are beginning to see an IMAP option enabled by default in their account settings, which will make the service more useful to those accessing e-mail remotely.

Google has put together detailed instructions on how to make IMAP for Gmail work with a number of clients, including Apple's iPhone. The advantage of IMAP is that it keeps e-mail data synced across multiple devices, so any changes made remotely instantly appear on the Web and elsewhere.

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