There are a ton of options available these days if you're looking for a portable mp3 player. The BigBruin crew steps in to help you in making an educated decision.

"This Tech Tip will attempt to simplify things by taking a look at eight basic features of a typical MP3 player that may be important to a potential buyer, including: storage technologies, capacities, file formats, displays, batteries, extra capabilities, computer interfaces, and size."

It seems that Intel's climbing aboard the WiMax boat. I hope that at least something like WiMax becomes widespread...

"The world's largest chipmaker sees in WiMax a potential profit source that it hopes will become as popular as its shorter-range cousin, Wi-Fi. Intel also believes it will stimulate computer sales in emerging markets where high-speed Internet access is unavailable or prohibitively expensive."

Crimson Sky wasn't happy with the options presented to him for a test rig setup, so he did what he does best & built one himself.

"I showed the guys a few of the testbeds I had looked at previously. Paul would have nothing to do with them...as a matter of fact he laughed me right off of Skype. 'Are you crazy Dante? $139 for a test rig?......yeah right. I could build one of those for $30'"

It's Final Cut plus a bunch of other goodies all rolled into one package.

"Final Cut Studio will sell for $1,299 new and an upgrade from any version of Final Cut Pro costs $699, Schoeben said, yet all the individual applications will continue to be sold separately."

Laptops

Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 with GeForce Go 6800 Ultra @ the [H]

Motherboards

Gigabyte GA-8AENXP-D @ Hexus  Asus K8N @ CoolTechZone

Cases/Power

A-Top Technology Gladiator Gaming Case @ hi-techreviews

Antec NeoPower 480W @ Techniz  Ultra Products X-Finity 600W @ BigBruin

Etc.

WD 320GB PATA HDD @ HardAvenue  Samsung 213T LCD @ XYZComputing

Vantec 3.5" NexStar 3 Enclosure @ 3DGameMan

Turtle Beach Video Advantage USB @ Designtechnica

Contest time again, & this one's a doozy. The OCTools crew is dishing out a total of 4GB of Corsair's blingedy-blingest RAM, the XPERT variety. Very easy to enter this one.

"Last year, we gave away 4Gb of Corsair's Pro Series modules. This month, OCTools team up with Corsair once again for another 4Gb Memory Giveaway! The contest will run for 2 weeks starting on April 15-30, 2005. 4 lucky people will be randomly selected worldwide with each receiving 1Gb Matched Pair of Corsair's latest and much talked about Xpert modules."

In case you missed it, PalmOne released the Tungsten E2 yesterday. The CoolTechZone lay out all the details of the newest Palm gadget.

"Recently, PalmOne made the announcement to introduce a more value class PDA to the market, Tungsten E2. The Tungsten E2 is originally developed from its predecessor, the regular E version and carries more or less the same feature set. Although the differences between the two are far and between, could this be the right PDA for you?"

Got that new PSP & aren't quite sure how to do anything but play games on it? IceTeks steps in & lends a helping hand.

"First thing everyone probably does is pop in the demo disc to check things out. Just so you know, there isn't any playable games on it, just videos. Inside the demo disc is full length music videos, movie trailers, and game previews."

C|Net's got a preview of the upcoming Windows OS that points out some of the new features.

"Beginning with brief demonstrations to reporters this week, the software maker is starting to shed light on just what the next version of Windows will offer when it hits the market next year. High on the list of features are security enhancements, improved desktop searching and organizing, and better methods for laptops to roam from one network to another."

If you're looking for the final accent to that newly pimped-out modded-to-hell case of yours, a window design might just scratch your itch. Tha Pimp-Mastaz have laid out a handy guide to help you reach that goal.

"Line has different qualities and gives a psychological response to the finished piece. Here are a few examples of how line can affect people. A curved line will usually give the viewer a feeling of playfulness, natural elements or motion. Straight, hard lines are the opposite. The impressions of formal, unnatural, and static. In nature there are no straight lines, try drawing a tree with a ruler and see how natural it looks when you are done."

Comcast is still messin' up, apparently. What's that, you say? An un-reliable ISP? Naaahhh....

"Like the previous two incidents, affected Comcast users experienced slow Web page loading times or could not view pages at all. Comcast said the problems began on Wednesday evening at 5:30 p.m. PDT, and that network access was restored nearly five hours later."

Motherboards

ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE i925XE @ OCAU

RAM

SimpleTech 1GB DC DDR PC4000 @ Techniz

Etc.

Ultra Products 2.5" Aluminum USB 2.0 HD Enclosure @ BigBruin

PSP @ Hexus

DigiTimes is reporting that AMD plans to make the price cuts next month.

"Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) plans to lower the unit prices for Socket 754 Sempron processors in early May, with the maximum cut being 15%, according to Taiwan motherboard makers. The price reduction for the entry-level K8-compatible CPUs will help AMD with its plan to phase out its Socket-A processors by the end of the third quarter, according to market sources."

The Hexus crew's got the dirt on the naming & speeds of the upcoming dual-core releases from AMD.

"The flagship AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ will have both its cores operating at 2.4GHz, the same frequency as the AMD Athlon 64 4000+, and we'll be surprised if this doesn't obliterate the already impressive Pentium Extreme Edition 840 we reviewed here."

Apparently all of the big name routing gear's been hit with this flaw. It's apparently an issue that they'd all been working to fix, & there are updates available.

"The National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre, part of the U.K. Home Office, has published details of a denial-of-service vulnerability that can affect routers' ability to handle traffic using TCP, or Transmission Connection Protocol, a widely used protocol for sending data over the Internet."