No one seems to know why Sun bought Montalvo, or exactly what it was that Montalvo was producing. MYSTERY! Warning: Sun PR babble follows:

"We believe acquiring these assets will enhance the current and future products we are developing and expect them to contribute to future generations of Sun's microprocessor technology, which will in turn drive additional differentiation for Sun's Systems products."

Um, ok.

EOL be damned. Dell's apparently going to keep on keeping-on. There's definitely a demand, & they'd be silly to ignore it. Not only that, but:

"Dell's plan could conceivably allow its business customers to skip Vista, the current version of Windows, altogether. Microsoft has said it plans to launch Vista successor Windows 7 in 2010."

The gang at the TechReport have posted an updated system building guide for this month. Intel systems are their recommendatons for all but one of the configurations. The only AMD recommendation is a new config: the "couch potato," & that's because you can use a 780G-based board. Good point.

"We've even included a fifth system this time around: the Couch Potato Mk. 2. This latest take on the ultimate home theater PC combines HD tuning capabilities with Blu-ray playback support all wrapped up in a quiet, power-efficient package."

Motherboards

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P @ HardwareLogic

Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 Intel X48 @ ThinkComputers

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3P @ Virtual-Hideout

ASUS P5K PRO Intel P35 @ Bigbruin

Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI @ Legit Reviews

Displays

Samsung SyncMaster 2263DX Dual Display @ DigitalTrends

Samsung SyncMaster T220 Widescreen @ Futurelooks

A/V

Alienware High Definition Media Server @ LegitReviews

Head-Direct RE1 Earphones @ techPowerUp

Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 Headset @ OCIA

Storage

OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4GB USB Flash @ ASELabs

Western Digital VR150 300GB Velociraptor @ Motherboards.org

Etc.

Cyber Snipa Stringer Gaming Mouse @ Pro-Clockers

GIGABYTE G-Power 2 Pro CPU Cooler @ TweakTown

LiteOn EZ-DUB External DVD Drive DX-20A4PU @ TechwareLabs

Assassin's Creed Director's Cut Edition PC @ TTGamer

nVidia's can of whoop-ass is on its way, in the form of the MCP79, a single-chip mobile chipset aimed at small form factor notebooks. Watching the nVidia/Intel spat unfold's gonna be mighty entertaining...

"Each variant of MCP79 incorporates a DX10-capable GeForce graphics controller supporting Shader Model 4.0, NVIDIA's VP3 video processor, and support for Hybrid Power/Hybrid SLI/Hybrid Performance."

For reference

There are a slew of sites hosting various details on AMD's 4800-series (aka RV770) and its supposed arrival next month, but TGDaily's got the best overall write-up, imo. Hit the link for the full, two-page read.

"The new GPU has 480 stream processors or shader units (96+384), 32 Texture units (up from 16), 16 ROP (same as 2900/3800), a 256-bit memory controller and native GDDR3/4/5 support (expect GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory versions of RV770 cards)."

Ten tips for texting that are actually functional. I didn't know about the Google calendar one. Pretty interesting stuff.

"Just send a message with the word 'next' to GVENT (dial 48368) and you'll get back the time and details of your next scheduled event."