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Sony Corp said five PC makers including Hewlett-Packard Co and Toshiba Corp will recall 100,000 computer battery packs made by the Japanese electronics maker due to a fire hazard. The recall is a fraction of a much bigger recall of 9.6 million Sony PC batteries in 2006, which cost the company around 35.5 billion yen ($360 million).

The U.S. government issued on Thursday a recall of 35,000 Sony batteries and the Tokyo-based company said it would recall a further 65,000 batteries worldwide. The recall affects around 74,000 notebook PCs sold by HP and 14,400 from Toshiba. The faulty batteries are also used in laptop PCs from Dell Inc, Acer Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd, Sony said.

RSA FraudAction Research Lab has discovered log-in information for about 300,000 online bank accounts and 250,000 credit and debit card accounts that have been gathered by a cybercrime gang over the past three years using the Sinowal Trojan.

The Sinowal Trojan infects computers without the owner knowing it by surrepticiously planting itself onto the computer while the owner is Web surfing in an attack dubbed a “drive-by download.” The malicious code is typically hidden on an unfamiliar Web site, often related to porn or gambling, but can also be found lurking on legitimate Web sites, says Sean Brady, manager of identity protection at RSA. The Trojan is programmed to execute when the victim visits a particular banking or financial Web site; it is triggered by more than 2,700 specific URLs, according to RSA.

Video game publisher Electronic Arts posted a wider quarterly net loss yesterday and said it is laying off about 6 percent of its workforce to cut costs as it heads into the most lucrative season for the games industry. Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown said the company remains “cautiously optimistic” about the holidays.

Higher development and marketing costs led to the bigger loss for the July-September period. The quarter's revenue surpassed Wall Street's forecast thanks to the success of games like “Spore” and “Madden NFL 09,” but the company did not exude the cheery optimism that has characterized the video game industry in the past few months even amid the economic turmoil.

Asustek Computer has announced consolidated revenues are down 14.2% on year, but they are up 13% on quarter. ASUS has shipped an estimated 17 million motherboards under the ASUS brand name alone, which is very impressive when you consider everything else that they make. Looking ahead ASUS has forecast a shipments goal of 20 million notebooks and netbooks in 2009! To put that into perspective the goal this year is just 5 million! The $200 ASUS Eee PC they are planning next year might help move more notebooks though!

Shen expects annual notebook shipments growth in 2009 to be higher than the industry's 10-20%, while the motherboard's percentage will be less than 10%. The company expects to grab a 30% share in the netbook market in 2009 shipments of 6-7.5 million units out of an estimated 2009 netbook market scale of 20-25 million units. Shen detailed that the company has adjusted its mid-range and entry-level Eee PC's pricing and market position, and expects to launch an Eee PC priced at US$200 in 2009.

Happy Halloween everyone! Find reviews like Scythe Musashi VGA Cooler Review @ High Techreviews.com from around the web by visiting our forums!

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inconvenience.

Yesterday, in a third quarter earnings call, Motorola’s CEO, Sanjay Jha, said that they would be streamlining their OS strategy to concentrate on three platforms: P2K (low end and feature phones), Android (consumer smartphones) and Windows Mobile (business phones). Motorola will no longer use its own LinuxJava (MOTOMAGX) or the Symbian UIQ platform. It also appears that several UIQ phones that are currently in development, which would have hit the market next year, will be abandoned. Read on for more.

In this editorial, Ewan mulls over the Smartphone Show 2008 and its significance in the grand scheme of things. How will Symbian Foundation attract developers in the coming years? Was the atmosphere one of post-iPhone doom and gloom? Not from Ewan’s perspective, he ends up very optimistic about prospects for Symbian ES (EcoSystem).

With the ATI All-in-Wonder HD, your PC and your TV play nice. It is now easy to create the ultimate digital entertainment center. With the TV All-in-Wonder HD graphics and video card your PC is transformed into the ultimate high-definition TV and 1080p Blu-ray and DVD movie showcase. Read on to see how it worked out for our Home Theater PC!

Dell is updating its previous battery-replacement program based on additional information that the company has received from lithium-ion battery supplier Sony. It seems that 300 systems contain a battery that needs to be recalled, so you might want to check your laptop again as it might be faulty even though it passed in the past.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced that certain notebook batteries manufactured by Sony have been recalled and Dell is listed among other system manufacturers in that announcement because it received some affected units fewer than 300 worldwide. According to Sony, the 300 batteries may present a fire and burn hazard. The battery packs were manufactured by Sony on Nov. 9, 2004 and April 11, 2005 and were shipped shortly thereafter with Latitude and Inspiron laptop systems or as service replacements.

Kingston announced it is first to ship 2GHz memory in triple-channel configuration designed specifically for the new Intel-based X58 motherboards. …