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Tablet computers are going to be a big deal this year thanks to the iPad as other companies try and launch a similar device. We will also see a number of new notebooks and netbooks that support multi-touch screens this year.

Not all multi-touch screens are created equal though. Many of the screens only support input from two fingers accurately before things don't work well. A new screen being shown off by Cypress Semiconductor can accept input accurately from an unlimited number of fingers.

The screen the company is showing off is 14-inches in size, but the tech can scale from 7 to 17-inches for different product types. The screen is designed to work with Windows 7 and will find its way into netbooks, notebooks, PMPs and other devices.

With MSI's Big Bang enthusiast oriented mainboards fast gathering attention, MSI chose to keep riding the wave with the series and have thus introduced yet another model into the Big Bang lineup, the XPower.

As the folks at VR-Zone have learned, this model is even meaner and richer in features than the previous offerings. It's using Intel's LGA-1366 based X58 chipset and gives graphics card junkies all they desire and more with six PCI-E x16 slots onboard for CrossFireX and SLI support whilst leaving plenty of room for other PCI-E devices.

Of course, MSI has made sure to put all the latest technologies on this variant with both SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 support. Meanwhile, overclocking should prove to give excellent results with a 16-phase DrMOS PWM (drawing power from two 8-pin connectors for added stability) and the use of High-C capacitors for superior durability. Meanwhile, the six DDR3 memory slots are powered by a 3-phase VRM.

Well after all the long running rumors and the scuttlebutt at each and every Apple event that this was when the Apple tablet would be launched that day is finally here. Steve Jobs whipped the beast out not long after taking the stage at the press event and it's called the iPad.

The thing is said to revolutionize the web browsing experience and promises to do things that no netbook or smartphone can. The iPad also has drop downs for fast access to email and it looks a lot like a larger iPhone. I had hopes to see the ting pretty much have an edge to edge screen like the iPhone but it appears to have a bezel around it about a half inch thick.

Like the iPhone, the iPad has an accelerometer and knows how you are holding it allowing the content on the screen to rotate to the direction you need it to. A large onscreen QWERTY keyboard handles the input duties. The keyboard is much larger than the one on the iPhone, which most users can type on surprisingly fast so it should be easy enough to use. I really want one!

MSI's marketing team recently invited 19 famous overclockers to Taiwan to do some first-hand overclocking on their new Big Bang Trinergy/Fuzion P55 based motherboards. Anticipation is high for this weapon and MSI had total confidence in seeing top notch results.

Sure enough, they got what they wanted. After MSI took notice, recognizing and resolving a known coldbug issue on P55 (when used in conjunction with Clarkdale processors) that limits extreme overclockers from touching the skies and beyond in the overclocking realm, famous overclocker Massman got stuck back into the board and came out with flying colours, breaking a WPrime 32M world record @ 7sec 329ms with a clock rate of 6485MHz.

MSI has since also bettered its P55-GD80 and P55-GD85 models by removing the Clarkdale coldbug issue on these boards, too.

Information has leaked onto the interweb today regarding the Apple tablet which is said to be presented at a press event tomorrow.

Jason Calacanis is involved in several operations on the web (such as being the CEO of search engine Mahalo, co-founder of TechCrunch50 and founder of Weblogs, Inc.) and has leaked information via his Twitter Account about the tablet, saying that he was given one from Apple ten days ago to tinker with in preparation for tomorrow's press event on cnbc, cnn, etc.

It's believed this isn't just a PR stunt and Calacanis is finding the iPad tablet a total joy in many respects. Here are his first-hand impressions:

The folks at TechConnect have discovered a couple new additions to XClio's mid-tower case lineup which are said to start selling as of next month.

Simply dubbed the 737 and 747 chassis', these two cases only differ by design slightly. They both have the same measurements at 480 (D) x 190 (W) x 440 (H) mm and both have a nicely presented black finish inside and out, from head to toe.

They have four 5.25-inch bays and five internal 3.5-inch trays. The cases are also tool-less for easy installation of drives and expansion cards. Up top an I/O panel provides connectivity for eSATA, two x USB 2.0 and two audio connectors (line-out and mic).

Whilst we've previously seen pictures of GIGABYTE's top of the line LGA-1156 based GA-P55A-UD7 motherboard as far back as November of last year, it is only now a confirmed final design candidate has been spotted which has several notable changes from the production sample we've seen previously.

Aside from having both USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s support, the retail model also has four PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots instead of three on the earlier production model. Further to that is the nuse of NVIDIA's nForce 200 PCI-E bridge chip which provides two x16 links that can be split into four x8 links for each slot. GIGABYTE has also added a PLX-bridge chip to provide additional PCI-E 2.0 lanes that assist the USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s controllers.

Both the nForce 200 and PLX bridge chips are situated in the same area that would otherwise be used for a Northbridge on older gen motherboards. They are cooled by a fusion heatsink that can be connected to a water-cooling loop and also has the ability to offload heat from the VPU VRM and PCH heatsinks.

Mozilla's highly popular internet browser, Firefox has just seen a significant update, moving version 3.6 out of beta phase into final status.

One of the biggest improvements compared to 3.5's final/official build is a good boost on performance, said to be up to 20% faster, while 3.5 was already a large jump forward in performance from 3.0.

Of course, there are a large array of new features added into 3.6 as well. These include :-

Notebook bags and cases are a dime a dozen and they are typically all pretty much the same. The things have the same features, look the same, and are honestly pretty boring for the most part. A new case has surfaced aimed at MacBook users called the Book Book that is actually pretty darn cool.

The Book Book case comes in two sizes with one for 13-inch MacBooks and another for 15-inch MacBooks. I would assume if your PC is about the same size, you could use the Book Book for a Windows notebook too.

The outside of the case looks like a hard cover book and is covered in black or red distressed leather. The distressing is done by hand making each of the covers unique. You can grab your own Book Book now for $79.99.

Sharing peripherals in an office or a home with many computers across a network can be a challenge. However, sharing things like printers and external hard drives can save lots of money compared to buying multiple devices.

Silex Technology has unveiled a new way to share up to 15 USB devices across a network using a Gigabit connection. The Silex adapter is called the SX-3000GB. The device has two USB ports and a single 10/100/1000 Ethernet port to connect to a wired or wireless network.

You have to use a USB hub to share all 15 devices the adapter can support. The two USB ports built-in have a combined power output of one amp. The adapter works on Windows and Mac systems and is available now for $99.

CES 2010 - On the last day of the show we finally had the chance to just wander around and take things in. During my wanderings I found the SilverStone booth and had the time to really take a good look at some of the existing and new products.

The first thing we saw was what appeared to be an extension of the Raven line, but with a few differences. We noticed that SilverStone has removed the awkward plastic cowling and replaced it with some nice smooth (and rounded) top and bottom panels. They did leave the 90-degree tilt in the case layout though. We asked about the importance of this and were told that SilverStone intended this design for use with cards that have a low (on the board) fan that pulls in air to exhaust out of the case. This type of graphics card have shown (in their testing) to be an issue in many standard cases.

If you think about when a card like a 5970 or GTX 285 is in your stock mid tower you have it pulling in hot case air and pushing it out into a wall or into a very small area between the case and the wall. This does nothing to help cool the GPU. With the 90-degree tilt you have multiple fans pulling in cool air from under the case which is then drawn into the card and out the top. So I can see what they were talking about. SilverStone does warn that this type of setup does not work for all cards. For cards that use a central fan (as shown below) you can actually hinder proper cooling. So while the 90-degree tilt is good for many. It is not a solution for all.

The folks at Techpowerup have sourced images from a little birdy in Taiwan that show an upcoming HD 5870 graphics card on steroids from MSI which the company will place in its Lightning Series of overclocking-friendly models.

The images show the card in naked form without its custom cooling solution attached (whatever that may look like, we're not sure yet).

This card has two 8-pin PCI-E connectors for maximum power delivery and MSI has even chosen to give the card easily accessible measuring points for voltmodders to monitor GPU voltages directly. You can also see from the picture directly above that the card appears to have a 12-phase vGPU and 3-phase vMEM.

CES 2010 - One thing that is always interesting about CES is the way you can directly compare product offerings right on the show floor. For example, if you want to see how different manufacturers are doing with LCD TVs you can simply walk from booth to booth and compare. We had the chance to do this with a couple of wireless charging systems.

WildCharge

Our first "victim" was WildCharge. WildCharge has now teamed up with PUREPENERGY Solutions to create a company that not only can provide a wireless charging solution but also rechargeable batteries for your portable devices.

NVIDIA has made available a new WHQL approved driver for its GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100 and 200 series cards and ION GPUs, the ForceWare 196.21.

One of the main features of the new release is the added SLI and multi-GPU support for a bunch of popular game titles. These include the Avatar Demo, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, City Bus Simulator, Dirt 2, Ferrari Virtual Race, GREED: Black Border, Mass Effect 2, Mortal Online, Ninja Blade, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Demo, Planet 51, RUSE, Serious Sam HD and Wings of Prey.

Further to the above is an upgrade to the PhysX system software (now at 9.09.1112) and a bunch of numourous bug fixes which you can learn more specifically about in the supported documentation located at this page.

Reminiscing of the dodgey capacitor woes occuring left, right and centre on motherboards of a decade or more ago, it's been discovered by Lars over at SemiAccurate that the same nightmare is potentially unfolding yet again, although not with regard to capacitors (thankfully they're solid state these days to ensure no issues with age), but rather the chokes onboard.

You can see from the picture above that the chokes on this board are rusting. These are iron core chokes; cheaper than ferrite core chokes so therefore used on low to mid-range motherboards. Unlike ferrite core chokes, they have iron in them which is a metal that easily rusts when it has come into contact with water at some point. Here's an extract of the most probable explanation of this from the source :-

The iron powder used to make the iron core chokes had water added to it during the milling process and the iron powder was then not dried sufficiently before the chokes were made. The moisture trapped inside the chokes has then started to rust the chokes from the inside out during the time these boards have been sitting in the warehouse.

Many computer buyers are opting for notebook computers today for the portability and smaller space requirements that they offer. However, there is still a market for desktop computers. Many gamers, enthusiasts, and businesses still prefer desktops.

Lenovo has announced a new desktop computer called the ThinkCentre A63 that is aimed at small businesses. The desktop can be had with AMD Sempron, Athlon II, or Phenom II processors at a price starting at $329.

The machine can be fitted with up to 1TB of storage and uses 1333MHz DDR3 RAM. GPUs used in the computer support DirectX 10 and multiple monitors. The machines are also green and have the Greenguard certification. The A63 line starts at $329.

CES 2010 - Stopping by the Dolby booth is always a fun time as it gives you the chance to see more than just single company's offerings. As Dolby is less a product and more a means for providing audio content the items you see in the Dolby booth are from just about every company that makes a device capable of producing sound.

I have always been something of an Audiophile and have owned many products that have Dolby technology in them going all the way back to the first independent Dolby A (and later B and C) units for stereo playback and magnetic cassette tape recording. I currently own more than one analog tube amp for both headphone use and also one that is capable of taking input directly from a PC through USB. As such I am particularly hard on audio equipment and like to know that it is capable of quality playback. I was not disappointed by the Dolby booth.

We had the chance to listen to their new Pro Logic IIz 9.1 setup that adds a new axis of audio to the experience. This the long missing Z-axis which bring the concept of height to the listening experience. It was something to listen to rain falling on a roof and hear the sound coming from above you instead of the normal flat sound that you get from even the most expensive 7.1 systems.

CES 2010 - During our trip to Las Vegas we had the chance to stop by the Vuzix booth and not only take a look at their new product line but also to talk to them about where they see their product in the emerging market of 3D TVs and monitors.

Vuzix, for those of you that are not familiar with the name is a company that makes hear/eye-wear for a virtualized (or augmented) viewing experience. They have been in the game for a long time and actually manufacture products for military use as well as consumer grade products. Their newest line is called the Wrap. This line up is interesting in that it is the first time someone has tried to make this type of eyewear look like a real set of sunglasses.

Unfortunately the technology needed to present a virtualized experience like the Vuzix Wrap does is still quite bulky. This means that even though on the outside they look like a pair of sunglasses when you put them on they will typically sit about an inch away from where a standard set of glasses would sit. When I put the Wrap eyewear on the first thing I noticed was the uncomfortable nose piece; the hear set is just a little too heavy for this type of nose piece and it felt like all the weight was pushing directly down on the bridge of my nose. I also felt like the Wrap was going to fall forward off of my head.

Along with todays launch of the HD 5670, AMD has several other new HD 5000 series cards ready for launch later this month. In the upper mainstream segment we will see a HD 5830 show up, whilst at the other end of the series we will see HD 5400 and HD 5500 variants released with super cheap pricing, these comprising the HD 5450 (said to be using GDDR3 memory), and HD 5550 / HD 5570 cards (supposedly GDDR5 equipped).

Images have appeared online that reveal a low-profile reference design used for these entry level HD 5000 series cards. Also resident is a miniature GPU cooler along with a DVI-D and DisplayPort connector. D-Sub connectivity is also in place if using a full height expansion bracket.

CES 2010 - Although the event is actually over this does not mean we are finished telling you about what we saw out there. Something that is of interesting to those of you looking for the fasted SSD (SATA II style) that you can find is the new Patriot Inferno drive. According to Patriot this drive is capable of up to 245MB/s sequential read speeds and up to 152MB/s Sequential writes. Of course random reads and writes are not going to be as fast but they are still up there with speeds reaching 198 MB/s read and 91MB/s write for 512k files.

The mockup of the drive was also impressive looking, but we were told that Patriot was not sure if they would keep the red casing or not.

As it is Patriot's 25th anniversary we were also shown some RAM samples that were branded with the 25 year logo. These were cool in a very understated way which is nice as many companies go overboard when they pass an important milestone like 25 years.