Toshiba 24nm MLC flash isn't exactly breaking news, SandForce had this drive on display at IDF 2011. We did learn today that Toshiba's 24nm flash should cost less than IMFT 25nm flash so all of those SandForce SF-2281 controlled drives could become a little cheaper in 2012.

We still are scratching our heads on what performance will be like but Toshiba's 3Xnm flash with the 2281 is the current speed king on the market today. Drives like the OCZ Technology MaxIOPS, Patriot Wildfire and OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G are just a few examples that use Toshiba flash already.

Also on display at AIS 2011 were several non-standard form factors produced by companies that are supplied with SandForce controllers.

I know, I know. I've posted a few rumors on the next-gen Xbox a few times now, but it seems there's just more news on it lately and especially today. Today's rumor is a bit more specific, though. Ubisoft Montreal are reportedly hard at work on 'target boxes' based on the intended specifications of the next-generation Xbox from Microsoft.

Delivery of the first iteration of genuine devkits, running custom hardware, are expected to reach studios before Christmas, which is pointing to a finalized console arriving in late 2012. Ubisoft's teams are reportedly working on PCs containing off-the-shelf components provided by Microsoft, and several other major developers such as EA are also in possession of these target boxes.

AMD is rumored to be providing Microsoft with the GPU goodness inside of the new consoles (and their target boxes).

In The Matrix, Neo said "Whoa", and the whole world listened. Today, I'm saying "whoa" at the rumor of HTC's Zeta smartphone. It's rumored to be a quad-core smartphone but sports a 2.5GHz APQ8064 CPU along with 1GB of RAM, all looking purdy on a 4.5-inch 720p HD display.

The phone is also very unique in its shape, which I kinda dig. Zeta is said to have Ice Cream Sandwich pre-installed, with Sense UI running the show, too. 32GB of internal storage should keep most people happy, an 1,830mAh battery, Beats Audio, Bluetooth 4.0, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with dual LED flash, 1080p video capture and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera.

Dimension-wise, we have 109.8 x 60.9 x 9.8mm (4.32 x 2.4 x 0.39 inches) and weigh 5.15 ounces (146g). Right now this is just sitting on RumorTT, but it is something that could definitely materialise. Now, I've been talking about this for a while, especially with the release of the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Nexus, Transformer Prime, and various other handsets like this new HTC Zeta, but I'm going to come out and say it in a single sentence below, and I'd like some thoughts on it:

Another console game, port, rape of series has happened in front of our eyes. From Electronic Arts' and Black Box, we have Need for Speed: The Run. NFS: The Run is powered by Battlefield 3's gorgeous, pant-swellingly beautiful, make-you-call-out-mom-in-your-dreams amazing graphics engine, Frostbite 2.0.

Even though the game is powered by that amazing engine, the game is locked to 30fps. What? Am I joking? No. The Run is locked to just 30fps. Now, this may work for other titles, but for a game capable of oh-so-much more on the PC, it's still locked. Locked frame rates on consoles can work, but what if you've just dumped your hard earned cash on a new X79-based system with Quad SLI GeForce GTX 580's?

Well, you'd be cranking out those serious 30fps in style and nothing more. The system above would be capable of 1080p at max detail (including AA) at 150 - 200fps and above in Battlefield 3, so why not NFS: The Run? Black Box have obviously put an artificial limitation on The Run, now the question ins "why?".

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was misquoted during Microsoft's annual shareholders meeting, where he answered a bunch of questions regarding Microsoft's future. Ballmer was asked whether we're in a post-PC era world and what his expectations are of the PC market going forward, he said:

But, press outlets and bloggers ran with it and thought Ballmer had all but confirmed Windows 8 for phones, but this is not the case. Microsoft have been clear that Windows 8 will be made for 7-inch devices and up. They have no plays to make Windows 8 available for phones and Microsoft are reportedly putting their focus on pushing the two ecosystems together with Windows 8, which is set to include the mix of the next-generation Xbox.

Wow. It was 10 years ago today that Microsoft unleashed the Xbox onto the gaming world. 100,000 units were shipped to retailers in the first week after its launch, and 1.5 million were sold before the end of 2001. This made the Xbox the best-selling video game console launch on record, and quite the achievement [unlocked?] for Microsoft. The picture below shows Edward Glucksman, where Bill Gates hands over the very first Xbox video game system to him.

10 years later, Microsoft have quite the collection of additions to the Xbox brand such as the current Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and Kinect for 360. Xbox LIVE boasts 35 million members worldwide who spend 2.1 billion hours per month on the service. Kinect for 360 set a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling consumer electronic device, selling 8 million in just 60 days.

I still personally remember the original Xbox, Halo looked stunning. Absolutely stunning. Project Gotham Racing saw me pouring unlimited amounts of hours into it. Since then, Microsoft seem to have concentrated more on their Xbox products than PC, which is disappointing for PC owners, but great for console gamers. Let's hope we don't have to wait 3 - 4 more years for another Xbox, launch one next year, Microsoft. We all need the push for games.

We've had some truly amazing games over the last few months, and Skyrim is definitely one of the creme of the crop. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has sold over 3.4 million copies at retail in its first 2 days on sale. Keep in mind that this is without the inclusion of digital sales (Steam, etc).

This is an increase of over 600-percent on top of what Oblivion sold, with an opening of just 490,000 copies. Skyrim is set to outsell Oblivion in mere weeks. 59-percent of units sold were on the Xbox 360 (over 2 million copies) and 27-percent were on the PS3. The PC? Just 14-percent, again, without digital sales included.

2.5 million of the total 3.4 million sold were in the US, with the remaining 950,000 units in EMEAA. Skyrim has managed to slay Gears of War 3 and FIFA Soccer 12 for first week sales, is head-to-head with Battlefield 3 and the only thing stopping it from reaching the stars is Modern Warfare 3. But, Skyrim is an RPG, and 3.4 million copies in 48 hours for an RPG is damn impressive.

NVIDIA have just announced that the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is developing a new hybrid supercomputer that, for the first time, uses energy-efficient, low-power NVIDIA Tegra ARM VCPUs, together with high-performance NVIDIA CUDA GPUs. BSC is in the planning stages and hopes to roll out the new ARM-based supercomputer, with a near-term goal of demonstrating two to five times improvement in energy efficiency compared with today's most efficient systems.

BSC's ultimate research goal is to establish exascale-level performance while using 15 to 30 times less power than current supercomputer architectures. This so-called EU Mont-Blanc Project will explore next-generation HPC architectures and develop a portfolio of exascale applications that run efficiently on these kinds of energy-efficient, embedded mobile technologies.

As ARM gains more support around the world with ARM-based initiatives, NVIDIA have also announced plans to develop a new hardware and software development kit. NVIDIA's new kit, with hardware developed by SECO, will sport a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM CPU accelerated by a discrete NVIDIA GPU.

It seems every few months there's some news about RIM, BlackBerry are dying, BlackBerry are returning... well, now we have the first-ever photo of the next set of BlackBerry devices, which will sport RIM's new BBX operating system.

The phone in the above picture is the BlackBerry "London", and should have a June 2012 release. The phone sports a TI OMAP dual-core 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of on-board storage, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 2-megapixel front-facing camera and is reportedly "thinner than the iPhone 4" and roughly the same size as Samsung's Galaxy S II.

Right now there's not enough information on the handset to make a complete, 100-percent claim on what is inside of it, how it looks, etc. But this is merely a tease. Whatever it is, I really enjou the look of it. It has that Porsche Design look of it that was on RIM's Porsche Design P9981.

One thing that really irks me with Windows (and even OS X) is updating and the requirement of restarting. I've never understood how operating systems have come this far with everything happening behind the scenes, yet it requires user intervention to do simple things like "when would you like to restart, I've just done updates, come on!".

Microsoft are working on this for Windows 8, which will see Windows Update consolidate all the restarts in a month, synchronizing with the monthly security release. This means that your PC will only restart when security updates are installed and actually require a restart. Security updates are released in a single batch on the second Tuesday of every month, where this will keep the system secure, in a timely manner, reduces restarts and makes restarts more predictable.

Now, Windows Update will notify you of any upcoming automatic restarts. If Windows Update has already detected, downloaded and installed security updates and requires a restart, Windows Update will notify you of an upcoming automatic restart through a message on the login screen that will persist for three days. This gives you an option of "Update and shutdown", or "Update and restart" at the login screen. You can still kick it old school and go to Windows Update in Control Panel, or do it like I do and search for "Update" in the start bar.