Normally we wouldn't cover something as basic as a voice recorder, especially as it comes built into many MP3 players these days, but Olympus has launched four new models that features a built in USB port. Again, this might not seem like a big deal, but it's taken until now for a voice recorder company to release such a product.

The first two models, the WS-110 and WS-210S features 256 or 512MB of built in memory and measures 94.7 x 38 x 10mm (H x W x D) and features a built in LCD screen. They're powered by a single AAA battery and Olympus claims it has enough juice for up to 21h of recording.

According to a story on the Inquirer, DirectX 10.1 will make the current crop of DirectX 10 cards more or less obsolete, as the new revision requires new hardware support. This is not going to make the GPU guys happy at all, especially when you consider the time it takes to design a GPU these days.

But what's even worse is the current install base of DX10 cards, as everyone that's spent their hard earned cash on one of these babies, will have to save up more money again for a new graphics card just to get a few new features that will appear in the latest games.

According to the Inq, DX10.1 isn't meant to add much that the game developers are really likely to care too much about, as the new revision makes certain optional DX10 features compulsory. One of those features is 4x Anti Aliasing as standard, but Microsoft hasn't limited to what kind.

Vista will get its first Service Pack in the near future, dealing with a number of annoying issues in relation to ReadyBoost, copying and moving large files, sleep/hibernate and stacks more - some of these problems have already been resolved via some hot fixes I mentioned last week.

It's been said that Microsoft's software testers have been given several private beta builds of Vista's SP1 recently so I would imagine it wont be much longer now before it is released. The lads at WinBeta have also managed to score some screenshots of the most recent SP1 build in action here.

More at the Dailytech.

Last week these updates also leaked onto the world wide web but now they are official - Microsoft just added them to their downloads area.

It is "Update for Windows Vista (KB938979)" and the description is as follows:

This update resolves the following issues on a Windows Vista-based computer:

OCZ has released a tool called SPD-Z that will allow you to program the SPD on your OCZ memory. Don't know what it means? Then you're probably not going to want to play around with it. The SPD or Serial Presence Detect is a way that information about the settings of a memory module is stored. If you've ever looked at a memory module without heatspreads you might've noticed a small chip near one of the corners, this is the SPD EEPROM.

Although OCZ is far from the first to release such a utility, it's the first memory manufacturer to offer such a utility to its users. Inside the SPD EEPROM information such as CAS latency is stored, but other information such as SLI memory certification and the multiple settings for different speeds that SLI memory offers.

A Russian website has had a utility called Thaiphoon available for quite some time and it enables similar options on none OCZ modules. The difference with SPD-Z is that your warranty is still intact, something it wouldn't be if you used a third party utility such as Thaiphoon.

According to a news post on Smarthouse.com.au, Palm is about to release a Windows Mobile 6 update for its Treo 750 and it will be available first in Australia to customers of 3. The update should be available in the next couple of weeks from Palm's Australian website and apparently other customers will be able to download it from next month.

Palm's Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, Olivier Rozay said,

"Building upon the successful launch of the Treo 750 in Australia earlier this year, Palm is pleased to introduce the new Windows Mobile 6 update to the Treo 750 smartphone. The hallmark Palm experience combined with the Windows Mobile 6 Professional Edition on the award-winning Treo 750 delivers a compelling mobile experience to customers."

It's great to see that some things actually come to Australia first, even though this might not be the most important event ever. Then there's of course the question of how many people in Australia own a Treo 750, but I guess we shouldn't complain, no matter how many or how few users there are.

After almost a year since the last refresh Apple has launched a new generation of iMac's and the new models feature 20 or 24-inch displays. The great news here is that Apple has finally given up on its pesky 1,440x900 resolution and moved to 1,680x1,050 on the 20-inch models. The graphics in the new models have also been upgraded to AMD Radeon 2600PRO cards for all but the entry level model which features a Radeon HD 2400XT.

The external design has changed as well and the iMac is even thinner than before and the "overhang" below the front of the display is smaller than before. Gone is the naff plastic look and it has been replaced by an aluminium chassis which looks a lot more professional. A new keyboard has also been created for the new iMac and it looks something like the MacBook Pro keyboard in an aluminium casing.

Click for a larger version

According to a news report on Digitimes, Intel is busy working on two enthusiast features for the X38 chipset before the launch next month. Not content by having two x16 PCI Express 2.0 slots with CrossFire support, Intel is going to take on Nvidia's SLI memory technology with what it calls Extreme Memory.

This is the same concept as Nvidia's SLI memory, although Intel is only going to certify DDR3 modules, DDR2 won't be considered. According to the news report, Intel is already working with Kingston and OCZ and samples should be available in late September.

The good news is that the Extreme Memory modules should also be compatible with the P35 chipset, as long as your board supports DDR3 modules, as well as Intel's next generation mobile performance chipset.

Nokia has announced its latest fashion phones today and they're part of the new Prism Series. Both phones are made up of straight geometric shapes and look rather odd to say the least. You'll definitely be noticed if you're using one of these, but if it's because people like your phone or not is a different matter.

Anyhow, onto the technical details, first up we have the Nokia 7500 Prism, which is to the left on the picture below and it has "bright, interchangeable color accents" and a 2Megapixel camera. It has a microSD card memory card slot and will handle 2GB cards. Apparently it has enough battery power to play music for nine hours straight. It should be available some time in Q3 for a price of €210, or US$289.

With AMD's launch of the ATI FireGL range today (full news will be posted later), the FireGL V7600 was revealed, but this isn't the big news here, instead the interesting story is the GPU that the card is using, the R600PRO. Although it's not yet available as a consumer product, this is at least a confirmation on the fact that it's coming.

However, from what we know, the consumer model will differ from the FireGL V7600 by having only 160 stream processors instead of 320. This means that the consumer model, which everyone assumes will be called Radeon HD 2900PRO, will be a fair bit slower. It will have 8 ROPs and 16 TMUs and a 256-bit memory interface. The good news here is that AMD didn't cut any of the TMU's, as this is the weak point of the R600 design.

The FireGL V7600 is clocked at 600MHz, but we'd expect the Radeon HD 2900PRO to be clocked higher, as the Radeon HD 2900XT is clocked higher than the FireGL V8600-series. The consumer card will use GDDR4 and should be available in 512MB, but we'd guess a 256MB version would also be available as a lower cost option.