Ina Fried from the CNET Beyond Binary blog was able to catch up with a couple folks from Microsoft at the Professional Developers Conference last week.

Ina has a quick hands-on look at the latest build Windows 7 desktop and its features including the new taskbar, "Jump List" mini menus and some other stuff which make the upcoming OS that little bit different than Windows Vista.

Take a look at it below and there is another below when you're done.

Shuttle, the company who made small form factor systems or XPCs famous a few years ago, is looking to make somewhat of a comeback with the launch of one of its first nettop systems on the market - well, in Germany at least at the moment.

Shuttle recently and rather quietly introduced its X27D barebones system and features a slim X-type chassis measuring 250 (L) x 185 (W) x 70 (H) mm. Probably most interesting of all is that it is fitted out with an Intel Atom 330 dual-core processor - from what we heard over the past few weeks or so, this CPU would not go on sale until half way through 2009.

On the eve of the launch of the cheaper ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card launch, Palit has just announced its Revolution 700 Deluxe graphics card and it looks brilliant from what we've seen on paper.

It is what Palit is claiming to be the first custom designed HD 4870 X2 graphics card and comes totally decked out with features. It carries the "Give me GDDR5 or Nothing" marketing message and that refers to the massive 2GB of GDDR-5 memory included onboard and it comes clocked at a very healthy 3,800MHz DDR clock speed.

First the ever popular Eee PC netbook, then the Eee Box and now the Eee Top - when will all this Eee-silliness end? Probably not for a long time, but anyway... where were we?

Details of the first 15.6-inch widescreen touch-screen-able ASUS Eee Top desktop PCs have been made official with listings on the ASUS website. The models are called ET1602 and ET1603 and both come with an Intel Atom N270 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 160GB SATAII 5400 RPM hard drive, 1.3 megapixel web cam, 802.11n wireless, a couple USB 2.0 ports and card reader and 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN. Windows XP Home comes installed on both models.

Coinciding with the launch of Intel's new Core i7 + X58 Express platform today, Gingle has just announced its first triple-channel DDR3 memory kit.

This kit coming in either 3GB or 6GB configurations is said to work at 1600MHz DDR at 1.65 volts and scales up to 1800MHz at 1.80 volts with timings of 8-8-8-24.

It's interesting that a voltage of 1.80 volts is required since Intel recommended a voltage no higher than 1.65 volts, or it could damage your processor.

Seagate has made a big step forward in the enterprise storage market today, launching the world's fastest hard drive under its Savvio series.

The Savvio 15K.2 uses a SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) 2.0 interface and runs at a spindle speed of 15,000RPM. Whilst being incredibly fast, the inclusion of new proprietory power saving technologies from Seagate are used to make the 2.5-inch 15K.2 an extremely efficient drive that uses up to 70% less power than competing 3.5-inch models.

Capacities come in at 146 and 73GB and with the help of the SAS 2.0 interface's 6Gb/s throughput on tap, these drives are highly suited to RAID configurations.

Alongside this posting earlier in the week, more coverage in the way of some hands on time with Windows 7 surfaces, with Gizmondo sharing an extensive amount of information with us all that includes some videos comparing startup / shutdown times side by side with Vista and a thoroughly written walkthrough which sheds light on many of its unique features and general interface improvements.

You can check it all out here.

During the Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008) this week Microsoft has given much more of an insight to their upcoming mainstream operating system; Windows 7.

It wasn't that long ago we saw the launch of Vista and Microsoft usually tends to allow their OSs to mature for a number of years before releasing a superseeding version. However, while hitting shelves this time next year, Windows 7 isn't so much an entirely new design; rather, it builds on the foundation of Vista.

Attention! Attention! AMD just sent us an email alerting us that it has just released yet another driver in a busy week for the ATI driver team.

This driver is another new hotfix driver for Far Cry 2 and Stalker Clear Sky. Here are the details:

Diamond have proven themselves to be capable of dishing out some pretty mean pre-overclocked graphics cards, especially in the case of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 XOC³ H2O Edition which also came equipped with a Koolance waterblock.

Now another HD 4870 X2 XOC Edition is available, only this one sticking to traditional air cooling. The core clock speed remains the same as its water-cooled brother at 800MHz whilst the memory speed takes a slight drop from 4400MHz down to 3900MHz. The rest of the card appears to follow the usual 4870 X2 design.