Oh hey, welcome to 500GB laptop drive announcement party Toshiba. Shame you had to come dressed in the same 9.5-mm slab, 2.5-inch 3Gbps SATA interface, 1.4 watt idle power draw, 5,400rpm spin, and 25dB hum as everyone else in the room. Pretty, but still embarrassing. No full-disk, hardware encryption but at least you can take comfort at besting some (but not all) of your competition by actually shipping your drive in December.

[Via Impress]

While HP mistakenly claims that its sparkly new (but previously rumored) TouchSmart tx2 is the world's first multi-touch consumer notebook, we're still decidedly stoked about this here convertible tablet. Boasting a 12.1-inch swivel display (LED-backlit) that's just dying to have your prints all over it, the tx2 will come loaded with Windows Vista, a bezel-mounted fingerprint reader, integrated webcam with microphone, Bluetooth / WiFi, stereo speakers, a 5-in-1 multicard reader and a LightScribe SuperMulti DVD burner. HP's also delivering the oh-so-stylish Reaction Imprint exterior, an AMD Turion X2 dual-core processor, the firm's own MediaSmart 2.0 software, a VGA output, Ethernet and at least one USB port from the looks of things. You're supposed to be able to add one of these to your digital shopping cart right now via HP's own webstore or Amazon.com, but both links currently lead to sections of the intarwebz you don't ever, ever want to see. Hold tight -- we've a feeling HP will be getting really official with this one momentarily. Check Laptop's hands-on with the unit in the video after the break.

Read - TouchSmart tx2 microsite
Read - Hands-on with TouchSmart tx2

Alright, alright. There's a few things going on here. First off, Reggie Fils-Aime told Forbes "I will be able to say our licensees 'get it' when their very best content is on our platform, and with very few exceptions today, that's not the case." That's a pretty good conversation starter right there. He also lamented the absence of Grand Theft Auto and Spore on his platform, teased community features without spilling anything at all, and for kicks threw us this utterly hopeless word on a price cut: "At some point, it will be time to adjust the [price], but we're nowhere near that point now." We're pretty astonished that a console honcho like Reggie would so summarily insult his third-party partners, but we can't help but agree -- though peep Nintendo Wii Fanboy's via link down there for an alternate perspective on the matter. To us, the question really lies in the blame game: is Nintendo's Wii strategy and unique hardware approach to blame, or is everybody else out there too dense to cash in? But really, this is just too wild, too incendiary, too awesome for us to hog all the discussion. Hit up the vaguely-applicable poll option, and then let loose in the comments. We're all ears!

[Via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]

Hacking the PSP has long been a popular pastime, but the 3000 model has proven a tough nut to crack. Don't pop open the champagne just yet, though, Sony -- Datel has revealed a special battery peripheral called the Lite Blue Tool that boots the handheld console into service mode, where downgrades to earlier, cracked firmwares are possible. Of course, most older PSPs could be downgraded without any additional hardware and you only needed a battery like Pandora if you failed the idiot test and bricked your system, but be patient, pirates totally legit homebrew types -- Rome wasn't burnt in a day. Lite Blue is priced at an affordable $29.99, not bad for an interim solution if homebrew and "backups" are your thing.

Just hours before the Xbox 360's newest dashboard update hits tomorrow morning (10:00 a.m. GMT), our friends at Joystiq noticed the list of movies available for Netflix Watch Instantly streaming has suddenly dropped. The culprit? Sony Pictures Home Entertainment subsidiary Columbia Pictures, flicking previously available titles like Superbad, Bad Boys, and We Own the Night over to "Not available on Xbox" status (curiously, SPHE movies are still available to all.) Word from the official Netflix blog cites "the ebb and flow" of what is available on license at any given time causing a few hundred titles to be "temporarily" unavailable on the console, while still open for streaming for other devices, with an eye towards licensing them for the Xbox 360 soon. There's no way to know what movies won't work until adding them to your queue, so when you find your Karate Kid trilogy watching time suddenly wide open for more Gears of War 2 or Left 4 Dead action, just remember you have Sony to thank.

[Via Joystiq & Multiplayer]

It's barely been two days since we heard that "Dan" at Peek had opened a suggestion box for would-be customers to recommend "minor" tweaks for their email only handheld, so we assume today's news is unrelated. Regardless, there was a pretty decent upgrade to the device last night, adding the ability to view image attachments, as well as text messaging capabilities. Texting works through an SMS email gateway, with users entering numbers in the "To:" field, but we're not going to start nitpicking about technicalities. Seriously though, if they add a way to make calls to this thing, we're totally sold.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

Well, we can't say we didn't see this coming -- Judge William Alsup in the federal Northern District of California today dismissed Psystar's antitrust counterclaims in Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit against the wannabe Mac cloner. According to the judge, Psystar's hotshot legal team failed to provide facts "plausibly supporting the counterintuitive claim that Apple's operating system is so unique that it suffers no actual or potential competitors." Not only that, but the judge also found that Psystar actually contradicted itself in pointing out that Apple has to advertise heavily to promote OS X against competing operating systems that perform the same tasks, and that Apple is "certainly entitled" to ask its customers to only use OS X on Apple machines. Yeah, that's a smackdown. Psystar has until December 18th to amend its complaint and try these arguments again, but we can't say we think it's got a shot in hell here -- and something tells us that that court-mandated alternative dispute resolution process isn't going to get very far in Psystar's favor either.

Disclaimer: Nilay's a lawyer and sells bootleg OSx86 machines out the back of his van, but he's not your lawyer and this isn't legal advice.

[Via Macrumors]

Not that it wasn't official already or anything, but nothing demonstrates dedication to a product like an exclusive home on the web. Yep, LG has just launched a standalone microsite for the altogether sexy Prada II, and while you already know about the specs -- HSDPA, WiFi, 5-megapixel camera, 3-inch 400 x 240 pixel capacitive multi-touch display and quad-band GSM connectivity -- you probably weren't aware of the matching Prada Link Bluetooth watch. As you'd expect, the timepiece syncs with your Prada II and shows your incoming calls / texts, and we'll go out on a limb and presume that it tells time, too. Sadly, the tidbits we're most interested in (a release date and pricing) aren't clearly available on the site, but we'll be refreshing like madmen hoping for that to change.

[Via UnwiredView]

If you were this close to snapping up a new Zune after Microsoft pushed out its 3.1 software update, boy, are you glad you held off. At least, if you've been eying a Zune of the flash-based variety. Beginning today, the US Zunes are coming a little more in line with their Canadian brethren by falling from $129 to $99 (4GB), $149 to $139 (8GB) and $199 to $179 (16GB). The Car Pack / Dock Pack are also seeing a $10 decrease while the Home / AV pack is being reduced $20. You already purchased two in the time it took to read this, didn't you?

Not just everyone can get away with consumer-level kit, and if you plan on keeping that Counter-Strike server running for another four years without so much as a hiccup, you should probably look into some industrial-strength materials. To that end, we present to you a new pair from TDK: a U.DMA 6-compatible CompactFlash card and a line of PATA SSDs, both of which boast a maximum capacity of 16GB. Both lines combine the original GBDriver RA8 U.DMA 6-compatible NAND Flash memory controller with a high-frequency SLC NAND Flash memory module for read speeds of up to 50MB/sec and write speeds up to 30MB/sec. You'll also find an error correction function scalable to 15 bit/sector ECC to provide high data reliability -- remember, zero hiccups -- and a static wear leveling function to greatly increase the write life span. Sadly, no pricing figures are disclosed, but both crews should start shipping next month.

[Via SlashGear]

If you're in the market for a reasonably sized, widescreen flat panel monitor, Dell just added one more choice to the platter. The SP2309W, which we saw officially announced back in September, is now available on the company's site. The screen boasts a 2048 x 1152 resolution, 300 nits of eye-searing brightness, a 80,000:1 contrast ratio, and all the DVI, HDMI and VGA ports you could ever need (well, one of each actually). The display retails for $379, and don't even think about stealing it. Seriously. Steven's watching, wise guy.

[Thanks, Lee]