Stony Stevenson writes to tell us IT News is reporting that Acer is betting big on Linux, looking to push Tux on many of their upcoming laptops and netbooks. "The company is already heavily promoting Linux for its low cost ultra-portable netbook range out later this year, but senior staff have said that Acer will also push Linux on its laptops. [...] Acer sees two killer apps with Linux on computers: operation and cost. Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows, and the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours."

eldavojohn writes "For the processor geeks here, Jon Stokes has an thoughtful article up at Ars Technica analyzing RISC vs. CISC in mobile phones (Wikipedia on Reduced Instruction Set Computers and Complex Instruction Set Computers). He wraps it up with two questions: 'How much is the legacy x86 code base really worth for mobile and ultramobile devices? The consensus seems to be "not much," and I vacillate on this question quite a bit. This question merits an entire article of its own, though,' and 'Will Intel retain its process leadership vs. foundries like TSMC, which are rapidly catching up to it in their timetables for process transitions? ARM, MIPS, and other players in the mobile device space that I haven't mentioned, like NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, VIA, and PowerVR, all depend on these foundries to get their chips to market, so being one process node behind hurts them. But if these RISC and mobile graphics products can compete with Intel's offerings on feature size, then that will neutralize Intel's considerable process advantage.'"

esocid writes to tell us that researchers from Taiwan have created a new baseball cap complete with embedded -bio-signal monitoring system. The purpose was to give a neural interface that could be useful in everyday life. "The cap contains five embedded dry electrodes on the wearer's forehead, and one electrode behind the left ear, that acquire EEG signals. Then, the EEG signals are wirelessly transmitted to a data receiver, where they are processed in real-time by a dual-core processor. The BCI system includes Bluetooth transmission for distances of 10m or less (e.g., for driving applications), as well as RF transmission for distances up to 600m (e.g., for potential sports applications). Next, the processed signals are transmitted back to the cap, where the data can be stored, displayed in real-time on a screen, or be used to trigger an audio warning, if necessary."

emj writes to tell us project jDome has started actively soliciting consumer feedback and, of course, donations. They are currently promising to deliver their "180 degree FOV monitor" this year for a pricepoint of around $200. The videos and talk have been circulating for the last couple of weeks or so, but they have added a video of the supposed tech in action. Buyer beware, but I would love to see a couple of reviewers get ahold of this and let us know what the story is.

webarnold writes "A new concept computer is being designed to look like a tea cup. Using holographic projectors, view your data inside the cup, 'spilled' onto the table, or transfer it to other Cup PC users by pouring data into their cup." Acceptance of something like this seems a bit far-fetched given current tech, but no nomad-space comparisons are being made. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

tringtring alerts us to news that the National Science Foundation has requested $20 million in funding to work on "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law." The PC World article goes on to say that the effort "would fund academic research on technologies, including carbon nanotubes, quantum computing and massively multicore computers, that could improve and replace current transistor technology." tringtring notes that quantum computing has received funding on its own lately, and work on multicore chips has intensified the hunt for parallel programming. Also, improvements are still being made to current transistor mechanics. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes in with news from the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco of a new energy-efficient chip designed by researchers at MIT. It's said to be able to run on 1/10 the power of current chips. Texas Instruments worked with MIT on the design, which is maybe five years from production. "The key to the chip's improved energy efficiency lies in making it work at a reduced voltage level, according to... a member of the chip design project team. Most of the mobile processors today operate at about 1 volt. The requirement for MIT's new design, however, drops to 0.3 volts." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "I'm wondering if anyone else out there has a stack of old hard drives sitting around and doesn't know what to do with them. I always remove the hard drives of my parents' and friends' computers before they recycle them or get a new computer, so now I've got a whole bunch sitting around. One, I'd like to dispose of them and know that whatever data was there is gone, but before that, I'd like to hook them up, one by one, and scan them to make sure there's nothing vital there worth saving. Some are years old and may be totally dead for all I know, but is there a good system for hooking up a hard drive as an additional device, perhaps via USB? And what's a pretty good way to ensure that someone else won't pull them out later on and find usable data?" Well to start with you could always use your hard drives to make electricity or create a decorative wind chime. There are also many different options to ensure that your data doesn't fall into the hands of the enemy. What other suggestions can folks come up with? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sheiky writes "Hardcoreware.net has posted a look at the manufacturing process of a motherboard at a new ECS factory in Shen Zhen. Unlike most factories, they build boards from the ground up at one location, starting with the PCB all the way to a finished product. They also talk a little bit about the working conditions they witnessed in China."

evileyetmc writes "Advances in nanowires have shown that they may be the future in cheap, high-performance electronics. Researchers at Harvard have shown that nanowire transistors are are least four times faster than existing silicon ones. These nanowires show promise in being able to be embedded in plastics, and could lead to devices such as flexible displays that process information in the screen itself."