Good afternoon all, hopefully the return to work from the weekend hasn’t been too hard on you. Things are going quite well here, even the weather seems to have cheered up a little. Anyway, every Monday afternoon we post a list of our special offers for the week. It means you guys have as long as possible to check things out before deciding if you’d like to pick them up while they’re at a reduced price.

Anyway, this week we’ve got a few really nice bits and pieces on offer, including Intel’s X25 SSD, Belkin’s Gigabit Powerline HD starter kit, a Radeon 5670 and a Pioneer surround setup.

Intel X25:

For a very long time indeed, the SSD was a very expensive option indeed, but Intel has attempted to remedy that, offering solid-state storage on a wider scale for less-than-bankrupting sums… which is always nice.

Click through to see our page for Intel's X25 80GB SSD

Intel’s X25 is, in case anyone missed it, a solid-state drive. As with the vast majority of SSDs, it’s a 2.5-inch drive, so it should fit into a laptop without any real bother. Moreover, because it’s solid-state you’ll see faster read and write speeds than most standard hard-drives, which should mean a quicker boot… which is always nice. Your data will also be that bit more secure when it comes to the drive being knocked around a little in transit, thanks to the fact that the drive has no moving parts.

All in all, it’s a solid drive, and one that we’re genuinely pleased to be able to have on offer, because it’s attracted an awful lot of attention over the last couple of months.

Intel’s X25 80GB SSD is down to €199 this week, which isn’t bad at all when you consider the upsides of a nice SSD.

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It seems that Google’s mobile operating system, the much vaunted Android, is set to see a tremendous amount of growth in the coming years, with analysts predicting that it will outpace its competitors.

The only thing the little guy is missing is a name... I like to think of him as Android Dave

Indeed, according to a Cnet report, it seems that Google’s Android is currently bringing up the rear a little, when it comes to the mobile OS market, at least. Interestingly enough, it seems that there’s still plenty of love out there for RIM and its BlackBerry line, which currently holds the number two spot, while Apple’s iPhone OS rests at number three.

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YouTube is stepping out into the online movie rental business, with its latest move to offer video independent movies through its web-based services.

According to a posting to the YouTube blog, the service is pleased to be able to offer something that’ll make a little money for independent filmmakers, who have long been its bread and butter. Indeed, the folks at YouTube seem to acknowledge the extent to which the two have been reliant on one another, with indie filmmakers pulling in users for YouTube and YouTube directing traffic at those filmmakers. It’s an interesting ecosystem.

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If you’re a committed but frankly useless gamer there may be an underlying reason. Your brain is broken. Okay, it’s not broken, but the make up of it may well determine the success of your on-screen antics. Physorg.com are reporting that researchers can predict your performance on a video game “simply by measuring the volume of specific structures in your brain”.

Brainiac... rumoured to be awesome at 'Uncharted 2: Among Thieves'

The report comes in the wake of a new study in the journal Cerebral Cortex which found that “nearly a quarter of the variability in achievement seen among men and women trained on a new video game could be predicted by measuring the volume of three structures in their brains”.

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In December, we ran a competition on Boards.ie to see who could build us the most impressive PC without going over a budget of €500. When I asked if we could do an example post, Ryan had boasted before his first attempt that he could “easily” fit in a copy of Windows, but after several builds not quite affording a hard drive, he gave up on it.

Still, that wasn’t enough to deter Boards.ie member, and eventual competition winner, Orcrist666. As we’ve said above, the whole point of the competition was to build a PC for under €500, but this one goes a bit above and beyond…

We’ll take it from the top…

Power Supply:

Since this is a build that’s being put together on an absolutely minimal budget, it’s not going to be using a phenomenal amount of power.

Click through to see our page for the AXP power supply

Not using too much power means not having to spend a tremendous amount on a high wattage power supply. Orcrist666’s build uses a fairly simple 500W AXP power supply, which has been well reviewed by just about everyone who has bought it. It’s a little noisy at times, but overall it’s a solid piece of kit.

Considering the fact that the AXP Power Supply ATX weighs in at just €34.86, it’s not a bad old deal at all. A solid base for a budget machine.

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There was a time when innovation and TVs didn’t seem to quite mix, with the tried and tested old models reigning supreme for years – the ones that weighed a tonne, took up a few square metres in the living room and were tough enough to last a few generations. Innovation seemed to be confined to just having more TVs in the room than normal.

What's the next big thing for TV? Clue, it's not just stacking them on top of one another

If the movies are anything to go by, powerful executives (or drug dealers) from the 1980s liked to have a wall of TVs in their offices showing various images across a selection of news channels like one enormous Rubik’s Cube of information. The past decade has been different though with one new idea following another, from LCD to DLP to OLED and all manner of promises preceded by the letters H and D.

So after several years of rampaging progress, what’s next?

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Komplett is looking to hire a statistically minded person for an internship in the country manager’s office.

Can you make a decent cup of tea? Very important.

The company is looking for someone who wants to gain hands on experience with real world statistical analysis using commercial data to help us identify commercial growth areas in the business and in the Irish ecommerce market. Our promise to the successful candidate is that they will receive real, useful and practical experience for their CV in return for their time and efforts.

If you think you’d be interested you can apply via jobs.ie.

Kodak has filed lawsuits against both Apple and Research in Motion (RIM) over digital imaging patents. The big complaint? Kodak filed their case with the US International Trade Commission arguing that Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry infringe Kodak technology for previewing images.

The greatest Kodak moment in history?

Just to round off their day in court, Kodak also filed two lawsuits against Apple in a US District Court claiming that Apple infringed on patents related to digital cameras and computer processes.

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Intel’s fourth quarter results from 2009 have gone beyond all expectations, with the global leader of chip design reporting fourth-quarter revenue of $10.6 billion, which is a whopping a 28% rise from the same quarter last year. Operating income for the quarter was $2.5 billion and net income $2.3bn, topping Wall Street estimates. While for those of you with shares, the good news is that Intel’s share price jumped over 2.7% after the announcement to $22.07 per share before settling back to $21.45 at close of markets.

Intel... they're everywhere...

According to TheRegister.co.uk the net income increase was “a brawny 875% improvement year-on-year, a $2 billion rise”. However, they note that as impressive as these figures may sound, the fourth quarter of 2008 was about as bad as it ever got for Intel, when they reported profits nose-diving by 90%. This was due in part to the company’s $1 billion write-off of its stake in the WiMax service provider Clearwire.

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The founding member of a global criminal website responsible for tens of millions of euro of credit card crime is facing a lengthy jail term. The Times reports that Renukanth Subramaniam, 33, set up Darkmarket, which enabled criminals to buy the stolen credit card details of hundreds of thousands of people.

Renukanth Subramaniam, the cheeky scamp

“In between delivering pizzas he used an internet café in Wembley, northwest London, to create the site that was described by investigators as a ‘shop window for criminality’. Fraudsters could learn how to steal personal information from banks and individuals and buy the equipment to do so,” says a Times report.

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Today sees the launch of two new laptop models from Acer that come with the Greenpeace seal of approval. Part of the company’s Timelines series of slimline, light laptops that use Intel’s ULV (ultra low voltage) Core 2 Duo microprocessors for long-lasting batteries – the Acer Aspire 3811TZ and Aspire 3811TZG will please tree huggers everywhere.

Acer are beefing up their green credentials with the Aspire 3811TZ and Aspire 3811TZG

Certified under Greenpeace’s ‘Who is Green’ list as being free of two toxic substances – polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFR) – with the exception of their power cables, the two laptops are also designed to reduce energy consumption and can be recycled, the company said in a statement.

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Squeezing your mouse may sound like a euphemism for something, but this week members of the Entertainment Computing Laboratory at Japan’s Tsukuba University began to demonstrate the advantages of their new mouse prototype.

The harder you squeeze the more you get… careful now

The Puyocon is the fruit of their labour and you can watch it in action here. Essentially, as CrunchGear.com put it, this wants to be for PCs what the Wiimote became for game consoles.

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