Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures @ GameZone.com.
Aliens: Colonial Marines @ Gameplayer.
Europa Universalis: Rome @ Boomtown.
Penumbra: Black Plague @ 2404.
Mass Effect on GameSpot, GamesRadar, & IGN.
The Tomorrow War @ Hooked Gamers.
Dead Space @ the Official Blog.
Empire: Total War Empire @ GamesRadar.
LEGO Indiana Jones @ Eurogamer.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King @ 1Up, GameSpot, GameSpy, GamesRadar, & IGN.

Like other Columbia debris, the mangled disk drive turned up in Texas. It was six months after the disaster when a NASA contractor sent the drive to Kroll Ontrack, which specializes in data recovery.

The process — two days from start to finish — captured 99 percent of the drive's information.

Dell Virtualization Servers Featuring Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ Processors Now Available
15 servers from Global OEMs now Shipping with Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processors

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- May 8, 2008 --One of the industry’s most scalable virtualization servers is now available from Dell and based on the Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced. Enterprise customers interested in consolidating server infrastructure may turn to two new virtualization servers from Dell utilizing Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, including the Dell PowerEdge R905 which set a new standard in VMmark performance testing with 60 virtual machines. The innovative new Dell servers take advantage of AMD Direct Connect Architecture to reduce bottlenecks, minimize latency and increase the performance of virtualized applications to maximize the benefits of virtualization.

The Dell PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers are designed to run with virtualization software from leading ISVs, including VMware and Citrix XenServer. The result is a virtualization solution that can enable customers to consolidate their IT infrastructure, increasing resource utilization while helping decrease power, cooling, and space costs.

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Many users find OpenOffice.org a capable replacement for Microsoft Office, but the software suite isn't without its quirks, and development has progressed quite slowly over the past few years. With the newly released OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta, the development team behind the software is giving users a glimpse of what's in store for the next major milestone.

Ars Technica has posted some first impressions of the new beta, and it says OOo 3.0 packs a number of notable changes and new components. Among those are:

A new Solver component makes calculating dependent spreadsheet cells much easier (a bonus for Mac users as Excel 2008 reportedly lost its solving component), and vastly improved cropping features in the Draw and Impress apps are indeed more intuitive. When working in Writer, multiple pages can be displayed at once for a bird's eye view of a document, and notes (or comments) on a document are now displayed in a sidebar, paralleling the same UI found in many other text editors.

LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures @ IGN.
Mirror's Edge @ GameSpot.
Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition @ 2404.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures @ Hooked Gamers.
Dead Space @ ActionTrip.
Mirror's Edge @ Hooked Gamers.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning @ Crispy Gamer.
Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis @ 2404.
Assassin's Creed Director's Cut Edition @ Play.TM.
Dancing With The Stars @ Killer Betties.
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty @ Boomtown.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures @ Computer and Video Games.
Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition @ Gameplay Monthly.
Overclocked: A History of Violence @ Gameplay Monthly.
Sudden Strike 3: Arms to Victory @ GameShark.
APB @ GamesRadar.
Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition @ bit-tech.net.
Paradoxion @ Out of Eight.
Mafia 2 @ Computer and Video Games.
StarCraft II @ 1Up & Computer and Video Games.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning @ ActionTrip, GameShark, Killer Betties, & MMO Gamer.
Warriors Orochi @ Gameplay Monthly.
Ghostbusters @ GameShark.
Prototype @ Ars Technica.
Political Machine 2008 @ GamesRadar.
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel @ GamesRadar.

id Software will be producing another Doom title after all. After last year's unveiling of Rage, id's next-generation title based on entirely new intellectual property, the game development studio has announced Doom 4. Production on the next installment in the Doom series has already begun, and id says it is "expanding its internal team and is currently hiring to work on this highly anticipated title."

"If you choose to install XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7 will remain on your system after the install is complete," said Jane Maliouta, an IE program manager, in the blog entry. "Your preferences will be retained. However, you will no longer be able to uninstall IE7. If you go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, the Remove option will be grayed out."

The inability to downgrade to IE6 after installing XP SP3 was by design, said Maliouta, because the service pack includes newer versions of the old browser's files. If Microsoft had allowed users to revert back to the pre-SP3 version of IE6 -- the one saved on users' PCs when they upgraded to IE7, and what was used until now to back out of the newer browser -- Windows would have ended up in a "mixed file state," Maliouta said.

"This state is not supported and is very bug prone. To ensure a reliable user experience, we prevent this broken state by disabling the ability to uninstall Internet Explorer 7," she said.

Users who want to retain the ability to downgrade from IE7 to IE6 should uninstall the former before upgrading to XP SP3. Once Windows XP has been updated to SP3, users can then install IE7. That process allows for reverting to IE6 in the future.

"The restriction on uninstalling only applies to when you install a Windows Service Pack release on top of a stand-alone IE release," Maliouta said.

There have been rumors since last year that Valve may be serious about porting Source games to Linux after Valve Software began seeking a senior software engineer with the responsibility of porting Windows-based games to the Linux platform. Valve Software has yet to officially announce Linux clients for any of its software, but at Phoronix we have received information confirming that Valve is indeed porting its very popular Source engine to the Linux platform.

Dell is expected to launch today its new servers supporting VMware ESXi.

The first two products will be the PowerEdge R805 and R905 which features some interesting (and surprising) hardware components:

• AMD Opteron Quad-Core CPUs (up to 2)
• 16 DIMM slots (up to 128GB RAM DDR2-5300)
• PERC 6/i SAS Controller
• Quad-Port 1Gb NIC with TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) and Intel I/O Acceleration Technology (IOAT)
• 32MB SecureDigital with VMware ESXi pre-installed

Still no words on the price that Dell will ask for the VMware lightweight hypervisor. In March a VMware representative reported that the OEM may offer the product for free.

Anyway the new servers will provide support also for other hypervisors like the Citrix XenServer and the new Oracle VM.

After a surprise delay caused by a compatibility snag last Tuesday, the third service pack for Windows XP has finally made its way onto Windows Update and Microsoft's Download Center. Windows XP users can simply hit update.microsoft.com in Internet Explorer or click "Windows Update" in their Start menus to begin the update process. Microsoft also offers a standalone network installer and ISO disc image of SP3 for folks with more specific needs.

Yahoo seemingly made its position absolutely clear -- it felt Microsoft's offer of $31 a share, a 62 percent premium on current prices at the time of the offer, was unfair and undervalued the company. It argued that anything less than $37 a share, or roughly a 91 percent premium on the price at the time, would be unsatisfactory.

In the end Microsoft dropped its offer, citing that Yahoo's expectations were unrealistic, while Yahoo tried desperately to reassure employees and shareholders that it had a plan to weather the tough times ahead.

However, it didn't take long for Yahoo to apparently start hoping that Microsoft would consider pursuing it again. In a move like something out of a television drama, the company announced only 48 hours after Microsoft dropped its bid that it would be willing to negotiate for a sub $37 price and that it would be happy to reopen talks with Microsoft.

Chairman Roy Bostock indicated that Yahoo's stubbornness on the $37 dollar price was basically an effort to get a bit more money out of Microsoft and it really didn't hope to get that much. He told the Wall Street Journal, "Listening to shareholders is very important but you'll get lots of points of view...we think a fair value for the company is $37. It was not a take-it-or-leave it statement."

The most advanced corporate server microprocessor, as well as processors for video game machines, have up to eight cores. While operating systems can work with this type of hardware, software engineers widely acknowledge that most apps are not designed for efficient use of the dozens or hundreds of processors expected in future computers.

In the computer world's equivalent of The Amazing Race television show, three rival teams of computer researchers are working on new types of software needed to better use computer chips that can process many tasks at the same time.

Last month, Intel and Microsoft Relevant Products/Services announced they were jointly financing new labs at the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to tackle the same problem.

While the average PC enthusiast may gawk endlessly over pages of reviews of high-end power-hungry graphics cards, jaw-slackened by the frame rates and 3DMark score that he or she might find there, at the end of the month it is the low to mid-range card that is purchased more often than not in the retail sector. Price typically is a primary consideration, but it's not the only concern. Availability, compatibility, and other issues factor in to a buyers decision as well.

Today we take a look at Diamond's lower cost, mainstream Radeon HD 3650 that increases total on-board memory to 1GB, but in doing so, uses lower cost, slower GDDR2 chips. In the pages ahead, we'll aim to find out if additional on-board memory really impacts performance more so than a smaller footprint of faster GDDR3 memory. The answer may definitely surprise you...

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - May 5, 2008 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that its Operating System Research Center (OSRC) has expanded its focus to include optimization and tuning advancements for Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris Operating System and Sun xVM Virtualization family of products. This extends AMD's commitment to work together with technology software partners to ensure that their OS and virtualization software layers are optimized to leverage AMD processor-based platforms' features. By expanding research and development on the OpenSolaris Operating System, the ORSC expects to help drive increased Solaris OS performance for business customers as well as feature enhancements on AMD Opteron(tm) processor-based systems.

To learn more please visit http://www.amd.com/sun and http://www.sun.com/amd.

There has been a long and tumultuous battle of words between Microsoft and Yahoo ever since the Redmond-based software giant decided to make a bid for Yahoo in early February. Microsoft offered to buy the search giant for $44.6B which included a 66 percent premium on Yahoo's stock price at the time.

Shortly after the offer was made, Yahoo chairman Terry Semel resigned. A week later, Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer. The back and forth between the two companies for over three months and last week, Microsoft gave Yahoo an ultimatum with regards to coming to a deal for the proposed buyout.

The ultimate aim of Open Screen is to make it much easier for TV and film makers to send their content to mobiles and on other devices such as set-top boxes.

It aims to do this by creating one flexible player technology that can run on any small-form device but only demands that developers write code once for it.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures @ 1Up.
Battlefield Heroes @ GamesRadar.
Left 4 Dead @ GamesRadar.
Cry of the Infected @ Strategy Informer.
Overclocked: A History of Violence @ Adventure Classic Gaming.
Jack Keane and the Dokktor's Island @ GameZone.
Panzer Command: Kharkov @ Armchair General Magazine & Out of Eight.
Magic World Online @ Ten Ton Hammer.
Wheelman @ GameShark.
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 @ ComputerGames.ro.
Slingo Quest Hawaii @ Killer Betties.
The Day @ 1Up.
Jumpgate Evolution @ Computer and Video Games.
Seven Kingdoms: Conquest @ GameShark.
UEFA Euro 2008 @ Games32.
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - Colonies Edition @ IGN.
Numen: Contest of Heroes @ RPG Vault.
Prince of Persia @ Eurogamer.
Bionic Commando @ 1Up.
Pure @ GamesRadar & IGN.