AMD, the No. 2 supplier of computer processors, is close to a deal to buy graphics chip maker ATI for USD 5.5 billion, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday. Any such deal would shake up the processor industry, which is witnessing a battle over market share between AMD and rival Intel.

A new version of the official Qt book, "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4", has now been published. The book is officially approved by Trolltech and has been reviewed by many Qt developers. It contains 560 pages of new and updated instructional content covering end-to-end cross-platform development.

"There is a great howto about installing Xen on Debian Unstable. It is really easy to do and it runs fine. Nevertheless, on production servers, that's not an optimal solution. Debian Unstable has too many updates and things change too often. On production machines, a Xen host system should be stable, secure and should not need much attention. That is where Sarge comes in. If you pull the Xen packages from backports and install them on Debian stable you've got the best of both worlds."

Toby Richards wrote an opinion article for NewsForge, claiming that for him, Linux won't get mainstream until Evolution - or another capable Outlook-like client - gets optimized and offers 100% compatibility with Exchange. In the comments section of Newsforge readers offered more reasons as to why Linux is not mainstream, offering a view on their needs. My take: While for my personal, home usage of Linux my needs are different, I agree with Toby that companies won't switch their desktops if full Exchange compatibility isn't reached and if Evolution stops being the memory beast it currently is.

Talking to your computer has been a staple of science fiction since at least the 1960s, but it looks as if it's finally coming within reach. This week saw the release of the first speech recognition software capable of handling continuous speech without the user having to train it in advance, namely Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) version 9. For anyone else who tried IBM ViaVoice or Dragon Dictate a few years ago, found it awkward to get the system used to your voice, and even more awkward to speak in a staccato word-by-word fashion, this is a huge leap forward.

In the early days of the 1970s, computer games were little more than a fantasy to most of the world’s population. Only the very few hardcore computer tech specialists had even the faintest inkling that computers could be used for more than calculating complex equations and filling huge rooms with noise, heat, and the faint stink of unwashed code math majors.

Haiku's Axel Dorfler has stated that Haiku's networking stack is more or less complete. "the basic networking infrastructure should be more or less complete now. Also, when booted, and an interface is up, the stack should also respond to ARP requests. However, that it is more or less complete doesn't necessarily mean it will work fine - when implementing the protocols, we'll definitely find some rough or even missing edges, I'm sure." In addition, a week ago, the latest Haiku newsletter was released.

Dell grappled with apparently severe overheating problems in scores of notebooks for at least two years before it announced a recall of 22000 notebooks last year, according to a source close to the company. The source allowed CRN to review documentation of investigations into the notebook problems, and the source said that documentation was supplied to Dell executives. The evidence, which included photographs of damaged notebooks, came to light in the wake of reports of one Dell notebook exploding in front of cameras during a conference in Japan.

The FreeBSD project has elected its new core team. "I am pleased to announce the results of the 2006 FreeBSD core team election. Congratulations to Wilko, George, Hiroki, Brooks and Giorgos who will be joining the core team, and of course to Robert, Warner, Murray and Wes who retain their seats. Our thanks also must go to Peter, John, Scott, Mark and Jun for all their hard work over the last two years."

Dell on July 21 issued a de facto earnings warning, citing an aggressive PC pricing environment in a slowing commercial market worldwide. The PC maker said that its second-quarter fiscal year 2007 results would yield about USD 14 billion in revenue and earnings per share in the range of 21 cents to 23 cents, lower than its first-fiscal-quarter results, reported in May.

The Ubuntu team has released the first milestones en route to Ubuntu 6.10, Edgy Eft, of all flavours (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu). The kernel has been upgraded to 2.6.17 in all flavours, and the GNOME version has been updated to 2.15.4 with GTK+ 2.10 in Ubuntu. Notable Kubuntu changes are listed as well. Screenshots of Ubuntu and Kubuntu are also available.

IBM and AMD are expected to announce an alliance that will lead to mainstream IBM servers based on the Opteron processor. A deeper partnership between IBM and AMD could take several forms, ranging from joint technology development to work on mainstream dual-processor servers. It might even cover the creation of more-powerful multiprocessor machines that could rival IBM's current Intel-based 32-processor, the System x3950. Update: AMD also posted its quarterly results.

Microsoft on Thursday reported earnings that were just ahead of analysts' expectations, as the company announced a plan to buy back as much as an extra USD 40 billion worth of its stock. The software maker said it would buy back USD 20 billion through a tender offer set to be completed on Aug. 17. The company said that its board of directors has also authorized the company to buy back up to USD 20 billion worth of stock through June 2011. The company said it has completed the USD 30 billion stock buyback announced two years ago.

XYZComputing reviews the Alienware Aurora 7500. They find that "Alienware delivered what they promised they would, an all-out gaming computer which would be perfect for computer building novices and experts alike. The system's build quality, component choices, and performance were all up to our expectations. While Alienware was able to build a great computer, it was an expensive acquisition. At over USD 3200 dollars, one would expect a very capable gaming computer with a lot of extras. The Aurora ended up not only being very quiet for a system at its performance level, but also one which was easy to work with and fun to use.