The team behind the eCos operating system has released version 3.0. eCos is an open source real-time operating system for the embedded market. eCos can run on systems with only a few tens or hundreds of kilobytes of RAM, is written in C, and has support for POSIX and µITRON.

"ThinkPads are well known for the quality of their keyboards. This has long been a strength of the ThinkPad brand, but when we say how good ThinkPad keyboards are we almost always implicitly mean 'relative to the keyboards on other laptops'. That might not be the case for everyone though, because the ThinkPad Full-Size UltraNav USB Keyboard is currently available for sale and it is a testament to how attached people have become to these keyboards."

I had prepared myself to experience the world's best game. Judging by other people's reviews, Grand Theft Auto 4 was crafted in a special gaming studio in heaven, authored by Jesus Christ himself, and it descended upon us from the heavens on a golden chariot made out of chocolate covered in fairy dust. Imagine my surprise when I experienced the world's biggest turd in gaming since Davilex' A2 Racer (Dutch people will understand).

Some weeks ago the popular AROS distribution VmwAROS has changed name into Icaros Desktop, for two reasons: to avoid confusion with VMware-related products, and to better focus on the "Live" version, which runs on top of real hardware. This new release, Icaros Desktop 1.1, the first with the new name, has got many enhancements over the previous ones.

Nvidia filed a countersuit against Intel for breach of contract yesterday, in which it alleged Intel had made misleading statements in an effort to weaken the graphics chipmaker's licensing rights. The suit is also seeking to kill off Intel's licence to Nvidia's graphic processing and 3D computing patents. "Having breached the contract and irreparably injured Nvidia, Intel has lost the right to continue to enjoy the considerable benefit of its license to Nvidia's patent portfolio," reads the filing.

"Two Middle Americans have sued Acer over its low-cost Aspire notebooks, claiming that the Taiwanese PC giant pre-installed Windows Vista on machines ill-equipped to run Microsoft's latest OS. With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world's third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-$600 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory."

Just now, both the server and desktop editions of the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope beta have been released. It comes with a boatload of new features, some of which come courtesy of upstream. A new GNOME release, a new X.org release, a new notification system, they're all in there.

Despite the recent emergence of several new ways to actually run AmigaOS 4.0, the supply of machines is still extremely small, and not very future proof. As such, one of the most recurring questions within the Amiga community is why don't they port the darn thing to x86?

The Windows 7 beta release is already a few months old now, and Microsoft has already made quite a number of changes to its new windows release after that, as detailed in the Engineering 7 weblog. These changes would make it to the public via the release candidate, but it has always been a bit unclear as to when it would arrive. Thanks to a slip-up, we now know the RC is coming in May.

"Even though Microsoft has, in the past, made marketing capital from synchronising its releases, group product manager Ward Ralston says that the desktop and server groups are two separate units that do not need to be released simultaneously. Windows 7 will should make its official appearance this year, but that major shift in the desktop experience isn't going to be matched with a similar sea-change on the server Operating System front. Microsoft has settled for only a minor upgrade to Windows Server 2008."

Techradar had a day touring Samsung's European forum and had the chance to interview Samsung's Head of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Kyu Uhm. During the session, Uhm mentioned that future Samsung netbooks will undoubtedly include Windows 7, but having a full version as opposed to the sorry Starter Edition was iffy. It was also mentioned that future Samsung netbooks installed with a Linux distribution was a slight possibility if enough customers truly wanted it.

BSQUARE is reportedly porting Adobe's Flash to Android on behalf of "a global Tier 1 carrier." It's still unknown whether or not Flash on Android will be restricted to only those contracted under this global carrier's service, but it's an advancement in the field nevertheless. Details at this point are few and far between, but it's assumed that Google and Adobe condone this action or else BSQUARE wouldn't go waving it about; BSQUARE also has "built an Android competency" not to mention that they purchased NEC's Adobe Flash Technology Consulting and Distribution Business back in December, so they seem to have the skill to do the job well.

Contiki released their newest version of the Contiki OS, 2.2.3. Contiki is an open source OS that is generally used to run very portable, networked embedded systems and wireless sensor networks. The typical RAM and ROM footprint of a Contiki configuration is two kilobytes and 40 kilobytes, respectively; if that's not 'highly portable,' I don't know what is. New features in 2.2.3 include checkpointing, which stores the complete execution state of a system in a single file; per-packet power profiling, which allows fine-grained breakdown of power consumption; announcements, which make neighbor and route announcements protocol-independent; and Deluge, a bulk data dissemination protocol. New ports to the Meshnetics ZigBit and Sentilla JCreate modules were also released.

The omnipresent "people familiar with the matter" have told AppleInsider that Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard operating system will have more to show for itself than "just" under-the-hood changes and improvements. Apparently, Apple is preparing an updated theme for Snow Leopard, to replace the Aqua one.