We've been waiting a while to see NVIDIA's Ion-based computers, and now Acer is taking the lead in this race by debuting the first Ion "nettop" since the ones shown off at CES by NVIDIA: the Acer AspireRevo. This little 7.1- x 7.1- x 1.2-inch box sports an 1.6GHz Intel Atom, up to four gigabytes of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, Four-in-one card reader, six USB sockets, Ethernet, and HDMI and VGA outputs while running Windows Vista Home Premium or Basic. It'll be able to play any of your 1080p content, of course. There isn't any word on when Acer will start rolling these out to consumers nor what the said consumers will be paying, but since it's likely that other Ion-based nettops will begin to appear at large come summer, the AspireRevo will most likely be up for grabs near the end of the second quarter. I suppose it's safe to say that the desktop equivalent to the netbook is coming.

"Microsoft Research was in the news not too long ago regarding the innovative, outside-the-box research being done by MSR scientists on display at the annual MSR TechFest event. One of the stars of the show was a new web browser project named Gazelle. This is a great conversation with Gazelle project lead Helen Wang and Alex Moshchuk, a PhD student intern developer working on the Gazelle project. We cover a lot of ground and Erik and I are unusually curious given the fascinating model Gazelle represents for a truly secure web browser."

Continuing the recently started trend at Microsoft to be a bit more aggressive towards the competition, Brandon LeBlanc wrote on the Windows Experience Weblog about why Windows is such a huge success on netbooks compared to Linux. Also, what is up with that story on AppleInsider about Microsoft offering Windows-7-to-XP downgrade rights? Is that really so special?

"The Pip-Boy 3000 is by far one of the coolest gadgets I can imagine owning, and it's no surprise to me that some crafty guy with a little spare time on his hands might try to create the real thing. YouTube user larpcast uploaded a video of a fully functional Pip-Boy, created using the one that came with the Amazon.com exclusive version of the game and an iTouch . Mix throughly and tah-dah, your very own Pip-Boy!"

We almost had another small riot over the EULA Google uses for its Chrome web browser. On Slashdot, the editors posted an anonymous submission that questioned Google's policies as defined in the EULA used by Chrome. Slashdot readers quickly corrected the wrong assumptions by the anonymous poster, and Google jumped in on its corporate blog to clarify the "issue".

We've been following the recent news about IBM potentially buying Sun, and the internet had more or less accepted that big blue was going to be the new owners of Sun Microsystems. However, the omnipresent "people close to the matter" have told the New York Times that IBM has withdrawn its offer, and that the deal is now off.