Dell has finally released a few glimpses on their upcoming Eee 900 competitor, called the Dell E (name subject to change). The Dell E sports an 8.9 inch display with three variations of configurations: Dell E, E Video, and E Video+, with one increasing the specifications respectively. Dell is also launching a second MID, the Dell E Slim, with a larger 12.1 inch display and two configurations: E Slim, and E Slim+. Both devices will run Linux and Windows XP.

"It's official: Microsoft will not accept any external code contributions to its planned Dynamic Language Runtime, which will run Microsoft's new scripting languages for the web and Silverlight content on .NET. Microsoft will, though, continue to accept source-code contributions to its slowly emerging implementation of Ruby for .NET, IronRuby. Contributions are helping to build IronRuby and shepherd the language towards the first-full release. The Register has learned, meanwhile, that Microsoft will start accepting external contributions to its other great scripting language project, putting Python on .NET - IronPython - in the "near future". The promise by Microsoft IronRuby lead John Lam comes nearly a year after the topic was first raised. The reason Microsoft decided to leave the DLR closed, despite taking contributions to the languages that will run inside it, is to protect itself from unwanted licenses and IP claims."

Journaling file systems used to be an oddity primarily for research purposes, but today it's the default in Linux. Discover the ideas behind journaling file systems, and learn how they provide better integrity in the face of a power failure or system crash. Learn about the various journaling file systems in use today, and peek into the next generation of journaling file systems.

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously they have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, Chet Ramey about his experience maintaining Bash, and S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions. In this article they chat to Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP and web application framework ASP.NET, used to build dynamic Web sites, applications and Web services.

We're continuing our detailed coverage of all the bits and pieces dripping from the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Fransisco. As you all might recall, Apple bought a chip company called P.A. Semi not too long ago, a maker of low-power PowerPC chips, fuelling rumours Apple might use them in its own products such as the iPhone and iPod. This has now been confirmed by His Steveness himself.

The original rumours concerning Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard stated that it would be available only for 64bit Intel processors, leaving PowerPC G4, G5, and early Intel Macs out in the blue. While Steve Jobs' keynote and the preview pages at Apple.com did not speak of any hardware cut-offs, Gizmodo got their hands on a hardware requirements document for the Developer Preview release of Snow Leopard, and it contains bad news for PowerPC users.

"We are proud to announce that the next version of SkyOS will ship with a new Mail client. In contrast to the already available Mozilla Thunderbird mail client, the new Mail application completely integrates with SkyOS. For instance, all mails are stored as separate files with various attributes attach to it. So you can easily and quickly find every mail using the SkyOS Viewer and its query system."

The KDE project saw the writing on the wall. They saw that they had reached a certain limit when it came to what could be done with the KDE 3.x series - they named it the "big friggin' wall", and decided that in order to get over that wall, incremental updates wouldn't do - they needed massive changes, a big jump, and they went for it. It's been a rough road, but it seems as if KDE 4.1 is showing signs of the vision becoming a reality. And it now seems as if several people within the GNOME community are seeing the writing on the wall too: GNOME 2.x has reached its goal - now what?

Phoronix has up an article looking at the release of X Server 1.4.1. This maintenance release for X.Org, which many open-source operating systems depend upon for living in a graphically-rich world, is coming more than 200 days late and it doesn't even clear the BugZilla release blocker bug. According to Phoronix, there are more problems for X.org than just this one.

Green, power reduction, and climate change are all the rage these days, and the world of computers is not off the hook on this one. Software and hardware manufacturers are trying hard to keep power consumption down - while first something for mostly mobile computers, desktops and servers are now part of the effort too. PC World tested Windows Server 2008 and two Linux server offerings and compared their power usage patterns.

Earlier this month, we reported that The Unofficial Apple Weblog's as well as Ars Technica's sources said that Apple was working on the next version of Mac OS X, dubbed Snow Leopard. The news was that the new release wouldn't focus on new features, but on performance. During yesterday's WWDC 2008 keynote, Steve Jobs confirmed this rumour, and now Apple has published a preview page.

Now that the WWDC08 keynote has come and gone, we've learned very little that we didn't already know. The iPhone 3G will be here on July 11, and will retail for $199 for an 8GB phone, $299 for a 16GB phone, available in white or black. OS X 10.6 will, as expected, be code-named "Snow Leopard," additional details to follow for sure. The App Store will feature some amazing new software, and Apple's new MobileMe is mere weeks away. Watch the "read more" link on this story for continued updates from around the web. If you'd like to read the play-by-play on the WWDC announcement, see Macrumors Live. UPDATED within.

Windows Embedded? Windows CE? Windows Mobile? I must admit I lost track long ago of which Windows is what in the mobile and/or embedded space, but fact is Microsoft is working hard on bringing new releases in those spaces. It's working on a new Windows XP-based Windows Embedded release, dubbed Windows Embedded Standard 2009, but the company is also working on a Windows Vista-based embedded release.

The story of Hans Reiser, the eccentric file system programmer, is a tragic one. The author of the ReiserFS was arrested under suspicion of the murder of his wife Nina Reiser in 2006, and was declared guilty in April 2008. Some still placed doubts about the conviction, stating that he might be innocent. It now seems that all doubt has been quelled, since Alameda County District Attorney Thomas Orloff has revealed that Hans Reiser will disclose the location of Nina's body for a reduced sentence.