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Apple's iPod Too Loud for France

Apple Computer has pulled its iPod music player from store shelves in France because the device is capable of producing noise levels that exceed government regulations. The company confirmed Monday that it has stopped shipments in that country for the next 15 days as it works on a fix that will keep the device from producing more than the 100 decibel maximum allowed under French law.

Read the full story on: ZDNet News

Developers that have successfully created a thriving economy of peripherals and accessories around the iPod may have a new and highly aggressive competitor, in the shape of Apple itself.

According to a report in Business Week, Apple's "Made for iPod" campaign – revealed in passing at Macworld Expo by CEO Steve Jobs - will effectively mean that only authorized accessory makers would gain Apple's official seal of approval for making iPod products. The company also rolled out a case for the iPod – the first time it has ventured into this area of the market, leading to speculation that the company would be more aggressive in the way it deals with peripheral makers.

However Phil Schiller, Apple's executive vice president for product marketing, sought to reassure those manufacturers who might have seen the moves by Apple as an attempt to take a slice of the millions of dollars spent every year on iPod accessories. Schiller claimed the company had no plans to expand its accessory range, and added that the "Made for iPod" campaign was simply a way of formalizing the relationship between Apple and third parties.

"We have worked hard on this market, to help developers design, market, and sell their products," he added. "And that's what we intend to keep doing."

Dell Computer is offering consumers a free digital music player for customers that turn in their Apple iPods, the company said Wednesday.

For $99, consumers can exchange any iPod for a 15-Gbyte Dell Digital Jukebox. Customers can also get free shipping, 25 free Musicmatch downloads and a copy of Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition and Windows Media Player 9, for a limited time.

The pay-for-iPod scheme is designed to push Dell's music players, which, like others, have been somewhat lost in the shadows of Apple's marketing machine. Dell claims that its players can run up to 20 hours on a single charge, about twice the battery life of an iPod.

All consumers need to do is buy a 15-GB Dell Jukebox at its regular price of $199, download a $100 mail-in rebate form, and send in their completed mail-in rebate form with the discarded iPod to be "recycled," Dell said.

Sappenin Technologies has released PalmPod 1.0, an application that allows users to export data from Palm Desktop to an iPod on Windows.

PalmPod 1.0, which is currently available in beta form as a free download from Sappenin's web site, exports events, to-do's, contacts and memos from Palm Desktop Calendar to the iPod, and includes support for filtering which items are exported based on conduit or category. Users can also select whether to export private records, as well as setting how far in the past and future calendar items should go.

The product support Unicode, supporting any language that's also supported by the iPod and Palm Desktop. PalmPod 1.0 is free, although users can donate to Sappenin via PayPal.

For the latest iPod news, reviews, hacks, tips and Podcasts, check out ExtremeiPod.

Lithium-Polymer Batteries Find Favor in Cell Phones

Lithium-ion batteries will displace nickel-metal hydrides (NiMH) as the rechargeable battery of choice in cell phones and personal computers this year, and lithium-polymers are hot on their trail, according to Hideo Takeshita, research vice president of the Institute of Information Technology, addressing the Power2002 conference. While 740 million lithium-ion cells were shipped in 2002, lithium-polymer technology offers greater storage capacity and its costs are approaching lithium-ion's, Takeshita said. In addition, lithium-polymer technology can assume compact, oddly-shaped form factors, which helps explain its increased use. Twenty million lithium-polymer cells were used in 2001, increasing to 50 million in 2002, Takeshita said.

Read the full story on: EE Times

AMD Has DDR400 All To Itself for Now

It appears that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will be the sole beneficiary of the first chipsets to support high-speed DDR400 PC memory. Intel Corp. and third-party vendors said they have no plans -- at least for now -- to offer DDR400 chipsets for Intel processors. However, any competitive edge that DDR400 might give AMD would be limited to a niche white-box market selling to PC enthusiasts and power users, analysts said. The lack of an industry standard is seen as a barrier to wider adoption of DDR400.

Read the full story on: SiliconStrategies.com

845GE to Take over the 845G Market by Year-End

Intel appears to be planning to replace its popular 845G chipset with the new DDR333-based 845GE through another price cut by the end of this year. For the transition, Intel is expected to release the old 845Gs to the market as soon as possible, which may become a crucial variable for the chipset market in the second half. The new pricing will make the 845G and 845GE both sell for the same price of US$35, and thus put the new 845GE in a better marketing position, given that the chipset supports not only the DDR333 standard but also Intel's Hyper-Threading technology.

Read the full story on: DigiTimes

Tyan Puts Dual Xeons on ATX Motherboard

Tyan today claimed a first -- a dual Xeon motherboard with the ATX board form factor. The upshot means that system builders and OEMs can build smaller servers, maybe cheaper. The Tyan Tiger i7500 incorporates Intel's E7500 chipset. It features dual independent PCI-X buses and Gigabit and Fast Ethernet LAN ports. The Tiger i7500 comes in two flavors-- the S2722GNN, with four standard DIMM sockets for up to 8GB of DDR memory, and the S2722GNN-1U, which has two angled DIMM sockets for up to 4GB of DDR.

Read the full story on: The Register

Slump to Squash Flat-Panel Prices

Shipments of the flat-panel monitors dipped during the second quarter, according to a new report, leading to an oversupply of components and sparking a new round of price cuts. DisplaySearch, which tracks the monitor market, said unit shipments of flat-panel displays slipped by 3 percent sequentially during that quarter to 7.3 million units. Falling LCD screen prices, combined with rebates, have helped push many brand-name 17-inch flat-panel displays below the $500 mark. While that price is still a couple of hundred dollars higher than a top-of-the-line 19-inch CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitor, it's close to the price level of 15-inch flat-panel monitors just a few months ago.

Read the full story on: CNET News.com