Digital Trends
Late last year, executives from LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa plead guilty to conspiring to fix prices for LCD display panels worldwide—and the case resulted in one of the largest fines ever handed down by the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division, as well as executives from LG and Chunghwa getting actual jail time. But the DOJ isn’t done with the case yet: the agency has announced three more indictments of executives at Chunghwa and LG for their roles in the price fixing conspiracy.
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that four executives from LG Display Co. Ltd. and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. have agreed to plead guilty to charges they conspired to fix prices for TFT-LCD displays from late 2001 through mid-2006. And, in addition to paying criminal fines and helping the government with its investigation, all four execs will serve jail time. Terms range from six to nine months, with Chunghwa’s former chairman and CEO Chieng-Hon Lin, a Taiwanese and U.S. citizen, drawing the long straw with a nine-month sentence and a $50,000 fine.
Memory and storage manufacturer Kingston has has introduced a new 64 GB edition of its DT150 DataTraveler USB drive, offering a new capacious storage option for folks like digital photographers and videographers who need to carry significant amounts of data with them. The DT150 works with Windows 2000/XP/Vista as well as Mac OS 10.3+ and Linux 2.6+, and just pops into any available USB port.
“The new 64GB DataTraveler 150 takes transportable storage to the next level with big capacity in a small package,” said Kingston flash business development manager Jaja Lin, in a statement. “As file sizes increase with digital media content such as music and photos, the need for USB Flash drives with high capacities will continue to rise. The DT150 certainly addresses those needs today.”
"You dream it. ASUS builds it. Intel inside it." That’s the slogan on a new website, WePC.com, a joint venture by chipmaker Intel and computer maker Asus. The pair are combining to take input from people worldwide and build what will really be the first community-designed PC. The blurb continues:
"Your designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and could influence the blueprint of an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."
This is more than simply soliciting feedback, insists Lillian Lin, the director of marketing and planning at ASUS. She told the BBC:
While the next generation of Asus’ Eee with an 8.9-inch LCD screen has been confirmed by Asus since earlier this month, the rumored touch-screen variant just recently became reality. Asus confirmed the touch feature to the Taiwanese media outlet DigiTimes on Wednesday, along with offering a projected price for the machine.
Kevin Lin, vice president of Asus’ sale department, told DigiTimes that touch-enabled Eees would begin to ship in May or June. Besides touch screens, the prospect of GPS was also mentioned, although not explicitly confirmed.
Continuing the expansion of existing flash memory formats into greater and greater capacities (as opposed to creating new, faster chips as Intel and Micron have recently done), Kingston announced its largest SDHC card yet on Thursday, weighing in at a hefty 16GB. The card doubles the capacity of Kingston’s last largest SDHC card, which was 8GB.
From the Lindows.com press release:
The “Lin—s” (Lindash) program was launched today to make the leading desktop Linux available in those countries where the Microsoft Corporation has blocked availability. Lin—s makes the affordable and robust operating system available to Dutch citizens through the website at http://www.lin—s.com/ and from participating resellers.
“Dutch citizens deserve the same choices that are currently available to the citizens of more than one hundred countries around the world,” said Michael Robertson, chief executive officer of Lindows.com. “Lindash ensures that the Netherlands will have affordable, virus-free options instead of just expensive Microsoft software.”
From VIA’s press release:
VIA Technologies, Inc. today announced that the new VIA KT880 dual channel chipset has been selected by the world’s leading mainboard vendors including Asus, Gigabyte and MSI to power their flagship AMD Athlon XP processor platforms.
Featuring the DualStream64 memory controller, an intuitive package of new dual channel DDR400 memory technologies, and a host of top-class connectivity features, the KT880 sports native Serial ATA/RAID, VIA Vinyl 6-channel Audio, 10/100 Ethernet, as well as optional VIA Vinyl Gold 8-channel Audio and VIA Velocity Gigabit Ethernet support through the addition of VIA companion controllers.
Everyone wants to be an insider, and you can be one too! Choose your poison: sign-up for our Newsletter, join us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. Do all three and you'll be swimming in the the latest news, reviews, videos and more gadget goodness!
Become a DT soldier! Join us on Facebook and share the best news, guides, videos and other cool information directly with all your friends. Some might even thank you for it!
Join the thousands and follow the best of us on Facebook.
Do you like information in small snippets? Then our Twitter feed is just for you. Follow Digital Trends and you'll be able to catch up daily on our latest content, or even interact directly with our team. Tweet Tweet!
Join the thousands and follow the best of us on Twitter.
That’s Right, Sign-up For Our Monthly Random Prize Drawings and You Could Be That Winner.
