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The next installment in the Call of Duty series, World at War, will hit U.S. retail shelves in just over two months. The upcoming title is based on the same game engine as its predecessor, though rather than a contemporary setting, World at War will take the series’ action back to WWII.

Some folks will get to play the game a bit earlier, with Activision announcing that a multiplayer beta is to take place this October for both Xbox 360 and PC – PlayStation 3 and Wii owners, however, appear to be out of luck. Expectations are obviously high for the game after the success of Call of Duty 4. The full retail version comes out November 11 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Wii, and Nintendo DS.

AMD will be introducing some new processors in November, aimed primarily at low-cost desktops: the Athlon 2650E and Athlon X2 3250E. Both processors are slower-clocked CPUs with very low TDPs as far as desktop chips go, with the 2650E's TDP being 15W and the 3250E's TDP only slightly larger at 22W. They won't be available in retail initially, instead aimed at OEMs who will doubtlessly put the CPUs in lower cost machines.

The 2650E will be a 1.6GHz part and the 3250E will be a 1.5GHz part. Another entry will be a 2.5GHz triple-core Phenom, the 8850. The processors are still being fabbed with a 65nm process, indicating that AMD's transition to 45nm is still faced with issues.

The CPUs are part of AMD's “Ultra-Value Client” line, a fancy way of saying “cheap” (or perhaps entry-level). This, coupled with recent price drops, indicates a change in strategy for AMD. After a recent announcement that high-end processors were no longer on the agenda, they've been leaning more towards the low-cost strategy that initially helped them compete with Intel in the first place.

Dell’s complete ownership of design, manufacture, sales and distribution helped the company rule the computer business back in the day. But as the industry changed, the PC maker was forced to ditch its once strong direct-sales-only business model and go to retail channels to increase its market share. Now, it seems the company is also trying to sell its computer factories around the world in a bid to overhaul what is rapidly proving to be an ineffective manufacturing strategy.

According a Wall Street Journal report, Dell has been in negotiations with major contract manufacturers and expects to sell most or all of its facilities “within the next 18 months,” but the factory buyers would continue to build Dell machines on the sites. Selling its production sites to focus on sales and marketing may aid the company’s efforts to expand its product range, all while reducing their operating expenses.

The news comes on the heels of weaker-than-expected quarterly earnings of $616 million, down from the $746 million a year ago – despite an increase in sales.

Intel's quick pace in advancing desktop CPUs continues, with recent announcements that many Core 2 processors will be discontinued soon. That includes several quad core and dual core processors, including some Extreme Edition processors. The quad core CPUs saying goodbye to their days of manufacture include the QX6800, QX6850, QX9770, and QX9650.

Even more dual core units are being discontinued, including some non-core products like the Pentium E2180, E2160 and the Celeron E1200. The units will still be available until towards the end of the year, but most retailers will be shuffling stock to newer model CPUs including 45nm parts.

The shelf-life for processors these days is pretty short. Most of the above mentioned quad-core units were originally released from just over a year ago to a year and a half ago.

The Xbox 360 price cuts which Microsoft has recently bestowed upon the U.S. and Japan will not be worldwide. In particular, the UK will not benefit from either sets of cuts, even though Microsoft is dropping the price of all versions of the 360 within the U.S.

Microsoft said that pricing is determined per-region, and they have no need to drop the price in the U.K. right now. Clearly they think that breaking the $200 barrier was important here, but not so much overseas. The reasoning for Japan is obvious enough, as they have a hard time competing as-is.

Is Samsung eying up SanDisk for a buyout? Whether that or some other form of partnership, Samsung has revealed that they are evaluating the flash company and considering “opportunities” with them, which could range from a total buyout to a joint venture. A spokesperson for Samsung said as much, but wouldn't reveal any details as to what they were working on.

SanDisk is the largest flash supplier in the world and large volumes of their memory is originally fabbed by Samsung – it could be that Samsung sees this as a chance to consolidate. Particularly as flash technologies become increasingly important to mass storage companies with the introduction of SSDs, Samsung may be seeking to leverage SanDisk as a way to boost their own flash products.

The move could also be seen as an attempt to anticipate rival Toshiba in the memory chip market. SanDisk has close ties to Toshiba and, while the two are behind Samsung in the flash market, they are expected to double its chip production capacity soon. An acquisition of SanDisk would not only be a huge hit to Toshiba’s business, it could also help Samsung cut the amount of royalties it pays to SanDisk relating to flash memory patents.

Just a few weeks ago it was rumored that Seagate was also considering a SanDisk buyout. That seems less likely to be true now with such statements by Samsung.

Microsoft has just posted their advance notification for next week’s Patch Tuesday, which will include four critical fixes that deal with remote code execution exploits in several software packages. Among the affected software is Windows Media Player 11, Windows Media Encoder, Microsoft Office and various components and versions of the Windows operating system.

Starting next month, the software giant will make a major shift in its security strategy. The company plans to unveil a new exploitability index to rank vulnerabilities based on the likelihood of someone developing working exploit code for them in order to help system administrators prioritize the patches. In addition, Microsoft plans to share detailed vulnerability information with security vendors before the public announcement so as to enable them to develop signatures and filters prior to Patch Tuesday.

Have you ever particularly worried about what your computer smells like? As long as it doesn't smell like smoke or burning plastic, I've been pretty content with the “factory” odor that just about every new piece of hardware comes with. That's not enough for some, it seems, who want a machine that is pleasing to the nose as well as pleasing to the touch.

Asus is going after them, with the introduction of the F6V-C1 line of laptops. The machines come in a variety of colors and designs, intending to be aesthetically pleasing. On top of that, each color of the laptop comes with its own smell as well, ranging from “Grass” to “Cologne” to “Flower” and more.

The laptops are fairly compact, though certainly not as small as the Eee line, and boast modest hardware to accompany their look and smell. You can read more in the press release.

LG has revealed more details regarding the launch of its Netflix-enabled LG BD300 Blu-ray disc player that was announced earlier this year. The device will be available from retailers in October for $400, which falls in line with the original company claim of “under $500” and also matches the price of a PlayStation 3 console.

The BD300 offers all of the features you’d expect on a new Blu-ray player, including Profile 2.0 for BD Live functionality, Dolby TrueHD and Digital Plus audio formats support. In addition, it will play 12,000 Netflix movies and TV episodes provided that you are a subscriber – albeit streaming is done in “near DVD-quality,” depending on the speed of your Internet connection.

The appeal of this particular device is of course in getting Blu-ray and Netflix movies in the same place, but at that price I’d rather buy a PS3 to get Blu-ray and gaming from a single device. I guess it’s a matter of preference. Keep in mind, though, that at least one company is already working to bring Netflix support (and a handful of online video services) to Sony’s console.

Intel is set to release a six-core processor within less than two weeks, according to Cnet sources at server vendors. The new 45nm chip is Intel’s first foray beyond four cores and also the first multi-core design from the company to have a monolithic design – meaning all six cores will be on a single die.

Previously codenamed Dunnington, the new server chip should start shipping on September 15 as the Xeon 7400 series, featuring 16MB of shared L3 cache and is expected to be socket compatible with the Xeon 7300. The design is the last of the Penryn-class before the company moves to its Nehalem architecture later this year, which will adopt the company’s new Core i7 branding.

DVRs save relationships: study @ Reuters
Where the hot IT jobs are going to be @ InfoWorld
Explosives Get Greener, Cheaper @ DailyTech
10 Amazing Google Earth Add-Ons @ PC World
See more articles and reviews.

Five years ago in TechSpot:
Decline expected in the game-console market

Even the largest supporter of Blu-ray, Sony, has admitted that it is the end of the road for optical technology. At the same time they also claimed it would be around for years to come, providing plenty of capacity and versatility for quite a while. Given how long CDs and DVDs are lasting, you might assume that to be 10 or even 15 years. Maybe even more.

Not Samsung, they have a much gloomier picture of Blu-ray. They are also members of the Blu-ray disc association along with Sony, and concur that it's the last optical technology around. Where they differ from Sony is in how long Blu-ray will last. They claim it may have as little as five years. Even if it does manage to survive five years, Samsung thinks that it “definitely” doesn't have 10 left in it.

Some of the cited reasons include increased distribution of high-def content over the Internet, hardware pricing and more. It's interesting when even two big supporters of Blu-ray predict its downfall in the near future.

Google Chrome has certainly made a powerful first impression. Though the overall picture painted has been one of incompleteness, it has apparently proved interesting enough for many to try it out. So many, in fact, that according to some statistics gatherers it is already beating Opera in terms of numbers, taking in a little over 2.6% market share.

Other trackers disagree with those numbers, putting the amount of Chrome users a little under 1.5%. Others don't even have data available yet.

These are definitely skewed perspectives. The browser is only a few days old, so many people may just be test driving it and don't plan on keeping it. Further, that's only two datasets. Other sites may differ. It definitely shows that Google's advertising methods, which include word-of-mouth, are working to their advantage. What I'd really like to see is download figures straight from Google – which I'm sure they are capable of providing.

The so-called $100 laptop from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative is about to get a much-needed boost, with Amazon getting ready to ship the XO starting in November. It’ll be sold as part of the “Give One, Get One” program, meaning that buyers will need to purchase two XOs – one for themselves and a second machine that will be donated by the charity to a kid in the developing world.

The program is expected to become available via the online retailer around the time of Thanksgiving in the U.S. and should extend through the end of December. In related news, a dual-boot XP and Sugar OS XO will be shipping in the “next month or so.”

If you've bought an Nvidia-based card in the past three years (and who hasn't?) you've probably noticed the dozens upon dozens of different “brand names” that vendors will give to the cards. Nvidia's resellers have been a strong point for them in the past, but now not so much. It seems that Nvidia is tiring of so many different brand names on the market for the same type of card, and as such as planning to cut off many partners.

In particular, they are dropping “smaller” partners, seeking to make the market for their cards less diluted. It's easy to see the advantage there. You won't be faced with 25 different iterations of the same GPU when looking to buy, and it would make different cards easier to compare, relatively. But how large will the difference be? Nvidia didn't say, nor did they say which partners were getting the axe.