It seems AsusTek won't stop its assault on all areas of the computing world, and I wouldn't be amazed to see them showing up with some Eee Phone in a year or two. Anyway, there are other things to be released until then, and I think a game controller to get together with the Asus Eee Box is a pretty neat idea. Leaving the idea aside, what seems to be the upcoming game controller looks a bit strange to me, but let's see what is supposed to be known about it, since Asus didn't make any official statement about this whole deal yet, shall we?

The Asus Eee Stick GMC-1 is more than just a game controller, being a set of two pieces, one for left hand, and one for the right hand(anyway, I am sure that left handed people can use them too, by switching one with another), coming together with a USB dongle, a quick start guide and a support CD.

This is all according to a filing of Asustek with FCC, so no pricing and shipping details have been made public yet. If these controllers are going to be available separately, or bundled with Asus graphics card, maybe even with Eee PCs...so many questions, so many mysteries!

These being said, I guess we'll have to wait a few more weeks to see the Asus Eee Stick on the market, but I hope it's going to be worth it!

Nokia, already the world's largest mobile phone maker, decided to strengthen its position on the market. How? Well, since they are already leading the mobile hardware market, they decided to get a good piece of the software cake, and who else could have made a better target than Symbian? Fortunately, there's more than just Symbian when it comes to mobile operating systems. I have nothing against Nokia, even my mobile is one of their phones, but monopoly is not good, so here comes the story...

Nokia is expected to pay about $411 million for the remaining 52% Symbian Limited shares it doesn't have already, and since Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic and Siemens already accepted, we can say that Nokia is in control already, because that would be about 91% of the company. Samsung Electronics still has to accept the offer.

According to Dick Komiyama, Sony Ericsson's president, "The complete, consistent platform that the Foundation plans to provide will allow manufacturers to focus on their unique differentiation at a device level. Sony Ericsson believes that the unified Symbian Foundation platform will greatly simplify the world for handset manufacturers, operators and developers, enabling greater innovation in services and applications to the benefit of consumers everywhere."

The transaction is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter, being subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. Once closed, all Symbian employees will be Nokia employees, and the mobile market will probably see another significant player disappearing from the scene...

Tired of that tiny Asus Eee UMPC, the same computer giving nightmares to Sony ? I love it, but I wouldn't use one. Why? Well, I don't have eagle eyes, and since I like to use bigger fonts...figure that out for yourselves! Even more, I don't have a clear opinion regarding Asus - I've seen a lot of outstanding products from them, but I have also seen (too many) pieces of hardware they should be ashamed of. Anyway, the bottom line is that the Asus Eee family just got a new member, the Asus Eee Box, the desktop counterpart of the Eee PC!

The details are somehow sketchy at this time, but there's enough to get a clear idea, and the design will be one that I love, if it proves that the image above is exactly the Asus Eee Box we're all waiting for. Now, to the technical specifications...

Based on Intel Atom N270 processor, which runs at 1.60GHz, together with an Intel chipset, the Asus Eee Desktop PC will feature 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 80GB hard disk drive, while on the connectivity part we have a Wi-Fi 802.11n controller, Gigabit Ethernet, as well as a card reader. Unfortunately, the Asus Eee Box does not come with any optical disk drive, so you can forget the multimedia part, at least for now. I am looking forward to the day when movies will ship on USB flash drives, instead of DVD discs!

At last, you should know this system comes with Windows XP Home OS, and Asus is going to ship it without a monitor. I hope they are working on some monitor designs to match the one of the Asus Eee Box, and since pricing is still a secret, let's hope for the better!

What’s the best gaming rig out there? Well, if you have enough money, you can go ahead and build your own atom-smashing-data-crunching-powerhouse. Or you could check out what companies like Alienware have in store for you. Among these companies, Asus is quite a new-comer, but it can easily stand out with the Ares line-up. Along with the GTX 200 series launch, Asus thought it would be a good opportunity to announce its new Ares “ridonk” system.

Why “ridonk?” First of all, the new Ares CG6155 is integrating a GTX 280 Tri-SLI setup. Immediately following is the impressive power-related part: “the ultimate gaming powerhouse" features no less than 2 kW of power with its "dual power supply design."

At the heart of the new Ares lies an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 factory overclocked to 4.0GHz, thoroughly supported by an Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard and up to 8GB of dual-channel DDR3 1333MHz memory. Optionally,, you can equip the monster with up to 4TB of HDD storage, Blu-ray drive, specially designed gaming keyboard, Logitech's G9 mouse and a headset.

Asus is pretty good at leaving people craving for more, without specifying availability dates and pricing, and this case makes no exception. You don’t really expect it to cost a little bit over you average system now, do you? Additionally, in case you plan to buy this behemoth, you might also consider the acquisition of a tachyonic field generator to provide enough continuous power for this rig.

The PCI (Peripeharal Component Interconnect) standard was created in 1993 and it was quickly adopted by motherboard manufacturers as a reliable solution to boost the performance of video cards in particular. Then 3D accelerators appeared and the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) was created in order to offer even more performance gains for the graphics cards. Apparently, the last AGP standard, the 8X, hit a bottleneck and PCI made a surprise return in the form of PCI Express in 2004. All of these standards were created by Intel. Although some say there isn’t much of a performance gain over the AGP 8X with the first PCI-e and even the second version of this standard, Intel is willing to change this perception and plans to release the third generation some time in 2010.

The good news is that the existing PCI Express 2.0 hardware will still work once motherboards switch to the PCI Express 3.0 standard. PCI-SIG chairman Al Yanes has recently disclosed more details about the PCI-e 3.0 connector, which should be able to manage speeds as fast as 8.0 gigatransfers per second

Yanes confirmed that the only real difference between PCI Express 2.0 and 3.0 has to do with the electrical specifications. The actual hardware itself will not see any major optimization, with PCs using one socket and servers two.

However, the 3.0 specs will be decided only by the end of 2009, with testing scheduled for the second half of 2010.