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Dell's Vostro V130 is one of the first with Intel's Hyperbaric cooling technology, drawing in air from outside to keep the system cooler and quieter.

In most existing designs internal fans blow to push hot air out.

Hyperbaric cooling does the opposite. It pulls air in and channels it towards key components like the CPU. The laptop draws in cool air from its left side, and expels warm air from the right.

Intel says it hasn't measured the new cooling system's impact on battery lives.

Dell's Vostro, meanwhile, is aimed at business users with a 13.3" screen and either Intel Corei3 or i5 processors.

Go Dell Vostro V130

DRAMeXchange reports DRAM prices are to keep falling through 2011's first half before eventual recovery.

The market researcher predicts 2GB DDR2 module prices will fall to $20 by 2010's end. Prices already fell by 24% this year, from a peak of $46.50 in first half 2010 to $25 in November 2010's first half.

Low PC sales (due to shaky consumer confidence), together with increased production from DRAM producers combine to make prices fall down even further.

DRAMeXchange mentions Samsung's increased output, alongside its rivals' production increases. Samsung aims to 50% of the DRAM market.

Low DRAM prices usually mean low prices and bargains for consumers-- however PC vendors can also up their offerings' specs in order to keep prices stable.

Go DRAMeXchange

Gartner revises its WW PC shipment forecasts-- shipments are to grow by 14.3% over 2009 (352.4m units), down from 17.9% in its September forecast.

It also slashes 2011 shipment forecasts-- to 15.9% increase over 2010 (409m units) instead of 18.1%.

The reason for these reductions? Weaker consumer demand thanks to growing interest in tablet devices (such as the iPad). Users will increasingly prefer such devices alongside next-generation smartphones for voice and light data consumption.

Hosted virtual desktops, using other devices as thin clients, are what will really effect PC sales in the long-term.

Gartner expects tablets to displace around 10% of PC units by 2014.

PCs are still seen as necessities, but the industry's lack of significant innovation and overreliances on a dated business model will impact its ability to induce new replacement cycles.

For the near term, Gartner predicts customers and businesses not buying PCs as they rebuild their finances in the face of an economy still in recover.

In the long term users will prefer to carry out their computing on other devices rather than replace their PCs.

Go Gartner Says WW PC Shipments to Grow 14% in 2010

Lite-on announces its iHAS624, a SATA DVD writer with disc labelling options as well as permanent disc erasing.

It writes standard DVDs at 24X, with 12X speeds for double layer discs, 8X for DVD +RW and 6X for DVD-RW. It also carries smart-erase to erase data by overwriting with random characters.

Lite-on says its writer even allows some 16X speed discs to be written at 24X through its fastest writing strategies.

The writer has 2x disc label burning systems-- either Lite-On's own Labeltag or Lightsribe technology.

Go Lite-On iHAS624