[H]ard|OCP – www.hardocp.com

The guys over at [H]ardOCP got the scoop on Dell’s plans to integrate more AMD-based products into their desktop and server lines. There have been rumors flying around for years about Dell entertaining the idea of using AMD processors in their products. In the past, nothing’s ever come of it, but with HP eating Dell’s lunch in the server market, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. However, with Intel getting more competitive with Core 2, it’s going to take a lot more than including AMD for Dell to get some market-share back. At the same time this news came out, Dell also admitted that their accounting practices are under review by the SEC. One wonders if the AMD news was released to distract us from the SEC probe and their laptop battery recall.

I got an interesting piece of junk mail in my inbox this morning. It seems that now that I’ve finally bought a decent Digital SLR, Nikon comes out with a new model that’s even better. I bought the D50 earlier in the year because it’s relatively cheap, (for a DSLR) and would let me achieve my goal of being able to get into astrophotography. (that’s when you mate your camera to a telescope and take pictures of things in space..) I love my D50, and it seems this new model is everything the D50 is, plus an extra 4.1 megapixels of resolution. (you’ll also pay about $100/megapixel more for the upgrade…) The D80 isn’t officially available until September, so if you’re looking for a DSLR, you may just want to wait for this one. If you’re really interested, check out this review for more info.

The big news at WWDC, aside from the forthcoming release of Leopard (the latest revision of OS 10) is the completion of Apple’s switch to Intel hardware. With today’s launch of the Intel Xeon-powered Mac Pro and Xserve, the last pieces of the puzzle have been placed on the board. This brings an end to Apple’s PPC-based products, and begins a new era under the Intel banner. On the bright side, these new machines are sure to bring a better performance per-watt than previous models. It will also be interesting to see what position Apple takes on virtualization now that their server line has moved to x86/x86_64 hardware.