Xbox 360 consoles are already dirt cheap in the US. Now Microsoft has utterly soiled itself through a series of Dell coupons dropping the prices of the Xbox 360 Arcade, Pro, and Elite Holiday Bundles by $30 (now $169), $50 (now $250), and $70 (now $330), respectively, just in time for the holidays. Better yet, we're talking free shipping and either one or two free game tossed in for grins. Hurry now, the offers expire on Monday and it's not like you can afford to take the family to grandma's house this year anyway.

Read -- Arcade
Read -- Pro
Read -- Elite

Sure, the US has fancy-pants capacitive touchscreen phones out the wazoo, but Japan's superphones still dominate when boiled down to a base, spec-for-spec comparison. Take this new Sharp SH-01A clamshell for example, just revealed by the FCC. It sports a 28mm wide-angle lens with 8 megapixel CCD sensor and, according to rumor, Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound for your microSD stored media. Remember, FCC testing doesn't mean it'll be sold between the left and right coasts -- this flip is likely just being certified for US roaming whenever it's finally announced for NTT DoCoMo in Japan.

Get ready for some legal mastication. According to DigiTimes' manufacturing sources, HP -- the world's leading supplier of PCs -- is said to be demanding that its manufacturing partners "refuse outsourcing orders from ASUStek." HP apparently "sent out a notice" to its partners threatening to reduce its own outsourcing volume for anyone who violates the demand. It's worth noting that DigiTimes offers no evidence of HP's demand and its sources can be hit or miss in the industry. Having said that, DigiTimes has a very good track record related to leaks in the netbook industry. The allegation becomes all the more interesting on the heels of yesterday's Gartner report that shows HP slipping into second place behind Acer in Europe due to Acer's strong continental netbook sales. While worldwide PC shipments rose 15 percent from last year thanks to a strong showing by both ASUS and Acer in the netbook segment, HP's share has remained stagnant at 18.4% of the total market. Perhaps it's time to reinstate that internal spying program to prepare for some anti-competitive practices litigation, eh HP?

Read -- HP threatening notebook OEMs
Read -- HP drops to 2nd in Europe

You've seen our hands-on first impressions, now check the video summary of the new multi-touch, glass trackpad featured on Apple's new MacBooks. It covers 2-, 3-, and 4- finger gestures in addition to the traditional 1 finger gesture some of you would like to direct towards Steve for all those glossy displays. See the demonstration after the break.

We can finally bring an end to all the fuss made about the custom, 65-nm processor dusted-off special for use in the MacBook Air -- it's gone, although still available inside the Voodoo Envy if you're feeling nostalgic. Intel confirmed its replacement by the smaller, off-the-shelf, 45-nm Penryn-class 1.6GHz and 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo procs which go by the product names SL9300 and SL9400, respectively. So while those clock speeds are identical to the first generation MacBook Air, the bump from 4MB to 6MB of L2 cache in the new Core 2 Duo "S" processor should give the processor access to more information, faster, while providing less drain on the battery thanks to a drop in TDP from 20W to 17W. For the record, while Intel laments the loss of Apple's laptop graphics business to NVIDIA, an Intel spokesperson says it'll "work hard to win back the business." Hmm, we talking Larrabee by any chance?

When you're digging a hole for yourself, you might as well keep digging in hopes of emerging from the other side. Today SanDisk unearthed its Sansa slotMusic Player -- specially designed for those ill-fated slotMusic microSD cards pre-loaded with DRM-free music from "dozens of popular artists" (a bit over 3 dozen to be exact) at $15 a pop. It'll also play your self-loaded music on microSD cards (currently maxing out at 16GB) just as long as it's loaded in either MP3 and unprotected WMA formats. The tiny, display-less, 2.8 x 1.4 x 1.4-inch (that can't be right, but that's what the press release says) player sells for $20 (or $35 for artist branding and 1GB slotMusic card album) and is available immediately along side a smattering of accessories from US shops like Best Buy and fittingly, Wal-Mart. Headed to Europe and other global destinations sometime in 2009 assuming the whole format isn't scrapped after disappointing holiday sales are tallied.

Read -- slotMusic Player
Read -- slotMusic Artists

Uh oh. ASUS just issued a recall for all Eee Box PCs sold in Japan due to a nasty pre-installed worm. The malicious code dubbed "recycled.exe" may attempt to download additional malware while attempting to replicate itself to attached USB storage devices at the first opportunity. Of course, this isn't the first time that ASUS has been embarrassed by its image burns. Who could forget the the illegal keygen and confidential documentation shipped on those brand new laptops last month? Apparently, only ASUS who has yet to clean house.

[Via The Inquirer]

Somehow, we don't think that this was what Swarovski had in mind when they began whoring their luxury name onto consumer electronics a few years ago. The Scitec SEB-100 canal-type earbuds with fancy, "hand-pasted" crystals will cost ¥10,000 (about 100 US beans) when they hit Japan later this month. The perfect gift for the glam-rock pansy struggling with middle age on your Malibu, beachside block.

We've been fans of Samsung laptops ever since we laid hands (and personal cash) on the ultra-portable Q30 resold by Dell as the X1. As such, Sammy has our full attention after announcing proper plans to enter the US market with five different Samsung-branded laptop models. Slated for sale at US big box and the usual brick-and-mortarless on-line shops are the 10-inch NC10, the 13.3-inch Q310 and X360, 14-inch X460 and P460, 15.4-inch P560, and 16-inch R610 slab with 16:9 aspect -- a silicon feast spread across thin and light, all purpose, business, desktop replacement, and netbook tastes. We're talking premium rigs here folks, a bold move with very questionable timing given the sudden shortage of discretionary capital held by the average Dusty McSixpack. Hit the read link for full specs and prices.

Listen up all you Palm Treo Pro hopefuls, your pre-order unit is now shipping with Palm's on-line store showing in stock availability. At least one tipster received a confirmation email saying his unlocked, $549 obsidian-black Treo is in the mail. Hell, Palm even did him a solid and expedited the order overnight instead of the 6-10 day standard shipment originally selected. Good on ya Palm.

[Thanks, Matt B.]

Forget everything you know about perspective, Samsung's Haptic 2 is clearly one huge-ass handset. Amazing that the jumbo-handed product waif on the left can even hoist the beast without so much as a grimace. Otherwise, Samsung's newest fullscreen device looks every bit the hot Korean cousin to the i900 Omnia. The Haptic 2 followup to the original Haptic features DMB television, 4GB (SCH-W550 or SPH-W5500, about $600) or 16GB (SCH-W555, about $690) of storage, integrated mobile banking, and improved (more sensitive) 3.2-inch touchscreen and an updated TouchWiz UI now sporting 50 widget applications (up from 15) and user defined vibration tones -- whoa, better beef up security for the Korean launch Sammy.

[Via Telecoms Korea]

October 2nd: mark it down 'cause Reuters says that's the date that Nokia will launch its Nokia Tube -- aka, 5800 XpressMusic. According to a pair of industry sources, Nokia will launch the much anticipated, long overdue, S60 touchscreen device at a media and analyst event in London -- exactly as Pocket-lint's source told us earlier. All that's left now is for the invites to be distributed.

If you can't get your goods into China via the front door, there's always the back. Apple is now selling its iPhone 3G unlocked via its on-line Apple Store in Hong Kong. The 8GB model sells for HK$5,500 (about US$694) or HK$6,200 (about $797) for the 16 gigger. Already available since July 11th with a local Hutchison Telecommunications contract, this is the first time that Apple has sold its device unlocked in Hong Kong:

"iPhone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier. Simply insert the SIM from your current phone into iPhone 3G and connect to iTunes 8 to complete activation."

Unfortunately for the 1 billion mainland Chinese, the terms and conditions limit sales to those in Hong Kong only -- not that the gray market cares about T&Cs. It'll be interesting to see if Apple extends the unlocking more broadly (presumably as exclusivity deals expire) or if this is strictly a local phenomena, perhaps in direct response to having its WiFi and the imperialistic 3G gutted from handsets sold under Apple's rumored China Mobile deal.

[Via PC World, thanks Twins N]

Get your flash here, red hot flash memory. Toshiba is now sampling its new 256GB SSD with a 120MB max read and 70MBps write via 3.0Gbps SATA interface -- not the fastest consumer SSD but not bad. This 2.5-inch slab measures just 3.0-mm thick and targets laptops looking to shed the 9.5-mm constraint presented by standard hard disks. Like Samsung, Tosh also announced new 8GB, 16GB and 32GB SATA flash modules aimed directly at the booming netbook market with speeds topping-out at 80MBps for reads and 50MBps for writes. All the drives feature MLC-based NAND which accounts for the less-than blazing SSD speeds. On the other hand, that should help keep the costs low when these things ship in quantity later this year.

Look National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, we understand this is your first walking, bi-pedal robot -- but why the peel-away face? Just slap in some big manga eyes and button-mouth and we might be able to sleep at night. But no, you show up at the Taipei International Invention Show with this creepoid, capable of singing via synthesizer and walking 2-meters in a straight line -- presumably in preparation to celebrate our demise.