Dell unveils sub-$1 000 notebook

Dell last week introduced a notebook with a Blu-ray disc player for less than $1 000, and has dropped the price of some of its high-end XPS models by $699.

Dell is offering its Blu-ray Inspiron 1525 for $879 at a time when consumers are expected to embrace high-definition DVDs, now that Sony-backed Blu-ray has won the format battle with Toshiba-backed HD-DVD. Movie studios and consumer electronics retailers recently dropped support for HD-DVD.

With consumers no longer having to choose between the two competing formats, Dell apparently wants to jump-start interest around the winner with the Inspiron 1525, which has a 15.4-inch display and an HDMI port for connecting to high-definition displays and HDTVs.

Mobile phones are set to become more dangerous to people's health than asbestos or smoking, according to a leading Australian neurosurgeon, reports News.com.au.

Research by the Canberra Hospital's Vini Khurana found that, in the next four years, the full impact of mobile phone-caused brain tumours would be revealed.

Dr Khurana's report, Mobile Phones and Brain Tumours - A Public Health Concern, made headlines all over the world over the weekend.

It turns out malware somehow found its way onto a Maine-based supermarket chain's servers, which led to the security breach announced earlier this month compromising up to 4.2 million credit cards, says CNET News.com.

Citing a letter the Hannaford grocer sent to Massachusetts regulators, The Boston Globe on Friday reported that the malicious software intercepted data from customers as they paid with plastic at checkout counters and sent data overseas.

The malware was installed on computer servers at each of the 300-some stores operated by Hannaford and its partners, the Globe reported.

Adobe Systems launched a photo-editing Web site on Thursday that blends its popular Photoshop software with the ease and community of social networks, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

Photoshop Express, which is now open to everyone as a "beta" test version, strips away both the complexity and price tag of the original Photoshop. This free Web-based editor offers tools for one-click cropping, colour adjusting and sharing.

Express comes from an impressive software pedigree. After years of being the industry standard, Photoshop is already the colloquial verb for manipulating images. But Photoshop Express is a far cry from the $649 professional Photoshop CS3. And that's the point.