Apple has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software.

Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor has a prototype low-cost notebook using ARM-designed chips is the latest evidence that the UK company could play a major part in the next wave of computing.

Toshiba, a company best known for making laptops and consumer electronics, on Monday said that it will enter the solar-photovoltaics business. Toshiba's photovoltaics business will be part of the conglomerate's Transmission Distribution & Industrial Systems business, which makes equipment for natural-gas power plants.

Across the whole holiday season 3.7 million Blu-ray units were sold in Britain, and that doesn't include sales of Sony's Playstation 3 console, which also plays Blu-ray movies.

Sony is likely to announce closures of Japanese factories and major divisions early next month, the Times of London said on Monday, but the company denied any such plan existed. The maker of Bravia flat TVs and PlayStation video game consoles faces halting sales and mounting piles of inventory in the wake of the financial crisis, even as a stronger yen bites into earnings.

Freescale on Monday is expected to announce a new processor for netbooks that may challenge chip maker Intel on price in the low-cost computing space. The company's i.MX515 processor will run on netbooks, low-cost laptops that are designed to perform basic computing functions like accessing the Internet and running productivity applications.

Mainstream SSD drives tend to be limited to 80 GB or less for affordability. There are drives that have larger capacities, but the cost is significantly higher than a similar HDD, which is what is keeping SSD drives out of the hands of many at this point. Despite this, capacities are ramping up fast!

It seems that Samsung will be the first tier one handset maker to release an Android phone, pipping Motorola, Huawei and Sony Ericsson to the post with a 2Q launch in the US planned.

The ministry said Japan aims to have solar power systems installed on more than 70 percent of new homes. The new efforts will also include solar power education in schools, the development of refined deep cycle battery technologies and the installation of grid connections.