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NVIDIA newsletter subscribers have been able to pre-order the Shield handheld console for several days now, but the rest of us were due to wait until after the weekend. Considering that $349 price tag, we're not entirely sure we want to commit without having a chance to take the final hardware for a spin, but the option now exists nonetheless. Beginning today (instead of the previously announced date of May 20th), early adopters can hand over their cash at Gamestop, Newegg and Canada Computer, along with NVIDIA's own pre-order site, which we've linked for your convenience just below. ...

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In with the new, and in with price cuts too!

AMD recently launched a pair of FX-Series Piledriver processors, FX-4350 and FX-6350, and hot on heels of those new chips is a round of price cuts to some older parts. The Sunnyvale chip designer slashed the price of 10 chips in all, most of which received a double-digit percentage discount. In fact, the smallest price cut was 9.5 percent, and the two others that technically don't qualify as double digits were both dropped by 9.9 percent. ...

"Post-PC era" objections

Supposedly, the wild popularity of smartphones, tablets, e-readers, smart TVs, and hand-held videogames has brought us the “.” To hear some folks talk, PCs are not only in decline, but are almost as doomed as dinosaurs. For proof, they point to slipping PC sales and to troubled PC vendors like Hewlett-Packard.
Maximum PC’s editors have objected to this verdict, and so do I. Furthermore, I disagree with the pessimists who fear that weaker demand for PCs will stifle the development of new PC processors and platform innovations. If you are a PC enthusiast—and you wouldn’t be reading this site if you weren’t—happy days are still ahead. ...

Well, that came sooner than expected. Two weeks after LG's announcements it will launch a curved OLED TV "later this year," the first such 55-inch device here, available for pre-order in South Korea
The 55EA9800, as it's called, brings what LG calls an "IMAX-like" experience of the home, with the entire screen surface being equidistant from the viewer's eyes. We haven't thoroughly tested a curved OLED screen yet, so we can't vouch that this entire curved screen business makes the viewing experience better, but it sure looks good, as you can see in the picture above. ...