News In Brief

Hot Rod: Satisfy your inner Speed Racer with Acer's Ferrari 3000 notebook. This power system features four coats of Ferrari's classic red paint, and comes bundled with a matching red mouse. Under the hood, it has a Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ processor, a built-in DVDA?R/RW drive, 802.11g wireless connectivity, and four USB 2.0 ports. It has been selling like a hot rod in other countries and should be available in the United States by the time you read this. Pricing starts at $1899.

Picture This: Canon was the first camera maker to offer a digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera priced at less than $1000--the $899 EOS Digital Rebel. Now, Nikon is readying a budget competitor, the D70, for shipment this spring. Few details are available, but Nikon says that its new digital SLR camera, which is expected to cost $999, will accept interchangeable lenses.

Cut the Cord: Electrovaya claims that its new, lightweight Scribbler Tablet PC SC 2000 can deliver 9 hours of battery life--that's potentially a remarkable amount of unplugged time. The convertible tablet device comes with a detachable keyboard/docking station and features a 1.2-GHz Intel Centrino CPU and a 12.1-inch display. Pricing for the unit starts at $2299.

Tidbytes

Worm Bites Spam: Do you need a virus to take a bite out of spam? We don't advocate using self-replicating code to combat unwanted e-mail, but antivirus vendor Sophos says that spammers were among the individuals most affected by the Sobig-F worm. Among the hardest-hitting viruses of 2003, it deluged e-mail gateways often used by spammers.

Please Stand By: Cellular phone numbers are now portable, thanks to a recent Federal Communications Commission mandate. But consumers eager to retain a phone number when switching wireless carriers are experiencing several technical difficulties, including delays of several days. The FCC has asked AT&T Wireless to explain what is going on.