For those who don’t know what they do, they sure look like a comb. But Corsair’s Dominator GT DDR3 memory modules are the kind of stuff that hardcore PC junkies lust for – and they are actually turning up at Sim Lim Square shop Cybermind.

According to Cybermind’s price list, the top-end 6GB C7 version (TR3X6G2000C7GTF) is going for S$789 (US$526). Interestingly, that’s still cheaper than the US$579 asking price at the Corsair store, which was supposedly the only place to buy these red-tipped babies.

The Dominator GT modules, boasting speeds of up to PC3-16000 and tight latency timings of 7-8-7-20, make overclockers drool at the performance they can squeeze out of their Core i7 rigs. And of course, for most of us who aren’t ready to fork out the cost of a PC for just a set of memory modules, the looks are simply to kill for.

But sexy as they are, these modules are simply too expensive… I’d probably get a $5 spray can and paint my blue Dominators red instead.

Heads up, Windows 7 fans. Microsoft is offering the “release candidate” for its upcoming operating system for download from April 30.

As its name implies, “release candidate” or RC is the last pre-release version to be tested before it goes out commercially. The early RC date seems to show that Microsoft is on time to release this much-anticipated OS some time in late 2009 or early 2010.

Windows 7, rightly or wrongly, has received favourable reviews and is being touted as the best OS from Microsoft so far. This comes after the much-maligned Windows Vista was widely criticised by many corporate users, who have chosen to stick with Windows XP (I’m one of the few happy Vista users apparently, having got over the initial hiccups).

If you are an MSDN or TechNet subscriber, look out for the download come April 30. The broader public will be able to get their hands on the pre-release OS on May 7.

Still new to the fuss about Windows 7? Check out our test of an earlier Windows 7 beta here. Aaron had pretty good things to say about it.

The tech industry is full of jargon junkies. We invent acronyms, come up with complex-sounding terms that are little more than airbrushed revamps of existing concepts. Scarcely had the latest “in” buzzword exited the scene gracefully, we then rush to foist the industry with yet another acronym that essentially means the same thing.

Utility computing? Nope, not in vogue any more. On demand software? Not as sexy as the acronym SaaS (service as a software), retired. The current iteration and poster child is cloud computing, in which all your IT problems are automagically solved by pulling “stuff” out of the cloud.

Major rant: if I hear one more “out of the cloud” reference tossed about casually I’m going to flip. If you mean services over the internet, please say so lah!

Now, cloud computing is an ok and even useful term, if you strictly define what it means. To this cantankerous curmudgeon, as I understand it, it is:

• an external platform of some sort, often hosted by a third party provider
• provides some sort of software as a service (SaaS) over the Internet
• purchase of said SaaS is likely by usage or subscription rather than in a licensing model

The problem is, popular jargon tends to be abused out of all context, which neuters the value of coining the buzzword in the first place.

Take for example VMWare, who invited me for their launch of their VSphere4 yesterday.

Just a month after Nokia launched its Comes with Music service here, music fans can now have another way to get music on their phones with Sony Ericsson (SE).

Turning the heat on Nokia, SE is getting in the act here too with its PlayNow Plus service, which lets users download thousands of songs onto their Walkman phones.

Announced this afternoon with much fanfare (even Wang Lee Hom was on stage), the service will be launched with the SE W705 Walkman phone from SingTel later this month.

What’s on offer:
>>1,000 songs included in the SingTel W705 phone from labels such as EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and Ocean Butterflies (local label).

>>takes less than one minute to download a full-track song on the 3.5G SE W705

>>free SE PlayNow Plus subscription for a year, offering unlimited downloads

>>200MB monthly data bundle for a year, to go with a regular SingTel voice plan

>>first-month free unlimited data usage, so you could get all the songs you want

Lots of Asian laptop/netbook/device makers seem to be jumping on the smartphone bandwagon, especially at the entry level range of the spectrum. Asus. Garmin. And now Acer.

Acer announced their ambition at a press event yesterday to be one of the top five players in smartphones globally. At the event, they officially launched five smartphones in the Asia Pacific region.

DX900
Price: S$799
Availability: April 2009
Touted as the world’s first dual-SIM smartphone to support both HSDPA and EDGE at the same time, this touch phone is designed for those that travel quite a lot. Might be useful for those who want one device for two phone lines, typically one a personal line and the other a business line.

DX650
Price: S$599
Availability: April 2009
A touch phone with a dual-face design, featuring a 2.8-inch touch screen on one side and a T-9 keypad on the other. Designed for ease of use in mind.

X960
Price: S$699
Availability: May 2009
A balanced smartphone with typically every function you would expect from a mid-range phone. Has most connectivity options available, GPS, a 3.2-megapixel camera and 2.8-inch touch screen.

Philips GoGear Opus

Philips may not be on many portable gear head’s shortlists of brands when it comes to buying a new portable music player, but its new model’s support for FLAC could swing a few votes its way.

The GoGear Opus is one of a slew of new releases by the Dutch electronics giant in Singapore today, and the only one in that bunch – as well as one of the few in the market – to supprt Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), an open source lossless compression standard that more than a few discerning listeners have told me is sonically a tad better than rival codecs like Apple Lossless and WMA lossless (although I can’t really discern those differences – all lossless codecs sound as good to me).

A rival to Apple’s Nano in terms of features and price, the decidedly chunkier Opus has a larger screen real estate compared to the Nano (2.8 diagonal inches vs 2.0-inch) but also costs slightly more ($339 vs $328 for the 16GB version; $299 vs $248 for an 8GB version).

Two weeks after IBM decided against buying Sun, Oracle announced just hours ago it has sealed the deal to buy Sun. Oracle will pay US$9.50 per share of Sun, 10 cents per share more than what IBM had offered. I knew something was up when I got a late SMS from Sun’s PR to attend an urgent conference call. Wow, this really came out of the BLUE,  pun quite intended.

A touchscreen with a tactile keypress. That’s probably the most strikingly unique feature about RIM’s first touchscreen device – the BlackBerry Storm … aka its 9500 series.

The concept of its “SurePress” touchscreen certainly sounds good … on the screen – a capacitive touchscreen that you can not only tap, double tap, flick and drag your finger on, but also click on.

Click on a screen? Hmm. But will it make typing faster and easier?

While the idea of a clickable touchscreen sounds great, in reality, it didn’t quite click with me. The touch and tap aspects of the screen were great – you could highlight, copy and paste, swipe your finger to scroll etc. But when it came to typing, which I’d imagine you’d do a lot of on a messaging-centric device like a BlackBerry, that’s when the idea of a clicking screen started to come apart. First, it takes some effort to click the screen – more so than needed for a light tap on the touchscreen. And closer to the edges of the screen, the clicks needed even more effort. Will it have worked better if the screen required less effort to click? I think not.

HTC unveiled their Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 phones at a media launch today, revealing for the first time prices and availability in Singapore.

HTC Touch Diamond2

Price (inclusive of 7% GST): SGD $1,088

Availability: Mid May 2009

Specifications: Quick specs include a 3.2-inch high-res VGA display, 5 megapixel camera, expandable memory (up to 16GB), almost every network/connectivity option (HSPA/WCDMA, Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ExtUSB, GPS), gravity and ambient light sensor, and a touted 20% larger battery capacity than HTC Diamond.

Full specs can be found at the HTC site here.

On the user interface end, HTC has made some cool improvements to the Touch Diamond2.

Want inexpensive customized art, browse hundreds of styles, and have it delivered to your doorstep anywhere around the world?

Singaporean start-up Phokki, whom I wrote about before, just launched their customized digital art marketplace early this month, a world’s first, according to founder Sean Seah.

Phokki used to be an art e-commerce site with a few artists in its stable a few months back, but now it is a complete end-to-end marketplace — a concept that the founders wanted from the very beginning.

The idea is simple: inexpensive customized art from a banquet of art styles to choose from.

Get artists to come aboard from worldwide, and let them set their own price, production times and review options. The customer sends in a photo to be styled with a corresponding brief. Phokki manages the platform, and any physical prints and delivery within the time stated. Phokki also takes 30 per cent of what the artist charges.

Here are some art style examples. The idea speaks for itself: