Dell's next design change for its Inspiron lineup will involve a radical overhaul meant to lure customers from fashion-conscious brands, according to a leak published today by Engadget. The 14-inch Inspiron 1435, 15.4-inch 1535, and 17-inch 1735 will all take their visual cues from the tapered, more upscale XPS line and will be the first to have a unique, edge-to-edge LCD that eliminates the thick side bezels that often surround notebooks.

Intel's upcoming generation of processors, called the Nehalem, will be introduced later this year, and all the signals point to a Q4 release. As previously stated by the chip manufacturer during this spring's Intel Developer Forum, the first Nehalem units to hit the market will be built on the 45-nanometer process technology (Bloomfield silicon) and will sport four processing cores.

Mike Doolittle writes:

''Bioware's highly acclaimed and formerly XBox 360 exclusive RPG Mass Effect is fast approaching its release on the PC. Most PC gamers were undoubtedly pleased to hear about enhanced graphics, faster load times, and a re-designed menu system; but it's likely that fewer were happy to hear about the evil digital rights management that will be unscrupulously bundled with the game.

Like an increasing number of PC games nowadays, Mass Effect will require an online activation when it is installed. This has been common practice ever since Half-Life 2. But Mass Effect will also "phone home" every 10 days to make sure the key is valid, and it will carry a three-install limit. This has set many message boards afire with rants about "draconian" DRM and people threatening to pirate the game precisely because of the DRM.''

John Nilsson is the man behind the jDome, an invention that will give gamers a massive 180-degree field of vision instead of the usual 15 to 20 degrees they get from their monitors.

TISCALI Games informed that Alone in the Dark (PC version) will be next game using mandatory online authorization, similar to one from Mass Effect.

They also discovered that Mass Effect online-authorization won't apply for every language version of game - for example in Czech, it wont contain any type of online validation (after talks with BioWare, Czech publisher managed to use only Safedisc, instead of SecuROM online) and that Russian-version of Mass Effect should use StarForce as copy-protection.

CVG writes: New developer diary shows off more fancy effects. There's a slight bit of promotional waffle in the video, but they do reiterate that the point of the game is to present you with a vast landscape in which you decide how to play.