We're not sure how practical these iPod Nano cases are, but with their horns and forked tail, we're sure they'll appeal to music fans whose tastes tend toward the diabolic. At least the "high grade" silicone shell undertakes the saintly task of keeping your digital music player unstained and unscratched.

Napster will post a smaller loss for its fourth fiscal quarter than it previously forecast. The reason? Greater-than-expected subscriber growth has taken numbers paying for its music rental service to over 600,000.

Asus this week lauded its latest laptops' successful attempt to win the thumbs-up from audio specialist Dolby. Announcing two new machines, Asus said one comes with the Dolby Home Theater stamp of approval, while the other ships with "gameplay transforming" Dolby Digital Live technology.

Acer has re-iterated its plan to bundle Vodafone-branded 'super 3G' HSDPA data cards with a pair of upcoming notebook PCs, pledging to introduce TravelMate and Aspire laptops with the cards in the coming months.

Acer yesterday announced the second notebook to support HD DVD, following the lead set by Toshiba, the next-generation optical disc format's chief cheerleader, and as predicted. But don't expect it to ship with such a drive immediately - the first models may only ship with DVD drives.

Don't expect AMD to offer a 65nm Mobile Athlon 64 X2 processor. According to alleged Turion roadmap details, the dual-core Mobile Athlon 64s will only be fabricated using a 90nm process, for the foreseeable future at least. AMD's 65nm mobile parts are due Q1 2007.

Nvidia has launched a PC add-in TV tuner card with two tuners, both of them ready to receive and record analogue broadcasts around the world. Nvidia has two versions: the NTSC-supporting part unveiled this week and a PAL/SECAM model.

US-based storage specialist Kanguru has launched the product for Flash disk fans who are unhappy with the weenie capacity most USB drives offer: a memory key with a whopping 64GB of storage capacity. The downside? It'll cost you rather more than your computer probably did.

Liteon will this month ship an external DVD writer that uses a slot-load mechanism rather than the more commonplace drawer system. The company is pitching the product at notebook users, though its slimline styling should appeal to desktop users too.

Sony this week unveiled a raft of DVD writers with built-in hard disk storage, two of which will also feature GemStar Guide Plus+ electronic programme guide (EPG). The five new models sport hard drives of between 80GB and 250GB unformatted storage capacity and DVD±R/RW drives with dual-layer support.

Group Test Fingerprint recognition might not be all it's cracked up to be - as it has been proven time and time again that there are ways around it - bit it's still far better than no security at all. As long as it's set up properly, it works well enough, and it's fairly easy to use. Many laptops now come with built-in biometric security, but what about the data that's not on your notebook?

Five industry organisations are together calling on European states to abolish - or at least significantly reduce - "outdated" levies raised on digital media and devices to compensate copyright holders for losses they incur through unauthorised copying.

US software company Parallels has posted a pre-release version of its upcoming virtualisation tool for Intel-based Macs. Coming in response to the release of Apple's Windows XP-oriented Boot Camp utility, the Parallel product eliminates the need to choose which operating system the users at start-up. Instead, users can flip between operating systems at will.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has claimed reports that its senior staffers let slip how much the company plans to charge for the PlayStation 3 when the console ships next November are "incorrect".

Sony has updated its skinny Cyber-shot T family with a 7.2 megapixel model that also incorporates the company's anti-shake system, Super Steady Shot. The slimline camera also features a high sensitivity ISO 1000 setting to improve its picture-taking ability in low light conditions.

Modeo, the US company evangelising the DVB-H digital TV standard Stateside, is to offer a Windows Mobile 5-based smart phone capable of receiving and displaying such broadcasts. The handset, manufactured by Taiwan's HTC, will go on sale in the second half of the year, the company announced yesterday.

Hard disk drive makers Seagate and Cornice have ended their feud and granted themselves 20 months' breathing space before they're allowed to start fighting again. The two companies this week said they had dismissed their lawsuits and countersuits and "agreed not to sue each other for patent infringement through the end of 2007".

Review Round-up This week's no-holds-barred product assessments from around the web...

Review It's generally a waste of a lot of money to go for a top-of-the-range card from any manufacturer. Unless you really, really need that extra little bit of performance, it makes more financial sense to go for the next card down. This is especially the case with ATI's X1900 XT and X1900 XTX - the XTX's performance advantage over the XT simply isn't enough to justify its higher price...

Suddenly, all sorts of small companies are crawling out into the sunlight to tout alternative optical media technologies that will support HD content without the need to move from the current red-laser technology to tomorrow's blue-wavelength lasers.