After a second run in with low, low, low prices on particular products at Dell Taiwan, Dell has shut down that country's online store until it can sort things out. Apparently this time it was the Latitude E4300 which would go haywire with particular CPU configurations. Dell is offering a 20,000 NT (about $600 US) discount to those who ordered the mis-priced PC, but apparently that only just matches the regular street price in Taiwan for the computer so people are naturally up in arms. We're not sure what they're so grumpy about: sounds like a paradise on earth to us.

It's not exactly all that uncommon for Dell to misprice an item on its website and, if you're lucky, it might even honor it. But it looks like the stakes have just been raised considerably in Taiwan, where the company recently listed a 19-inch monitor for NT$500 (or about $15US) and promptly received more than 26,000 orders for close to 140,000 of the monitors. Now, ordinarily, Dell would simply send out a polite email explaining their mistake and call it a day, but Taiwanese regulators have now stepped in and ordered suggested that Dell honors the misprice after receiving a couple of hundred complaints. For its part, Dell simply says that it plans to "compensate the buyers for the mistake," although it's not clear if that means it'll actually be sending out the monitors -- which, incidentally, would add up to more than $20 million at their full list price.

Update: Engadget Chinese tells us that the Taiwanese government has suggested to Dell that it compensates consumers fairly and will assist in legal action against Dell if they don't. Also, the $15 price applies only to the first monitor purchased with discounts applied to subsequent units for those who made multiple-monitor purchases.

Update 2: Dell has agreed to issue a NT$1000 (about $30) coupon for every monitor purchased including those made through multiple purchase orders. That sound more than reasonable to us.

[Via The Raw Feed]

It looks like OCZ Technology did it first with the Colossus, but you won't hear us kvetching over competition in the SSD space. Over at Computex, Team Group Inc. was caught showing off a similar product, the Combo Pro SATA II 500GB. In essence, this device pairs up two 250GB SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration, providing maximum read / write rates of 230MBps and 160MBps, respectively. There's no word just yet on pricing or availability, but we definitely like where this is headed. Now, if only those MSRPs would head south too, we'd really have something to cheer about.

You may not know who Taiwan-based Prime View International is but the makers of the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader sure do. See, PVI is the company that builds the electronic paper displays for the world's most popular ebook readers. Now, it's also the expectant owner of US-based E Ink and all the associated patents that come with. The deal, if approved by government regulators, is expected to close by October.

We've always heard that most things come in packs of three, so just as soon as some other dodgy source affirms that Hulk Hogan will actually be replacing Steve Jobs in August, we'll be set. Shortly after seeing a 32GB iPhone placeholder over at T-Mobile Austria, we're now staring at a comically brief report from Digitimes that pegs Wintek as the "panel module supplier for Apple's upcoming e-book form factor netbook product." If you'll recall, Wintek was already independently confirmed as said panel supplier for said product back in March, but obviously Apple has remained tight-lipped on the whole netbook / tablet / e-reader thing. That said, we do find it interesting that this report clarifies that whatever's purportedly cooking in some dark, highly guarded lab in Cupertino looks more like a tablet with a netbook-sized display rather than a conventional netbook. Whatever the case, we wouldn't expect it at WWDC, but any Tuesday morning after that is fair game.

Oh sure, we've seen photovoltaic panels strewn across rooftops before, but this takes things to a whole 'nother level. Taiwan's $152 million National Stadium, which will proudly host the 2009 World Games, is home to no fewer than 8,844 solar panels. With under a month to go before the events kick off, construction on the Toyo Ito-designed arena wrapped just in time, and we're told that some 55,000 observers will soon be spectating underneath the eco-friendly shelter. Early reports have noted that in optimal sunlight, the solar panels can cover around 75 percent of the stadium's energy needs, and on days when the facility is dormant, the power generated is simply fed into the grid in order to help the local community. So, who's down for a trip to Kaohsiung? Sunscreen's on us.

[Via Inhabitat]

Paper speakers go a long way back, but now finally seem close to making appearances in the real world. A few weeks ago it was researchers at the University of Warwick showing off their wispy wares, and now Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute is talking up its thin tweeters, called Flexpeaker. The initial goal is for 8.5-inch by 11-inch sheets that cost about $20, but the hope is to produce whole rolls of the stuff in the not too distant future, which will then be liberally applied to the exteriors of movie theaters, the interiors of automobiles, and the sides of the thinnest of thin-panel TVs. An effective range of 500Hz to 20KHz leaves an awful lot of lower frequencies lacking, but perhaps someone will invent a paper subwoofer one of these days. High-pitched video of an earlier prototype after the break.

According to MobileTechReview the HTC Touch Diamond2 is due out this month in Taiwan. Local price is NT$21,900 (US$648.93) and it'll come with a 8GB memory card inside the box. Still no US release date, but with the UK version reportedly launching next week, we wouldn't be surprise if April was the lucky month for a stateside debut, as well.

Information about Palm's hotly anticipated Pre just keeps slowly trickling out... today, we hear that Taiwanese OEM Chi Mei Communication Systems will have the honor of assembling the smartphones. The company's not one of the largest out there, but it also manufactures phones for Motorola. This info comes to us courtesy of DigiTimes, so make of it what you will, but they also say that production could begin as early as March. Considering that it's March now, well... we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

[Via Brighthand]

Not sure what exactly Doraemon is? Haven't heard all the rage over it in Japan? Fret not, as this here netbook is definitely none of your concern. If you just so happen to be in the opposite camp, you'll certainly take interest in knowing that this Doraemon-splashed rig has been spotted in Taiwan, and so far as we can tell, it's just a beautified version of the Classmate PC. Regrettably, there's no word on actual specifications, and we're hoping and praying the ¥48,000 ($497) price tag we're seeing is a horrific typographical error. Even if not, we're still tempted -- just don't tell anyone.

[Via PortableMonkey, thanks Peter]

Now showing at a Taiwanese book expo: two gorgeous e-paper displays, one in black-and-white and one in color. The approximately 24-inch readers were created by Delta Electronics (no relation to the airliner) and are being used by a local newspaper publisher to survey attendees and gauge interest in their future use. Our friends at Engadget Chinese tell us the color one is less contrasty than its monochrome partner, but beyond that, details are scarce and no one at the booth could provide any specs. One thing's for certain: they're a helluva lot crisper than those 28-inch e-paper billboards popping up around Tokyo. Hit up the read link for more pics.

It looks like a $6.5 billion dollar bailout of Taiwan's DRAM industry is in the works, a move that is proving as controversial on the island as the auto bailout is Stateside. The DRAM market has been in decline a while now, as evidenced by the recent closure of the Hynix plant in Eugene, where some 1,100 souls once worked doggedly to topple the likes of Intel and AMD. Now, we don't really know all the particulars of this admittedly complex situation, but we sure hope that lawmakers over there are able to work something out -- after the recent debut of Phantom of the Opera peformed by robots at Taiwan's University of Science and Technology, we're sure that people there could use something to lift their spirits.

[Via TG Daily]

The University of Science and Technology in Taiwan's announced that they're putting on a very special performance of The Phantom of the Opera on December 27th, in which the two leads will be played by robots. The lead bots (named Thomas and Janet) can both walk, and have silicon facial "muscles" that help them mimic human expressions and mouth movements. There will be two additional robotic thespians, Ringo, a jazz drummer, and Pica, a painter, that move on wheels. The Center for Intelligent Robots at the University says that while they've developed the robots for entertainment purposes, they plan to move toward applying them in service fields. As if upstaging Sarah Brightman with a robot isn't service enough already.

[Thanks, Tim]

While everyone wants their gadgets, particularly smartphones, to become smaller and smaller we paradoxically want the screens to get bigger and bigger. That's why so much R&D money is spent on wearable, folding, projecting, swiveling, and rollable displays: there's a gold mine to be had by the first to offer a solution with mass-market appeal. Here's Taiwan's great economic hope developed by its Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) with some help from industrial design house, PilotFish. The TFT-EPD (Thin Film Transistor Electrophoretic Display) panel combines a folding-top display with a bottom-sliding secondary (separated by a 1-cm flexible strip) to double the total panel size to 5-inches -- other screen sizes are also in the works. What looks like a break through the center of the combined display above is actually a software taskbar. While these are obvious mock-ups, prototype displays do exist with plans to take the technology -- which will included touchscreen capabilities -- into production sometime next year. Imagine this applied to an N97 followup and you might appreciate our enthusiasm.

[Via Computerwoche]