The government will spend an extra 25m to put thousands more mobile devices in the hands of police in an attempt to further reduce paperwork and give officers on-the-spot access to information when out on patrol.

In May, policing minister Tony McNulty announced a 50m investment to furnish 27 police forces with 10,000 mobile computers. The new funding will pay for an additional 15,000 handheld computers by March 2010, bringing the total number to around 30,000 by 2010, according to policing support organisation the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which will manage distribution of the cash.

Richard Earland, chief information officer of the NPIA, said reducing the bureaucracy burden on police officers is a key theme of the government’s policing green paper, published last week, and of the independent Flanagan Review of policing which, among other things, has highlighted the need for the police to boost community presence, increase efficiency and better manage information.

Mobile devices can play an important role in delivering these reforms, Earland added.

He said in a statement: “When used appropriately, handheld computers keep officers out in the community and make them visible to the public.

(Full article ‘Police to get thousands more mobile devices’)

Advanced Micro Devices has written down another $880 million from their goodwill and intangible assets in the recently ended quarter quarter, the company said in a statement with Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm said that its handheld and DTV businesses were not demonstrating expected financial results.

After performing an interim impairment analysis of its goodwill and intangible assets associated with its handheld and DTV reporting units of the Consumer Electronics segment that it acquired from ATI Technologies, the company concluded that the current carrying value of the goodwill and intangible assets associated with these reporting units was impaired.

AMD’s estimate is that the goodwill and intangible asset impairment charges will be approximately $880 million.

(Full article ‘AMD Writes Down $880 Million Following Inability to Execute in Consumer Electronics Business’)

Intel Corp. today announced the receipt of 510(k) market clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Intel’s personal health system, the Intel Health Guide, a care management tool for healthcare professionals who manage patients with chronic conditions. This is almost the first time when Intel officially gets into the healthcare market.

The Intel Health Guide is a comprehensive solution, combining an in-home patient device, as well as an online interface allowing clinicians to monitor patients and remotely manage care. The solution offers interactive tools for personalized care management and integrates vital sign collection, patient reminders, multimedia educational content and feedback and communications tools such as video conferencing and e-mail.

The Health Guide can connect to specific models of wired and wireless medical devices, including blood pressure monitors, glucose meters, pulse oximeters, peak flow meters and weight scales.

(Full article ‘Intel Receives Clearance on In-Home Medical Device’)

Not only customers in the U.S. are skeptical about mobile Internet devices (MIDs), but also hardware makers from Taiwan do not appear to have any optimistic feelings about the future of MIDs.

Citing unnamed Taiwan-based hardware manufacturers, DigiTimes web-site reported that amid increasing popularity of inexpensive notebooks with 7” – 10” screens there will be virtually no demand towards MIDs before mid-2009, which is a completely different scenario that Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp., the biggest backers of mobile Internet devices, would like to see.

MIDs are handheld gadgets with main purpose of browsing the Internet. Due to relatively high heat dissipation and power consumption they are relatively big these days, hence, customers are not really interested in them right now and prefer smartphones instead.

The clear winner in survey of U.S.

(Full article ‘PC Makers Not Optimistic about Mobile Internet Devices’)

Asus has released the final specifications and UK pricing for its two new Eee PC models, the 904 and the 1000.

The Eee 1000 is Asus’s long-awaited extension of the Eee line into 10-inch-screen territory, and brings the company up against rivals’ devices, such as the MSI Wind. Because the chassis of the Eee 1000 is larger than other netbooks in the line, it can accommodate a larger keyboard.

The Eee 904 is effectively the Eee 900 in the chassis of the Eee 1000, larger keyboard included. Like the smaller Eee 900, the 904 has an 8.9-inch screen and uses a Celeron processor rather than the low-powered Atom processor used in the 1000 and the 901.

Despite their differing screen sizes, both the 1000 and the 904 have a screen resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels.

(Full article ‘Asus reveals specs, pricing for Eee 904 and 1000′)