Few things for everyone geeking home on Friday night.

* Microsoft is giving away free flash drive for anyone who solves the mystery. You’ll need to login with your MSN passport. Correct answers are 2 and all true. Good luck :)

* DLTV guys released episode 40 of their popular tech show. Click for download page or here for additional information’s.

* ATi is planning some price cuts. That’s nice, but graphic cards are still ridiculously expensive.

* nVidia released official beta drivers (yeah, that’s brand new term, official beta) of their ForceWare drivers. ForceWare 84.12 brings support for GeForce 7300 GS and 7300 LE VGA cards along with rather experimental H.264 acceleration. Click here for this official beta.

If you want to be great in your business, you have to learn how to tell people exactly what they want to hear. Microsoft’s president of EMEA region did exactly the right thing: he said that Microsoft will beat Google on US market in less than 6 months by introducing superior search engine available on web and integrated into Hotmail and Messenger. How? I have no idea, but Mr. Holloway claims it will be “twice as good” so we should believe him, right? But wait Enis, didn’t he say Microsoft will go beyond finding URLs and instead focus on specific information sought by Internet users? Oops, he did, but he didn’t say how Microsoft is going to do “it”. And, favorite quote:
“Should we add a Google-like search engine but twice as good hard-core into Windows? Guess what. If we did that, I don’t think a company called Google would be very happy,” Holloway said.

Despite numerous rumors about Apple’s big announcements for Tuesday, Apple showed only new line of Mac Mini computers (as I was expecting) along with not-really-portable iPod Hi-Fi system priced at $349 and incredible (cough) leather case for iPod video. That’s all folks. Now sit back and enjoy while waiting for “Big Origami Thursday”.

Finally! Someone revealed the real truth about iPod and its evil existence. As many have feared, iPods really came from the sky. I just watched trailer for Scary Movie 4 which features tripods (yeah, they call it like that) attacking the Earth. Among other things, Dr. Phil and Shaquille O’Neal had their own piece. More information’s about movie can be found here.

Oh, and we’re still waiting for Apple’s big announcement. Latest rumor is Apple “tablet PC”, but I’m also expecting to see new line of Mac Mini computers.

Update: If you are looking for something really cool to add on your iPod, then make sure to check Encyclopodia project which brings whole Wikipedia on your iPod!

New episode of world’s most popular podcast is ready for download. In episode 43 of This Week in Tech, hosts Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Patrick Norton, David Prager, Dough Kaye and John Dvorak are talking about Google Base and its taking of credit cards, Google’s Page Creator, meaningless of Alexa’s ratings, Xerox’s hidden dot-code, iTunes 1 billion songs being sold, Dvorak’s new IPTV show any many other things.

You can find full show synopsis here and download latest version right here.

Are you excited? Only 4 days left until Microsoft shows “the thing” that will set us free. I was hoping Microsoft would drop the idea and give real software support to the PDAs, but that isn’t going to happen. According to various rumors, Origami will bring touchpad along with support for Wi-Fi and Xbox games. Now I’m just wondering what will people say if rumors about touchpad iPod come to true as well. This will be interesting week, there is no doubt. Now someone please set me free.

Paul Thurrott from winsupersite.com has put small Office 2007 FAQ that should answer some basic questions for people who either never met with Microsoft Office (who are those people?) or who would like to know what exactly is each version going to deliver. You can check his FAQ here. Also, make sure to check his in-depth articles on Windows Vista.

In related news, nVidia just released updated drivers for Windows Vista. Drivers are in beta (version 87.15), of course, but you can download them here for classic 32-bit Vista configuration and here for x64 version of Windows Vista OS.

I’ve just read that first season of very popular show “IT Crowd” is over. IT Crowd is much like American show The Office, but this one is about geeks and you might find some similarities with your life. Well, at least I did. Hopefully, you don’t mind British humor since show is really great. Guys from Geeks are Sexy blog posted short synopsis for each of six available episodes so make sure to check it out. All episodes are free for download via filecloud service.

It seems that Chinese company Lenovo finally decided to take own brand to the new horizons. After being seen as IBM with different name for most of time since they acquired IBM’s PC Division, Lenovo decided to go strong with brand name promotion by sponsoring Winter Olympic Games. Lenovo became world’s third-largest PC maker with 6.4% market share behind leaders Dell and HP with 17.2% and 14.7% market share respectively (according to research published by iSuppli). However, Lenovo finished 2005. as number one on Chinese market, ahead of mentioned companies. That said, last year was definitely successful for Lenovo, but that’s hardly enough since both Dell and HP are expecting significant raise in market share trough this year.

Lenovo decided to strike and they did it good. By introducing new and very cheap line of desktop and notebook PCs, Lenovo did something IBM was afraid to do for many years. They’ve decided to use AMD’s cheap and effective Sempron along with powerful Athlon64 processors in their configurations. With new line, Lenovo finally gave customers something they really wanted and needed – a choice. Not to mention that their new notebooks aren’t black. Of course, such decision gave Lenovo more flexibility in terms of price, but it also put great pressure on Dell to rethink its policy on use of Intel-only processors in their configurations.

Yey, I know that you read about possible Dell-AMD partnership every single day with rumors floating around, and it is getting definitely boring, but Dell can’t ignore the threat, not anymore. After being so sure in Intel processors, Michael Dell isn’t giving famous speeches about quality and quantity, but he is rather being open to all solutions that would benefit his company. If there is one thing company can’t ignore, then its market and customers, and customers obviously want more solutions to choose from. Dell knows it and in my opinion it is really just matter of time before partnership between Dell and AMD is announced. If they want to remain world’s largest PC maker, they have to change, and the change is happening right now. Negotiations with Google about adding Google’s software on Dell’s configurations along with Intel’s “new love”, Apple, should be clear signs for everyone. Dell isn’t going to crack partnership with companies that made Dell great, Intel and Microsoft, but Dell isn’t going to let its market to others, and if it means installing Google applications and adding AMD processors to their configurations, so it will be. As Rahul Sood said, it is no longer matter of “if”.

Speaking about Rahul, I have to mention his already famous bet with Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian. Those fellows have somewhat different opinion on whole Dell-AMD case. On one side there is Rahul with his belief about Dell and AMD working together pretty soon, while on the other side is Charlie who believes in forever love of Intel and Dell. They’ve put a bet, and fate of the world will be decided on upcoming IDF where the loser will wear pinky bunny suit for one day. Yey. I guess it was the only way to slow Charlie in his quest for another title in super fast PC assembling. To spice things a little bit, maybe they should add some contest for cheerleaders and for best geek cheerleader offer some prices like date with famous Inq-Dell girl or some nasty VoodooPC configuration, depending who wins the bet. Anything can happen if you believe.

Guys over DLTV just released download links for episode 38. of their popular tech show. In this episode they’re talking about new Windows Vista build (see some additional information’s here), Google’s brand new Page Creator, Apple’s iTunes service and more.

You can download this show in different versions from this page. Enjoy.