Technofile: It's incredible to conceive of, but it just might turn out to be true. Microsoft has admitted that because of the delay in finding an online music store provider to partner with in Ireland or the UK, we may not get hold of the new Zune media player until late 2007 or even 2008, well over a year after its US launch, writes Mike Butcher
But now that a Zune International head has been appointed, things may start to move a little quicker. This is something of a gadget lover's double whammy, since we'll also have to wait until March for the PlayStation 3 to come to these shores. Anyone got a spare ticket to the US going cheap?
• Speaking of the PS3, Sony has revealed more details of the PS3's online service and the games that will be timed to come out for the launch.
Among them are war games Call of Duty 3, Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII, F.E.A.R., Ridge Racer 7 and Tony Hawk's Project.
Meanwhile, like Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network will allow PS3 owners to chat with each other, download extras and surf the web.
• Nokia has come out with its first dedicated GPS device, the 330, due out in the shops before the end of the year. It has a 3.5-inch colour touch screen, Route 66 navigation software and will speak instructions, like a lot of modern satellite navigation devices. It comes with a 2GB SD card featuring Navteq maps for the UK, Ireland and Europe. It should come out priced around €310.
• Apple is rumoured to be working on an update to the Mac Pro, which could mean the box carrying two Intel "Clovertown" Xeon 5300 quad-core chips. In other words, that's an eight-core computer, making it extremely fast.
• Anyone who has been using the free Firefox web browser over the past couple of years will have enjoyed the addition of little useful widgets to it. Now Firefox version 2.0 is out with new features such as built-in spell checking, clever search assistance and the ability to restore old browsing sessions after a crash.
However, with Internet Explorer 7 now incorporating some of the best features of Firefox such as tabbed browsing, the game has become more interesting. Still, if you are a more advanced web browser and want all the bells and whistles, Firefox is still the one to go for.
