Some computer repair shops are illegally accessing personal data on customers' hard drives and even trying to hack their bank accounts, a Sky News investigation has found.

In one case, passwords, log-in details and vacation photographs were all copied onto a portable memory stick by a technician. In other shops, customers were charged for non-existent work and simple faults were misdiagnosed.

Sky engineers created a simple, easily diagnosable fault by loosening the connection of the internal memory chip. This prevented Windows being able to load. To get things working again, the chip would simply need to be pushed back into position.

The investigation targeted six different computer repair shops. All but one misdiagnosed or overcharged for the fault.

The most serious offender was Revival Computers in Hammersmith, West London. Shortly after identifying the real fault, an engineer called our undercover reporter to say the computer needed a new motherboard, which would cost $200.

The surveillance software then recorded one technician browsing through the files on the hard drive, including private documents and intimate vacation photos, including some of our researcher in her bikini.

A second technician then copied photos and passwords from the laptop on to a memory stick.

One of the documents copied contained a text file with passwords for Facebook, Hotmail, eBay and a NatWest bank account.


shop workers caught with laptop webcamera while "repairing" the laptop.

This bad boy is basically 4 DLP monitors stiched together and LED backlit, offering a killer response time of 0.02 seconds. It's got DVI-D and HDMI 1.3 inputs, but don't bother hooking up something like your Xbox 360 to this thing—it wouldn't know what the hell to do with the wacky 2880x990 resolution. But I can only imagine how incredible this thing would be when set up to properly run an FPS or driving game. Hardcore gamers looking to out-rig each other, the bar has been raised. It can be yours for $7,999 of your dad's money next month.

The NEC CRV43 curved display includes the following features:
* Seamless curved screen, which eliminates bezel and screen gap issues for increased productivity and decreased frustration (according to Center for Human-Computer Interaction - Shupp et al, presented at Graphics Interface 2006)
* 2880 x 900 double WXGA native resolution
* 200 cd/m² brightness
* 0.02ms Rapid Response
* 10,000:1 contrast ratio
* Wide color gamut with 100% coverage of sRGB and 99.3% coverage of Adobe RGB
* Single link DVI-D and HDMI 1.3 input connectors
* USB 2.0 connectivity for easy use of peripherals
* Front panel controls
* On Screen Display (OSD®) and software-based GUI, which enables advanced display control options

This is the Alienware M17x Gaming Laptop is powered by Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz P8600 CPU and packed twin GeForce GTX 280M GPUs.

It has dual 1GB nVidia GeForce GTX 280M GPUs, top end with up to 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory, 1TB 7200-rpm or to 512GB SSD [Raid 1 or Raid 0], a nine-cell battery, FireWire, 4x USB, eSATA, ExpressCard, 802.11n WiFi, 8-in-1 media card reader, dual-layer Blu-ray, a 1920 x 1200 pixel edge-to-edge LCD, DisplayPort, HDMI-outs and red lightings under keyboard, numberpad, and touchpad. It measures 15.98 by 12.65 by 2.11 inches and weighs 11.68 pounds.

 It will be shown at the next week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), from June 2-4 in Los Angeles.

If you were a little underwhelmed by Lenovo’s last mini-notebook launch (the IdeaPad S10-2 which was a minor update to the original S10), the IdeaPad S12 should take your blues away. While this little puppy is a bit on the large side for a netbook, thanks to its 12 inch display, it has one killer feature: This is the first laptop to ship with an NVIDIA ION option.

Up until now, the only ION-based products that had been announced were nettops, or tiny desktop computers. The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is the first laptop to use the platform, although I doubt it will be the last. The S12 is also available with the plain old Intel 945GSE chipset with integrated 950 GMA graphics. This model should cost about $50 less and get better battery life.

 

Samsung Electronics has released its premium mini notebook pc N310 in Korea. It is powered by it is powered by Intel Atom processor with 1GB of RAM and 160GB HDD, supporting 802.11bg wireless LAN, HSDPA and WiBRO and comes with 10.1-inch LCD screen , a 1.3M webcam, three USB ports, and 3-in-1 multi memory slot. The N310 weighs only 1.23kg together with battery pack. Oh yeah, its battery offers you up to 5 hours of working. The Samsung N310 mini lappie is available in Turkey Blue and Red Orange in Korea at a suggested price between 900,000(KRW) and 1,000,000(KRW). More pictures after the break.