It’s never as much fun to write an article to report on things that aren’t going to happen, but in this case we think this is something that should happen and we still expect it to, despite Microsoft’s denials.

What we do know is that Microsoft had an HD DVD player for the Xbox 360 which they put a stop to producing. We also know that rumors keep cropping up that Microsoft is going to work something out with Sony to bring a Blu-ray player to the 360, and Microsoft continues to squash them.

Walmart is moving in a more creative direction for the latest upcoming holiday and is promoting Nintendo’s Wii Fit as a “perfect gift for moms” for this Mothers Day. The retail giant has thrown traditional flowers and candy out the window as the Nintendo product is dominating the Walmart website home page with pre-orders for just under $90. The orders even come with a $10 gift card to Walmart so you can come back and get yourself a little something extra later on. The site’s home page portrays kids and men using the Wii Fit board as well, not to miss out on any type of demographic.

Walmart’s Mothers Day Wii Fit pre-order promotion with the gift card runs through May 11 and the Wii Fit will officially launch on May 19 for $89.99. Walmart will ship any pre-orders on or shortly after May 21 and ensures consumers that they been working with Nintendo to have adequate inventory to fill the pre-orders.

Often the most sought-after gadgets are a little on the spendy side, and to help out a little with your consumer electronics addiction the IRS has started issuing Stimulus Payment checks recently. The event has raised seemingly numerous questions from tax payers wondering mostly how much their check is going to be and of course when it’s going to arrive. You can find answers to these and a whole lot of other questions at our sister website, WealthyReader.com.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer issued a letter to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang over the weekend stating that the company withdrawing its offer to Yahoo. Microsoft had raised its bid to well over the $33 per share, upping it by nearly $5 billion which was still not enough to sway Yahoo board members.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer in the letter.

The new Mobile TV service from AT&T that we first talked about back in March is now available starting this week for customers in 58 select markets in the United States. The service from AT&T in conjunction with MediaFLO streams live TV with over 150 different programs to mobile phone customers.

The service initial will work with just two specific handsets offered from AT&T – the LG Vu and the Samsung Access. The Vu is an interactive touch screen phone that will display video and web pages, has a music player, a 2MP digital camera and Bluetooth. It goes for $299.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a 2-year contract.

Earlier this week Microsoft announced that it is delaying the release of Windows XP SP3 because of some bugs it caused with the database server with Microsoft Dynamics. Last night I went home and was looking for the automatic update bringing SP1 to Vista and found that it wasn’t there either, much to my dismay as there are a number of issues I have on Vista that I was hoping to see corrected.

Today we find out that Microsoft has indeed delayed the release of Vista SP1 to Automatic Updates as well, due to the same issue. It sounds like some of found the problem has to do with SQL Server with Dynamics. It’s unlikely that the problem is with SQL Server alone since MS is surely to have tested that at some point, but the relatively few that are out there running Microsoft Dynamics are holding it up for the rest of us.

Apple today announced the immediate ability to purchase movies through iTunes the same day that they are released to DVD. This takes away another hurdle that Apple needed to get over to increase the number of online movie rentals through iTunes, and comes only months after the initial launch of the ability to purchase movies at all through the online service.

Apple says they will be providing new releases for sale from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Lionsgate, among a couple others. The new release purchases are priced at $14.99 each and can be viewed on a Mac, PC or any iPod with video and require iTunes version 7.6.2 which is available now as a free download.

We’ve seen our share of portable speakers and so far our favorite so far has to be the X-Mini Capsule speakers, mostly because they are compact and they went wireless recently. Close behind would probably be the Easter Egg Tumbler Speaker. This device, like the X-Mini, pops open to extend out the chamber a little bit and add some more bass into the pint-sized speaker (or about as much base as you can expect from something like this.) It also comes egg-shaped and heavy at one end so that it can’t be tipped over when being bumped around on your desk

Each comes as a single speaker with an audio cable for input and a USB cable that powers and charges in the internal battery. No word on exactly how much juice the speaker puts out but we’re guessing 1W, and it’s pretty hard to say on the battery life if you wanted to use this with your media player.

If you’ve been eagerly watching your Windows Update on XP waiting for SP3 to show up your wait is over; it’s not coming, or at least not quite yet. At what seemed like a very last minute decision, Microsoft on Tuesday delayed the launch of Windows XP Service Pack 3 due to a compatibility glitch with Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System software. The release was scheduled to be available through Windows Update on Tuesday and has already been released to manufacturing and volume customers last week.

“In the last few days, we have uncovered a compatibility issue between Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1),” said the firm.“In order to make sure customers have the best possible experience, we have decided to delay releasing Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to the web.”

Grand Theft Auto IV went on sale worldwide today and many retailers such as Best Buy and GameStop opened their doors at midnight last night to meet fans across the country who created long lines to be one of the first to get their hands on a copy and spend the rest of the night playing. The GTA 4 launch from Take Two is expected to see sales that will rival that of last year’s Halo 3 release, with numbers nearing $400 million for around 6 million copies sold around the world.

The Grand Theft Auto 4 game is available for both the Sony Playstation 3 and the XBox 360 which greatly broadens the audience. Some speculate that the launch delay from last October also allowed more people to have time to buy the latest generation of game console and built more anticipation for the launch. Take Two says the delay was due to technical hurdles that needed to be overcome.

Targus has introduced something new for the portable speaker market called the Speaker Book. Creating a good set of portable, battery-operated speakers seems to be quite a challenge, and although we’re not sure how it sounds quite yet this one at least looks like a pretty cool solution.

The Speaker Book, like the Targus SonicPak backpack, uses the super-thin NXT Balance Radiator speaker technology and pumps out the tunes from your portable player through a standard 3.5mm jack. Also it can be powered by either three AAA batteries or from a USB connection if you want to run it from something like your notebook computer.

Now you have no excuse, except for maybe the price, not to pick up one of those Optimus Maximus keyboards for yourself. ThinkGeek is now shipping the Art Lebedev creation for the incredible price of $1589.99.

Onkyo has released an upgrade to its TX-SR605, HDMI 1.3a home theater receiver with the announcement of the TX-SR606, while still keeping the price under $600. This new model comes similar to the original but with two more HDMI inputs added in which bring the total to four. They’ve also added in 1080i video upscaling, Audyssey’s new Dynamic EQ loudness compensation technology and the companies new Music Optimizer.

This is an impressive set up for the price, allowing four high-definition video inputs each with high-def 7.1-channel surround sound, and will also convert non-high-def signals up to 1080i. Aside from the new add-ons, the TX-SR606 receiver comes equipped with a 90 watt-per-channel amp, Remote Interactive HDMI control, has a number of surround sound codecs and is equipped to handle Sirius Satellite Radio.

Chris Keroack, release manager for Windows XP Service Pack 3, has announced that the new service pack has been released to manufacturing (RTM) and is working its way to the OEM’s right now. For the rest of us, Microsoft is planning on getting XP SP3 online and available through Windows Update on April 29, along with its associated documentation.

This release is the first of its kind for XP since Microsoft released SP2 back in 2004, and is a welcome site to users of XP anywhere and especially to those that have battled with Windows Vista and lost, or at least came out slightly injured. Included in the update is a cumulative security update along with some performance and stability enhancements. They’ve also included some features to help integrated new Windows Vista OS’s along with existing XP machines on a network.

It’s hard to say how they did it, but it appears that somehow Telecom Italia Mobile has convinced Apple and Steve Jobs to offer the new upcoming 3G version of the iPhone to customers in Italy with quite a bit more leeway than we’ve seen here in the states. Not only will the iPhone not require that two-year service contract along with the purchase, but it will also come unlocked.

This is something that Apple has been very stringent about stateside and has been volleying versions with hackers since the beginning, keeping the iPhone locked and with a single, exclusive carrier. What this means is that in Italy customers can just by the iPhone and use it with any carrier that they choose.