I have drooled over the Shuttle XPS line of small form factor computers for years. I always wanted one of the small but powerful machines to toss inside my entertainment center to use as a HTPC. If you have had your eye on one as well, Friday might be the day to buy.

Shuttle has announced that on Friday and Monday it will offer up to half off some of its XPS computers. The deals will be on some of the entry-level and mainstream XPS machines. That means none of the high-end gaming versions will get the special pricing. Exactly where the deals will be offered is unknown.

Just in time for Christmas, you can get this latest HK branded piece of gear to go with all of your other HK purchases. It’s nice to know that aside from ushering in the apocalypse, the kitty is also weathering the economy nicely and still enticing young girls.

The Hello Kitty C1 is equipped with Windows XP Home Edition SP3, a 120 gigabyte hard drive, 1 gigabyte of RAM, a 10inch display, and comes with pre-installed software including Open Office, Firefox, Skype. The Hello Kitty C1 is available now for $890.95.

Kensington seems to have been storing up on new product releases for notebook computers. The computer accessories maker yesterday unveiled some 24 new products across several notebook accessory related categories.

Highlights of this new product line up include a device for sharing USB devices between computers, wireless mice, notebook locks, column mount monitor arms and cases. We’ve provided more details on these new Kensington offerings via its press release after the jump.

Microsoft released a statement today that said it was “considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo.” Microsoft would not give details, but word is that sources at both companies agree that it involves Microsoft buying Yahoo’s search business as well as their ad business related to text-based ads. I hope Yahoo puts out soon, cuz I’m getting sick of hearing about it.

Once Microsoft finally released Windows XP Service Pack 3 to the Automatic Update after a last minute delay you might think the worst is over, but for many it doesn’t look like that’s necessarily the case. As the release has been rolling out to computers around the world there have been a number of reports with problems as you might expect with any major service pack, but one issue seems to be quite a bit more prevalent than the others.

According to ComputerWorld there have been many reports of an “endless reboot” problem that has been flooding forums with no real specific reason or response from Microsoft. One of the theories is that computers running AMD processors with XP are the ones having the problem, but the issue is not exclusive to AMD. Microsoft has said that problem comes from computer makers who used the wrong XP images to load the OS on AMD machines. HP, who was not named specifically by Microsoft, fired back saying that SP3 added a driver that was not previously present which causes the problem.

Microsoft has put on an announcement through one of its many channels that Office 2007 owners can expect Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 to show up in their Windows Automatic Updates sometime on or after June 16. The Office 2007 SP1 has been available since December of last year but Microsoft has been careful about forcing it into the general population of Office users.

As they had done with Office 2003, they are giving a 30 day warning/notice that the automatic update is coming. They also said that not everyone will see it at the same time since they will rolling it out a little at a time to be sure that their servers can handle the download requests.

Our monthly check of new Microsoft updates revealed today the long awaited Windows XP Service Pack 3. We are in the middle of downloading the update right now so we can’t speak to performance, but we wanted to give you a heads up it is now available.

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.

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.”

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.

Microsoft has announced that the plan for the general end of shipping Windows XP has been extended a couple of years, at least for the Windows XP Home edition. The latest plan for the end of most sales of XP was dated on June 30, 2008 but the advent of a new market of ultra low cost PCs (ULCPCs) has made Microsoft change there tune on forcing everyone onto the new Vista system.

Microsoft has just released Windows Vista SP1 which is usually a good milestone for those looking at upgrading to the next version of Windows, and is a point at which Microsoft helps push them along, but in the case of these UPCPCs, the Vista OS is just to big and expensive. The OLPC (supposed $100) XO laptop is one such machine that could still take advantage of the XP OS but would be forced to stick with Linux or look elsewhere if XP were phased out.