Company calls it an Android for your kitchen.

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Toshiba is on the verge of announcing a tie-up with Telecom that will see the laptop maker’s 3G-enabled notebooks and netbooks available for XT.

Initially, the laptops will only be available through Gen-i, but will later appear in Telecom retail outlets.

Another nail was banged into the coffin of the hard disk drive today with Toshiba set to ship a notebook with a half terabyte solid state drive, due for New Zealand release in June.

Solid state hard drives (SSDs) use the same flash memory technology as the memory chip you slot into your digital camera.

NB = notebook; DT = desktop PC

New IDC analysis says PC shipments will turn south this year - but also names the date of an expected turnaround.

Following a slow start to the year, IDC has revised its forecast downward.

The IT market tracker is now picking PC shipments in New Zealand will decline 3% in 2009 over 2008.

Sony, Toshiba, and Nintendo are in trouble. The Japanese tech stars pin half their troubles on the Yen, which reaches parity with the greenback in The Economist's latest Big Mac Index. The other half: we’re not buying as much of their stuff.

It's no blue screen of death, but the local PC market is running a little slow. Sales declined 4.7% during the third quarter, IDC says.

The market researcher has also slashed its worldwide forecast for 2009, now expecting a 5.3% drop – which would make it the PC market's worst year since the tech-wreck/millennium bug upgrade hangover of 2002.