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Finnish consumer board balks at Sony's killing of OtherOS functionality, and thinks the consumer electronics giant should pay up.

A Finnish man purchased a PlayStation 3 (PS3) console last year for €268.90. At the time of purchase, the product was being presented with capabilities to install an alternative operating system, such as a Linux distribution.

However, it is well known now that Sony decided to axe the popular "OtherOS" functionality, citing security concerns. Consumers who had previously purchased the console would see the functionality disappear after installing a firmware update.

Choosing not to install updates in an attempt to preserve the OtherOS functionality would cripple other functions of the console, such as online features, and could block out newer game titles.

The man at the center of the case in Finland, which was brought to the Consumer Complaints Board, lost the ability to use an alternative operating system after an update was installed from a new game. He was seeking €150 in damages for the removal of the OtherOS feature.

The CCB said that the removal of OtherOS crippled console features that were present at the time of purchase, and agreed that consumers should be compensated. It recommended that the manufacturer and seller of the console pay €100 jointly to compensate the man.

LoveFilm, Amazon's European streaming and movie rental company, has announced this week that it has signed a content deal with Disney that will bring over 50 films to the platform.

With the deal, Disney has become LoveFilm's first major partner in the UK.

LoveFilm subscribers with 5.99 pound per month subscriptions will be able to freely stream catalog titles like Princess Frog, Armageddon and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and new releases like Tron: Legacy, I Am Number Four and Tangled will be available via the service's PPV selection.

Says LoveFilm CEO Simon Calver:

This is a great endorsement of the popularity of LoveFilm, as Disney is one of the world's leading studios.

We're working with innovative partners such as LoveFilm to offer our programming to viewers in evermore flexible, easy to access ways, and this agreement builds on our existing DVD rental partnership to further extend the availability of our films amongst U.K. audiences.

Sony has ended production and shipment of the much-maligned PSPGo, discontinuing their handheld "experiment" after just 18 months on the market.

Cnet confirmed the news with Sony reps after a report surfaced this morning on Impress.

Sony will continue to provide updates, repairs and support for the device but will stop producing any more of the console.

The PSPGo, which launched in 2009, removed the UMD drive and changed the form factor of the PSP-3000, adding a slide-out screen. Despite removing a key feature, Sony sold the handheld for $250, and gamers balked, with the PSPGo seeing weak sales since the beginning.

Currently, the handheld sells for $150 and comes with free games but it appears Sony has moved their focus to the upcoming NGP, which boasts impressive specs and will be a true sequel to the PSP.

ARM Holdings has announced the next step in its plan for computer architecture domination, giving a timetable for the Cortex A15, dual-core designs that can support 16 cores and clock in at 2.5GHz.

The CPUs will be available in devices in late 2012 or early 2013, says James Bruce, the U.S. mobile segment manager at ARM Holdings.

Nvidia and Texas Instruments are the first chipmakers to license the A15, and Qualcomm and Samsung are expected to license the architecture soon.

Most of the current high-end smartphones and tablets use the Cortex A9, which only supports 4 cores and clock in at 2GHz, at most.

Outside of the clock speed and cores, the A15 boasts huge performance boosts and the "efficiency of parallel processing on mobile devices," says DT.

Intel recently stated it would be taking on ARM by creating architectures with 22nm transistors by 2013, beating ARM in power consumption. However, Intel's current offerings are 45nm Atom designs while ARM is already moving to 28nm, in 2011.

According to new sources cited by MSNBC, the iPhone 5 will begin shipping in September, later than the usual June launch date for Apple's popular smartphone.

The phone will look very similar to the iPhone 4 in form factor, but will include a dual-core CPU.

Apple is delaying the launch due to the release of the iPhone 4 for Verizon earlier this year, which remains a strong seller.

Suppliers like Largan Precision, Wintek and Foxconn will begin production in July or August, say the reports.

Apple will report earnings at 4pm today, expecting another huge boost in profit and revenue.

Netflix is prepared to begin offering "Family Plans" for its streaming service, soon, says the company's IR page.

There are little details so far on the plans, but it will likely be similar to other products that give deep discounts if families add family members to their plans.

Says the page:

The evolution toward individual memberships will take time, and we are still thinking about how to best do it. One option would be to allow an account to add additional concurrent streams (using the analogy of our DVD business, it would be like choosing a higher-priced plan that allows a subscriber to have more DVDs at home). Our $7.99-per-month plan is for one stream at a time, and later this year we expect to be able to offer consumers some account options to watch multiple simultaneous streams. Or it could be that there is a price point that would encourage multiple accounts in one household.

Apple has sued Samsung this week, accusing its rival of "copying" iOS devices when creating its Galaxy line of tablets and phones.

The lawsuit alleges Samsung violates many Apple patents and trademarks relating to design features.

Samsung says it will actively respond to the suit and the accusation that it "blatantly copied" Apple gadgets.

Apple's suit is over 16 different claims "including unjust enrichment, trademark infringement" and 10 patent claims.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab and Galaxy S devices have all sold well in the United States, and feature Android software.

The RIM Blackberry PlayBook is now on sale in the U.S. and Canada, hitting stores with a mixed bag of critical reviews.

Selling for $499 for a 16GB/Wi-Fi model, RIM is hoping to break into the tablet market dominated by the Apple iPad.

The PlayBook features the standard 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM but its real differentiating factor is its Internet experience. The browser has support for Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, and HMTL 5 and many reviews say it is the best browser on a tablet, ever.

Additionally, the PlayBook has a 7-inch screen, 1024x600 resolution, dual cameras, a microHDMI port and the BlackBerry App World, which has thousands of apps.

Models with 4G access will be available during the summer.

Following Best Buy's drop last week, most other major retailers have also dropped the price of the Nintendo Wii to $170 this week.

The price drop lends more credibility to the rumor that Nintendo is ready to unveil the Wii 2 at this June's E3 event, with a 2012 release date.

Target, Amazon, Wal-Mart and GameStop among other retailers now show the $169.99 price tag on the Wii bundle.

The white and black colorway bundles, which each include Wii MotionPlus Remote, a Wii Nunchuck Controller, "Wii Sports," and "Wii Sports Resort" have seen the price cut while the special edition red colorway remains at $200.

A couple retailers have also dropped the price on other special Wii bundles, best idea is to check each respective site.

After searching for buyers of its money-losing HDD division, Samsung has announced today that Seagate has taken the business for $1.375 billion, in a cash-and-stock transaction.

Seagate is the largest HDD manufacturer in the world.

As part of the deal, Samsung gets a 9.6 percent ownership stake in Seagate.

Seagate, for its part, will become the sole provider for HDD in Samsung PCs, notebooks, NAS and DVR alongside the extension of a number of cross-license agreements.

Additionally, Seagate now has a guaranteed supply of NAND flash memory for SSD, a huge bonus for the drive maker.

Just last month, Western Digital purchased Hitachi's HDD business for $4.25 billion, as the market continues to consolidate.

Says Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO:

We are pleased to strengthen our strategic relationship with Samsung in a way that better aligns both companies around technologies and products. With these agreements, we expect to achieve greater scale and deliver a broader range of innovative storage products and solutions to our customers, while facilitating our long-term relationship with Samsung.

According to the WSJ, Twitter is looking to buy out the popular Twitter client TweetDeck for $50 million, continuing the company's efforts to buy or shutdown third-party clients.

TweetDeck had been previously linked to UberMedia, who was looking to purchase the client for $30 million. That deal is still on the table, but negotiations have died down, say the sources.

As arguably the best Twitter client around (and accounting for 13 percent of all tweets sent on a daily basis), TweetDeck is a hot commodity for the microblogging platform and remains the top app for "power users," those who tweet many times per day from many different devices.

Twitter will certainly want to outbid UberMedia, if possible, especially since Uber has the top Twitter app for BlackBerry (UberSocial) and the "highest rated" Twitter app for Android, Twidroyd and has been allegedly cooking up a plan for a "Twitter killing" service.

It appears that Apple is quietly moving away from Toshiba's X-Gale SSDs to faster Samsung models for its MacBook Air ultra-portable.

Over the last month, Air models have been shipping with two different SSD, the "SM128C" and Toshiba's "TS128C." The SM implies Samsung is the manufacturer, says MSNBC.

The Samsung drive, when benchmarked, shows off 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write speeds compared to the Toshiba which has 210MB/s read and 185MB/s write.

Samsung and Apple have not confirmed so there is no way to know which drive you will get if you are in the market for an Air, but if accurate it may pay to wait a bit longer to ensure you have the faster drive.

According to multiple sources, Samsung has promised a 2GHz dual-core smartphone for 2012.

By using such powerful processors, the company says it will continue to bridge the gap between phones and desktop/notebook PCs.

Says a Samsung official (via Mash):

We are planning to release a 2Ghz dual core CPU-equipped smartphone by next year. This product will have the data processing capacities of a regular PC.

According to his blog, Geohot has donated the remaining money from his legal defense fund to the EFF, as promised.

Last month, the hacker, facing a lawsuit from an angry Sony over his part in jailbreaking the PS3, asked for donations and received an overwhelming response. Within one day, his defense fund was full and some even speculated that Microsoft had helped.

At the end of March, however, Sony and Geohot settled and some of the donations remained unused.

The hacker says the funds remaining were a bit under $10,000 so he added the rest himself to take it to $10,000, posting the receipt of the donation on his blog.

Taking a parting shot at Sony after confirming he would not be working on jailbreaking any other Sony products, Geohot says:

If you piss [Sony] off enough for them to pull out the legal team and their million dollar checkbook, worst thing that happens is you have to super swear to never do it again.

Retailer Toys R Us has begun selling the Apple iPad 2, although the company notes that not every store will have stock of the tablet.

Besides the actual device, the retailer has Smart Covers, the iPad Camera Connection Kit, and a VGA connector.

The iPad 2 is available in Apple stores, Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Radioshack, Verizon and AT&T alongside e-tailers like Amazon.

Although numbers have not been released, the iPad 2 is expected to have sold over 2 million units since launch last month.

Strong demand for the tablet has many potential buyers waiting 2-3 weeks for delivery.