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With all eyes turned to the Olympics in Beijing this week -- what with all the swimming records being blown away -- IT news eased into its usual August slow period. Hackers switched from duping people with CNN news alerts as a lure to sending out millions of messages with fake MSNBC links in them. U.K. hacker Gary McKinnon got to stay in England a little longer as he continues to fight extradition to the U.S. And more news started to pop up regarding the IT angle on the U.S. presidential race as Democrats and Republicans prepared for party conventions.

Advanced Micro Devices has no immediate plans to release a processor designed for low-cost laptops, sometimes called netbooks, saying its not yet clear whether or not growing shipments of these devices will cannibalize sales of mainstream laptops.

Better late than never, Lenovo has launched the IdeaPad S9 and S10 sub-notebooks, the company's answer to the embarrassing success of the Eee PC from rival Asus.

A company is now selling what it calls the "world's cheapest laptop," which at $130, is not a bad deal if you can bear some hardware limitations.

Later this week, Panasonic will be adding a rugged mini tablet PC to its Toughbook line of products. The machine is based on Intel's Centrino Atom platform and prototype versions have a touch-sensitive 5.6-inch screen under which is a compact QWERTY keyboard that's been split in half with a number pad filling up the center.