This might seem like an odd topic for Giz Explains, our weekly "WTF is that?" series, but a bunch of comments last week revealed a need to plainly explain the tussle going on between internet service providers, the Federal Communications Commission, content providers and you, and how it's shaping the way you'll use internet over the next couple of years. First, a quick primer.

Comcast was caught slowing down BitTorrent traffic last year by the Associated Press. It (re)sparked cries for government-mandated net neutrality—treating all internet traffic equally, whether it's email, Skype or a bootleg of The Dark Knight over torrent. While that didn't happen, a complaint against Comcast went through the FCC, which ruled against it last week, saying that slowing down BitTorrent was a naughty thing to do, and that they must disclose all management practices to subscribers.

In the meantime, a different network management trend started to emerge among the major ISPs: metered broadband, aka data caps. It's like dial-up service or wireless data: After reaching your alotted amount of data for the month, you pay extra, maybe through the nose, as our northern neighbors in Canada are familiar with. Conveniently, it's "net neutral," since it doesn't discriminate against particular kinds of traffic, and it's fully disclosed to subscribers so it satisfies guidelines discussed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. In case you're looking to file a complaint, Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Fred Von Lohmann told us, "There's certainly nothing to stop them from pricing that way if they want to."

Time Warner was the first major to float the plan, which is currently in testing, with a 40GB cap at the high-end. Comcast is considering a metered approach as well, its spokesman has confirmed. AT&T is the most recent major ISP to jump onboard, and it'll be testing caps in the fall. Not to mention Cox Cable and a whole mess of regional ISPs already implement them.

Here's the rub: The P2P apps ISPs point to as pillaging their networks are increasingly a nonexistant bogeyman. Video is now the actual bandwidth monster, and it's only getting hungrier and hungrier.

The thing about all that video is that it competes with what your ISP is probably delivering to your other screen in the living room. Why watch 30 Rock on your couch at specific time when you can grab it on demand on your laptop with Hulu, or on a Netflix Roku box? That awesome Vudu box you bought? Pulling in Transformers in HD uses your cable provider's pipes, but it doesn't see a dime from the transaction.

Suppose you decide to be pseudo-green and opt for an all-digital approach from Vudu or Apple TV, and you have a moderate habit of two movies a week. A 90-minute movie running at a constant bitrate of 2.5 megabits per second (you're talking HD here) will swallow 1.69 GB. If you've got a 40GB cap, eight movies will eat over a quarter of it. And that's just your rental habit, with today's specs. The 1080p flicks they'll be streaming tomorrow will be even more bandwidth intensive.

More importantly, today's geek frontier is tomorrow's mainstream playground. Like game demos on Xbox Live? Or games-for-purchase on Steam? Those are a gig or two a pop, and as more and more games are distributed digitally, the gigs will add up. Which is also part of the problem as far as the ISPs are concerned: AT&T's tech chief glibly notes that "traffic on our backbone is growing 60 percent per year, but our revenue is not."

While I wanted to tell you that data caps will destroy the internet as we know it, really video is what's actually facing the greatest threat. Time Warner has openly said content providers can't have it both ways. And the EFF's von Lohmann told us that while he hasn't "seen any evidence that [metered broadband] will radically change the internet" he is "worried that companies that have their own video they're delivering over the same pipe they deliver internet service will have an incentive to reduce caps" and it's a "valid concern worth watching." It would effectively have us paying twice for video delivered over the internet. Most people can barely stand paying for it once.

USB Type A Universal Serial Bus, the gold standard. The whole idea behind it is that this one interface will connect everything (except the stuff it doesn't), killing off the old guard, like parallel and serial ports. It moves data, and in the case of USB 2.0—which is pretty much the standard now—it does it faster, and with some extra specs for power. Clarification: USB 2.0 adds in the Battery Charging specification 1.0, which allows for dedicated charging and other power goodness. This particular connector is the type A variety. It plugs everything from your iPod to your digital camera into a computer, or whatever else. If you haven't seen this before, what are you reading this on?

USB Type B The USB Type B plug is basically a USB connector for peripherals—you've probably seen it jacked into a printer or scanner.

Mini USB It's a type of USB connector for smaller devices like cameras and phones—it takes up less real estate than a port for a Type A connection, obviously.

Micro USB Even smaller than the above Mini USB. Since it's, like, even smaller, we're starting to see it adopted by LG, Motorola and others—hopefully this is the last time they all switch power adapters on us, till wireless power makes adapters unnecessary. Update: Better pic via Mobile Burn.

IEEE 1394 (aka FireWire) An alternative to USB, Apple popularized the IEEE 1394 interface as FireWire (Sony called it i.LINK). You're probably most familiar with it on a digital camcorder (or an old school iPod), since it's really speedy for data transfers. You're looking at the four- and six-pin versions of FireWire 400. The six-pin version delivers power, the four-pin version (originally favored by Sony) doesn't.

FireWire 800 A revised, faster version of FireWire introduced in 2003, it doesn't use the same connectors as the original, making it rare for non pros—and an unnecessary pain the ass.

RJ45 The kind of plug you're used to seeing on the end of a Category 5, Cat5 enhanced or Cat6 (commonly known as Ethernet) cable, which is plugged into your router or computer's networking port. Cat5e is an update to Cat5 that supports faster Gigabit Ethernet. Cat6 is the next-gen standard that will handle speeds twice as fast as Cat5e, and has stricter rules about noise and crosstalk. Interestingly, the most recently approved IEEE 1394 spec (aka FireWire S800T) uses RJ45 connectors as well.

eSATA External Serial ATA is a branch off of the Serial ATA interface that connects your hard drive to your computer if it was put together in the last couple of years. As you can guess from the name, the difference is it's an external port, but it delivers the same insane data transfer speeds as the hookup to your hard drive. Faster than USB or FireWire, it's basically for external hard drives for quicker data transfers. You'll be seeing it more as more laptops include a port for it, usually one that can also be used with USB. There's even talk of bus-powered eSATA coming in the next year or two.

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface is another one of those "it'll connect everything except all the stuff it doesn't" deals, but for high-definition audio and video. It basically replaces DVI (see below) plus S-Video and all that other analog crap. Laptops, desktops and even high-end cameras and other gadgets are getting HDMI. Besides fat bandwidth, another benefit is control: The Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) profile already lets machines send commands to other products over HDMI—that or something like it could be very useful in the PC space, too.

DVI The digital successor to VGA, Digital Visual Interface is a video connection you'll most likely see dealing with computers or computer monitors, at least until they're all replaced by HDMI. Older HDTVs have DVI ports too. It can have a few different pin arrangements, depending on whether it carries a digital (DVI-D) or analog (DVI-A) signal or both (DVI-I, for integrated). The analog deal on some types is to make them easy to adapt for use with a VGA monitor, but it's less and less noteworthy. There's also a dual-link version that carries more data for high-res displays. These are helpfully depicted at Wikipedia.

Mini and Micro DVI are dumb, shrunken, Apple-only versions of DVI. Why dumb? Because they're essentially proprietary formats. HDMI will make them obsolete before long.

DisplayPort is the newest video interface on the block, and its plane of existence is basically in the computer-to-monitor realm only. It's not even close to mainstream yet, but Dell is backing it, among others, so you might wanna know it. It can carry a whole lot of data, but it's got DRM built into the spec, so it's a double-edged sword. Update: Swapped pic out with a better one.

That's enough cable to strangle most of California, but by all means feel free to add in your own cable trivia down in the comments.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about cables, plugs, holes, bird or bees to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

But first, the basics. The difference between the TV you're used to and this fancy IPFreelyTV stuff is that IPTV is delivered to you like any other data sent over the internet—in data packets. You even plug an Ethernet cable into your receiver box/DVR. Of course, the internet's a messy place with lots of muck bouncing around the pipes and you'd be really pissed if the Yankees game stuttered or crapped out, so this is all running on the telco's "walled garden" network with a fat, dedicated lane for video. (Your internet service, which is bundled since it's running on the same network, runs on a different lane, delineated by quality-of-service, or QoS, protocols.)

Now that that's out of the way, back to why its good for HD. With a standard cable setup, the channels are basically always being piped into your home, whether you're watching or not. To add more channels, they've gotta compress 'em down farther or open the pipe up, especially since HD eats up a lot of bandwidth. Since IPTV is sent in regular ol' data packets and the system is two-way (the nature of internet protocol), they're basically only sending what you ask for, when you ask for it. So theoretically, they could offer way more HD channels than cable, since they're not as limited here. Also, like that mythical Xbox 360 IPTV box, the number of streams you can watch/record simultaneously is basically only limited by your bandwidth.

The two-wayness of the infrastructure is another point of awesomeness. It can be used for actually useful interactivity—one of AT&T's apps for the Olympics can bring in a stats feed you can check out while watching the game. Or regular internet video, like YouTube, can be piped in and integrated with the other video on your box. It's all just regular data over standard internet protocols, so there's a lot of flexibility to do stuff you simply can't with a traditional setup.

The problem is that building the infrastructure necessary for IPTV service is slow and expensive, largely cause it requires a heavy fiber optic component. Verizon runs fiber all the way to your door (which is why it can offer those crazy FiOS internet speeds), while AT&T runs it to the node, which you're then connected to with copper and (which is why U-Verse internet is slower). So right now, both have puny subscriber numbers—1.2 million FiOS TV customers, and a scant 379,000 on U-Verse TV.

Still, there's a lot of potential in IPTV, even if it's taking forever to get to your doorstep. AT&T actually showed me some of the stuff that could be at your door in the 6-9 months—and beyond—and it's definitely worth getting excited about. We'll be telling you all about it later.

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about IPs, TVs, chewing gum or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

Let's start with the goals of each program. The Global Health program is, no surprise, all about fighting disease, in two ways. One, making vaccines and medicine more readily available. Two, good ol' R&D to develop new vaccines—vaccine development and access takes up half of the Global Health program's money—plus treatments and other higher-tech solutions, the stuff that actually gets Bill excited now.

Global Development has three prongs, with the overarching mission of attacking poverty and hunger: Providing financial aid, spreading internet access as wide as possible, and helping small farmers with crop production and getting food to market.

The U.S. program is all about education, like its $1.37 billion grant to the United Negro College Fund via the Gates Millennium Scholars Program.

The foundation's goals don't sound so much different from anyone else's—they're big, lofty and impossible. What's so brilliant? They're not charging at the world's problems scattering its massive war chest around willy-nilly. They invest in solutions. Take access to clean water (or the lack thereof). The Seattle PI notes in a piece today that the foundation has spent years looking at the problem, but has yet to pump money into a major water project, because simply building pipes won't really crack at the root problem. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, director of the Global Development Program, says in the article that "what we look for is the project has to be scalable, sustainable and catalytic." (Its hardcore focus on vaccines makes total sense from this angle.)

In other words, it plants tons of little techno-seeds and showers them with love and money until they grow to be totally independent and self-sustaining, and doesn't waste its largesse on stuff that's a temporary fix. To keep up the plant metaphor, rather than hoping to grow a single, giant tree of awesome that stretches over all the problems they're trying to fix, they're planting a ton of little, carefully planned and managed trees to make a, um, forest of awesome. It's an approach borrowed from drug companies, which invest in lotsa different drugs simultaneously, not just one miracle drug at a time.

Not that they're cheap—in his person of the year story, Time says that the Gates spent 2005 "giving more money away faster than anyone ever has," It's just that every penny of it is invested with the same sharpness Bill applied to Microsoft in its golden days, so each one works as hard as possible, like the $1.5 billion grant for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

Above and beyond all of that, Bill's philanthropy is nudging other people to chip in. Most famously, Warren Buffet is giving most of his fortune to the Foundation because he believes in its goals and smart, practicable approach to charity. As long as Bill's got the passion—like he did for Microsoft in his past life—then yeah, he just might save the world.

Hokay, the iPhone 3Gness makes browsing a whole 2.4x faster than EDGE in Apple's test. (One thing that we can't explain: Why did Apple chose lonelyplanet.com for its performance benchmarks?) The 3G goodness is real: We've been conducting our own testing of AT&T's HSDPA in the New York area (including suburbs) and it really is faster and more readily available than Verizon's EV-DO 3G network. (For a quick primer on different kinds of 3G like HSDPA vs. EV-DO and other mobile terms, click here.) But the iPhone 3G is rated for 1.4Mbps, a nice clip but not the 3.6Mbps downstream that AT&T's HSDPA is capable of. (The carrier loves to brag that it'll have 7.2Mbps by the end of the year.) So why not crank up the iPhone to those better data rates? Turns out, according to AT&T people we talked to, 1.4Mbps is the capped bandwidth for all mobile smartphones on the network for a few reasons.

(UPDATE: AT&T is saying they're not capping the phone at 1.4mbps, but that's what its capable of doing now, due to factors below. There's no difference except intent, and AT&T is careful around words like "Cap" these days.)

A major one is battery life—the faster you burn, the faster your battery dies, so going full steam at 3.6Mbps would cut you well short of that nice round five hours. A second one is cell site congestion and backhaul (carrier-speak for size of the wired dataline that connects cell sites to the actual telecom infrastructure). While everyone at AT&T, from the top down, is adamant that AT&T is "comfortable" with their ability to meet the huge data draw once 3G iPhones hit the streets, it's not like the pipe is unlimited.

AT&T wasn't able to give a breakdown as to how many of their towers have fiberoptic pipes as opposed to slower copper T-1 lines. Nor could they say how quickly they could add capacity to a site that is pummeling their demand expectations, since it varies from site to site. Ones in dense urban areas are loaded up with more backhaul and can handle more users than one closer to the edge of their 3G footprint. Still, generally speaking, more users on a site means more congestion, so if you're slurping from a site that's really slammed, it will be slower. As with all radio technologies, proximity also matters. (Hint: For the absolute fastest speeds, wait until 3am and then go sit right next to your favorite cell site.)

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about 3G, GPS, G-spots or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

Intel
Like it or not, Intel's the biggest player in the game, so they've got essentially two major entries for mobile. First up is Montevina, soon to be known to your mother as Centrino 2. It was supposed to launch this month, but was delayed until August for a full rollout. It's a "platform" for notebooks, so it's got a few different components, like a Penryn Core 2 Duo processor and a wireless module (two options, one flavor has WiMax). It's basically nimbler all around than the preceding Santa Rosa platform—speedier front-side bus, faster RAM, better integrated graphics—but solid emphasis on battery life too. It'll basically be in any of the full-sized notebooks worth buying after this summer, and probably in the next MacBook/MacBook Pro release.

The ballyhooed Atom chips actually cover two classes of devices: so called "mobile internet devices"' (a vague category between a smartphone and a tiny laptop) and budget, smaller notebooks ("netbooks," "mini-notebooks," whatever you like), including the Eee PC 901 and MSI's Wind, with chips running from 800MHz to 1.86GHz, and an average power use of 160 to 220mW. As Jon at Ars sums up in his nitty gritty coverage, it's not quite "there" yet, but it's just a foot in the door for Intel.

AMD
I've been feeling so bad for AMD lately. Hopefully, its just-launched mobile platform, Puma, will help start turning things around. Its CPU soul is a Turion X2 Ultra, which has the nifty feature of adjusting power levels on the fly for each core. Another winning aspect is the integrated Radeon 3000 graphics, which AMD believes totally pwns Intel's, with three times the 3D performance and five times the HD quality (maybe something useful came out of the AMD/ATI merger after all?) Also, it can flip between using integrated and discrete graphics to save juice or ramp up performance. Tom's Hardware isn't too hot on it, though.

Nvidia
Nvidia is a relative noob in the mobile platform space, with Tegra being its first real charge. It's a system on a chip, with memory, a graphics processor, a CPU (from ARM) and more on a single chip. While they reference Intel's Atom a whole bunch, it's not really a competitor—these are just for more of those mobile internet devices. No hard products use it yet, either, but here are some videos depicting what Nvidia's got in mind. Neat, but I'm not sure who's gonna buy 'em. Also, new 9M notebook graphics cards—faster than the 8M series that's in decent notebooks now, we mayyyy see 'em in new MacBook Pros in August (crosses fingers).

Via
Via's Nano processor follows up the C7 used in stuff like the OQO UMPC and Cloudbook. It's mo' powerful, but it also uses more juice than the C7 or Intel's Atom. So, as Ars points out, it doesn't quite compete with Atom, just cause of the power differential. That's cool though, since Via's planning on using the Nano to break into powering bigger, badder notebooks that'll do HD video, and the C7 isn't going anywhere. You might see it replace the C7 in some stuff though, like HP's Mini-note, since physically it'll fit anywhere the C7 did.

That should bring ya up to speed.

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about chips, Pringles or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line. [Giz Explains]

Subnotebook: Judging by Google results (1,660,000) and the presence of a Wikipedia entry, "subnotebook" appears to be one of the most popular and closest-to-legit terms, with a history going back to at least Toshiba's Libretto, according to our friend Mark Spoonauer, editor-in-chief at Laptop. The real sticky point appears to be on the edges—when does a UMPC become a subnotebook, and when does a subnotebook become a real notebook? At 11 inches, Lenovo's IdeaPad U110 is probably the breaking point for subnotebook. In fact, that's our new rule: to classify as a subnotebook or ultraportable (see below), you've gotta be 11 inches or under, and less than 3 pounds. (Sorry Walt, the MacBook Air might be light, but its ginormous, full-notebook footprint means it ain't really a subnotebook in most people's eyes.) Judgment: Like a pair of loafers, "subnotebook" is unsexy, but it gets the job done.

Ultraportable: That's a really tricky term, probably the most amorphous. Spoonauer classifies small notebooks with fuller keyboards and displays like the IdeaPad U110 or HP's Mini-note 2133 as "ultraportables," leaving the "subnotebook" moniker to devices in the UMPC class, like the HTC Shift. However, added confusion comes from the fact that ultraportable sounds like ultramobile, as in UMPC (see below). Still, it's the most compelling alternative to subnotebook, because it sounds sexier, and has over 3 million Google hits alone and 1.27 million tagged to notebook or laptop. The big knock against "ultraportable" is that it redirects to "subnotebook" on Wikipedia. Judgment: I don't mind it, but without a firm identity it'll never be useful. Plus I feel like it's trying too hard.

Mini-Notebook: While "mini notebook" seems like a less popular and unwieldy derivative of "subnotebook," with fewer Google results (1,110,000) and no Wikipedia page (it doesn't even direct back to subnotebook), Spoonauer says that it's distinguished from subnotebook as being the class of small form-factor notebooks that are under $600, like the Eee PC. Judgment: I think this one should be junked, though determining a class on price is probably a good idea.

ULPC: This most generally stands for ultra low-cost PC, though I've seen ultra-light PC, too. (How about that for a red flag?) It isn't overly popular, but it obviously refers to small, cheap notebooks like the Eee or XO OLPC Laptop. While it might be useful in distinguishing the Eee from, say, the pricier U110, overall the term seems pointless, especially when there's already a better alternative. Judgment: Garbage heap.

Netbook: This is actually the brainchild of Intel's marketing department to describe sub-$500 notebooks centered around internet-connectivity, such as its Classmate PC. The original Eee PC, XO OLPC Laptop and Cloudbook would fall into this category. While it is technically flackspeak, I actually like it because it's short and fairly specific. Besides being endorsed by Intel (obvs), Ubuntu has officially picked up the term. Judgment: A keeper, even if it was coined by the Man.

UMPC: The term stands for ultra-mobile PC, and actually has fairly concrete origins in the Project Origami catastrophe headed up by Microsoft. Under Intel and Microsoft's guidelines, technically the form factor is defined as touchscreen mini-tablet smaller than eight inches with a resolution of at least 800 pixels wide. However, we (and most others) include the OQO in this category. Even though it doesn't have a touchscreen, it otherwise fits the slabby form factor to a T. Update: To be clear, the OQO has an active digitizer, not a touchscreen. It won't recognize your finger, you need a special stylus. Judgment: Works, we just have to disabuse people of using it in reference to stuff like the Eee.

Conclusion
Hopefully focusing on three terms that bear the least ambiguity will help with this confusion. Here's where you guys come in, since believe it or not, we do like standards. So while UMPC has dried to a firm, tasty shell, Netbook and subnotebook are still pretty jelly-like. Or maybe you'd prefer ultraportable to subnotebook? Should low-cost dwarfish notebooks be called netbooks, or is there a better term? Help us clean up this semantic cesspool.

OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, meaning that the glow-y part that lights up when zapped with electricity has organic stuff in it. Because the particles light up by their own damn selves, they don't need a backlight like LCDs, so they can be stupid thin, and they use way less power than either LCD or plasma. The problem is, they're still a bitch to make, which is why they're expensive and teeny.

Wilson and Benny Boo took a tour of the place where OLED panels are born, and got the full rundown on how they're made. Basically, phosphorescent colored particles are fused to a substrate (glass, metallic or plastic screen), which can happen in one four ways (which are covered in more detail here):
• Vacuum thermal evaporation
• Organic vapor phase deposition
• Ink-jet printing
• Organic vapor printing

Though they each deal with the tiny pixel-sized dots of phosphorescent material slightly differently, all of them are a pain in the ass (read: expensive). The first two techniques require the substrate to be suspended in the air, making larger screens harder to do well (they tend to bow in the middle). Hence, Sony's wonder TV is a mere 11 inches and costs more than a good plasma, and Samsung's 31-incher was nigh miraculous.

One of the major problems with OLEDs is that the organic materials degrade over time, as organic things tend to do, with blue being the quickest fader. To wit, it came out that Sony's XEL-1's half life is only about 17,000 hours, not the 30K it was rated for, and not even close to the 60K+ hours that many LCDs and plasmas get.

And here's something you probably didn't know: While OLED does consume less power than LCD or plasma, its energy needs are content independent, so you'll be suckin' the same wattage whether you're watching the darkest scenes of Batman Begins or a virtual whitewall.

But, rest assured OLED is probably what you'll be watching Obama grow old and nasty on, with most majors promising mass production of big OLED TVs in the next couple of years. Presumably, that means prices and sizes will start getting reasonable. Not fast enough for our tastes, though—super thin, gorgeous picture, and none of the hallmark problems of LCD and plasma? Do want. So, so bad. [Giz Explains]

Let's start with the acronym: GPS stands for global positioning system. Originally a DARPA-funded joint project of the Air Force and Navy, this satellite network tells ya where stuff is, like bombers and cruise missiles in decades past, or you as of mid-2000 when the government made GPS of decent accuracy available for civilian electronics. (It was available before then, but wasn't good enough for reliable turn-by-turn app.) The soul of GPS is the constellation of at least 24 satellites way out in orbit. Signals from four separate birds are usually needed for a standard GPS receiver to peg your position.

The GPS goods most people are familiar with are ones you mount in your car (though like we said, GPS will fit just about anywhere now) with the biggest players being Garmin, TomTom and Magellan. They used to be a lot more expensive, but now you can get basic namebrand models for not much more than $200, and cheap knock-offs for even less.

At a basic level, these all operate the same way, with variations in feature sets and UI: Your GPS receiver picks up signals from orbiting satellites and plots your position accordingly on pre-loaded maps. (The maps themselves typically come from one of just two companies, Navteq and Tele Atlas.) More recently, live traffic info (or something close to it) to avoid the Monday jam courtesy of an overturned 18-wheeler of pig lard has been the goal, with the pricey (but awesome) Dash Express delivering the up to the minute goods via GPRS cellular connection.

While GPS has gotten better in your car and on your wrist, the real excitement is its movements into cellphones and other gadgets such as cameras for location-based services (and maybe ads) and tricks like geo-tagging. Sprint's Instinct phone, for instance, makes a big a deal out of having real GPS while the iPhone has less accurate triangulation via cellphone towers, since being accurate to within several blocks isn't nearly as helpful as knowing where you are within a couple of meters. Friend finders and kid locators are options on pretty much every carrier.

As GPS modules get smaller and less power-hungry, you can expect GPS to keep showing up in ever smaller and crazier gadgets, since it'll be cheap and easy to cram it in. Manufacturers on everything from laptops to shoes are getting in on GPS mania, so even if you never owned a GPS device, odds are, you soon will.

Alright, so LCD stands for liquid crystal display. (Again, we're keeping this kind of simple, for simplicity's sake.) Basically, the liquid crystal part is a gel that sits in front of a backlight or—in the case of older panels such as those found in Game Boys up till like 2003—a reflective panel. (Remember those crappy lighting accessories?) The gel is divided up into a bunch of separate pixels, which can be fired individually. Color LCDs are a bit more complicated, made up of red, blue and green subpixels which combine to create pixels with the full range of color. To throw one more bit of tech at ya, most LCDs at this point are thin-film transistor LCDs, so that the control layer is embedded within the panel itself instead of off to the side. This provides better image stability and other benefits.

One of the problems with LCDs, and why plasma has an advantage in showing blacks, is that the liquid crystal layer is not opaque, even when all of the pixels are closed. On most LCDs, the bright backlight is on when the TV is on, so that will always bleed through at least a bit. LED-backlit LCDs can light up just a part of the panel instead of the whole thing, to an extent minimizing the problem.

Besides the "dynamic" backlighting described above, LCD technology is constantly improving its contrast through various crazier schemes involving pixel twisting and other light-blocking techniques.

The other notorious LCD problem is moton blur. If you've been buying LCD monitors for the past few years, you'll notice that advertised response times have dropped precipitously, down to as little as 2ms on some gamer-friendly computer monitors, and 6ms on big ol' TVs, so there's less true blurring of the picture. LCDs can also reduce motion blur further by processing the image: High-end LCDs use 120Hz technology to essentially double the framerate of source video, tricking the eye into seeing less blur.

Some 120Hz LCDs achieve this by tossing in a black frame of "downtime," but other sets morph two frames into a third, middle image that sits somewhere between the original frame and the next. As you might suspect, this can result in a weird, uncanny super silkiness that some reviewers object to.

Other reasons home theater buffs pick plasma over LCD in serious showdowns are that LCD naturally produces a less uniform picture and can't be seen as well (in color or brightness or both) from wide angles. LCDs can produce great pictures, and will keep getting better (LED backlights FTW), but in sets 42 inches and above, it just can't quite touch plasma, despite the fact that its cheaper pricer point has given it an overwhelming marketshare on the HDTV front.

Sony, which pushes Bravia LCD and hasn't sold plasma sets in years, is sending signals that it will soon focus on OLED instead. OLED pretty much makes both LCD and plasma look sad. They still cost a billion dollars and are a few years away, but the day of the OLED will come. [Giz Explains]

The basic explanation of how plasma sets work is that they've got a cocktail of noble gases (think back to high school chemistry) in tiny cells crammed between two glass panels. The cells are zapped with electricity, which makes them light up. Phosphors coating the cells make the color magic happen. (The gas is turned into a plasma during the process, hence the name.) Since individual pixels can just be turned off (more or less), plasma can inherently produce much better blacks than LCDs,

For instance, the way Pioneer's ultimate Kuro tech manages to pull out some disgustingly deep blacks is that its cells require less and less charge to fire, so they keep cutting down on the pre-charge that results in glowing grays that you see in lesser plasma sets.

Plasmas have actually come a long way in the past 10 years or so, since they started going mainstream. The old problem of "burn in," where a picture is seemingly permanently etched on the screen if a static image is left up too long, is mostly mythical now. They're not totally impervious—leaving the Wachowskis' upcoming hyper-lush Speed Racer on pause for a few weeks might lead to some ugly results. But because the time it takes to reduce the panel's brightness by half (the half-life) can be 60,000 hours or longer, at least the same life as an LCD's backlight, it's now a non-issue when debating LCD vs. plasma.

The so-called "Denver" altitude problem is less of one now than before as well. See, plasmas aren't too fond of high altitudes, because it affects the gas inside (think baseball players visiting Coors Field, or the need to modify Betty Crocker recipes). Plasmas in higher altitudes can make annoying buzzing sounds. But new sets are able to withstand higher and higher altitudes, and Denver falls within the newest comfort zone of 7,500 feet. Sherpas still might want NEC's special "high altitude" models that'll work all the way up to 9,180 feet. Still, as Plasma TV Buying Guide suggests, you might just wanna stop by a Best Buy that sits at your same altitude, and see how their TVs are faring.

The one thing plasmas are losing though is bulk, both size and heft. (Unless you count the pictured 103-inch or 150-inch monsters from Panasonic.) Current models run as fat as five inches thick and 100 pounds, making self-installation a real pain in the dick. But sets shipping later this year and next will slim down to around an inch and around 45 pounds—but you will have to pay mightily for the new lightness, and may never be able to afford Pioneer's anorexic-model-on-coke skinny concept plasma.

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There are two major types of image sensors for digital cameras and camcorders: CCD (charged-couple device) and CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, sometimes also known as active pixel sensor). We're not going to get into the really geeky differences, because you don't really need to know or care. What you should know is that higher-end digital SLRs (the big cameras with a removable lens) use CMOS because it's easier to make bigger CMOS sensors; and mobile phones do because CMOS uses less power. That said, most point-and-shoot cameras and most camcorders use the more common CCD sensor.

The big thing about image sensors? Size matters. And we're not talking megapixels. Half the reason shots taken with a DSLR look so much better than the ones taken with your backpocket point and shoot is that the DSLR's image sensor is massive in comparison. The difference can be even more stark when you compare shots from a 2-megapixel cameraphone with a standard 2-megapixel camera. (The other half is the lens—pros will tell you it's all about the glass—but we're talking sensors here.)

You see, in order to cram more and more pixels onto tiny sensors—think $150 cameras claiming to rock 10 megapixels of awesome—you've gotta make the pixels smaller and smaller, which a) makes photos look grainy and b) makes the sensor suck at picking up light. The result: Low-light shots look like they're off a security camera from 1997, especially when you crank up the ISO (light sensitivity) setting. When a point-and-shoot promises you shots at 1600 ISO, it's generally a sacrifice you don't want to make: unuseable pics full of rainbow-colored noise.

The best DSLRs use 35mm sensors, that is, a sensor that is the same size as a frame of standard film. This is known as "full frame." The D3, Nikon's biggest, baddest DSLR camera, costs $5,000 but only shoots at 12.2 megapixels. By contrast, its Canon competitor rocks 23. Still, the D3 beats all comers in low-light shooting, mainly because its 36 x 23.9mm sensor doesn't try to shove a bunch of megapixels onto it. By better, we mean that the pictures have less noise (that rainbow-colored grain). It's also why rumors of a new 24.4-megapixel Nikon spark some concern—there's no way it'll shoot as well in the dark. Sony promises to release a 25-megapixel Alpha DSLR this September. It will be sweet, but being the highest in megapixels doesn't guarantee its place in the winner's circle.

So when you're out camera shopping, don't think that more megapixels is more better. A lot of review sites will list the size of a camera's image sensor (plus the other stuff obviously) and a 6MP camera with a sensor the same size as an 8MP model is gonna take better pictures. Check out these two Kodak point and shoots from CES, the m1033 and Z1085. Same megapixel count, but the Z1085 has a bigger sensor (1/1.7-inches is larger than 1/2.3-inches, non-math majors) and will almost certainly shoot less noisy pictures.

Of course, a DSLR will take better shots than any point-and-shoot, but while DSLRs are getting cheaper every day (only $475 for a Nikon D40 or $450 for a Canon Digital Rebel XT (both with lens) that might not fit everyone's budget. Plus, they don't fit in your pocket, like your dumb cameraphone.

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GSM is the most widely used mobile standard—210 countries—and by AT&T and T-Mobile in the US. What's groovy about GSM is that any device that'll take a SIM card—"subscriber identity module" is a chip that identifies you to the network and allows you to get on—can get you on a local network. Hence the market for "unlocked" phones that aren't tied to any carrier, which you can just pop an AT&T or T-Mobile SIM card in. It's also AT&T's response to Verizon's open initiative: GSM networks are technically already open.

CDMA is a competing voice-and-data standard that is smaller in distribution—but highly prevalent in Korea, Japan, South America and the US, on the networks of Verizon Wireless and Sprint (including MVNOs such as Helio and Virgin Mobile). CDMA is actually more efficient in terms of the way it uses channels, but it doesn't have GSM's "open" advantage of SIM card swapping. (This is why you can't take your iPhone to Verizon.)

2G refers to any second-generation networks—like CDMA and GSM/GPRS—that are digital, and not analog (which would be 1G). It's mostly for voice, but there's some slow data, too. (Remember WAP?)

2.5G are data upgrades to 2G networks that allow for faster data transfer. EDGE is the best known, used by T-Mobile and AT&T (and the bane of iPhone owners everywhere) and a transitional tech to 3G. Still pretty pokey, topping out at 200kbps downstream real world. Verizon and Sprint have a 2.5G technology called 1XRTT.

3G Now we're talkin'. Third generation is what we finally call "mobile broadband," with the potential for early DSL-like speeds. In the US, this involves two standards: the CDMA-based EV-DO for Verizon and Sprint, and HSPA for AT&T (running now) and T-Mobile (coming this year). Japan, parts of Asia and Europe also make use of W-CDMA. Despite the name, it's actually a GSM technology developed by NTT DoCoMo. For Americans this doesn't matter and only confuses things, so forgetaboutit.

HSPA High-Speed Packet Access is the umbrella term for two complementary GSM technologies, HSDPA and HSUPA, with the D and U standing for "downlink" and "uplink" respectively. Currently HSDPA can pull down info at speeds up to 14.4Mbps, but in the US it's more like 3.6, and only under amazing conditions. AT&T plans to hit 7.2 later this year. HSUPA is an add-on to HSDPA, rolling out in the US this year, which can transmit data at up to 5.7 Mbps, up from 384Kbps.

EV-DO is CDMA's 3G data service, used by Sprint and Verizon. There are different revisions, called Revs. The latest, Rev. A, is capable of 3.1Mbps downstream and 1.8Mbps up in ideal conditions. Though its specs are not as hot as HSPA, it is the most robust and widespread 3G network currently in the US.

4G is the near future of wireless data, with download speeds equivalent to or faster than most US broadband networks.

WiMax is 4G ultra-high-speed mobile broadband developed by Intel, Motorola and Samsung. In the US, Sprint is the only carrier planning to deploy it nationwide. WiMax promises incredible long range and connectivity on par with what you can get at home—think of it as Wi-Fi on 'roids. It was supposed to roll out hard this year, but Sprint has been having a lot of internal problems, necessitating cash injections from partners like Intel. Consequently, you probably won't see WiMax till '09 or '10.

LTE Long-Term Evolution is the other major 4G ultra-high-speed mobile data dealio. It's a GSM-based technology, and quickly emerging as the dominant next-gen standard, in part thanks to WiMax's stupor and Verizon's adoption of it. Though Verizon and AT&T have competing formats currently (CDMA and GSM respectively), both pledge to roll out LTE in the US. Verizon will do this as an overlay to its current network, meaning both CDMA phones and new LTE devices will work throughout the footprint. You'll start seeing LTE in the US in 2010 with mass coverage by 2012.

We skipped over some acronyms, and sped past others, but this should be all you really need to know to navigate Giz's mobile device coverage, so do yourself a favor and bookmark it.

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It's about as powerful as the first Pentium M chips (Banias), but while those idled at 5W and averaged 24.5W, this little guy sips as little as 0.1W in its idle state, with peaks up to just 2W on the 2GHz model. It's really cheap to pump out too, tapped for the $200 OLPC at one point.

It comes in a couple different flavors up to that 2GHz version. To get athletic performance—it's a full-fledged x86 chip, not a half-baked cutdown—out of an anorexic processor, Intel worked all kinds of design mojo, like a new quick-wake deep sleep state. It's still a bit too hungry for smartphones, though. So, while it's a neat piece of silicon, as Ars says, it's still got a ways to go, especfially with stiff competition from ARM and TI. But that's a good thing.

• TVs: Series 7 high end plasma. Improved video processing makes this monster, available in 50, 58 and 63-inches, as well as with four HDMI ports, the cream of Samsungs HDTV offerings. Series 4 and 5 are the entry level plasma varieties, but are worthy of your attention thanks to their 3D displaying abilities, not to mention HDMI and USB 2.0 inputs. LCD-wise, Series 4 and 5 LCDs will also be dropping in various sizes, which will be capable of full 1080p, but given some of the smaller screen sizes, we aren't so sure that is a big deal. If you are looking to save a pretty penny, but still want a large screen, the Series 6 and 7 rear projection models should do just the trick.

• Blu-ray and HDTV: The BP-U5500 combines the best of both HD DVD and Blu-ray, with its dual playback capabilities. At under $600, it may be promising for diehard HD DVD fans that see the imminent demise of their format on the horizon.

• Complete Theater Systems and Standard DVD. Samsung are launching a new Home Theater in a Box (HTIB) range, the 2.1-channel HT-X710 and 5.1-channel HT-X715, will offer wireless speaker systems, polished styling and 1080p upconversion. The more compact, Soundbar HT-X810 will be a smaller package with Bluetooth for streaming audio. The big daddy will be the HT-BD2, with 7.1 speakers and Blu-ray 1080p playback.

• The best of the rest. Samsung will be adding Bluetooth functionality to their P2 and T10 MP3 players. They also have a HD camcorder in the pipes, the SC-HMX20C will shoot 1080p straight onto its 8GB flash memory.

• LCD is a big priority for them, and this CES Philips has an all-new LCD line, starting with the 7000 series. Dubbed the "Ultimate Dream TV," the $2,800 52" 52PFL7603D has a 2-millisecond response time thanks to 120Hz ClearLCD technology, and it wouldn't be Philips without an Ambilight LED lightshow around the bezel. Along with design taken from their European Aurea TV line, the 7000 series also features a "invisible sounds system" which has the sound originate from the back of the TV, then uses the curved bezel to push the sound forward.

• The 5000 LCD series features an "Eco TV," the 42PFL5603D designed with a power-saving feature that dims the backlight in low ambient light and when content doesn't require as intense a backlight. Philips is calling the world's lowest power consumption—less than 0.15w on standby mode—scoring all kinds of certification. It's also lead-free.

• Philips is promoting a new Blu-ray player, the BDP7200 which is their first profile 1.1 player. There's nothing very thrilling about it except its sexy design and its low MSRP of $350. That's if you can find it—hopefully it will be in wider production than its predecessor.• Most of the other Philips announcements are refreshes of existing products, such as the Swarovski Active Crystals, the Streaming Wireless music system, and Ambisound Home Theater surround bar that features HDMI 1080p up conversion. [Philips]

• VP504F-50 1080p Plasma. It's got Silicon Optix HQV Processing for better images than most higher-priced sets.
• SV42LF-42 and SV47LF-47 has 120Hz, 1080p, Anti-Judder, and a side HD Game Port. Great for movie watchers (thanks to 120Hz refresh) and gamers.
• Jive Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio Kit. Adds onto many of their sets (including SV42LF and SV47LF) to give you an all-in-one entertainment system.
• Plasma line: 1080p and 720p sets.
• LCD line: 1080p and 720p sets, with the Envy line looking slightly fancier than the Evolution series. Then there's the VW series that's sold at Wal-mart.

A touted aspect of DisplayPort is its "security," comforting to those who create content but an unwelcome guest for those who can't stand even the thought of DRM (digital rights management). Carrying HDCP along with it, the standard is designed to protect content from those free-copying, eyepatch-wearing pirates. In addition to that, it also carries an additional DRM can of worms, DPCP (DisplayPort Content Protection).

That gives the standard an advantage over DVI in the eyes of content creators, who have sometimes been known to arm-twist various hardware manufacturers. Speaking of which, the standard has gotten rousing support from many of the usual suspects, including Dell, HP, Philips, Samsung, Intel and Lenovo, and also graphics cards manufacturers AMD and NVIDIA.

Those companies might like this standard better than HDMI for another reason, too: Unlike HDMI, DisplayPort's an open standard with no fees required to those who invented it. Other than that, besides the slight bandwidth advantage of DisplayPort, the two are almost the same and will be interchangable in some cases with an adapter. But not all cases. Such as...

What do we like about it? You can daisy chain multiple 2560x1600 monitors together, and the standard also supports fiber optic cable, able to blast tons of serious bandwidth for longer distances. It also has an advantage over DVI with its 15-meter spec length, compared with DVI's measly 5-meter recommended distance. We're also quite fond of that ability to support 16-bit color for each component, and hey, the damn thing is easier to connect than a DVI or VGA cable. With Dell and ATI first out of the gate, expect graphics cards and monitors to jump on board any day now. [DisplayPort Info Guide]

SSDs have no moving parts, so seek time is drastically reduced. No spinning=less battery vampirage, so your laptop lasts longer too. And finally, the lack of a deadly read-write head means you can drop your SSD-powered lappy with far less chance of weeping. Right now, SSDs are usually made with either SDRAM (like RAM used in computers) or NAND flash (like in thumb drives, iPod nanos, etc.). Flash is more common, since it doesn't need a battery even though it's slower. Problems: Gig for gig, SSD is way expensive. The beefiest you'll be able to get soon is 128GB (or maybe 256GB)—but the current 64GB 2.5" SSDs go for $1,100 and up. Still got questions?

The result is that they're smaller, faster, cooler and more energy efficient than the last generation of chips, so bet on the cram-as-many-cores-as-you-can processor race to really start heating up in 2008, with quad-core and higher becoming increasingly common. These chips also have the fourth generation of SSE instructions for faster technical and multimedia computing. You'll see Penryn chips in everything from gaming PCs to beefy servers to MacBook Pros.