Brand: MacNews

Pioneer today announced that it has begun shipping its DVD-RW/CD-RW combo drives to Sony for use in Sony’s soon-to-be-released VAIO PCV-RX490TV. With the system, Sony will join the ranks of Apple and Compaq in offering consumers a DVD-recorder on a system. The drive that the PCV-RX490TV users varies slightly from the SuperDrive used by Apple in that it supports DVD-rewriting as well. The Sony system will sell for US$2,499 after a $100 rebate.

A Reuters report discusses Napster’s need to align itself with major music publishers, who own the rights to the content they reproduce, and not necessarily just appease the major labels. The story also offers a perspective on the current state of Napster — presently a shadow of its former self — as well as the company’s plans moving forward.

PC Connection today announced that it will buy Cyberian Outpost, more commonly referred to as Outpost.com, in a stock-swap whose value depends on Outpost’s revenues in June, July, and August as well as the trading price of PC Connection shares. PC Connection will immediately provide Outpost with two credit lines of up to US$8 million to sustain operations.

ATI will ship the next revision of its Radeon card, based on the R200 chip, in late summer, according to The Register. The card will likely be titled the Radeon 2. There’s no word yet as to when the Mac version will be ready — Mac versions of ATI’s card have generally lagged some months behind their PC counterparts.

In its efforts to offer a myriad of “e-government” services online, the UK government has inadvertently snubbed Mac users, reports Macworld UK. Mac users will be unable to access the services — at least for now — as they require the use of Internet Explorer 5.01 on a Windows system due to the certificates that the site uses that are incompatible with Macs.