While we chew on that incoming Metal Gear Solid 4 80GB PS3 (with DualShock 3) in the States, Europe has a pair of SKUs of its own to look forward to. Sony's hitting with a "movie bundle" on March 19th that includes Spider-Man 3, 300 and Casino Royale on Blu-ray, along with a 40GB PS3, all for the regular €399 price. If you can wait until March 29th, for the same price you can nab a 40 gigger bundled with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Both bundles promise to be quite appealing, but apparently neither come packing HD cables, which could be a bit of a hangup for those ready to make the Blu-ray plunge. GT5 box art is after the break.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Ah, Target. The home of so many broken street dates. Just days after letting the Xbox 360 Arcade slip out of its doors early, the retailer is apparently proving that the 40GB PlayStation 3 is indeed coming to America -- and for $399.99, no less. Reportedly, the system is all set to "officially" be released here on October 28th, and while we've no way of confirming, we're hearing that it may be bundled with the upcoming Spider-Man 3 flick, too. Anyways, we'll let the photos take it from here -- click on through for more.

[Via N4G, thanks Alexis]

Well folks, it looks like the funky, PS3 price-drop happenings you've been hearing about lately may very well be dropping all over the place. Apparently, hot on the heels of a new filing with the FCC, and various rumors concerning an approaching $399 console, Sony (which has heretofore denied the chatter) has announced a "Big Bang" press conference to take place on October 12th, where many believe they will intro a new, lower priced 40GB console. With nothing big slated for the holiday season yet, and Xbox 360 price-cuts and bundles being bandied about, it makes sense that Sony would come out swinging before holiday shoppers hit the stores. It's truly a good time to be a buyer.

Read -- PlayStation 3 getting holiday makeover: $399 PS3 rumor has legs
Read -- Rumor: Sony has 'big bang' announcement Oct. 12

Despite our personal reservations on the topic, if you're rocking a Zune, we say more power to you, and we thought we'd let you know about this simple method to upgrade that little player of yours to 40GB. Ironically, iPodMods did the honors: turns out the Zune uses the same battery as that of the 60/80GB iPod, and while they were mucking about they also discovered that an upgrade to a 40GB Toshiba drive is relatively painless as well. The player also supports 60GB and 80GB drives, but you can't get the back cover back on with those bulkier drives in place, so no dice there. But if an extra 10GB is worth the price and hassle to you, then by all means grab your Xacto Knife and get hacking!

[Via Zune-Online]

Hot on the heels of MediaGear's HD2GO is yet another photo viewer / PMP, but with 40GB or 80GB hard drive options, the Picture Porter Elite is more akin to Epson's P-4000 line of capcious convergence devices. Manufactured by Digital Foci, the USB 2.0-enabled PPE-360 features a 3.6-inch screen (only QVGA, though -- Epson gives you VGA on its models), line-in recording, PictBridge printing support, and video out for displaying your pics and vids on a regular TV. Supported memory card formats include Compact Flash I / II, MicroDrive, SD / MMC, and Memory Stick (xD, miniSD, and MS Duo cards work with an adapter), while the compatible file types include JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and RAW (image), MP3, WMA, AAC, and WAV (audio), and MPEG-1/4, AVI, MOV, and WMV9 (video). The Picture Porter Elite will begin shipping on the 7th, starting at $450.

[Via Digital Media Thoughts]

A trio of new PMPs from Archos have been popping up around the web courtesy of a snapshot from the Trois Suisses winter catalog, but details are still scarce as all that's known about these models comes from the little big of information we can glean from the included French description. Making matters even more confusing is the fact that the so-called 604, with its 10.9-centimeter screen and 30GB hard drive, appears to cost about $130 more than the $500 504 which has the same screen but 10GB greater capacity -- although its seemingly slimmer design may account for some of the disparity. Meanwhile, the 404 sports an identical drive to the 604, but only an 8.8-centimeter screen, and is supposedly priced at $440. Both 30GB models are said to be scheduled for a July release, while the 504 should be available in August, but we'll do our best to get specs on these before then, because we like knowing about stuff before anyone else does.

[Via GenerationMP3]

At a San Francisco press briefing and product demonstration that hopefully went better than its disastrous Korean counterpart last month, executives from Samsung, Microsoft, and Intel jointly announced pricing and availability details for the official U.S. release of the Q1 UMPC. Starting on May 7th, early-adopters will be able to pick up a Q1 -- along with all the high-profit-margin accessories -- at Best Buy's e-tail location for $1,100, with an in-store rollout planned for "later this summer." As you're probably already aware, the Q1, along with models from Asus, Founder, and TabletKiosk, is among the first generation of so-called Ultra Mobile PCs designed to enhance your on-the-go lifestyle, and sports a 7-inch touchscreen, Celeron M ULV processor, 40GB hard drive, 512MB RAM, 802.11b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0.