Asus Eee PC 1000H 80G XP Mini-Notebook

Ever since the Eee PC 4G opened up the mini-notebook market last year, Asus has been pumping out different flavors of the Eee, including versions of the original with XP and models sporting slightly larger screens and a multitouch pad. With the $460 Eee 1000H 80G XP, though, Asus addresses many of the previous problems we've had with earlier mini-notebook models--and it creates a solid second-gen machine in the process.

The newest member of the Eee family offers the same Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and 80GB hard disk as MSI's Wind NB U100. It has a 10-inch display and measures 10.5 by 7.5 by 1.5 inches (about the size of a hardcover book, and only slightly larger than the MSI Wind). The Eee 1000H is also fairly heavy for a mini-notebook, weighing about 3.6 pounds including the six-cell battery packed underneath. (On the plus side, the battery lasted about 4 hours, 32 minutes in our tests.) With the Eee 1000H's design the way it is, you might as well call it an ultraportable--in heft, if not performance.

The Atom processor may be passable for last-gen apps and small devices, but it's downright mopey if you're hoping to run Vista. And it isn't exactly a speed demon in XP, either: On our WorldBench 6 tests, the Eee 1000H received a score of 37, a point higher than MSI's Wind got. For the most part, though, this model's performance is consistent for what we're finding with XP-based mini-notebooks running an Atom processor and 1GB of RAM.

One thing that sets the Eee 1000H apart from the other mini-notebooks we've seen is its spacious, comfortable keyboard. I'd probably put it on a par with what you'd expect to find on a full-featured ultraportable laptop. The keyboard, coupled with an array of useful shortcut keys, makes this mini-notebook very easy to use. One key turns off the monitor, another switches the resolutions, the third changes the performance settings, and the last is user configurable. And the keys aren't the only things that work well: The touchpad offers a sensual feel and is fluidly responsive, and the mouse buttons are firm, metallic, and well mounted.

The display's native 1024 by 600 resolution looks reasonably sharp on the 10-inch screen. With a quick toggle of the shortcut key, you can pop through a number of "optimized" resolutions. The only real use I've found for the resolution gear-shifter is that it's helpful for trying to fit some oddly formatted Web pages to the screen; otherwise, you can always output video through the VGA port. A firm, flush bezel surrounding the screen and the 1.3-megapixel camera securely locks everything in place. The case has a smooth yet slightly textured feel.

Suprisingly, the Eee 1000H's audio sounded crisp, and richer than I had expected. Maybe that's the result of Dolby Sound Room technology (which Dolby says extends the speakers' bass response up an octave, and widens the sound space that the speakers project). Elvis's "Suspicious Minds" rang clear; Run DMC's "Walk This Way" sounded a little tinny, but good enough that I was able to forgo plugging in headphones. I'd even say that the Eee 1000H can fill up a small room (or office cubicle) with tunes.

One other unexpected twist: Asus preinstalls some handy software, including Microsoft Works, StarOffice, and Skype.

In other respects, the Eee 1000H provides exactly what you might expect from a mini-notebook in expandability and layout. It includes three USB ports, an SD Card slot, VGA-out, headphone/microphone jacks, and an ethernet jack.

I liked the thorough manual, too. It's funny, really: Many makers of high-end notebooks don't even bother--simply tossing a PDF in the box--and yet this well-laid-out book covers all the bases.

Asus' Eee 1000H is among the leaders in the mini-notebook market. This model offers a sizable keyboard, a solid screen, and a clean and comfortable layout, just beating out the MSI Wind. Buyers beware, however: It's a device that's roughly the size of an ultraportable yet has half an ultraportable's power (albeit at more than half an ultraportable's price).

Panasonic Unveils Line of Toughbook Laptops

Panasonic Computer Solutions Co. Thursday unveiled a slew of new portable computers, focusing on small but rugged models.

The PC maker took the covers off a light-weight rugged laptop, a tablet PC and an ultraportable computer. Panasonic said the new offerings, especially its Toughbook line of laptops, focus on helping the business person on the move,

"The growing trend of portability in computers -- lighter weight, longer battery life, advanced wireless capabilities -- needs to be balanced by true durability," said Daniel Longfield, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan, in a statement. "Highly mobile government, enterprise and small business users need reliable connectivity to drive continued productivity."

One of the mobile computers that Panasonic is unveiling is the Toughbook F8, which the company puts in the lightweight but durable category. Weighing in at 3.7 pounds with a 14.1 inch-wide display, it uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and has up to 4GB of RAM. With an integrated handle for easier portability, the F8 also has a 160GB shock-mounted hard drive.

Panasonic also is coming out with the Toughbook W8, an ultraportable laptop with a 12.1-inch display and an integrated DVD multi drive. Weighing about 3 pounds, the laptop runs also runs a Core 2 Duo processor and has a 120GB hard disk. It also reportedly has a battery life of seven hours.

The company also brought out the Toughbook T8, a tablet PC. The 3.3-pound computer has a 12.1-inch touch screen, stylus and screen-rotating software. The T8 runs an ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo processor, has a 120GB hard drive and up to seven hours of battery life.

The 8 series of laptops is slated to be available in November.

The ultraportable market, in particular, is getting a lot of attention in recent months. Just this past August, Lenovo went ultraportable with a US$399 laptop.

Ultraportables, or netbooks, are relatively inexpensive, small form-factor laptops that are designed for basic applications like Web surfing, e-mailing and word processing. They're designed to use less power than traditional PCs and laptops and aren't powerful enough for serious power users or gamers.

Industry powerhouse Intel Corp. is betting heavily on the emerging market, announcing this past June that its new Atom processors are aimed directly at netbook and net-top PCs. Chris Tulley, a spokesman for Intel, said in a previous interview that he expects netbook and net-top sales to outpace growth of traditional laptops and desktops.

Firms Urged to Boost Web 2.0 Security

A new study says companies are lagging seriously behind when it comes to protecting themselves from new threats in the Web 2.0 world. While Web-based threats have become more common in recent years, businesses are still focused on e-mail threats, according to the research.

The study, which was released last week by Colorado-based security software vendor Webroot, found three out of 10 organizations have seen their businesses' Web security compromised by employees using personal Web mail accounts, visiting social networking sites and downloading videos. Webroot surveyed 648 organizations in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, and found over a third thought their employees spent at least an hour per day on non-work-related sites.

Businesses are taking measures to protect against e-mail-based threats, but they are not yet attuned to the greatest threat vector today: Web-based threats driven by employee Web use," said Mike Irwin, COO of Webroot, in a release on the finding. "We found that Web-borne malware increased over 500 percent in 2007 as cybercriminals developed new ways to attack on-site and remote employees through personal Web mail accounts, social networking sites and other Web 2.0 applications. In the current threat environment, businesses must utilize a Web security solution that provides an additional layer of in-the-cloud protection for corporate and mobile users."

The study notes that 85 percent of malware is now distributed through the Web and cited industry research that shows 49 percent of businesses allow employees unlimited access to social networking sites, which do not monitor their content for malware.

"Employees and businesses regularly use blogs, Wikis and other online information sources that are more susceptible to hackers and infections because they include content from numerous anonymous contributors, rather than one trusted source," said Irwin. "However, awareness is only just beginning to grow among the IT professionals responsible for protecting these organizations. Nearly 30 percent of the IT decision-makers we surveyed did not know if their organization or its employees are using Web 2.0 applications."

Webroot found that lack of knowledge was not for lack of fear. Nearly half the businesses surveyed said they were concerned about data breaches.

Securing Your Mobile Devices

If you've ever let a stranger borrow your corporate smartphone, you may have just given him a gift of your company's data.

The reason: he might have palmed a small USB device called the CSI Stick, and surreptitiously plugged it into your phone. The device can drain every bit of data from a cell phone in seconds, says Patrick Salmon, a mobility architect for Enterprise Mobile, a technology services company that specializes in Windows Mobile deployments.

Increasingly, companies want to give mobile or field-based employees direct, instant access to critical corporate applications previously accessible only from a desktop. To do so, existing security, authentication and management infrastructures have to be extended and adapted so that mobile devices, along with their data and wireless connectivity (cellular or Wi-Fi), are managed as surely and fully as desktop PCs.

But that's not the case in many mobile deployments today, according to consultants who, like Salmon, specialize in working with enterprise customers. "What we see is an ill-defined policy regarding devices," says Dan Croft, president and CEO of Mission Critical Wireless, a technology services company that specializes in mobile deployments.

Often personal handhelds are granted wireless access, something that would never be allowed with a personal computer, creating security vulnerabilities, manageability challenges and tech support burdens, Croft says. Companies don't plan beforehand about how to handle lost, stolen or broken devices, or the data on them. "IT needs to get control of wireless [mobility] within their company," he says.

Taking control falls into four broad areas, says Jack Gold, principle of J. Gold Associates, a mobile consulting company: securing and managing every device; managing every connection; protecting every piece of data; and educating every user.

Securing and managing every device

Mobile devices, whether bought by the company or by the individuals, are accessing company networks and company data. Device security and management are closely intertwined, because you have to be able to monitor the devices in order to enforce policies.

In most cases, practitioners recommend standardizing on two or three mobile device models, minimizing the support, security and management challenges. "Other smartphones [brought in by users] might not be capable of supporting your specific security and administration polices," Enterprise Mobile's Salmon says.

Using mobile device passwords or PINs is advised. "If your enterprise doesn't enforce a password policy on those devices, you might as well stop with all your [other] security measures," Croft says. Salmon favors PINs, coupled with a limit on the number of access attempts. After that number, the next attempt triggers an automatic lock or wipe of the handheld.

Enforcing effective passwords is one of the essentials at Florida Hospital, in Orlando, where wireless notebooks are widely used by staff and nurses, along with BlackBerry devices for e-mail. The hospital also is exploring what's involved in granting access to clinical systems from physicians' smartphones.

The hospital enforces regularly changed passwords (a function of its enterprisewide identity management infrastructure), up-to-date antivirus software and some ability to remotely wipe data from mobile clients, says Todd Franz, associate CTO. "We see the need to protect the data on these mobile devices just as much as we do on a desktop PC," he says.

On selected notebooks, the hospital also uses the CompuTrace service from Absolute Software, a kind of "LoJack for laptops." A stolen computer can be traced and tracked down. Franz won't say how often hospital laptops have been stolen, but the recovery rate for laptops protected in this way is 100%. According to some accounts, 10% to 15% of all mobile devices go missing.

Consider using comprehensive device management applications such as Sybase's Afaria, Credant's Mobile Guardian, Nokia's Intellisync, Microsoft's System Center Mobile Device Manager, and others from the likes of Checkpoint and Trust Digital, to name just a few. These policy-driven suites blend monitoring and enforcement capabilities focus on mobile clients, and typically work with back-end authentication and other servers.

It's also important to have the ability to wipe, lock or kill any mobile device that's stolen, lost or unaccounted for on a moment's notice, including its SD card if it has one. A network manager should be able to issue a command that locks a device until the right password is used, wipes or deletes some or all of the corporate data on it, or shuts it down entirely, Croft says.

Managing every connection

"These connections are a pretty significant exposure if they're not done right," Gold says. "Don't leave it up to the end users."

These practitioners favor enforcing VPN connections with IPSec for mobile deployments. "SSL, which uses TCP port 443, is the path of least resistance," Enterprise Mobile's Salmon says. "I consider this the weaker of the two options." That's chiefly because while the target server has a certificate and is trusted, the SSL client is not. IPSec requires that ports have to be specifically opened, but both ends of the connection have certificates, he says.

A related issue is allowing mobile devices to connect only if they pass muster. Is the antivirus software up-to-date? Is the VPN active? Is the Wi-Fi connection from a public hotspot?

Protecting every piece of data

Selective data encryption should be an essential item in any mobile deployment.

With a managed mobile device, you can distribute and enforce encryption policies for specific data. "Document folders, your e-mail in-box, user data, contacts, certificates, and so on as the kinds of things that should be encrypted," consultant Gold says. Also consider encrypted or encryptable removable storage devices, such as high-capacity SD cards, he says.

"Unless you're in a 'James Bond environment,' most encryption levels will give you far more security than sending an unencrypted e-mail over the Internet, which happens all the time," Croft says.

Educating every user

"Few companies educate end users on the proper procedures and policies to safeguard [mobile] corporate assets," Gold says. "Get the users on your side."

"The greatest vulnerability is human," Enterprise Mobile's Salmon says. "If a stranger asked to borrow your laptop for five minutes to check his stock portfolio, you'd say "No!" because you've been educated about the risks. There's no way you're going to let a stranger use your laptop. The same thinking has to apply to your mobile phone."

To school its nurses in mobile technology, Florida Hospital relies on trainers who also have been, or are, nurses. "They speak the same language as the users," Associate CTO Franz says. "We try to keep IT people out of the way of this training, because they do not speak the same language."

Franz makes a key point about nurses and mobile technology that's relevant to all such deployments. "People don't go to nursing school to become a clerk-typist," he says. "They go because they want to help people. Technology can assist them in doing that."

Acceptable use policies should be short and to the point, otherwise they won't get read. Training should cover all the elements (explaining the device, applications and intended usage), says Alphons Evers, global solutions manager with the mobility practice of Getronics, a global IT services company.

Educating users means willing to be educated yourself. Franz says Florida Hospital discovered that one major problem facing nurses with wireless laptops was finding enough convenient surface space with electrical power so they could be recharged, and finding a lockable locker or drawer to store the laptops when not in use. That was one aspect of mobility that hadn't been anticipated.

Enterprises Overpay for Antivirus Software, Says Analyst

Enterprises continue to pay too much for security software -- while the software vendors aren't doing enough research to keep up with fast-changing threats on the Internet, a Gartner analyst said Monday.

Security vendors are maintaining high profit margins on firewalls and antivirus software, products which are commodities these days, said Neil MacDonald, a research vice president at Gartner, during a presentation at the company's IT Security Summit in London.

Buyers should take advantage of the competitive environment in the antivirus software industry to negotiate better prices for such products, he said.

"I know it's hard to switch but you have to seriously enter the negotiations," he said. "Let the vendors know that you are not afraid to switch."

Security vendors have maintained a pricing scheme that contradicts the rest of the IT industry, MacDonald said. Typically with software or hardware, prices go down year after year with the introduction of new and better products. In some cases, however, security software often loses its effectiveness as new threats emerge, while prices stay high.

"Why in antivirus year after year do we pay more for something that gives us less?" MacDonald asked. "It's insanity. Why is information security immune from the trends of the IT industry?"

For the last 18 months, MacDonald has been researching adaptive security, a concept that envisions having different security products communicate with one another and evaluate threats in a more contextual way. MacDonald argued that security products should work together like the human body's immune system, where different defensive mechanisms work in concert with each other.

These days, a security product is often designed to address a single security aspect, such as fortifying Web applications, protecting endpoint devices or preventing network intrusions. Vendors have taken advantage of how organizations deal with a security problem by offering single products, a model that makes security overly complex, MacDonald said.

Vendors need to create security technology that is less rigid and can change when businesses modify their processes. Ideally, those products would able to apply certain security policies in certain situations, a concept MacDonald labeled as adaptive.

"Vendors are holding us back from enabling this vision," MacDonald said. "The vendors are delivering us too many unconnected point products with too much complexity."

Sprint Launches Xohm WiMax Network in Baltimore

Sprint Nextel launched its mobile Wimax broadband network in the city of Baltimore on Monday.

Xohm (pronounced "zome") will offer download speeds of between 2M bps (bits per second) and 4M bps, with prices starting at US$30 a month for mobile users, the company said.

Other plans include a one-day pass at $10, a home Internet option at $25 a month, and a "Pick 2 for Life" introductory offer that allows two devices to access the network for $50 a month. Customers won't have to sign a long-term contract.

Sprint will sell the necessary WiMax modems through the Xohm Web site and local independent retail stores. The Samsung Express costs $59.99 and the Zyxel model $79.99.

The company plans to introduce another modem from Chinese manufacturer ZTE later this year, and also expects to see notebook PCs and a wireless Internet tablet from Nokia with WiMax modems built in. Sprint also plans to sell a dual-mode wireless modem capable of connecting to the WiMax network and to its existing 3G (third-generation) mobile phone network.

Sprint is in the process of combining its Xohm WiMax business with Clearwire, and plans to form a new company in the fourth quarter, also to be called Clearwire. That company intends to build a nationwide WiMax network on which Sprint will resell airtime as a virtual mobile operator.

Security Risks Rise as Smartphones Become Smarter

As wireless devices become more numerous within businesses, their convenience will be counterbalanced by an increasing potential for security problems, according to a Gartner analyst.

New trends in the wireless industry are making it easier for hacking attacks, said John Girard, a Gartner vice president, who spoke at the IT Security Summit in London on Monday.

A few years ago, there was not a lot of standardization across wireless devices. Differing operating systems, differing implementations of mobile Java and even varying configurations among devices with the same operating system made it hard to write malicious code that ran on a wide array of devices, Girard said.

But that's changing as the quality control gets better on widely-used platforms such as Microsoft's Windows Mobile and the Symbian operating system, he said. That standardization makes it easier for attackers to write code that will run on many devices.

"The more your phone gets like a PC, the more it can host malicious code," Girard said. "People are getting used to sending out executable code."

Many of the attacks that have been traditionally plaguing desktop machines, such as phishing, will increasingly move to the mobile platform, Girard said. Also, users may be more tolerant of glitches on their mobile phones, which may be clues that a device has been infected or hacked.

That's problematic when enterprises begin installing business applications on mobile phones and carry data that is potentially valuable to attackers, Girard said.

"We're very quickly moving to the point where people really can do business on smartphones," Girard said.

Gartner is predicting that wireless ID theft and phishing attempts targeting mobile devices will become more and more prevalent throughout next year, Girard said.

Companies need to be sure before buying a fleet of mobile devices that those devices meet a minimum security specification. The security specification can be formulated by figuring out what kind of data the device will handle and what regulations a company is bound by under data protection law, Girard said.

If the hardware and software is secure when the device arrives, it makes it a lot easier to manage than trying to fix a device after it's in the field, Girard said.

Girard laid out a few key security points: Data on devices should be encrypted, proper identity and access controls should be implemented and intrusion prevention systems should used to ensure that rogue devices don't access sensitive information, he said.

IBM threatens to leave standards bodies

IBM is threatening to leave organizations that set standards for software interoperability because of concerns that their processes are not always fair.

IBM published a new set of guidelines it plans to follow, which include encouraging standards bodies to have rules to protect their decisions from "undue influence," a clear reference to competitor Microsoft Corp.

IBM would like to see loopholes that allow dominant companies to abuse standards processes closed, said Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and standards. Leaving a standards organization for a lack of reforms would be a "last resort," he said.

"We see this very much as a positive, constructive policy for how we hope to engage," Sutor said.

IBM was one of the most vocal opponents of a file format created by Microsoft and approved by the ISO as an international standard earlier this year.

Part of the specification, called Office Open XML, is used in Microsoft's latest Office 2007 productivity suite but has yet to be fully implemented by either Microsoft or other software vendors. OOXML is a rival to OpenDocument Format (ODF), also an international standard used in office suites such as OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.

Microsoft submitted OOXML to the ISO under a so-called Fast Track process, which some opponents believed was too rushed and resulted in a poor-quality standard. Many countries and technical experts questioned the need for another standard document format.

A draft standard OOXML was approved by ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) in a vote that closed March 29. Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela filed appeals over its approval, but the appeals were dismissed in July. The appeals centered in part on alleged irregularities in the ISO's voting process.

In August, the ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) approved the publication of ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the official name for the OOXML specification.

IBM's new guidelines for how it will participate in standards organizations was born out of the company's frustration with OOXML, said Andrew Updegrove, an attorney at Gesmer Updegrove LLP in Boston who studies standards and intellectual property issues.

IBM's guidelines were formulated from recommendations from a six-week, Web-based consultation held in May and June. It involved more than 70 experts who discussed how the creation of standards could be improved. Updegrove also participated.

IBM's guidelines are based on its belief that open standards increase the range of software products that are interchangeable. Standards prevent one software vendor from capturing a large part of a market by locking users into a proprietary format and limiting their ability to easily switch to another product.

Microsoft has long been accused of dominating the market for office productivity programs because of its use of closed file formats. Microsoft changed course, however, and submitted its OOXML format to become an international standard, which means other vendors could implement OOXML in their products.

Android phone makes its debutAndroid phone makes its debut

The first Android phone looks a lot like the fuzzy pictures that have surfaced online for months, with a touch screen similar to the iPhone's and a full slide-out keyboard.

T-Mobile Inc., Google Inc. and HTC Corp. unveiled the long-awaited G1 Android phone at an event in New York today, revealing pricing, availability and some of the initial applications available for it. They emphasized that the software is open source.

The phone will first become available in the U.S., and a U.K. launch will follow shortly afterward. Starting Oct. 22, U.S. consumers will be able to buy the G1 for $179. Users can subscribe to a limited data plan for $25 a month or $35 for unlimited data access.

The G1 will go on sale in the U.K. in early November and in other T-Mobile European markets in the first quarter of next year.

"We believe open will drive the future of the mobile Internet," said Cole Brodman, chief technology and innovation officer at T-Mobile USA. "From garages to graduate schools, from small towns to big cities, we believe third parties will drive the innovation and future of the mobile Net, along with partnerships with carriers and key manufacturers."

A demonstration of the phone showed a user flicking the screen to scroll through items, in much the same way people can use gestures to navigate the iPhone. The G1, however, also supports the "long press," where a user holds a finger to the screen to open up a menu. For example, holding a finger on a photograph opens a menu offering options such as the ability to send the photo to someone else.

The phone includes a browser built on Webkit, the same technology that drives Apple's Safari browser, said Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms at Google, who is credited with leading the Android development. He called it "Chrome-light," comparing it to the Chrome browser that Google recently introduced.

The T-Mobile G1

In a browser window, a user can drag a small box around the Web site and the content behind the box is magnified for easier viewing on the small screen.

The phone, which the executives referred to as "G1 with Google", features many Google applications, including Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Flickr and GTalk. It is also integrated with the Amazon MP3 store, allowing users to easily buy digital music, and it features the Android store where users can browse and buy new applications.

The phone also includes a dedicated search button. When users press it, a Google search bar pops up on the screen.

G1 users will be able to read Word, PDF and Excel documents but, initially at least, they won't be able to sync Microsoft Exchange mail with the phone. "Currently there's no Exchange compatibility, but that's a perfect opportunity for a third-party developer," Rubin said.

Oracle mum on 11g Release 2, 11g Express Edition

Oracle Corp. has filled the schedule of its OpenWorld conference with sessions hyping the various features in its 11g database, which was launched in July 2007. But the company doesn't plan to deliver new details of the anticipated 11g Release 2 (R2), or a ship date for 11g Express Edition (XE), the free version popular among developers.

The vendor is doing some recruiting this week for the 11g R2 beta test, but otherwise has no plans to make any announcements, Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president of server technologies, said in an interview following a keynote address Monday at the conference in San Francisco.

"We're going to do an 11g XE, but it will be sometime after the 11g R2 time frame," added Mendelsohn, who oversees the development of Oracle's database. He declined to provide firm dates for either release.

Instead, Oracle seems ready to make news at OpenWorld around complementary technologies that add performance to the core database. Particular attention and speculation is on CEO Larry Ellison's keynote address scheduled for Wednesday, which is titled "Extreme. Performance."

Mendelsohn urged showgoers to watch the speech during his talk Monday.

As for Mendelsohn's remarks, they seemed geared more toward getting customers to adopt the initial release of 11g, focusing on topics such as its new features and the possible upgrade paths.

Oracle has not released hard adoption numbers for 11g, which according to some estimates is seeing slow uptake, but has said the software has been downloaded more than 450,000 times, and that adoption is "on pace" with 10g.

In addition, the company issued a press release stating that customers from "across all industries" have upgraded. Named customers in the release include Eli Lilly & Co. and Novartis AG.

Meanwhile, 11g R2 does appear to be moving toward completion.

Ian Abramson, a Toronto-based data warehousing consultant and president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, said his organization is scheduled to be briefed on the 11g R2 beta program under a nondisclosure agreement today.

"I think we'll understand their timelines a lot better [after the briefing]," Abramson said. "We already have a number of great volunteers who are ready to [join the beta program]."

Microsoft visits cash-strapped Wall Street to roll out HPC Server 2008

This may seem like a weird time to go to Wall Street to announce a new operating system, but that's what Microsoft Corp. did today. At a technology conference in New York, the software vendor formally detailed its Windows HPC Server 2008 software, a high-performance computing version of Windows offering some features that may appeal to bailout-seeking financial services firms.

First, the new release — the successor to Microsoft's Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 technology — will do far less damage to corporate bottom lines than bad subprime mortgages have inflicted. HPC Server 2008, which can scale from two to 2,000 or more server nodes, costs $475 per node, with each consisting of between one and four processor sockets.

Second, HPC Server 2008 includes new management and diagnostics functionality designed to improve the ability of systems administrators to identify performance issues, such as system latency and its root causes. The software is also integrated with desktop applications; for instance, a user working in Excel can send a processing job to an HPC cluster with just one mouse click, similar to what it takes to launch a printing task.

And third, Microsoft said that HPC Server 2008 will enable users to run complex algorithms, such as those used to determine the amount of risk in investment portfolios, in a parallel environment on multiple server cores without having to rewrite their application code.

Financial services firms are increasingly adopting HPC technologies, something Microsoft pointed out in its announcement that HPC Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing.

Among the people quoted in Microsoft's press release was Jay Dweck, global head of strategies and technology for the institutional securities group at Morgan Stanley, an investment banking firm that late Sunday received permission from the Federal Reserve to become a more regulated bank holding company. "We are closely evaluating Microsoft's Windows HPC Server 2008 to provide Morgan Stanley with the ability to maintain our competitive edge," Dweck said in a statement.

Air Canada Clears Wi-Fi for Takeoff

Air Canada will soon be answering the prayers of its business travelers as it prepares to rollout in-flight Wi-Fi services on select U.S.-bound flights. But with the lack of an air-to-ground network on Canadian soil, passengers looking to take advantage of the new service on domestic flights will have to wait a little while longer.

Teaming up with Aircell LLC, Air Canada will rollout the "Gogo" Wi-Fi system on a handful of its Airbus A319 planes. The airline expects the initial deployment to be completed by spring 2009, primarily on west coast-bound flights to San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Internet access will allow passengers to surf the Web, check e-mail, use instant messaging applications, send SMS messages and access their corporate VPN.

"Customers who have identified the need for in-flight Internet connectivity are very much skewed to the business travelers," Charles McKee, vice-president of marketing at Air Canada, said. "The full suite of functionality that Gogo can provide aligns perfectly with what our customers want." Earlier this year, Aircell rolled out its U.S. network, comprised of 92 cell towers across the continental 48 states.

The company teamed with American Airlines to launch the service on 15 planes and is now in the process of launching the service on two other airlines. Joe Herzog, vice-president of airline solutions at Aircell, said the network took a total of six months to construct and anticipated a Canadian network could be completed even faster.

But the problem facing currently facing Aircell -- and the issue that is limiting Air Canada's initial rollout to U.S.-bound flights only -- comes in the form of a regulatory roadblock. Industry Canada has yet to assign air-to-ground spectrum to a licensee in Canada, meaning Aircell will have to hold off on putting up cell towers on Canadian soil.

"We're working with the regulatory officials in Canada right now to basically take the steps necessary so that we can have someone -- a partner perhaps -- in Canada that will obtain the necessary licensings," he said. "One of the key attributes in Canada is that there is air-to-ground spectrum already set aside specifically for this type of application. There was a lot of foresight from Industry Canada to set aside this spectrum and it makes it much more practical for us."

And with the rising fuel prices putting a cramp on the airline industry, potential users might have questions about how much Air Canada is hoping to charge for this service. According to McKee, the first phase of pricing has been set at C$12.95 (US$12.14) per flight for trips lasting longer than three hours. Gartner Inc. analyst Ken Dulaney was impressed with Air Canada's initial price point, but wondered how well the network performance would hold up under heavy use.

"The question becomes how much bandwidth will they have on these planes," he said. "If too many use it, you'll get what you have on ViaRail trips from Montreal and Ottawa -- something that is unusable."

But Herzog said that connection quality won't be an issue for passengers and compared in-flight Wi-Fi speeds to mobile broadband access on the ground. He added that the system connects each plane's Wi-Fi hot spot to the ground over a 3 MHz signal.

"Passengers have been telling us that what they're experiencing is better than what they have at home, in the office or at a coffee shop," he said.

As for the security concerns that might come with accessing potentially mission-critical data over an in-flight Wi-Fi system, Herzog said that Gogo supports most corporate VPNs and will allow passengers to use the service in full compliance with any business security requirements they might have.

IDC Canada security analyst David Senf agreed, saying the network won't be any more or less secure than a public Wi-Fi hotspot at a local coffee shop. "When sending or receiving personal or corporate sensitive data, remember the basics and use encryption," he said. "Assume that if you are not encrypting your wireless traffic that it can be read."

Senf advised that HTTPS communications is used when checking Web-based e-mail accounts such as Gmail, and that a VPN is used whenever communicating with a corporate system.

• Sponsored Resource:Are you ready for virtualization? Try the sever assessment tool.
• Sponsored Resource:Learn more about ultra light notebooks from Asus and the best warranty in the industry.
• Sponsored Resource:Thinking about a new Laptop? Lenovo has models to meet everyone's needs.
• Sponsored Resource:Get the truth about remanufactured ink. Learn more from HP.

Next: Virtualized IPhones

VMware Inc.'s vClient initiative may be compelling but one industry analyst wonders how many users will require their desktop environment on portable devices.

The vClient initiative, announced this week at the 10th annual VMWorld conference, is designed to give users one view of all their data and applications on different devices, and is endorsed by major hardware vendors like Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and NEC.

Though CEO Paul Maritz did not elaborate on the implementation for smart phones and handheld devices, he did say the firm plans to include vClient versions for mobile hardware in the future.

vClient includes VMware View, designed to make user profiles and applications available on different devices, including Windows and Macintosh.

Dump the Desktop?

"People who have BlackBerrys, they have desktops, there's clearly a group of people who will pay a significant amount of money for that," said David Floyer, co-founder of the Wikibon project, a Mountain View, Calif.-based firm that publishes research online. "But I'm not sure of the fundamental value proposition."

Using the iPhone as an example, Floyer said some users may dispense with the desktop and use portable devices as their primary client.

"It's a very powerful operating system, a very powerful device," Floyer said of the iPhone. "Maybe it's just simpler that that becomes the PC of the future, that you obviate the need for so many devices. You pick one that's the best fit for your lifestyle and you'll make do with what it can do and if necessary you'll pick another one.

Along with vClient, VMware also announced Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS), which includes services for infrastructure, cloud computing and storage.

One product under the VDC-OS umbrella is the Fault Tolerenace service, designed to move applications over to different hardware in the event of failure, with no down time.

"If a machine goes down we let another physical resource in the resource pool pick it up," said Stephen Herrod, VMware's chief technology officer. "The idea is you run a virtual machine, you have a shadow copy kept on another site kept in perfect synchronization. You can't have a fault tolerance that 'kind of works.'"

Floyer said managing storage is a major issue today in managing virtual environments.

"If you do not manage things properly, you can actually make things and your storage far worse, because instead of having ten real machines, you have 50 virtual machines running on the same infrastructure and you are not careful you have five times the storage," Floyer said. "So you have to manage the storage carefully, you have to manage the backup environment."

Windows-on-Mac Option

As part of its desktop virtualization portfolio, VMware announced version 2.0 of Fusion, which lets users run Windows applications on their Macintoshes without having to buy the Mac versions of Office software.

"A lot of businesses have a site licence for office for windows and don't want to purchase licenses of office for Mac," said Pat Lee, VMware's group manager for consumer products.

Lee added Fusion 2.0 would appeal to business users running computer-aided design (CAD) software and those that employ Mac users working on their own Apple hardware.

VMware officials said about 14,000 users attended the conference, which included an exhibition of partners and education sessions.

One Canadian user who presented was Kris Jmaeff, senior server analyst and information systems security specialist with the Interior Health Authority.

Based in Kelowna, B.C., IHA operates 28 acute care facilities and a total of 183 health facilities. More than three years ago, the organization decided to use VMware Infrastructure to consolidate servers when it was formed after an amalgamation of several regional health organizations.

In 2006, the organization had a total of 66 virtual and physical servers, and now it has 250 virtual servers, Jmaeff said. When they rolled out VMware in 2006, the organization found it had 40 percent more capacity due to server virtualization.

Now, more than 50 percent of servers in their data center are virtual, he said.

Virtualization Evolves

Virtualization has come a long way since IBM introduced CP 67 in 1967, Floyer noted.

"I grew up with IBM's original virtual machine, which was CP 67," he said. "I always had a great love for that. You could virtualize your devices, your machines and disks -- everything."

But he noted there were drawbacks.

"The first versions of this had huge overhead," he said. "You lost so much at the processor. The combination of what Intel has done to speed things up plus the work that VMware did to make the overhead reasonable and just recognizing that it's more than just providing a hypervisor."

World of Warcraft Update Due in November

Blizzard Entertainment announced last week that World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King will arrive November 13.

The expansion is the second for WoW, which to date has amassed 11 million subscribers. The expansion arrives in all other regions (save China) by November 18.

"We're looking forward to launching Wrath of the Lich King and finally giving World of Warcraft players a chance to take on Arthas and his minions," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment in a statement. "Until then, we'll continue to refine and playtest the expansion content to make sure it provides a highly polished and entertaining experience."

GameDaily reports that the expansion will come in two editions.

A standard edition will include the game, and a Collector's Edition will include a 208-page art book; an exclusive in-game baby frost wyrm pet; a behind-the-scenes DVD; the official soundtrack; a mouse pad featuring a map of the continent of Northrend; and two WoW Trading Card Game March of the Legion starter decks. *deep breath*

There's also two exclusive trading cards that will be made available only in the Collector's Edition.

Biggest Malware Lure? Brad Pitt

Movie star Brad Pitt has shoved Paris Hilton off the top of a list neither will have coveted being on. A fan entering Pitt's name in a search engine now has a startling one in five chance of finding a malware-hosting site instead, says McAfee.

Pitt is top of the fake website malware league, just ahead of a collection of pop and film stars that reads (in descending order) Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Heidi Montag, Mariah Carey, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cameron Diaz, George Clooney, and Angelina Jolie.

Hilton no longer even makes the fake web top ten, but can perhaps take some solace from her continued popularity with spammers.

If you're never heard of some of these people then it's a fair bet that you are not the intended target of a technique that has been for some years one of the commonest ways to infect a PC. But still it persists, driven by an apparently insatiable appetite among some Internet users for computer screensavers, wallpaper, ring tones and star pictures, at whatever risk to themselves.

"Cybercriminals employ numerous methods, yet one of the simplest but most effective way is to trick consumers into infecting themselves by capitalizing on Americans' interest in celebrity gossip," commented McAfee's Jeff Green. "Tapping into current events, pop culture or commonly browsed sites is an easy way to achieve this."

Reading the latest statistics, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that malware writers think that the celebrity-obsessed are as recklessly naive as they are star-struck. Most malware-infection techniques have shown some evolution over the last two years, but the fake website ploy just goes on and on.

In fact, a deeper problem is the way users interact with search engines, as was pointed out by McAfee itself only a year ago. McAfee's motives for publicizing the issue aren't entirely neutral - at least one search engine, Yahoo, recently took up using McAfee's SiteAdvisor tool to filter the websites it returns in search boxes.

And for those users who only visit legitimate websites they know about, there is also bad news. The biggest hack trend of the last year has been compromising perfectly legitimate websites to serve malware - witness this week's large attack on the website of BusinessWeek magazine. For Internet users there is no easy escape, only the awareness of the growing number of pitfalls.

Putting WiMax to the Test

While Sprint officially launches commercial WiMAX services for the first time in Baltimore this month, one college campus 30 miles to the south will be building its own mobile WiMAX network that will be used to test next-generation applications for mobile broadband services.

The James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland is deploying WiMAX nodes, routers, base stations and other equipment on its campus to create a large testing ground for next-generation mobile broadband capabilities. The lab, which is being built in collaboration with the industry group the WiMAX Forum, will give students the opportunity to test applications on a mobile broadband service that is not expected to be available in most of the United States until 2009. As one of only two WiMAX Forum labs in the world -- the other is in Taiwan -- expectations are high that it will spark a wave of innovation that will showcase WiMAX's strength as a mobile data standard.

Dr. Ashok Agrawala, a University of Maryland computer science professor who is directing the lab, says that most of the equipment is being provided by the Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, a federal research lab located on the campus. Much of the gear being deployed at the lab comes from Motorola, he says, including WiMAX base stations and antennae. Additionally, Agrawala expects device vendors to donate some WiMAX-enabled cell phones, PDAs and laptops to the lab, and that eventually the lab's network will support "at least 30 to 50 different devices" during experiments.

Agrawala says that once the lab is operational later this year, computer science students will start working on applications that will give everyone on campus instant access to crucial information such as class schedules, campus maps and schedules of events on campus. And that's not all: other applications in the works include real-time updates on the campus bus system, as well as updates on the nearby Washington, D.C., Metro system; dining hall menus; and even a public safety application that will send emergency signals directly to police once activated.

"With the public safety application, all you'll have to do is touch one button that will open up a window on the police dispatch," Agrawala says. "It will then open an audio and video screen so police can record the incident as it's happening."

WiMAX's potential to deliver high-speed public safety applications aren't limited to delivering messages in emergency situations. Another application that is being considered, Agrawala says, is a map application where students with disabilities can find all handicap-accessible entrances to buildings and where they can chart a course across campus that has the fewest slopes or the least amount of traffic.

Christian Almazan, a Ph.D student at the University of Maryland, says deploying WiMAX on campus will make it vastly easier to connect students to vital campus information quickly and reliably. And because WiMAX hotspots can cover miles of territory, WiMAX devices won't have the same problems as those that have to constantly hand off between hotspots to get coverage, he says.

"With WiMAX, it will be easier because you'll only need to have one device for accessing everything on campus," Almazan says. "We'll have three nodes deployed across the campus, which should cover the majority of the area. And if the signal doesn't go inside some areas, we can take advantage of the Wi-Fi capabilities we already have set up throughout campus."

The new applications will be running on a campus-based mobile platform called MyeVyu (pronounced "my view") that debuted earlier this year and specializes in supporting location-based mobile software applications. Agrawala eventually expects that this platform will be integrated into all campus laptops and devices, and that WiMAX will help the platform reach its potential to instantaneously deliver information to students and faculty.

"Our major attraction to WiMAX is its stability in terms of broadband capability," he says. "Our basic plan is to cover the campus first, and because WiMAX has such a longer reach than Wi-Fi, it's possible that the signal will be audible in the downtown areas near the campus. There's even a possibility that certain federal agencies might connect to us as well on a point-by-point basis."

Almazan says he is excited that he and fellow students will be working as pioneers in the WiMAX frontier, and he is enthused by WiMAX's potential to close the "digital divide" between urban and rural areas in the United States.

"The best part of this project is simply playing with a brand-new wireless technology that will potentially penetrate the entire United States," he says. "It will enable rural communities to have Web access with tremendous ease."

The Best Ultraportable Laptops

Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Laptop

Because it bears a lower model number, you might imagine that this a less-powerful version of the ThinkPad X300, but the X200 actually has a more recent processor. The X300 has a 13.3-inch display, however, while the X200 has a 12.1-inch screen. Ah, but what you'll see when you fire this baby up!

At just under 3 pounds with its lightest battery installed, the X200 weighs a few ounces less than the ThinkPad X61, despite offering the same 12.1-inch-wide screen and a bigger keyboard. The bright little display has an easy-to-read, 1280-by-800-pixel resolution, making it quite comfortable for work on the go. And the built-in Webcam keeps you in visual touch with your colleagues. The redesigned keyboard is as big as the ones that members of Lenovo's ThinkPad T series carry.

Equipped with the new Centrino 2 processor, Lenovo's ThinkPad X200 looks like a mild-mannered ultraportable, and yet it can leap tall workloads in a single bound. Its battery life is phenomenal, and the keyboard is huge. In short, this is a much better laptop than the ThinkPad X61, which it replaces, and a surefire winner for on-the-run execs.

Check Latest Prices

IDC: Sluggish economy won't slow hot laptop sales

Forget the sluggish economy. Worldwide demand for laptops is driving the PC market into an area of solid growth for the next several years, according to a study just released by IDC.

The Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm predicted that global PC shipments will grow by 15.7% this year, hitting 311 million units. The IDC report issued today also projects that worldwide PC sales growth will remain in double digits through 2011. That growth might slip to around 9% in 2012, when analysts expect annual shipments to surpass 482 million.

What's boosting the outlook, according to IDC, is the increasingly strong demand for portable computers.

"We continue to see a rapid transition to portable PCs around the world, even as economic pressures rise," said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, in a statement. "The trend reflects the increasing importance of computing, not just in the home or office, but as an integrated part of our lives. Falling prices, more design choice and competition for PC makers to capture this market continue to drive a rapid transition."

IDC noted that desktops and x86 servers rang in about 37 million shipments in the U.S. alone during 2007. That number is expected to drop to 35.5 million this year, while shipments of portable are projected to grow from 30 million last year to 35.3 million in 2008.

Worldwide, IDC counted 161.1 million shipments of desktops and x86 servers in 2007. The research firm estimated that worldwide shipments will increase to 163.2 million this year. Meanwhile, IDC projects a huge worldwide leap in laptop shipments, from 108 million last year to 148.2 million in 2008.

"There's a lot of demand for laptops right now because there's the ability to do so much more with them at a much lower price," said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. "It used to be that a decent notebook was twice the price of a desktop, but couldn't do nearly as much, like games, video and multi-tasking. Battery life was short, too, limiting the places you could use them. Now, you can go almost anywhere in a city, bring your laptop along, and be able to surf the Web, do your banking, check your e-mail, IM with your pals and download music."

This latest report comes in sharp contrast to one that IDC released in April, when it found that PC shipments in the U.S. had taken a sharp hit in the first quarter of 2008 because of a sluggish economy. At the time, one analyst predicted that buyers would put off buying new PCs for up to a year.

"The first half of '08 is definitely looking sluggish," IDC analyst Doug Bell told Computerworld. "At first glance, I'd say we'll be bringing our forecast down. I think companies and individuals will be putting off spending for six months to a year. There are a handful of drivers, but it will take more time to make a purchase."

Bell also said he thought that a lot of desktop and laptop purchases would be pushed off until 2009. He noted that the U.S. economy hadn't yet affected worldwide PC sales, but it might further into 2008.

Western Digital offers 500GB laptop drive

Western Digital Corp. today announced that it is shipping its Scorpion Blue 500GB 2.5-in. hard disk drive. It costs $219.99.

The new Scorpion Blue 500GB drive fits in standard laptop drive bays. The drive crams 250GB onto each of two platters into a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard-drive mechanism suitable for installation in laptop computers. The two platters reside in a 9.5mm hard disk drive mechanism -- the standard height for a laptop hard drive.

Three hundred gigabytes remains the largest hard drive that can be ordered from Apple Inc. for a Mac laptop; that's an option on the 17-in. MacBook Pro. MacBooks and MacBook Pros both take commodity hard-drive components, and user interested in upgrading their systems could add this 500GB drive themselves (or pay a technician to do it).

The drive operates at 5400rpm and features Western Digital's "WhisperDrive" technology, which the manufacturer claims allows it to operate more quietly. "ShockGuard" firmware and hardware protect the drive if it's dropped or bumped, while "IntelliSeek" calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption.

8 Laptop Bags That Zip Through Airport Security

While no one questions the need to properly scan laptops when going through airport security, the requirement to remove them from their protective cases is a different story. "Naked" notebooks can easily get dropped, damaged, forgotten and even stolen outright. One study done for Dell estimated that about 12,000 laptops are lost in U.S. airports every week -- a claim that has been challenged by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) . Whatever the numbers are, you don't want your machine, with all its precious data, to become a statistic.

Happily, the TSA has recognized these issues, and began working with case manufacturers in March on a standard for checkpoint-friendly laptop bags that can pass through the security scanners without your having to remove your notebook.

Several cases meeting the spec have already hit the market, and many more are due soon. They have been allowed at checkpoints since late August.

So what makes a checkpoint-friendly laptop bag? The TSA has five official criteria :

A designated laptop-only section.

A laptop-only section that completely unfolds to lay flat on the X-ray conveyor belt.

No metal snaps, zippers or buckles inside, underneath or on top of the laptop-only section.

No pockets on the inside or outside of the laptop-only section.

Nothing packed in the laptop-only section other than the computer itself.

To meet these requirements, case makers have come up with three basic bag designs: zippered clamshells that open flat with your laptop on one side and everything else on the other; double- or triple-compartment bags that unfold and lie flat like a garment bag, again with the laptop on one side; and simple notebook sleeves that either fit into a larger bag (in which case you'll need to take the sleeve out for scanning) or are carried alone. Many existing sleeves meet these criteria, as long as they don't have pockets or metal parts on the sides.

Here are eight of the latest full-featured TSA-approved cases with pockets and compartments that hold everything from your power adapter and accessories to a change of clothes. They'll help speed up the line and look good doing it.

Aerovation Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Bag

The Aerovation ($129.95) was the first checkpoint-friendly bag on the market, available back in June. It is a clean-lined double-compartment bag made of rugged 1680D nylon fabric and a sateen liner, with 4mm of EVA foam padding in between. The accessory compartment is, according to the manufacturer, "designed to give the traveler access to files, pens, cell phone and media. There's also enough room for a change of underwear and toiletries." This no-nonsense bag measures 15 by 12 by 4 inches, has both inside and outside pockets, and holds laptops with displays up to 15.4 inches. (There is also a version for laptops up to 17 inches.)

Aerovation also offers a Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Sleeve for $24.95, which, according to the manufacturer's site, "is made of the same material as a diver's wet suit." So if you accidentally drop your laptop out the plane over the Atlantic, it should be OK.

HP Pavilion dv7t Laptop

HP's powerhouse laptop sails through performance tests and whips the current competition. If speed is what matters to you, the Pavilion dv7t has it in spades. Beyond the 17-inch screen and under the cool "liquid metal" exterior lies Intel's new Centrino 2 processor. The result: high-octane performance in an extremely shiny package. The dv7t, with its 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo T9400 processor and 3GB of RAM, turned in a blazing score of 98 in our WorldBench 6 tests. Interestingly, MicroExpress's identically stacked all-purpose machine, the JFL9226, earned a mark of 103. The dv7t is a handsome, fast unit. For our review it was nicely configured with a 400GB hard drive, a Blu-ray drive, and Windows Vista Home Premium. And if you're looking to replace a desktop, it's a better candidate than most other big notebooks because of its proprietary left-side connection for HP's xb3000 expansion base. Though the base is an expensive add-on, it incorporates a screen stand, a third hard-drive bay, far better speakers, and a wireless keyboard and mouse for a complete desktop experience.

EU Calls for Help to Protect IT Infrastructure

The European Commission's justice and security department is seeking outside help to improve Internet and telecoms security in the European Union.

It has announced two calls for tender for protecting critical infrastructures in the IT sector -- one worth €500,000 over a nine-month period, the other worth €400,000 over a 12-month period. The deadline for submissions in both tenders is Oct. 6.

The two contracts will complement the work carried out by ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency), the Commission said. ENISA was set up by the Commission to spearhead efforts to improve network security in the E.U.

"These two open calls for tenders form part of the ongoing E.U. programme on 'Prevention, Preparedness and Consequence Management of Terrorism and other Security Related Risks' for the period 2007-2013," the Commission said.

The main objective of the first contract is to help define criteria for identifying European critical IT and telecommunications infrastructure.

The second contract is to identify how emergency preparedness in the field of fixed and mobile telecommunications as well as the Internet could be enhanced across the European Union.

"Achieving this objective is a key element in improving the overall robustness and resilience of European electronic communication networks," the Commission said.

Mozilla reacts to rivals with plans to beef up Firefox 3.1

Mozilla Corp. will try to squeeze more into Firefox 3.1, in part as a reaction to rival browsers from Microsoft and Google, the company's chief engineer said today.

"Looking at where we are and the competitive browser landscape, we felt we would be doing a better job if we had another four to five weeks," said Mike Shaver, Mozilla's interim vice president of engineering.

Shaver wasn't sure what impact, if any, the additional work would have on Firefox 3.1's final release date, which Mozilla had targeted as late 2008 or early 2009. "It's too early to know what affect it will have," he said. "But that [late 2008/early 2009 time frame] is still what we're looking at."

In a lengthy post to the Mozilla.dev.planning message forum last week, Shaver spelled out what Mozilla hopes to do. There, he listed several features that would benefit from "one more 'feature cycle' " of development, including TraceMonkey, the browser's revamped JavaScript engine, and a privacy mode that was only recently slated for Firefox 3.1.

In an interview today, Shaver said the move was in part due to faster-than-expected progress on some features, such as extending TraceMonkey's capabilities into other areas of the Firefox code. "We saw we could apply those [TraceMonkey] techniques to performance in other areas, like [Document Object Model]. We think if we could bang on this a little longer, we would get more out of this," he said.

The desire to push TraceMonkey development wasn't a reaction to Chrome, the beta browser Google Inc. released two weeks ago. "That's not a reactive thing, it's just the next logical step," Shaver said, noting that Mozilla started work on TraceMonkey more than two months before Google announced Chrome.

But Shaver acknowledged that some of the extra work Mozilla would like to put into Firefox 3.1 is being prompted by competitive pressure. "We're not blind to the competitive landscape," he said. "We're watching other browsers as much as they're watching us."

He cited Mozilla's plans for a Firefox privacy mode as an example. Both Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 8, currently in beta, and Google's Chrome have tools that limit or eliminate what those browsers record during their travels.

"There's a difference between when just one browser has a feature and when it's in several," said Shaver. "There are user expectations."

Among the features of a Firefox privacy mode that Shaver would like to squeeze into 3.1 is one that would let users wipe surfing traces retroactively. "It would be nice if you could pretend these last two hours didn't happen," he said.

Other changes that may land in Firefox 3.1 between its first and second betas, said Shaver, include improvements to the location bar -- which Mozilla dubs the "Awesome Bar" -- and detachable tabs, a feature Chrome also sports that lets users drag tabs from a browser to the desktop to open a new window.

"In some ways, we get a free move" with the opportunity to look at rivals like IE8 and Chrome, study how they implement a feature and watch the reactions from users, said Shaver.

Currently in Alpha 2, Firefox 3.1 is scheduled to go "code freeze" at the end of this month, with a tentative ship in four weeks or so, said Shaver. "We're in good shape for mid-October to the third week," he said today.

Firefox 3.1 can be downloaded in its present form from Mozilla's site in versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Study: PVC and Toxic Flame Retardants Still Lurk in New PCs

PC manufacturers have still not figured out how to make a computer without PVC (polyvinyl chloride) insulation and toxic brominated flame retardants (BFRs), although some consumer electronics manufacturers are now able to produce smaller gadgets without those chemicals, Greenpeace reports in a new study.

Nokia has returned to the top of Greenpeace's ranking of consumer electronics manufacturers after a year away from the number one spot -- although not for any changes to its products. Instead, it scored an extra point for improving its systems for taking back unwanted electronics in India.

However, some of Nokia's products were praised for their energy efficiency, a new criterion Greenpeace added in the ninth edition of its Guide to Greener Electronics, released Tuesday.

Other companies singled out by the campaign group for excellence in energy efficiency were Apple, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.

Greenpeace monitors the materials used in electronics because of the health hazards they can pose on disposal. Some chemicals can pollute groundwater when they leach out of waste electronics dumped in landfill, while other chemicals are released into the atmosphere when waste is incinerated or broken up for recycling.

In this edition of its report, Greenpeace is most concerned about continued use of toxic flame retardants and PVC insulation: It noted that so far, no company has released a computer completely free of these materials, although some manufacturers are reducing the quantities used in their products.

Fujitsu-Siemens Computers jumped to number three in Greenpeace's rankings, up from 15th place, after it promised to eliminate PVC and BFRs from all its products by late 2010. Many other companies have set no such timetable.

The campaign group also praised Apple for saying its new iPod line will contain no PVC, BFRs or mercury, and that it will eliminate these materials from all of its products by the end of the year.

However, Greenpeace remained unhappy with other aspects of Apple's product design, including the way that the sealed casing makes battery replacement so expensive that customers are more likely to buy a new model than replace a worn-out battery.

Despite the clean white appearance of Nintendo's game console, the Wii, the company is still the black sheep in the Greenpeace rankings. On a scale from "Bad" to "Good", Greenpeace rated the company bad on most criteria, but only partially bad on its management of chemicals, its plans to phase out substances other than PVC and BFRs, its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its disclosure of its own carbon footprint.

• Sponsored Resource:Are you ready for virtualization? Try the sever assessment tool.
• Sponsored Resource:Learn more about ultra light notebooks from Asus and the best warranty in the industry.
• Sponsored Resource:Thinking about a new Laptop? Lenovo has models to meet everyone's needs.
• Sponsored Resource:Get the truth about remanufactured ink. Learn more from HP.

Dell intros virtualization hardware, storage, services

Dell announced Wednesday a broad set of services and hardware designed to optimize both storage and server virtualization.

New AMD-based blade servers and an iSCSI storage-area network address a performance problem that occurs in highly virtualized environments, namely that loading too many virtual servers onto a single piece of hardware puts stress on memory and network bandwidth, slowing everything down.

"It's like putting too much weight on the back of a pickup truck," says analyst Charles King of Pund-IT.

Dell's PowerEdge M905 blade server offers four sockets, compared with just one or two in previous generations, King says. (Compare blade server products.) Dell says the M905 can support 66 virtual machines. According to King, performance on a typical server can slow down even if it holds just a dozen virtual machines.

Increased memory capacity is a key factor, King says. Standard one- or two-way servers top out at 16 or 32GB of memory, while Dell's new box goes up to 128GB, he says.

Dell also released a new two-socket blade called the PowerEdge M805, but said it holds more DIMM (dual in-line memory module) slots than previous two-socket machines. Later this month, Dell will update its Intel-based PowerEdge R900 rack-mounted system with six-core processors and embedded hypervisors.

Increased bandwidth and performance is also coming with new 10GB Ethernet and 8GB Fibre Channel switches, Dell says.

On the storage front, Dell announced a new EqualLogic iSCSI SAN array that doubles density and triples capacity, going up to 576 terabytes with a single management interface. The new EqualLogic PS5500E can be used to consolidate "common tiered business data and applications such as file services ... databases and virtual server environments," Dell says. (Compare storage products.)

The array also enhances data protection for virtual storage with a feature that integrates EqualLogic snapshots with VMware's hypervisor, providing faster online backups and restorations of virtual machines and file systems. This feature will be available this month as a free download to customers who have support contracts.

Dell's goal is to integrate storage and server virtualization, storage marketing director Praveen Asthana said in a conference call with reporters. The PS5500E starts at $78,000 (U.S.).

"It's not enough to offer storage; you need to integrate as much as possible," he says.

Dell's blitz of new products comes a few days in advance of VMworld, an annual virtualization industry event hosted by VMware.

More pieces of the announcement include:

• Pricing for the PowerEdge M805 and M905 starts at $1,699 and $4,999, respectively.


• Integration with Microsoft virtualization technology, making Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V available as a factory-installed option on PowerEdge servers. Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager is also available for PowerEdge servers.


• Integration of EqualLogic storage with Citrix XenServer, making it easier for IT managers to create snapshots, clones and single client images, the company said.


• Infrastructure consulting services for Hyper-V deployments, involving assessment, design and implementation of the Microsoft hypervisor.


• Site Recovery Manager for VMware environments, involving consulting services to prepare a disaster recovery plan and help customers configure VMware's Site Recovery Manager software, which automates disaster recovery.


• Life-cycle management for VMware, a service involving design and implementation planning, proof-of-concept and configuration of VMware's life-cycle manager.

Laptop cellular data card from AT&T, Sierra includes microSD slot

AT&T Inc. and Sierra Wireless Inc. today announced a new laptop cellular data card called the AT&T USBConnect Mercury. It is the smallest of the cellular data cards that AT&T offers for its 3G network.

The Mercury will be free for customers who purchase a two-year cellular data plan worth at least $60 a month. AT&T offers several data plans, and for $60 a month, a customer can receive as much as 5GB of data use in the U.S.

One new feature of the Mercury, which looks like a USB flash drive, is an integrated microSD slot to give users portable storage. It was designed and manufactured by Sierra Wireless. Mercury's predecessor was the High Speed Packet Access-capable USBConnect 881, an AT&T spokesman said today.

The AT&T USBConnect Mercury card, which looks like a USB flash drive, is offered with two cellular data plans. (Photo courtesy of AT&T)

The Mercury, which operates under HSPA, can be used with AT&T's North American or global data plans. The North American plan provides 100MB of monthly use in Canada and Mexico, plus 5GB in the U.S. for $109.99 a month. Meanwhile, AT&T's global plans start at $139.99 a month for 100MB of usage in 67 countries, plus 5GB in the U.S. Or, customers can receive 200MB of monthly usage in the same 67 countries for $229.99 a month.

That cost is more than what AT&T now offered Apple Inc. iPhone users in an international data roaming plan unveiled last week. One of the new iPhone plans costs $119.99 a month for 100MB of data use, while the other costs $199.99 a month for 200MB. Both plans apply to 67 countries.

Gobi wireless chip set to ship in Panasonic Toughbooks

Qualcomm Inc. and Panasonic Inc. today announced that two Toughbook laptops will ship in October with Gobi, a chip set allowing laptops to function in multiple wireless modes.

Panasonic will be the fifth laptop maker to adopt the Gobi technology. Others that have said they will incorporate the chip set are Acer Inc., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Lenovo Inc., Qualcomm officials said.

The Gobi chip set and Panasonic software will allow for connections to 3G cellular networks globally, helping mobile workers and IT shops by making it possible to reach more networks than a single cellular data card or USB modem can, Qualcomm officials said.

"For IT managers, it's easier to manage a fleet of laptops, since you can [use one chip set] and manage that connection totally by software," said Mike Concannon, senior vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA products. "Previously, if you wanted to provision a laptop, you had to physically swap out cards. Gobi doesn't lock in customers with a long-term proposition with one carrier."

He said laptop makers like using the Gobi chip set because they don't have to support multiple cards for a single network in multiple locations.

For an international traveler, the Gobi chip set means a Verizon CDMA wireless user in the U.S. could fly to London and switch to the HSPA network with the carrier Vodafone, Concannon said. In all, Gobi supports EV-DO/EV-DO Rev. A networks in 850 MHz and 1900 MHz, HSDPA/HSUPA in 850 MHz, 1900 MHz and 2100 MHz, GSM/GPRS/EDGE in 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz, and stand-alone GPS.

Panasonic will support Gobi in its Toughbook 19 and Toughbook 30 laptops in October, and all of its Toughbook products in the first quarter of 2009, officials said. No pricing was announced, but Concannon said the price of the Gobi chip set has dropped by half to about $50, although that price may be reflected differently by suppliers.

Gartner Inc. analysts originally opposed embedded radios such as Gobi, but have endorsed their usage partly because of the increasing flexibility of carriers that are willing to adopt short-term contracts. Also, the embedded technology is now stable enough to be used for three years in a laptop, Gartner said in a recent report.

Microsoft-Novell partnership yields virtualization bundle

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. yesterday released a virtualization bundle that represents the pair's first fully supported joint product since their historic interoperability partnership was forged in 2006.

The two have configured and optimized Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to run as a guest operating system on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. The product is the first to include technology developed by both vendors at the Microsoft and Novell Interoperability Lab they opened just over a year ago in Cambridge, Mass.

Dell Inc. has said it will offer a blade server running the Linux-Windows virtualization software, and is one of a number of channel partners stepping up to offer support. The others are systems integrators Computer Integrated Services Company of New York, Continental Resources, Insight, Total Tec Systems and China-based 21Vianet.

Microsoft and Novell opened their Windows-Linux interoperability lab with an initial focus on three projects: virtualization, management and identity federation. The lab was one part of their 2006 partnership agreement.

Experts say user interest in integration of virtualization wares is growing, but actual use is far from a tidal wave.

"I think it is still too soon in terms of this [interoperability work] getting out to customers," said Jay Lyman, an analyst at the 451 Group. He doesn't doubt that Microsoft and Novell are responding to user needs, because he sees that most users have mixed environments. The vendors, he said, are ahead of the curve, however.

On some level, the vendors agree.

At a virtualization launch event on Monday, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business, said, "It is still early days. Only about 12% of servers are virtualized." He also said that Microsoft foresees a future world where virtualization is the norm. "It will be used across all the servers and desktops in a business," he said.

Lyman would like to see a few more case studies. "We would be interested to hear a bit more about the demand and how it is transferring to the mainstream market," he said. "We continue to ask who these customers are and what is driving their demand."

Microsoft last month said "customer demand" was driving it to spend as much as another $100 million to purchase certificates it will distribute to users, who can cash them in for support on their Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers. The partners involved in supporting the pair's new virtualization bundle will help distribute those certificates.

The investment, which will come on Nov. 1, is on top of the $240 million Microsoft agreed in 2006 to spend on certificates as part of a five-year business and technology deal with Novell that also included intellectual property rights protection.

The two vendors claim the $100 million investment is needed to meet customer demand to integrate Linux and Windows. Novell has invoiced $156 million of Microsoft's original $240 million certificate purchase, leaving 35% of the funds still unused.

The original $240 million deal, which raised the ire of the open-source community, covered the distribution of 70,000 certificates for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support.

Demand for SAP skills keeps rising, analyst says

The ongoing demand for workers skilled in SAP technologies grew dramatically stronger in recent months, according to Foote Partners LLC, an analyst firm in Vero Beach, Fla., that tracks pay rates for IT jobs.

"Employers are feeling more pain than ever in their search for skilled and experienced SAP talent. We expect this to continue for the next year and a half, and maybe longer," CEO David Foote said in a detailed report on the firm's findings.

During the six months ended July 1, workers with noncertified SAP skills showed the largest increases in pay, rising between 25% and 30% in some cases, according to Foote's data.

Pay is particularly going up for skills centered on SAP's NetWeaver platform, but the hiring environment is "not peaches and cream for those hanging on to their SAP ERP 4.6 or ERP 6.0 systems ...," Foote said in the report.

However, SAP skills are far from the only ones in high demand.

Other areas showing strong upticks in pay during the first half of this year include Oracle, wireless networking, PHP development, business intelligence and network security, according to Foote.

Meanwhile, compensation for other skills dropped, the firm said. Pay for workers with Lotus Notes/Domino and Exchange skills both fell 14.3%, for example.

As for SAP AG, company spokesman Saswato Das said via e-mail that a distinction should be made between SAP employees and the SAP consultants who work with the vendor's partners.

"As a result of the strong demand and market uptake for SAP solutions, there is a corresponding increased demand for IT consultants with SAP skills. We are actively working with our partners to build the pipeline to meet this demand," he wrote.

SAP and partners have certified 20,000 SAP professionals in the past 18 months, and the company is well on its way to reaching a goal of certifying 30,000 of them in 2008, according to Das.

Also, SAP itself has had little problem attracting enough qualified talent, he added.

Globalization update: Indian IT firm reshapes Tucson's tax system

September 12, 2008 (Computerworld) Indian IT firm Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. is upgrading systems for state and local governments, competing in a market where the words "India" and "outsourcing" make politicians bristle.

And Tata is being very bold about it. It's calling its tax and revenue systems, Tax Mantra, a word rooted in India. It has completed seven tax system projects for cities in the U.S. At least two of those are in the Arizona cities Phoenix and Tucson. The full list isn't being disclosed.

Tata, as a provider of tax and revenue systems may be a relatively new vendor in the local government market, but it has worked for years modernizing tax systems in India. The company said tax systems share many similarities globally. Tata is one of the largest IT services and outsourcing providers in the world, with more than 116,000 employees.

Tata just completed a modernization project for Tucson. The city's outdated system was a 20-year-old IBM mainframe system that ran mostly homegrown applications written in Cobol, according to Gage Andrews, deputy director of the city's IT department. The city received a number of proposals from vendors. What helped Tata in its bid was the work it did elsewhere in Arizona. Because of that work, it knew the state and local customization requirements, Andrews said.

The city followed Tata's recommendation as far as platform, moving to Window servers and browser-based applications with capabilities for taxpayers to manage their taxes online, a feature the city wasn't able to offer previously. The data from the mainframe applications was migrated to new applications in a J2EE environment.

"What was impressive to us was Tata's ability to take an application that was not Web-based and turn it over to a Web-based application," Andrews said.

This is a turnkey project, with Tucson's IT staff running the day-to-day operations and equipment. The city isn't outsourcing operations, although Tata provides ongoing maintenance and support. Once the city is completely off the mainframe, Andrews said the IT staff that worked on it will be redeployed to other projects.

Asked about using an India-based company, Andrews said that "with the globalization of IT, it's going to be pretty hard to find somebody that is only an American-based company."

Chris Dixon, an analyst at government IT market research firm Input in Reston, Va., agrees with Andrews' perspective, and said state and local governments may hire U.S.-based IT firms for similar projects that nonetheless ship work overseas to stay competitive. But few Indian companies are winning work under their "own banners" as Tata has.

Local governments are already working with vendors in other countries, Dixon said. He cited Montreal-based CGI Group, which in 2004 bought Fairfax, Va.-based American Management Systems, a company that had done extensive state and local government work. Tata could acquire U.S. companies as well.

"If a Canadian firm can come into America and compete, there is no reason why an Indian firm can't do the same thing," Dixon said.

Tanmoy Chakrabarty, vice president and head of Tata Consultancy Services government industry solutions, said the company is working to sell its tax and revenue system approach globally.

The challenges involved in India, where many people don't own computers, required approaches such as the use of kiosks. Those weren't needed in Tucson because most people have access to a PC. But the use of the Tax Mantra framework in other countries won't be that difficult.

"The fundamental applications and principles of taxation have an underlying commonality of approach," said Chakrabarty, adding that he believes the system can be easily repeated, hence the word mantra in its name.