News

Angry Vista users vent over SP1 driver issues

Microsoft's Vista blog has become a forum for Vista users to blast the company for the problems with the recently released Vista SP1's drivers

The gov’t and SOA

Hands-on with the new multitouch MacBook Pro

The biggest upgrade to the MacBook Pro — the iPhone-style multitouch trackpad — offers easy-to-use functionality, but it may not be worth the price of an upgrade by itself

Daily news beat for March 21, 2008

Obama passport records breached; IT system flagged violation

State Department's privacy protection exposes intrusions; supervisors kept mum

Solid state and its mobility

Sony charges $50 to remove laptop bloatware

Sony's 'Fresh Start' option to remove trial software from the hard disks of new laptops is only available to customers who pay an additional $100 to upgrade to Vista Business

InfoWorld News Quiz

M&A news dominates market turmoil

Acquisition sagas involving Yahoo, 3Com, and Iomega grabbed the attention of IT investors this week

Mob attacking Web sites

Wireless auction yields mixed results for consumers

New networks should result in more choice and new types of services for users, but not in the delivery of cheaper services as some had hoped

The real difference between SQL Server and Oracle, in 2 parts

Security chief quits OLPC amid restructuring

Innovator Ivan Krstić resigns, citing differences with OLPC's aims and shift of focus

Eclipse IDE: due for a trim?

A leader of the open source tools group believes the Eclipse IDE needs its functionality pared down, citing difficulty in finding capabilities in the currently overloaded platform

Elitegroup announces Eee rival with HSDPA

India rejects Office Open XML again

Nasscom favors multiple file format standards, saying that technology neutrality and competition will lead to falling prices of IT products

You don’t know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz

Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master

Upgrading to solid state

Multicore boom needs new developer skills

As parallel computing becomes more commonplace, the next generation of developers will need new skill sets in order to get the most out of multicore chips

Citrix, HP team up on virtualization-enabled servers

Citrix has embedded its XenServer hypervisor into HP's ProLiant servers

Deal to buy 3Com falls apart

Bain Capital Partners and Huawei have dropped their bid to buy 3Com because the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. intended to prohibit the sale

Microsoft acquires security company Komoku

Microsoft plans to add Komoku's rootkit detection technology into its Forefront and Windows Live OneCare products

Verizon Wireless wins large chunk of 700MHz spectrum

Company prevails in FCC auction with $4.7 billion bid for the C block, a nationwide block of spectrum; other winners include AT&T and Qualcomm

Qualcomm can’t hold off injunction in Broadcom suit

A U.S. appeals court has denied Qualcomm's request that an injunction against sales of some of its mobile-phone chips be postponed

Unified threat management rebounds

After stumbling out of the gate, unified threat management concepts and devices are starting to catch on with some enterprise IT shops

Business case is driving SOA

Get ready for these game-changing technologies

Hype and promises abound in the IT world, but these six breakthroughs, from ultralight laptops to wireless USB, really will change your life

Daily news beat for March 20, 2008

Update: E-voting vendor’s Web site hacked

The Web site of Sequoia Voting Systems, which is already under scrutiny for voting tally discrepancies in New Jersey, was hacked Thursday morning

Lotus Expeditor inside Sprint Nextel’s ‘Titan’ platform

IBM's Lotus Expeditor development environment can be used to create collaborative, desktop-style apps for mobile devices

Test Center guide to Vista and XP service packs

Update: Software group files lawsuits against eight eBay sellers

SIIA suit on behalf of Adobe alleges that eBay-based software sellers are selling counterfeit products

Reports: U.S. to name head of new cybersecurity center

Tech entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom reportedly will be named to run a new National Cyber Security Center at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Measuring your carbon impact

Contract chipmakers face more cutbacks

Flash memory giant Spansion announced it will reduce orders to contract chipmakers by $50 million per quarter, at a time when other companies are cutting back as well

Sprint aims for unified architecture for networks

Single core infrastructure would mean a consistent experience when consumers access Sprint's services from a mobile phone, a PDA, and a laptop

Vista looks a lot like Me, Windows Me

Intel offers Classmate PC to vendors in developed countries

Intel sees the Classmate PC as just one of a range of low-cost 'netbooks' it will make available to consumers

Hacker pleads guilty to computer fraud for adware

A 21-year-old man faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for infecting hundreds of computers in Europe with advertising software

New Jersey clerks call for e-voting investigation

New Jersey's attorney general has been asked to step in and investigate voting discrepancies seen in e-voting machines used in last month's presidential primary election

Google’s U.S. search share up, Yahoo and Microsoft down

Worldwide, the No. 3 search engine is China's Baidu.com, behind Google and Yahoo but ahead of Microsoft's MSN-Windows Live

Microsoft, IBM brainstorm enhancements to IDEs

Technologists at EclipseCon stress that IDEs of the future should be more connected and make developers smarter

HTC names Google phone ‘Dream’

HTC's 'Dream' mobile phone will run on Google's Android software and have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad

iPhone 2.0: Safari hosts local apps; SQL on a smartphone!; go get Safari 3.1 now

Eclipse planning an upgrade

The upgrade to the Eclipse development platform will feature web enablement and less complexity

A Dell smartphone appears imminent

Analysts believe that Dell is working with the Foxconn Group to make Windows Mobile-based handhelds, but it will face stiff competition from the iPhone

Emerging technologies will soon marginalize IT’s role in BI

A recent study by Gartner found that new technologies like search and collaboration tools will crowd corporate IT units out of the business intelligence realm

Red Hat open-sources security framework

Red Hat has released the entire source code for the Red Hat Certificate System to back its assertion that open-source software provides the most secure infrastructure

Microsoft working with Eclipse on Vista, ID links

Executive from software giant stresses company's open-source efforts, including using Eclipse technology to build Java apps for Vista

Dynamics GP aims at QuickBooks users

Microsoft is offering a set of dedicated data migration tools to entice SMBs to move from QuickBooks to its Dynamics GP ERP app