Reviews

Cisco TelePresence 500 delivers the total collaboration experience

The InfoWorld Test Center gets its hands on Cisco's most affordable suite-oriented telepresence system

First look: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 teases

Microsoft's IDE reveals a cleaner look, IntelliSense and Designer improvements, even parallel programming support, but some promises still achingly unfulfilled

Apple’s Nehalem Xserve serves the need for speed

Sleek, new Mac OS X rack server sets a far higher bar for performance and power efficiency

Review: 3 e-mail encryption packages help businesses stay secure

We look at 3 products which will safeguard your e-mail while being both easy to use and easy to afford.

Ubuntu Server: Lean, mean, cloud-making machine

Canonical's Ubuntu Server 9.0.4 is a Linux distro well suited for VARs and OEMs

Review: 2 USB devices offer easy remote access

The Pogoplug and I'm InTouch SecureKey let you access files remotely without negotiating complex remote-control software.

SonicWall NSA: Death to malware

SonicWall's NSA E7500 firewall combines smooth setup, high performance, and real protection against Internet malware

WatchGuard Firebox: Fiery performer at a nice price

WatchGuard's Firebox Peak X5500e is a strong, manageable firewall and the fastest in our test, but complexity and weak attack protection hold it back

Malware-fighting firewalls miss the mark

InfoWorld Test Center attacks Astaro, SonicWall, WatchGuard, and ZyXel firewalls, and only one puts up a fight

Ixia IxLoad’s multithreaded testing

Providing flexible traffic generation and simultaneous firewall and VPN testing, the Ixia test tool laid the foundation for our scenario-based test

Astaro Security Gateway: Rich in features, poor in performance

Astaro's Linux-based firewall appliance stands out with a laundry list of capabilities, but runs several steps behind top competitors

Mu’s Internet attacks in a can

Mu Dynamics' Mu-4000 Analyzer and Published Vulnerability Attacks take a hammer to our UTMs

ZyXel ZyWall: The little firewall that could

ZyXel's ZyWall USG1000 delivers a solid set of features, acceptable performance, and a surprising level of attack protection at a bargain price

How to stress a UTM

We challenged the Astaro, SonicWall, WatchGuard, and ZyXel appliances with a maximum dose of legitimate traffic, 200 VPNs, and hundreds of Internet attacks, all at the same time

Google’s Chrome 2.0 is underwhelming

There's so little new that if you blinked you'd miss the changes

VMware vSphere 4: The once and future virtualization king

VMware's big new release turns the corner on machine virtualization, and toward next-generation management of virtual machines

First look: JBoss Drools grows up, and out

Red Hat's open source rule engine turns full-goose enterprise BRMS, and decision management suite, in Version 5.0

Microsoft NAP: NAC for the rest of us?

NAP is a good foundation for policy-based network access control, but lacks granular controls and easy management

Napera N24: NAP made easy

Napera's plug-and-play network access control appliance brings NAP services to Windows and Mac OS X, without the use of Windows Server 2008

OpenOffice.org 3.1: The next generation

A significant step ahead for this free open-source alternative to Microsoft Office

BlackArmor NAS: A polished storage server with an open source heart

Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 stands apart with smooth setup, a nice set of features, and potential for growth

Intel’s NASty little test tool

The Intel NAS Performance Toolkit provides a battery of real-world tests for your filer and makes them a snap to run

Windows XP Mode: The new DOS box

Microsoft takes a page out of Apple's playbook to entice Windows 7 fence-sitters, with disappointing results

Sun storage system delivers high performance

ISCSI-based 7410 unified storage system has some usability and integration issues

Iogear MiniView KVM switch saves space, money

First look: Ubuntu 9.04 stays the course

The new edition of the friendly Linux desktop OS is more maintenance release than upgrade

Novell’s SLES 11 is packed to the gills

We found it to be packed with useful management tools

Running Windows 7 on a netbook

Microsoft has said that any version of Windows 7 will run on a netbook. We try it with Windows 7 Ultimate.

First look: Amazon brings MapReduce to the Elastic Cloud

Based on Hadoop, MapReduce equips users with potent distributed data-processing tools

OCZ’s high-capacity SSD ‘a solid choice’

Sun Cloud looks beyond Java

Although Java is a key ingredient, Sun promises an all-purpose cloud akin to Amazon Web Services

Java in the cloud: Google, Aptana, and Stax

Google App Engine, Aptana Cloud, and Stax for EC2 make it easy to spin up and scale a simple Java Servlet Container, but are still a far cry from the full Java EE

3Com high-end switch: Alternative to Cisco

First look: Exchange 2010 beta shines

Flexibility, reliability, client-side improvements, and ease of administration mark this major upgrade

Mac Pro: The perfect workstation

With more than double the memory throughput of an eight-core, 3GHz Xserve, the massively parallel Nehalem-based Mac Pro is built to rock your world

Clash of the handsets: Seven smartphones for business

Apple iPhone, Android G1, AT&T Fuze, HTC Touch Diamond, and three flavors of BlackBerry compete for one pocket. Which should you choose?

VMware View is good news, bad news

VMware's VDI solution makes virtual desktops real, but not particularly easy to manage

The Energizer laptop: 20 hours on a single charge

New add-on batteries from Dell and HP kept notebooks going and going in InfoWorld's tests. Download our benchmark to see what these extenders could do for you.

Intel’s Nehalem simply sizzles

In a range of tests, the new quad-core Xeon processor shows huuuuge performance gains

Nehalem Mac Pro: The Mac reborn

This isn't merely the ultimate Mac, but an impossibly idealistic concept for a fast, green, silent, rugged, expandable, and affordable top-end workstation, made real

Test Center review: An IP KVM for the little guy

The AdderView CATxIP 1000 packs just enough punch at a sweet price for SMBs and remote offices

NoSQL databases break all the old rules

Amazon SimpleDB, CouchDB, Google App Engine, and Persevere may have a better way of storing data for your Web app

Open source and SaaS offerings rethink the database

Key-value repositories and other alternatives take aim at simplicity, scalability, and cloud services

Test Center: E-mail security services square off

From spam-busting to content management, we test the limits of hosted e-mail security offerings from AppRiver, MessageLabs, Microsoft, MX Logic, SECNAP, and Trend Micro

Test Center review: Sprint’s Palm Treo Pro and the debut of Microsoft’s IE Mobile 6

Microsoft's Internet Explorer Mobile 6 browser is more usable than its predecessor and a better fit with Web-based business apps, but it crashed on complex sites

Test Center preview: Windows Server 2008 R2

A better, stronger Hyper-V isn't the only reason to look closely at this wide-ranging Windows Server update

Test Center review: The mightiest ThinkPad

Lenovo's beastly ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation is a laptop in name only, for better and worse

Test Center review: King of the dynamic IDEs

Multilingual ActiveState Komodo 5.0 conquers Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby projects with strong debug facilities, excellent code control, and an unbeatable set of utilities

Test Center: Safari 4 preview

Apple's new beta of Safari for Mac OS X and Windows is fast, beautiful, tuned to the latest Web standards, and finally even with the remarkable WebKit project

Test Center review: Thumbs-up to FileMaker upgrade

FileMaker Pro 10 is significantly improved with a smoother GUI and winning new features, but faces stiff competition on Windows