Stories by IDG staff

NetComm's NB620W is a worthy router for anybody looking to broaden their online and local network connectivity.

The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, has announced the government will support the introduction of a new telecoms number range to facilitate the development of VoIP services.

Newsweek has posted its cover feature on Apple’s unannounced latest version of its digital-music player. It shows the fourth-generation iPod to be something of a hybrid of the iPod and its 4GB iPod mini sibling.

Two companies The SCO Group targeted with lawsuits earlier this year have fired back questioning the very foundation of SCO's allegations.

The LAN switch market is shrinking, but demand for products is higher than ever.

With IT budgets tight, most CIOs are consolidating purchases with larger vendors with strong brands and the ability to provide a variety of products and services, a survey has found.

Hewlett-Packard is looking to leverage its services organisation to help enterprises reduce the costs and complexity of IT infrastructures.

Operators and users of communication networks and critical information systems are being called upon to implement new security guidelines as part of a global initiative.

Confidence in Australia's IT industry is beginning to pick up with budgets improving and headcount freezes lifting, according to a recruitment company survey.

National Australia Bank expects to save $110 million by outsourcing its Australia and New Zealand operation's telecommunications services to Telstra.

The Australian Senate has rejected a proposal that would have forced Internet service providers (ISPs) to assist law enforcement agencies to snoop on e-mails.

Software provider SAP AG will resell and distribute Oracle's Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters under the terms of a three-year deal. The companies say they will provide support to joint customers. The SAP software using Oracle9i RAC will be available within six months for SAP customers using Hewlett-Packard's HP AlphaServer systems running Tru64 Unix.

A recent IDC survey found that only 5 per cent of respondents plan to increase their purchase of hosting services. That likely means future service provider spending will be focused on new services such as managed storage or application management, IDC says.

IBM last week bolstered its tape products to give users more back-up capacity and improved performance. IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3590 Model H uses a new magnetic recording head that increases the capacity of the drive by 50 per cent over older versions of the product.

D-Link last week announced a small office/home office Cable/DSL Router for $US50 -- priced about $20 less than competitors' products. The Express EtherNetworkTM Cable/DSL Router packs a four-port 10/100 autonegotiating switch, and features include a network address translation firewall, VPN passthrough, stateful packet inspection filtering, content filtering and basic network management.