Integration and Services: Reviews

Get behind the wheel of any new car and you'll quickly grasp the importance that electronics and gadgetry play in the auto industry these days. Companies are starting to put just as much effort into the entertainment system as the mechanics and that means some pretty high-tech rides like the Cadillac XTS.

Lenovo's new ThinkPad X1 Carbon ultrabook is fast, stylish and lightweight, although the price is slightly higher than some of its rivals.

The next revision of Office adds touches of Metro without itself being a Metro app

With the revamped System Center 2012 suite of management tools, Microsoft has launched a powerful new weapon in the battle to control the virtualized data center and the cloud, both private and public.

While SQL Server 2008 was little more than a service-pack level upgrade, the 2012 version of Microsoft's database has a boatload of new features and delivers solid performance improvements.

Virtually all our testing took place across 512Kbps frame relay, T-1 and T-3 WAN links. The test bed network consisted of six Fast Ethernet subnet domains linked by Cisco routers. Our lab's 50 clients consisted of computing platforms that included Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/Win7, Macintosh 10.x and Red Hat Linux (both server and workstation editions).

HP's new Envy Sleekbook 6-1010us offers an alternative to higher-priced ultrabooks: It's not as fast, but it's got a fine display and great audio.

Windows Server 2012 Release Preview features a better virtual desktop experience, much easier DirectAccess deployment and a full-scale file-classification and access control system.

We take a hands-on look at 10 e-commerce tools that can help businesses large and small sell products and/or services online. Insider (registration required)

From network services and storage to virtualization and private cloud, the beefy new Windows Server leaves no server role unturned

NetSuite offers extensive ERP, CRM, and other business management functionality to organizations that recognize the value proposition associated with SaaS

Monitoring services from Boundary, Circonus, and Librato combine simple setup and richly different capabilities

Moving tends to be stressful and migrating apps and files from a Windows XP PC to a Windows Vista system is no exception. Belkin's Easy Transfer Cable for Windows Vista ($79.95) and Laplink's PCmover for Windows Vista ($89) can do some (though not all) of the heavy lifting involved in transferring programs and data to a new PC, but their help varies in quality and quantity.