Whitebox

Intel Australia is attributing a 20 per cent increase in server sales over the past three quarters to an influx of new channel players.

Microsoft Wednesday released a feature-complete beta of its Hyper-V virtualization technology, which is an add-on to Windows Server 2008.

Intel had a legal reprieve Thursday when an Illinois judge threw out a state appeals court ruling that would have launched a US-wide class-action lawsuit against the company over Pentium 4 processors.

Just four manufacturers - Acer, HP, Lenovo and local box-builder ASI Solutions - will get the chance to sell notebooks to NSW agencies as the result of a government supplier cull announced today.

What a difference a year makes. One year ago, we were dazed, dazzled, and beguiled by the arrival of dual-core processors. Offerings from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices had analysts, journalists, IT professionals and enthusiasts all gushing with praise for a bright new multitasking future.

As the whitebox market fights for its life, local players are reinventing the wheel and dishing out a few survival tips. Strength in numbers is a main strategy. It's a classic scenario. By building up a large team which works towards a common goal, the little guys are able to battle it out against larger, more powerful competitors - and make a statement while doing so.

Computer scientists at the University of Texas at Austin are inventing a radical microprocessor architecture, one that aims to solve some of the most vexing problems facing chip designers today. If successful, the Defense Department-funded effort could lead to processors of unprecedented performance and flexibility.

While smaller notebook price tags are great news for consumers, they are a big challenge for vendors and resellers alike. Several players in the market have now introduced models that break the $1000 barrier and the outbreak of a price war is a real possibility.

Graphics chip and chipset vendor ATI Technologies aims to have half of its revenue come from the consumer electronics market in the future, according to the company's president and chief executive officer, Dave Orton.

It's been one year since Lenovo Group announced plans to acquire IBM's PC division and the enlarged company is now looking to aggressively expand its share of the worldwide PC market. As part of this effort, Lenovo is gearing up to introduce its own brand of PCs to the US and European markets, most likely starting with a line of desktops for small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers.

After seven years in retirement, Geoff Anson decided to return to the IT industry as Palm's A/NZ sales director. In the past 12 months, he has re-shaped the vendor's distributor line-up by signing exclusively with Ingram Micro. His mission now is to develop Palm's partner relationships.

As vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group, Anand Chandrasekher was the executive who led the company's Centrino charge. Now he has a new challenge: leading Intel's global sales organization.

It has always struck me that the great advantage of working in this industry is also its biggest challenge. I'm talking about the rate of change. No matter how good you are at what you do, you better be prepared for somebody to try and pull the rug from under your feet at any given moment.

The leading quote from this week's news comes from Intel CEO Paul Otellini: "We're doing product refreshes every two years, which is the model we invented and then stopped doing after Pentium 4, shame on us," Otellini said. "We fell off it -- mea culpa, we screwed up -- and now we're back on that pace."

Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are taking different paths to the quad-core market, but some believe it's only a matter of time before their roads converge.

AMD's Barcelona CPU is loaded with "invented here" innovation. It is also inspired by IBM's Power architecture. IBM's newest Power CPU, Power6, is due mid-year, along with quad-core processors from Intel and AMD. And while x86 will get more headlines in IT publications, Power6 is arguably more deserving.

The speed with which an unprotected PC picks up malware from the Internet can be truly scary, hence the rise in popularity of security bundles that combine antivirus, firewall and spam protection.

The Toshiba Tecra M4-S515 is a nicely designed convertible notebook that's easy to use as a tablet PC. It has plenty of ports accessible in both tablet and laptop modes, but our test unit's touchpad didn't always work. To convert the M4-S515 into a tablet, you have to swivel the 14.1-inch screen clockwise and lay it flat against the keyboard. Along with the touch screen, the M4-S515 offers two keyboard pointing devices: an eraserhead and a touchpad. The eraserhead worked fine, but the touchpad did not. No matter how I tweaked the settings, the touchpad wouldn't reliably select text when I dragged my finger across it. Selection usually required several swipes, and sometimes it didn't work at all.

Pigs must be flying, because Apple has finally released a mouse with more than one button. Called the Mighty Mouse, the USB device includes four buttons and a multidirectional Scroll Ball.

The NEC MultiSync LCD1770GX achieved good scores on our text and graphics tests - in fact, it reached the highest graphics scores a 17-incher has attained recently. It also bettered all other monitors on our three real-life graphics test screens: a Web page with a mix of text and images, a photo of a vividly colored fruit tart, and a group photo of several subjects with different skin tones. Our jurors praised the detail and the rich, saturated colours that the monitor displayed.