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Tid-bits
12/15 - ATI is offering graphics cards for under $200 as an attractive price for Christmas gifts. ATI "has made holiday gift giving easier".
Many of McAfee's solutions protect against the four Internet Explorer and one Windows vulnerabilities that Microsoft is securing this month. One of the patches can prevent someone from taking "complete control of an affected system ... install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights".
Dell also has theft recovery technology for laptops and has upgraded it into the BIOS. The technology is then present but must be activated. The software or firmware also does more than theft recovery, such as data protection and asset-monitoring. To activate, "customers need to purchase the service".
Hewlett Packard continues to strengthen its online photo services. An acquisition allows HP to extend its photo printing, sharing, and storage services throughout Europe. HP will "become Europe's largest online photo service, just as it is in the U.S."
MTV and Microsoft have developed MTV's new digital music service. The service shall be a part of the next Windows Media Player. URGE is set "to debut in 2006".
Microsoft's PC-to-PC voice and video features are evolving into PC-to-phone, in partnership with MCI. The service extends to cell phones. The service is currently in beta as part of Windows Live Messenger. Unlike PC-to-PC, calls will not be free. "Final pricing will be determined when the product officially launches in 2006".
IBM is seeking to build an ecosystem around its Power processor architecture based on open hardware standards. According to IBM, microprocessor architectures have traditionally been proprietary. Power, on the other hand, uses an open hardware architecture to drive standards. Among the benefits are lower development cost. IBM is attempting to do in hardware, what Linux "accomplished in software: providing an open platform".
Sun sure stands behind open source. The company has incorporated the open source Java DB into the Sun Java Enterprise System. If that weren't enough, their upcoming NetBeans IDE 5.0 for building and deploying Java apps is "a complete open source development environment".
AMD has declared victory in its dual-core challenge to Intel. The competition did not show up. Sun showed up at the online event to cheer on AMD. AMD suggests that Intel's architecture is disruptive. In contrast to competitors such as Intel, AMD "has not confused the market with disruptive architectures".