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One of the unfortunate realities of the Wintel monoculture is that expectations are set mainly by ads, the Sunday supplements and stereotypes like TV character Marshall, the supertech on the show Alias. But delivery is constrained by reality. As a result, the Microsoft Certified Systems Engin...

IBM reportedly is working with Microsoft to port the Redmond, Washington-based company's popular Office desktop software to the Linux platform, a platform that IBM has wholeheartedly endorsed and leveraged to win market share in the enterprise-computing space. Although open-source alternatives such ...

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has released a set of guidelines aimed at helping users deploy Linux in corporate data centers. Following a process that mirrors the open, ongoing development of Linux software itself, OSDL is inviting feedback on the Data Center Linux Technical Capabilities 1...

Waiting for a PC to boot up can be quite boring. Who wants to sit there and watch the Microsoft Windows hourglass graphic for a seemingly interminable amount of time? This problem has plagued the PC industry for years. But a solution could be at hand, at least for entertainment PCs -- those PCs buil...

In a somewhat uncharacteristic announcement about Linux, Hewlett-Packard said its revenue from the open-source operating system and connected products and services hit record levels in 2003, earning the Palo Alto, California-based company $2.5 billion, an increase of about a half-billion dollars fro...

Novell has announced it will indemnify users of its newly acquired SuSE Linux software systems. Following the lead of Hewlett-Packard, which was praised for its savvy in being the first Linux vendor to indemnify customers in the face of SCO's source-code claims last September, Novell said enterprise...

Mixing two of the hottest tech trends -- notebook computers and the Linux operating system -- Taiwanese computer maker EliteGroup and San Diego, California-based Lindows have announced the deployment of more than 300,000 Linux-based laptops to the U.S. market. The $700 machines -- preloaded with Lin...

A few years ago, the only IT system I wasn't responsible for at a multimillion-dollar company consisted of a SCO server with an ancient accounting application maintained by the remaining representative of the company that had originally sold it. At the time, I thought old Vitki (not his real name) w...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of computing -- and that, of course, has to include Microsoft's future. Microsoft's own vision of its future seems clear. The company sees a transition to a secure Windows OS environment, continuing strength in Office and server applications, and deve...

One of the bigger risks facing Linux is that explosive growth can destroy it because people who don't understand what it's for often install it simply as a Windows substitute, then discover that it isn't Windows and denounce it. The underlying issue here is that people can easily become captive to w...

The desktop may be the final frontier for Linux, but one company is using a combination of Windows interface strategy, Wal-Mart sales and a wide selection of software to try to match the inroads Linux has made in the corporate datacenter. That company is Lindows.com. There was much open-source hoop...

Noster fungitur -- ours works. It's the motto I suggested to a local Mac user group. But it's also the theme you need to push when selling open-source software against the Microsoft desktop system -- Windows 2003 Server with Office 2003. Office 2003, in combination with Server 2003, is the fi...

Like other governments and corporations seeking to mix yesterday's IT investments with today's emerging technology, the state of Massachusetts has directed its IT staff to begin adopting open standards and open-source software. The move mirrors other government and enterprise initiatives that have I...

Both VeriTest on Microsoft's behalf and IBM have recently issued reports on running Ziff Davis Media's NetBench performance benchmark on mainframe Linux. Overall, it appears that Microsoft reports better mainframe performance than IBM does. These results might seem surprising enough to those unfamil...

In response to attacks on the Linux operating system launched by SCO, which claims its own Unix source code was incorporated into the open-source software, Hewlett-Packard is indemnifying its Linux customers against any potential SCO litigation. The move comes after SCO, which has sued IBM for $3 bi...

Asia's PDA markets have long been dominated by local players that have developed their own proprietary operating systems, with support for local languages serving as one of their strongest selling points. But Palm and Microsoft have targeted the Asian PDA market, and regional players are increasingl...