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Yahoo today announced the beta release of the Yahoo Toolbar for the Firefox Web browser, giving the Mozilla Foundation's platform what analysts said is an endorsement of the alternative browser that should help it take more market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. "The Yahoo Toolbar provides...

Some friends of mine are considering setting up a new company around an e-commerce idea and asked me to research the cost of the IT infrastructure needed. As part of that, I went Web shopping for a low end server to get them started, and found some surprises. Note that all pricing data shown below i...

The year 2004 might someday be remembered as the year that venture capitalists got interested in open-source software -- interested enough to fund a number of new companies based on open source, especially Linux. The year saw a number of funding rounds for such companies as high-end Linux cluster fi...

In a competitive move against IBM and HP, Microsoft came as close as it might ever get to supporting Unix and Linux when it bought a minority share of platform integration solutions firm Vintela. Vintela technology will allow companies to use Microsoft Windows software management tools to manage Uni...

About two months ago, I looked at the cost of the Macintosh relative to Dell PCs and discovered that not only are Macs cheaper than PCs once you upgrade the PCs to rough comparability, but the PC line is narrower than Apple's, with Dell offering nothing to compare to the 17-inch Apple powerbook, the...

In a move that gives Linux greater play in the data center, Dell has reached an agreement with Novell to certify Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on Dell PowerEdge servers. The companies said the deal would give customers more choices for fully-supported Linux platform developments. Dell Servic...

IBM has launched an aggressive bid to grab an even bigger share of the midlevel market for Unix-based servers, where Big Blue has recently made huge gains on competitors. IBM launched a family of products built around its Power5 microprocessor and made no bones about its desires to use them and thei...

About a month ago, I compared the cost for Apple's desktop, server and laptop products to their nearest Dell equivalents and discovered that Macs generally cost less than comparable PC products. That was a bit of surprise, but the truly astonishing thing that came out of the comparison was that Dell...

Everyone knows PCs are faster than Macs, but Macs cost more. Right? There are two issues here: cost and performance. Right now I want to focus on the cost side of the myth, leaving performance for another column, possibly in late September. For today, I'm simply going to argue that Macs and PCs are ...

Last week a dashboard light in my car (a Volvo V70R) came on, leaving me groping for the manual while trying to survive traffic. As it turns out, an "ETS" light is a failure warning from something called the "electronic throttle system," so the obvious thing to do was find a place to pull off the hi...

For the last three weeks I've been talking about the impact the new Sony, Toshiba and IBM cell processor is likely to have on Linux desktop and datacenter computing. The bottom line there is that this thing is fast, inexpensive and deeply reflective of very fundamental IBM ideas about how computing ...

Through a partnership with Questar, a PC distributor, Dell has introduced a line of Linux-based desktop computers in Europe. Each computer will be shipped by Dell and preinstalled with the English or Italian version of the Linspire 4.5 Linux-based operating system. Each PC will include Dell's gold t...

Last week, I talked about the cell processor expected from Sony and IBM. This week I want to think out loud about what happens in the industry if Toshiba launches a PC based on this processor into the Asian market and IBM promptly follows suit with a series aimed at the American and European markets...

This week, Red Hat seems to have weathered every senior executive's nightmare: The CFO resigns just days before the company is to report its financial results. What do you do? Red Hat prereleased enough good news in advance of its earnings call to calm down fears of possible scandal or bad numbers, ...

Sun Microsystems is attaching itself to Linux's growth in the retail market with today's announcement that it has made inroads into five chain stores by teaming up with Tomax Corporation. There's a good reason Sun has been porting its Solaris server to the Linux operating system. Tomax predicts that...

New research once again confirms that Linux and open-source acquisition costs are a "fraction" of the cost of comparable proprietary options -- but the research adds a new caveat, noting that costs will be driven lower in coming years. Today, savings from Linux are often "offset by high integration,...

Sometimes bitter humor is the only sensible response to absurd injustice. A few years ago, for example, a lot of frustrated Apple fans were sure that if Steve Jobs walked across San Francisco Bay, the PC press would thunder "Jobs Can't Swim!" Or, more topically, if Sun won a major legal victory agai...

A week after announcing it was putting Linux on more of its desktop machines for the Asian market, HP made bigger waves this week, disclosing a deal with Novell to put SuSE Linux on the entire HP portfolio of business desktops and notebooks in North America, to be followed by other markets later. An...

One way or another, anti-outsourcing legislation seems likely to pass both houses of the U.S. Congress relatively soon. Whether this comes about through the House initiative led by Bernard Sanders or through other routes isn't important. What is important is that most of the proposals being discusse...

I've been puzzled by Sun's Linux strategy for a long time. On the software side, things make sense: Linux is Unix, so supporting Linux in the short term brings new value to Solaris in the long term. On the hardware side, however, I couldn't see any logical reason for Sun to sell x86 boxes until just...