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Here's one of the many questions facing device makers targeting the mini notebook and netbook markets: When business users or consumers want to access the Web on the go, will they be willing to set aside a smartphone or cellphone and instead log on using a next-generation PDA? Dell may be wagering t...

Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer, which seems to be having an on-again, off-again relationship with netbooks running Android, is now reportedly working on one. Jim Wong, the firm's president of IT products, made the announcement Tuesday at Computex Taipei, Asia's largest computer exhibition. The...

Good things come in small packages, as they say, and that's perhaps never been more true than it is today, thanks to the emergence of increasingly diminutive devices equipped with Linux. Perhaps most notable of late is the $99 Marvell SheevaPlug, a wall-wart-sized device that runs Linux on a 1.2-GHz...

Someone has floated a trial balloon, through a leak to The Wall Street Journal, that IBM is in "talks" to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion. The only party that would leak this information is Sun itself, and it smacks of desperation in trying to thwart an unwanted acquisition, or to positively i...

Oh, Linux is Linux, and Windows is Windows, and never the twain shall meet -- isn't that how the saying goes? Well, not quite, of course, but it might have been if Kipling had only lived long enough to get to know our favorite operating system. The fact of the matter is that Linux and Windows must a...

I recently carried out a personal quest for a netbook computer. Relying on a bit of insider snobbery since I write about computer technology almost daily, I was not expecting a big problem in making a selection. It's not that I really needed another computer. My home office is well-stocked with two ...

OK. You've heard of Linux. It's another operating system for a computer. But why use it when you can choose between Windows and Macs? Unless you run business-class servers, Linux isn't really something consumers really need to hear about, right? Well, if that's what you think Linux is, you couldn't ...

As editor for LinuxInsider for more than a year now, I figured the time was right to start walking the walk with my personal machine. So I took my Dell Inspiron 1150 to this year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo with the intention of switching my operating system to one of the many Linux distros.

In his keynote speech at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, Simon Crosby, Chief Technology Officer for Citrix Systems, announced the company's plan to open source Project Kensho, a set of tools that will help migrate virtual machines between different hypervisors and virtualization platforms. I sat d...

IBM fired the opening salvo at this year's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, and to the surprise of no one, it was aimed squarely at Microsoft. Sure, it was the low-hanging fruit -- Microsoft's an easy target. It's kind of like taking pot shots at John McCain at an Obama fund-raiser. But here, the amm...

Japanese Linux computer firm Plat'Home has released a palm-sized, full-featured Linux-based server dubbed "OpenBlockS." This tiny marvel is no lightweight wanna-be replacement for a real Linux server. It can run most server applications that you would expect to run on a "normal" full-sized Linux box...

As if stepping on the Linux community's toes when they first teamed up wasn't enough, Microsoft and Novell have announced a joint push into the China market to attack the Linux installed base there. They have launched what they call "an incremental investment in their relationship" that will focus o...

Citrix and HP announced a deal Thursday that integrates the virtualization company's XenServer into HP's 64-bit ProLiant Servers. The jointly developed server virtualization solution, Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition, will be available to both HP and Citrix customers. The new offering provides use...

What a nut I was. Back when Sun Microsystems and Microsoft announced they would be joining forces on interoperability between Sun, nee Java, and .NET -- remember Steve Ballmer of "Ballmer and Butthead" fam] and Scott McNealy sitting side by side -- I thought they meant it. I pushed the envelope, jus...

The world of open source mobile platforms is starting to get a little crowded. Over the past couple of days, rumors began flying that Dell is getting into the game with a phone based on Google's Android platform. Dell denies it, but the amount of attention that is being paid to this segment of the m...