"Although not noted for its server lineup, Apple Xserve has made significant strides over the past two years. And this year, Apple surprised the world when it announced a shift to the Intel Core Duo processor. The move has been implemented at the PC level already and will be added to Xserve by the end of the year. Although a small player compared with HP, Dell and IBM, Apple seems to know which way the server wind is blowing. As a result, it has made significant changes in Xserve over the past year in hardware and software as well as in added storage capabilities in the form of Xsan for storage area networking."

"Hard disks tend to be one of the weakest points in today's machines. If you can afford it, RAID setups will address the problem. And if you cannot afford it, you probably cannot afford a NAS or a SAN either. The poor man's solution is to regularly back up the information from one disk to another. Of course if your disk dies between two backups, you lose. der Mouse is a Canadian open source developer who produced a bunch of valuable software ranging from anti-spam tools to a PPPoE implementation. At the BSDCan 2005 conference, he presented an innovative solution to hard disk replication. In this interview, der Mouse explains his idea and how he implemented it to us."

PCMag reviews the new Intel Mac Mini, and concludes: "Though the Intel mini doesn't really blow away the G4 mini on most of the performance tests we ran, the addition of Front Row and wireless networking to the Mac mini is a welcome one, and dovetails nicely with Apple's mission to acclimate users to the digital lifestyle."

"Technology professionals have loosely used the term 'UNIX' since the first person had to explain the difference between the Berkeley and AT&T flavors, so it's not surprising to find as many UNIX standards as there are versions of the operating system. Peter Seebach wades through the wellspring of UNIX standards and sorts them out for you, concluding that the rumors of the death of UNIX are (as usual) greatly exaggerated."

C# 2.0 is just out and Microsoft is already working hard on the next version of C#, version 3.0. In this post, Niek describes a few of the new language features that will be introduced in this version. Please note that the resulting binaries will be backwards compatible with .NET 2.0, so C# 3.0 is only new on the compiler side.

It took some time, but someone finally made it happen: Windows XP boots on a Macbook Pro! Screenshot included!

The team behind Kororaa, a Gentoo-based live CD, have released a live CD showcasing Xgl. "Today I am happy to release a Kororaa Live CD showcasing Xgl technology. If you would like to find out what it's all about, then download the CD and boot up your pc! The Live CD comes with Xorg 7, Gnome 2.12.2, 3D support, and of course Xgl." Download locations.

"Red Hat is peased to announce the availability of Update 3 for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 family of products. This update includes the following enhancements: hardware support enhancements; technology preview for support of very large system configurations on IA64 (up to 256 logical CPUs) and PPC (up to 128 logical CPUs); security enhancements; and much more."

From this year's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, CNET's Justin Jaffe gives a first look at the new Ultra Mobile PC and ConsumerLaptop Concept. Intel's Director of Marketing, Brad Graff, also shows off new software from StreetDeck that turns the PC into an interactive media center. More about this at CNet and CoolTechZone.

The ultimate accessory for 8 bit Acorn users, an ARM7 co-processor, is now available to order. Robert Sprowson's ingenious project to produce a second processor sees a 64MHz ARM7TDMI from OKI running alongside a BBC Master's dinosaur 6502 CPU. The box of tricks uses an Altera FPGA as digital glue to bind together the second processor, 16M of RAM, 512K of Flash ROM, and optional serial port and EEPROM chip. The ARM7 chip includes a 8K cache, and the kit took over six months to develop.

"The Java programming language has had an unprecedented run of success for vendors, customers, and the industry at large. But no programming language is a perfect fit for every job. This article launches a new series by Bruce Tate that looks at ways other languages solve major problems and what those solutions mean to Java developers. He first explores Active Record, the persistence engine behind Ruby on Rails. Active Record bucks many Java conventions, from the typical configuration mechanisms to fundamental architectural choices. The result is a framework that embraces radical compromises and fosters radical productivity."

I recently set up my new Macbook, and I was upset to see that my Windows Media video files no longer worked. The Flip4Mac player that Microsoft endorsed after they officially killed Mac Windows Media Player doesn't install or run on Intel Macs, but it can be easily circumvented with a little tinkering. Read on for details.

Intel demonstrated two quad-core processors Tuesday, 'Clovertown' for servers and 'Kentsfield' for PCs, directing attention toward the future during a more troubled present. Pat Gelsinger, a senior vice president in Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, demonstrated both processors in a speech at the company's Intel Developer Forum here. Both chips are built using Intel's 65-nanometer manufacturing process and will ship in the first quarter of 2007, Intel representatives said.

During a presentation on IBM's involvement with Open Source, Andreas Pleschek from IBM in Stuttgart, Germany, who heads open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe for IBM made a very interesting statement. "Andreas Pleschek also told that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. That means that IBM will not use Windows Vista for their desktops. Beginning from July, IBM employees will begin using IBM Workplace on their new, Red Hat-based platform. Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista."