Price Differences Between Europe, US

This week saw the introduction of various new Apple products. Everybody has their own opinions on these new products, and websites all over the world saw enough discussions about the integrated video card of the Mini, the 'HiFi-ness' of the iPod HiFi, and more. Another issue, however, which got considerable less attention, was that of pricing. And no, I'm not talking about expensive-or-not (God, no). I'm talking about price differences between the US and Europe. And quite frankly, it's pissing me off. Note: This is this week's Sunday Eve Column.

Review: Apple MacBook Pro

PCMag reviews the MacBook Pro, and concludes: "For typical users running the iLife '06 suite, iTunes, and even nonuniversal applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products, the Apple MacBook Pro is a solid notebook. It's a sweet upgrade from the PowerBook G4, and Windows users switching over will like it just the same. But for sophisticated media enthusiasts or professionals, we suggest you wait a couple of months, or at least until the software can catch up with the Intel components, before diving in." They did some benchmarks too (the MacBook Pro beats the PowerBook G4 in every area, at the cost of 7 minutes of battery life), and they made a slideshow with photos of the device.

Strike Three for Intel

"Intel warned on Friday that its revenue for the first quarter would come in at between $8.7 billion and $9.1 billion , roughly $500 million lower than estimates the company issued in January. The chipmaker cited a weak market and a 'slight' market share loss. Analysts generally agree about the market, but are putting more emphasis on the loss of share. Some have pointed to the momentum shown by AMD, which has been far more aggressive over the past 18 months. The rival chipmaker has been strengthening its ties to PC makers, most prominently with HP, and keeping prices low."

Better Linux Sales Aren’t Enough to Halt Novell’s Slide

"It was not the best of quarters for Linux vendor Novell. When Novell announced its financial results for its first fiscal quarter, which ended Jan. 31, 2006, it reported revenue of $274 million , compared to revenue of $290 million for the first fiscal quarter 2005. This was a decline from the previous quarter in which Novell had reported $320 million of revenue."

Tomcat5, Apache2 with Virtual Hosts Using mod_jk

"This tutorial explains how I was able to setup a web server in order to support Java Server Pages and Servlets using virtually hosted websites. I have spent a lot of time gathering several resources in order to get this to work. Many portions of these resources have been deprecated and required a few workarounds. It is my intention that this tutorial will help anyone that has attempted to install such a system without success."

Sun’s McNealy Wants HP-UX/Solaris Merger

Sun's CEO Scott McNealy has published an open letter to HP, proposing a merger of their respective UNIX platforms. In the past, Sun's top execs have been highly critical of HP-UX's future. Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz has repeatedly referred to the 'demise' and its troubled commitment to Intel's Itanium chip. Now, it seems, they've hit on a new idea. "We propose an alternative," writes McNealy in the letter, "that Sun and HP commit to converge HP-UX with Sun's flagship volume UNIX, Solaris 10.'

Better Networking with SCTP

"SCTP is a reliable, general-purpose transport layer protocol for use on IP networks. While the protocol was originally designed for telephony signaling, SCTP provided an added bonus - it solved some of the limitations of TCP while borrowing beneficial features of UDP. SCTP provides features for high availability, increased reliability, and improved security for socket initiation. This article discusses the key features of SCTP in the Linux 2.6 kernel and takes a look at the server and client source code that shows the protocol's ability to deliver multi-streaming."

SGI Kicks off New Era by Firing 12% of Its Staff

SGI's new CEO has wasted no time performing a major shakeup at the server company. Moves announced today include substantial layoffs, executive departures and SGI's plans to tweak its server business. SGI will fire close to 12 per cent of its workforce - 250 staffers - in the hopes of saving some extra cash. Word of the layoffs arrives just about a month after SGI moved former CEO Bob Bishop aside and tapped Dennis McKenna as its new chief. SGI heralded the layoffs as proof of McKenna's quick, decisive action, issuing a statement titled 'CEO Delivers Aggressive Changes in First 30 Days as Part of Turnaround.' The Inq speculates about nVidia buying SGI's graphics dpt. Update: Couldn't resist.

Office 2007: Users Wary of Changes

While Microsoft faces a host of challenges in maintaining its market share numbers and persuading customers to upgrade to its 2007 Office System suite of products when released in the second half of this year, its competitors face an equally daunting task of winning users away from Office 2007 and growing their numbers. Heading the list of challenges facing Microsoft is the fact that Office 2007 has a new user interface, which could require extensive staff retraining at a significant cost, as well as a new file format, which has the potential to create compatibility issues.

Q&A with the Windows Vista Bitlocker Team

BitLocker Drive Encryption is a new feature in Windows Vista that provides enhanced data protection for your computer. BitLocker is Microsoft's response to one of their top customer requests: address the very real threats of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen or inappropriately decommissioned PC hardware and tightly integrate the solution into Windows. Windows Connected recently had an opportunity to ask the Windows Vista Bitlocker team a number of questions.

Linspire May Offer Ubuntu CNR Service

Linspire and one of its biggest desktop Linux rivals, Ubuntu, are talking about collaborating to offer Linspire's CNR (Click-N-Run) application download service to Ubuntu users. CNR is a subscription service ($20 annually) through which users can install thousands of software programs with 'literally' one click, CEO Kevin Carmony said. Ubuntu, according to DistroWatch.com the no. 1 most popular Linux distribution (as ascertained by number of clicks), has nothing like CNR available for its users. Both Linspire and Ubuntu are based on the Debian kernel.