Opera 8 Beta2 is now available with a host of new features, including security fixes, and UI enhancements. Would be nice to see an Opera version for PocketPCs too, not just for Smartphones.

Sharp has always been an innovator with the Zaurus line of PDAs and the newest member of that family is no exception. The Zaurus SL-C3000 takes the utility of previous generations and extends it even further. The C3000 is a clamshell device that resembles a miniature laptop when opened and has a bright vivid screen that is wonderful to work with.

Customers who find themselves reinstalling Windows XP should be ready for a headache: Microsoft will no longer support activating the product over the Internet.

Firefox 1.0.1 is a security update for the 27 million users who have already downloaded the free browser. The Mozilla Foundation encourages all users to download the update.

Carly Fiorina's undoing was her inability to capitalise on the 2002 HP-Compaq merger, seen as her bet-the-company move. HP is on shaky ground at the moment because its product portfolio has become too large and diversified to manage, and lacks organisation-wide synergy. The printing and imaging business account for a disproportionate share of the profits, while its enterprise divisions lag. The options that stand before HP's board range from organisational restructuring, to a complete split of the company. Which of the many strategies is eventually adopted depends on the identity that HP decides to create for itself.

With the latest crop of iPods, Apple is no longer including a FireWire cable in the box. The music players will still work with FireWire, if a cord is purchased separately, but only a USB 2.0 cable comes with the device. The move is part of a gradual shift on Apple's part to standardize the iPod on USB, which is far more common in the Windows world. Nonetheless, some Mac owners were rankled by the move, saying that as recently as a year or two ago many Macs didn't include a USB 2.0 port. My Take: Just bought (a previous generation for cheap) iPod Mini yesterday. It's a truly nicely done product. The FW option seems better than the USB on my 2 year old Powerbook, as it has USB 1.1 instead of 2.0.

The OpenPKG project released version 2.3 of their unique RPM-based cross-platform multi-instance Unix software packaging facility. OpenPKG 2.3 consists of 545 selected (from a pool of over 850) packages. The major technical efforts for this release were spent on the porting of all packages to the now officially supported Unix platform Sun Solaris 10 on both Intel and SPARC architectures.

Part III of Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth is published. In it retired World Bank CTO W. McDonald Buck looks at what the CTO needs to consider in making a realistic desktop switch to Linux (-after- having switched to OS software on Windows & Linux in the server room) in a big company and how to avoid ending up toasted.

According to this press release, European Linux developer Mandrakesoft has acquired the Brazilian Conectiva. Says the release, "This acquisition is expected to increase significantly Mandrakesoft's size and R&D capabilities."

The new Javolution 3.0 (open source library) allows your objects to be preallocated at start-up and transparently recycled during execution.

Here's a comparison by a BSD user between FreeBSD and NetBSD. Elsewhere, the FreeBSD logo competition has just kicked out, officially this time.

This article explains how I’m able to use an aging but still capable Mac for database development in a company that develops commercial decision support software for hospitals. I wrote this article because I think the results of the search I made for software that allows me to work productively on this machine may be of use to others.

Minimo, the Mozilla browser for mobile devices, is poised to move beyond Linux PDAs and onto Windows CE devices, according to the Mozilla Foundation. Screenshot here (mobile version of OSNews is showing). Elsewhere, the Mozilla chairman Mitch Kapor speaks out.

Here is a two-part article on security and Mono.