Microsoft, hoping to drive greater adoption of its Windows XP operating system, will unveil a new central Web site with revamped tools to help IT administrators make the switch.

Sun Microsystems will build its entire collection of software into a single, gigantic version of its Solaris operating system and release updates once a quarter, Sun's top software executive said Tuesday.

QNX released the much anticipated 6.2.1 version of their QNX Momentics Development Suite (Standard and Professional Editions) at Embedded World in Nuernberg. The non-commercial (NC) version is expected to be released by month end. Press release here.

Over at ActiveWin you will find a variety of shots, including those of Outlook, Excel, Word etc, from the second beta of Microsoft Office 2003. Our Take: You can clearly see the task-based interface being more prominent than ever in these Office shots, and despite the questionable choice of colors used, Outlook's three-vertical-pane interface as the default makes sense UI-wise (documents are generally long, not wide).

The MacOSX 10.2.4 Server Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, services and technologies: AFP, SMB and NFS file services, DHCP, NetBoot, Open Directory, QuickTime Streaming Server, Sendmail and Workgroup Manager.

"Sun Microsystems will use processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in future blade servers that it first announced on Feb. 10. Sun will use Athlon XP-M processors, originally developed for mobile computing, running at 1.2GHz or 1.4GHz." Read more at InfoWorld.

The days of defending Linux momentum in the enterprise may rapidly be coming to a close. Red Hat executive Mark de Visser gets to the heart of the matter with SearchEnterpriseLinux.com, pointing out that moving from a proprietary Unix system to Linux on Intel results in "10x price-performance improvements" in many cases. De Visser covers more in this question-and-answer interview, specifically the inhibitors to Linux adoption in the enterprise, Red Hat's focus on certain vertical markets, customer demands and the maturation of the open-source platform.

Jared White at The Idea Basket explores in this editorial the dangers and pitfalls of the practice of both propertary and open-source software bundling/integration and then offers some alternative development methodologies that could benefit both users and developers alike.

Intel's recent announcement that it will start shipping motherboards with built-in 802.11b sparked an interesting question in a ZD Net article: is this a sign that Intel has realized that most people don't need faster processors? If demand for 3 and 4 GHz processors is going to be mild, then the logical step for Intel is to move into other areas, like building more stuff onto the motherboard.

The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association is working on a replacement for its PC Card/Cardbus form factor. In addition to being smaller, faster, and cheaper, the PCMCIA is working with other standards bodies to assure that the new format is compatible with USB 2.0 and PCI Express serial input/output technologies. The new standard is primarily for laptops, but this article in PC World mentions that it is also being intended for desktop use.

Real Software announces the availability of REALbasic 5 for Macintosh. This new version builds smaller applications, improves support for Jaguar (including drawers, brushed-metal windows and toolbars), adds new Internet capabilities, better Unicode support and new server development option.

Microsoft has set 12 March as the release to manufacture date for the six new versions of its server operating system, paving the way for a shipping date of 29 April. The six versions of Windows Server 2003 due to launch in April will be followed by a seventh, called Windows Small Business Server 2003, due late summer.

Apple's Safari web browser will soon be equipped with a tabbed browsing feature, the notoriously precise Think Secret has confirmed. New pre-release betas that are being tested include this capability (after activating it from a debug menu), which is one of the most anticipated additions to the upstart browser.

"Sun did not invent the engineering workstation, but they certainly perfected it. But where are workstations today? Gone, for the most part. Sun's workstation business is about the same size as SGI's, which is to say small. Sun is now a server company, but that won't last long either under the onslaught of Linux. Cheap Intel and AMD hardware running Linux is going to kill Sun unless the company does something so stop it, which they aren't." Cringely editorializes on Sun's future.