"Terry Hatfield introduced Linux to a Senior Citizen in response to her ongoing Windows system woes. Hatfield proves that Linux can be used successfully by anyone wanting to perform simple tasks -- in this case browsing the Internet, using email, and playing solitaire. After a one month trial, Hatfield asked the elderly woman if she wanted Linux removed from her system, and she affirmed that her new OS of choice was Linux" Read more at DesktopLinux.com

Matthias Schonder writes "Check out this article. Maybe Gobe for OS X is closer than we think". I don't know if the momentum of OpenOffice.org can be stopped, but how could anyone not welcome Productive to their suite of tools?

"Intel introduced six new chips for notebooks on Tuesday, not long after cutting prices on its mobile processors. The chipmaker, which slashed prices on its mobile Pentium 4 and Celeron chips on Sunday, launched a new flagship 2.4GHz Pentium 4-M chip for notebooks. The chipmaker also boosted the clock speed of its mobile Celeron processor, issuing a new 2GHz mobile Celeron." Read more at ZDNet. On other CPU news, Transmeta is embedding security in its new chips.

"Today's operating systems are conceptually upside-down. They developed the hard way, gradually struggling upwards from the machinery (processors, memory, disks and displays) toward the user. In the future, operating systems and information management tools will grow top-down." Read the editorial at ComputerWorld by David Gelernter (CS professor at Yale and chief scientist at ScopeWare).

One of the coolest 3D OpenGL games written for the Mac 8.x/9.x, WaterRace, is now GPL and it would be great if developers would port it to other platforms that support GL.

There has been a growing movement in the computer industry as of late towards exploration of more database-like filesystem paradigms - the reason being that today's filesystems are primitive, scattered, and cannot efficiently manage the immense amount of information that computer users have to work with on a regular basis every day.

My husband and I made it back from Europe just last night (after an adventurous trip back) so today I was finally having access to my G4 Cube in order to test Safari, the new Apple browser based on KHTML. I like what I saw on Safari. The browser is simple (I like simplicity) and indeed loads the web pages fast (even faster than Gecko browsers on my PC) by using some techniques on rendering the page almost immediately after receiving the data from the web. With Safari, MacOSX has now seven "native" graphical browsers. Read more and vote for your favorite OSX browser! Update: A relevant article is posted on News.com regarding the reasons Apple chose KHTML and not Gecko.

PalmSource has licensed CIC's Jot character recognition system for its new handwriting system, replacing Graffiti for all devices, and added a unified soft Graffiti area.

Amiga Inc has revealed more details on the new Amiga Operating System: "Amiga is pleased to publish this first version of the feature set of the up and coming AmigaOS4.0. The document will undergo revision in subsequent issues but because of the massive demand for information made by the public, we have decided to release it in its current state." The official launch of the PPC based AmigaOne platform together with AmigaOS4.0 is sheduled for March at the upcoming CeBit tradeshow in Germany.

A couple of months ago, at the Lightweight Languages Workshop 2002, Matthew Flat made a premise in his talk: Operating system and programming language are the same thing (at least "mathematically speaking"). I find this interesting and has a lot of truth in it. Both OS and PL are platforms on which other programs run. Both are virtualizing machines. Both make it easier for people to write applications (by providing API, abtractions, frameworks, etc.)

"As some Apple defenders have noted (and I implied with my Bang & Olufsen comparison), there are lots of niche players who make loads of money selling higher priced, but high quality products. The problem, however, is that software lacks the natural levels of compatibility found in other markets. Bang & Olufsen stereos can play the same radio stations and CDs as the lower-priced offerings from Aiwa. That isn't the case with operating systems, and really can't be so long as developers have different ideas about API design." Read the editorial at ZDNews.

"Could we be constantly tracked through our clothes, shoes or even our cash in the future? I'm not talking about having a microchip surgically implanted beneath your skin, which is what Applied Digital Systems of Palm Beach, Fla., would like to do. Nor am I talking about John Poindexter's creepy Total Information Awareness spy-veillance system, which I wrote about last week. Instead, in the future, we could be tracked because we'll be wearing, eating and carrying objects that are carefully designed to do so." Read the interesting editorial at ZDNews.

The next update to Microsoft's Windows CE .Net OS, which has been given the code name McKendric, will ship before the middle of 2003 and include several new features, a company executive said at the Microsoft Embedded DevCon 2003 conference.

John Mahala writes "Over the weekend, Sun released Solaris 9 for x86. You can check it out here. The cost is $20 to download, and there is no offering (yet) to purchase a Media Kit."