"The desktop metaphor was a brilliant innovation--30 years ago. Now it's an unmanageable mess, and the search is on for a better way to handle information. If you have ever forgotten what you named a file or which folder you put it in, you probably will agree that it's time for a change. The desktop metaphor is decades old, arising from early-1970s work at Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center, and was never intended to address today's computing needs. TechReview searches for our next computer Interface.

Today, OSNews features an interview with Zac Woodall, software design Engineer at Office Data and Developer Services at Microsoft Corporation. Zac, who is also a frequent OSNews reader, talks about the new Office, .NET, WindowsXP, NTFS and how it compares to BFS filesystem, the GPL & open source movement and much more.

Apple Computer has a message for Windows users considering an upgrade to XP: "Come back to the Mac." In the wake of a $1 billion Windows XP marketing campaign, all eyes would appear to be turned away from Mac OS X 10.1.1, the new operating system Apple significantly upgraded in September. But Apple is convinced that Windows XP's endorsement of technologies that first appeared on Macs--802.11b wireless networking, CD burning, DVD playback, movie making, and easy retrieval of digital camera images, among others--will help Apple system and software sales.

Part 1 of "Microsoft on Truth Serum" has been posted at OS/2 Headquarters. This article covers each line of the Definitions section of the document, and it claims that Microsoft plans to get out of each and every restriction listed. Furthermore, the article finds a "loophole" that actually grants Microsoft exemption from copyright lawsuits by rivals -- something no other software company has ever been granted.

The first Windows beta for gobeProductive 3 Office Suite is now released. The download weighs only 5 MB, and it expires on January 15th. gobeProductive 3 includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, vector and raster graphics editors and a presentation tool. A special upgrade price ($40) will be offered to BeOS users, while the full price will be around $125 USD under the Family License (you can freely install the suite to all your home PCs, plus one PC at your workplace). The Linux version is scheduled for the second quarter of 2002. If you encounter bugs in this beta version, let Gobe know about them, by emailing them and make sure you mention the version of Windows, printer driver and your hardware specs (CPU, graphics card etc). OSNews featured a world's first preview of the office suite just two weeks ago.

The weekend is ahead and the day of relaxing from coding furiously all week, should also be near. Given that most OS coders love sci-fi, here are some sci-fi movie and TV news: One of the most highly anticipated new sci-fi series, a revival of 70s cult classic Battlestar Galactica, has been shelved after director Bryan Singer jumped ship to direct 'X-Men 2'.

The new version of SuSE Linux 7.3 is now starting to show up in many mirrors around the world and it is becoming available for download. You can read the review of SuSE 7.3 on NewsForge: "For me, getting SuSE 7.3 Personal installed and running was a lot like having a baby -- it was painful and took a long time. But baby, am I ever happy with the result." Tina Gasperson writes. However, TheRegister journalist Thomas C Greene, after having big troubles (read the 'related stories' at the end of this article to get the feeling of the context story) installing RedHat 7.2 in his Dell machine, reports that the SuSE installation went just fine.

From TheRegister: "Sun is expected to announce the introduction of Gigahertz processors on Monday, the first time Sun has shipped SPARCS clocked higher than 1GHz. The SunBlade 1000 will be the first to receive the 1,050MHz SPARC IIIs. It isn't the first RISC chip to reach the milestone: Compaq's Alpha can claim that prize..."

Compared to the Whistler client releases, which became known as Windows XP back in February, the Whistler Server beta has been relatively quiet for a long time. Whistler Server hit Beta 2 in late March alongside Windows XP, when Microsoft noted that the two product lines would then follow different development paths. In late April, Microsoft announced that the Whistler Server products would be marketed as 'Windows 2002 Server', but it was later renamed to 'Windows .NET Server'. Screenshots and lots of information can be found at the WinSuperSite and an FAQ is also available for the product.

DirectX is the multimedia system foundation for Windows operating systems. This latest version of DirectX (released very recently) offers updated graphics, faster frame rates, and support for massive multiplayer games. It also offers more immersive audio when running and displaying programs rich in multimedia elements, such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and surround sound. The Windows2000 binary is 7.6 MB while for Windows98/98SE/ME, the download weighs 11.5 MB. Users of Windows XP do not need to install DirectX 8.1 as it is already included, while Windows95 is not supported at all anymore.

"Over the past few months the SourceForge development facility, which hosts a large number of Free Software projects, has changed its policies. Features for exporting a project from SourceForge have been removed. The implementation used to be exclusively Free Software but is now based on non-free software. Finally, VA Linux has become rather underhand in their attempts to grasp exclusive control of contributors' work. SourceForge did a lot of good for the Free Software community, but it's now time to break free." Read the rest of the editorial at FSFEurope.org.

"This is probably the greatest week ever for gamers. The Xbox and GameCube will be launched while the PlayStation 2 is at the top of its game. Will players buy Microsoft's deal: a CPU based on a 733MHz Pentium III, 8GB hard drive, ethernet port and strong game lineup? Physically, this is probably the largest video game console ever and Bill Gates and the WWF's The Rock will attest that it's the best. See what's inside that makes it rumble." Special on ZDNews.

"In my October, Byte.com column I described the new VM written by kernel hacker Andrea Arcangeli. In that article, I promised I would come back to my FreeBSD versus Linux comparison that I ran in my February 2001 column. Many people say FreeBSD has a very good virtual memory manager. As it turns out, I pretty much proved them right in that article. Now, with the new VM engine in Linux as of 2.4.10, things might look different, so I prepared a new test environment for the benchmark." Moshe Bar benchmarks the VMs between Linux and the previous FreeBSD, version 4.3.

Apple has posted Mac OS X 10.1.1 and it is installable via via System Preferences' Software Update pane. Last week's Installer Update 1.0 must be installed first. MacOSX 10.1.1 "delivers improvements for many USB and FireWire devices, including support for additional digital cameras, and overall improvements to CD and DVD Burning. The update includes enhancements to AFP, SMB and WebDAV networking, updates to the Finder and Mail applications, as well as improved support for printing. In addition, hardware accelerated video mirroring has been enabled for the new PowerBook G4." The download weighs in at 14.4 MB.