No fewer than five major announcements in the development field are being issued by Microsoft this afternoon, the timing of which is by no means coincidental: On the top of the list, Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 - which is quickly losing touch with its old code-name 'Orcas' - will be made generally available for download by this Friday, along with Beta 2 of .NET Framework 3.5.

Sun's latest Niagara and Rock details have reached El Reg, and they confirm that the hardware maker is up to some very ambitious stuff. First off, Sun looks set for the imminent release of its first Niagara II-based servers - the T5120 and T5220 systems. Customers will see 1U and 2U boxes, respectively, each with one of the 'Niagara II' or (more formally) UltraSPARC T2 chips. It looks like the eight-core, 64-thread chip will arrive at 1.5GHz.

"Dell knows it won't happen overnight, but along side wanting to ship audio/video codecs, Intel Wireless 80.211n support for Linux, Broadcom Wireless for Linux, and being able to ship notebooks and desktops with Compiz Fusion enabled, Dell would like to see improved ATI Linux drivers."

"The news of Con Kolivas, a Linux kernel developer, quitting that role, along with an interview in which he explains why, could and should make loud noises around the Free Software community which is often touting GNU/Linux as the best operating system one could use, and not just because of freedom you have with it. In the interview he says certain things which should cause tectonic shifts in the mindset that we have all been having. Why didn't we realize these things before? As you can see, the article intrigued me quite a bit, and got me thinking about a better way forward for the Free Software OS. I'll go through some of the basic points that he makes and lay out one possible solution and its implications. However, take this article as just a discussion starter." My take: I have been advocating splitting the Linux kernel up (desktop, server, embedded) for years now.

After years of being relegated to server racks and the desktops of ultrageeks, Linux is finally making some headway as a viable alternative to Windows on the consumer desktop. That's the optimistic message delivered by a newly energized contingent of Linux proponents. By employing the same consumer-friendly marketing techniques practiced by Microsoft, and by taking advantage of the rising popularity of web-based applications, Linux vendors are getting ready for what they say will be a wave of consumer interest in the free operating system.

PureMobile sent us in for a review one of Nokia's newest and most powerful handsets: the E90. The E90 is a Communicator-class device and very popular among businessmen, but also among system administrators too (one of our friends, sysadmin at Google, is using Nokia's qwerty/wifi devices specifically for SSH access). Read on for our review of the impressive E90.

Apple earned a profit of USD 818 million on revenue of USD 5.41 billion for its fiscal third-quarter ending June 30, the company announced Wednesday. Apple sold 1.764 million Macs and 9.815 million iPods during the quarter, and 270000 iPhones in that product's first 30 hours of sales. In addition, Apple has released a new Leopard build.

"DesktopBSD 1.6 RC 3 is now available for download from our mirrors or via BitTorrent. This release candidate is considered a large step towards a final release 1.6 with major changes such as: X.Org release 7.2, improving support for modern graphics hardware; NVIDIA graphics driver, providing hardware 3D acceleration for NVIDIA video cards; latest FreeBSD 6-STABLE as base system with High Definition Audio support; support for multiple processors and multi-core CPUs; more up-to-date software packages from the DesktopBSD build servers; many small bug fixes and optimizations. Upgrades from 1.0 and previous release candidates are supported. An additional language CD and 64-bit (AMD64) DVD will be released soon."

"If you're a GNOME user I expect you're more than familiar with the panels that come as standard with your desktop; if you use openSUSE you're probably also familiar with the slab menu that Novell have developed. There are, however, several other applications out there that can extend and beautify your Gnome panels."

"The NetBSD Foundation announces that it has hired Andrew Doran to work full-time on improving symmetrical multi-processing in NetBSD. This work is made possible through a generous donation by Force10 Networks and internal funding by The NetBSD Foundation. Andrew Doran is an independent, Dublin based Unix systems consultant with special interest in building scalable systems. He has been a NetBSD developer since 1999 and is currently working on the transition from a big-lock SMP implementation to a fine-grained model, which allows multiple CPUs to execute code in kernel context simultaneously. Hiring Andrew full-time will boost work in this area, with the final result of a SMP implementation that is ready for tomorrow's multi-core-CPUs."

"Intel announced today that they're open-sourcing their cross-platform Thread Building Blocks 2.0 (TBB) template library. While the company contributes code to open-source project like the Linux kernel and drivers, the opening of TBB marks the first time that Intel has taken a commercial tool and open-sourced it, making it Intel's largest open-source commitment to date."

Two preview articles give a taste of the new proof-of-concept desktop environment Pyro. Based on Firefox, used in conjunction with X's compositing extensions, Pyro allows web applications to behave like full-fledged ones running alongside traditional Linux apps. Perhaps most tantalizing of all, Pyro is a simple Firefox-extension-install away. Ars Technica has a backgrounder on the project, while Desktoplinux spotlights potential security concerns.

Break out the salt, boys and girls, it's time for some statistics again. "According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June. If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August." Do with it as you please.

The head of PC maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, has hit out at Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, saying that the 'entire industry' was disappointed by it. Few buyers have purchased new PCs specifically for Vista, Acer's chief says "The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista," the head of the world's fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday. Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales, he said. "And that's not going to change in the second half of this year," Mr Lanci said. "I really don't think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista."