Ars has reviewed the new MacBook Pro. "The latest MacBook Pros are a solid upgrade from their predecessor, thanks to the new Santa Rosa platform. If you already have a 17" MacBook Pro and aren't dying for the higher-resolution display, don't bother upgrading. If, however, you have been sitting on the fence with an old G4 or Core Duo laptop, this is a worthy upgrade. If you like your laptops large and in charge, I strongly recommend the 17" MacBook Pro."

According to Microsoft's beta tester site for Windows Home Server, they "will be notifying all applicants this week that they can now access the Windows Home Server RC build in order to download the software." Folks in the beta program can already access the latest release but others may join by completing this participation survey. Ars has more.

An Apple official on Monday said Sun's open-source file system would not be in the next version of the Mac operating system, contradicting statements made last week by Sun's chief executive. During an interview with InformationWeek, Brian Croll, senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS, said, "ZFS is not happening," when asked whether Sun's Zettabyte File System would be in Leopard. Instead, Leopard would use Apple's current hierarchical file system, called HFS+. The Apple file system was first introduced in 1998 in Mac OS 8.0.

Internet search leader Google is trying to convince federal and state authorities that Microsoft's Vista operating system is stifling competition as the high-tech heavyweights wrestle for the allegiance of personal computer users. In a 49-page document filed April 18 with the U.S. Justice Department and state attorneys general, Google alleged that the latest version of Microsoft's Windows operating system impairs the performance of 'desktop search' programs that find data stored on a computer's hard drive. Besides bogging down competing programs, Google alleged Microsoft had made it too complicated to turn off the desktop search feature built into Vista.

As you have surely noticed by now, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs held his keynote speech yesterday at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. So far, the responses have been mixed; I have seen a lot of excitement, but also a lot of disappointment. Personally, I am not really sure where I stand.

VMware is pricing its upcoming new software to run Windows on a Mac similar to rival Parallels's software announced last week. VMware said that its Fusion software for Macintosh computers can be pre-ordered beginning Tuesday for USD 39.99, and USD 79.99 when it becomes generally available near the end of August. Parallels priced its Parallels Desktop version 3.0 at USD 79.99 when it became generally available Thursday, and USD 39.99 for users upgrading from a previous version of Parallels.

Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users. In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy."

ROX-Filer 2.6.1 has been released. ROX-Filer is the filemanager at the core of the ROX desktop. "Some problems with session management were fixed. This makes it easier to use ROX-Filer with gnome-session and similar. When creating thumbnails, we can now use a thumbnail embedded in an Exif image, which speed things up. A couple of build problems were fixed."

A recent IDC report showed Linux servers continuing to increase market share for x86 architecture with a second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, but the bigger news could be Microsoft's even bigger surge with Server 2003. The software giant's Server 2003 showed modest gains in Q1, with IDC reporting that Microsoft Windows Server revenue was USD 4.8 billion in Q1. This number represents 10.4% year-over-year growth and a gain of 1.9 points of revenue market share over the same period in 2006. Windows encompassed 38.8% of all server revenue in Q1 of 2007.

Tonight (19:00 CET), Apple's CEO Steve Jobs will deliver his keynote speech for the attendants of Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Fransisco. As always, the Mac world is buzzing with rumours. Firstly, a photo taken with a camera phone suggests Apple will release a sub-notebook, with a 10" LED widescreen, 120GB flashdrive, and a programmable LCD keyboard. Another persistent rumour is that Apple will replace its iMac line with thinner, brushed-metal 20" and 24" iMacs. Lastly, a German website claims to have an outline of the keynote speech - this outline confirms the new iMacs, but also has some interesting notes on Leopard: a unified, standard theme (this alone would make the keynote worthwhile for me), a new Finder, resolution independence, and more. As always, take these rumours with a bag of salt.

"It wasn't until last week during a meeting with Sun that some new light was shed on the Solaris Check Tool and as a result we decided to explore this tool further. Check Tool is a bootable CD that lets the user know whether the hardware they have installed is likely to work with Solaris or not. If a third-party driver is needed for a particular piece of hardware, the Check Tool will even provide a link to the driver needed. There are currently a few rough spots with the tool, but improvements are planned and in this article we will share more information on this program that can tell you in a matter of minutes whether you'll face a hardware compatibility nightmare or will be running Solaris/Solaris Express with ease."

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lit a 60 watt light bulb from a power source two meters away and with no physical connections between the source and the appliance. The 'WiTricity' device - the term coined by the MIT team to describe the wireless power phenomenon - uses magnetic fields to deliver power to the gadgets remotely."

A minor extra release of MINIX 3.1.3 was done, called 3.1.3a, correcting some flaws in 3.1.3. "Found after release time and fixed in 3.1.3a: mkfs does not check for overflow of firstdatazone field in superblock; a missing check in rename caused moving directories to hang sometimes; autopart truncates new partitions at 4GB. If you want to create a larger partition, use part (expert mode) to do that first; and more."

El Reg takes a look at ten desktop computers, from Apple's Mac Pro to Dell's exotic XPS M2010. The verdict: "The ten PCs we have looked at here represent a huge cross-section of the computer market and as such offer varied functionality depending on specific needs and budgets. If you're looking for an imposing combo of power and potent design then the Alienware really should be your first and only port of call. For us, if money were no object we'd opt for the Dell XPS for its sheer bling factor, but in the real world give us an Apple Mac Pro and we're happy."