Apple has upgraded its Mac Pro desktop with a pair of 3GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processors. It can have up to 16 GB of RAM, although it isn't cheap. Apple has already published benchmarks.

The startup ZenZui is introducing a zooming user interface to facilitate web browsing on mobile phones. The company is commercializing technology that it licensed from Microsoft, in particular the AppLens and LaunchTile interfaces developed by ZenZui's founders while they were at Microsoft Research.

For the first time in its 7 years of existence, some decent statement has been released concering the legality of Zeta. Access, the current owner of Be, Inc.'s IP, states: "We have sent 'cease and desist' letters to YellowTab on a number of occasions, which have been uniformly ignored. If Herr Korz feels that he holds a legitimate license to the BeOS code he's been using, we're completely unaware of it, and I'd be fascinated to see him produce any substantiation for that claim." Update: Bernd Korz has replied on his blog.

"Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz loves to splatter the media with the line that Windows, Red Hat Linux and Solaris stand as the only operating systems of significance in the server kingdom. We've spent the last few years struggling to appreciate the seriousness of that claim. Sun's declining system sales failed to inspire much optimism about the company conquering the data centers of tomorrow with a deflating 'venerable' OS. A couple of recent items, however, have tweaked our view of Schwartz's favored claim. It could well be that Solaris - of all things - provides the 'iPod moment' Sun seeks." In the meantime, Sun upped the speed of some of its SPARC chips.

A NetSurf coder has sparked debate over the future of the web browser by suggesting ways in which JavaScript support and other features can be developed. In tentative plans sketched out by John-Mark Bell, which are to be discussed with fellow programmers, he suggested that version 2.0 of NetSurf could feature JavaScript support.

"We are very pleased to announce that Access, the current holders of the BeOS intellectual property, has responded positively to our request for permission to reproduce the BeBook and all the Be Newsletters. As a result, we will be able to release these BeOS legacy documents under a Creative Commons license."

Version 0.67 of Visopsys was released today, with all the usual bug fixes and tweaks plus two focus areas of improvement: the IDE/ATA disk driver has been 'modernized' with PCI, DMA, and 48-bit addressing support, resulting in a raw I/O performance increase of up to 700%; additionally the Disk Manager (Partition Logic) has been re-engineered and modularized to support the later addition of new disk label types, as well as improved support for MS-DOS logical partitions (moving, creating out-of-order, etc.). Downloads are here, and the change log is here.

"The Free Software Foundation has published a third draft of the GPL3 license. The FSF had indicated leading up to this draft that it would be addressing some concerns it had with the Novell-Microsoft agreements in the draft. Here's Novell’s position on the new draft."

"Unlike previous Microsoft operating systems, Windows Vista is pretty streamlined right out of the box. It makes terrific use of a system's resources, but it's built as much for pretty looks and increased stability and security as it is for horsepower. It's time now for a course of action that will take the ball and chain off this baby and let it fly. The ink on Windows Vista's EULA is barely dry, so it's very likely that more speed tips, registry hacks, and deep settings will be revealed in the weeks, months, and years to come. For now, here's our set of tweaks that can help you turn up the throttle on your new operating system."

The POWER5 processor is a 64-bit workhorse used in a variety of settings. Starting with this introduction to assembly language concepts and the PowerPC instruction set, this series of articles introduces assembly language in general and specifically for the POWER5. Read more for links to all the parts in the series.

Microsoft has made changes to its licensing model for Windows Vista to meet the needs of enterprise customers in the finance and government sectors using bleeding-edge technologies. The software giant will announce April 2 a subscription license called Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktops, which allows customers to use Windows in virtual machines centralized on server hardware. It is also giving its Software Assurance customers using Windows Vista Enterprise the license right to use Vista on diskless PCs - essentially machines without hard drives.

"In this anniversary, I'd like to shed some light about my first-hand experience with , especially since I see many attempts at history re-writing and over-simplification, when people compress OS/2's two decades into a single paragraph. An OS/2 user named Roger Perkins wrote to OS/2 newsgroups ten years ago: "Here's to OS/2's 10th Anniversary on April 2nd! No OS has ever died so many times!"

Hi-Mobile sent us in the very popular Nokia N80 smartphone. While the phone was released about 10 months ago, just last month there was a brand new and free firmware upgrade that upgrades it to version 4.x which adds VoIP functionality. The upgrade is available for all N80 models, even the ones that were not released under the "Internet Edition" brand. Read more for our test.

Bernd Korz has announced that he will cease all development on Zeta , which effectively means Zeta will no longer be in development. Korz already wanted to quit development on Zeta when YellowTAB went belly up, but the numerous requests from customers to continue development eventually dragged him across the line. However, after the spat with Magnussoft, enough is enough for Korz. He states that he is not sure if and when the service pack to Zeta 1.5 will be released. He also states that he is not sure if and when he will open source or give to Haiku his contributions to Zeta. He explicitely states nor yT, nor Magnussoft own the source code to his work. My take: While I can understand Bernd, I am also sad to see this happen. For the little money and manpower Bernd had at his disposal, he did a magnificent job in making Zeta a usable operating system. I already knew this was about to happen, but a sad day it remains for Zeta users.