Mercury Computer Systems announced a USD 7999 accelerator card Tuesday that uses the Cell Broadband Engine processor that plugs into a computer's PCI slot. The Cell Accelerator Board, which will be generally available in the first quarter of 2007, can speed tasks such as signal processing or image rendering, Mercury said in an announcement at the Siggraph computer graphics show.

MEPIS, the popular Ubuntu-based Linux distributor, has finally released its distribution source code under the GPL. Warren Woodford, CEO, is not one bit pleased with being forced to do so. Woodford has long disagreed with some parts of the GPL. He recently ran into some trouble with its requirement that downstream distributors of GPL code are obligated to provide source code to users in an easily accessible format. Note: Starting today, Mepis stories will be posted in the Ubuntu category.

The new EU legislation that forces manufacturers to reduce the amount of harmful chemicals and materials in their products will affect the Iyonix. The computer's motherboard will require a costly resdesign in order to meet the requirements of the new RoHS rules, especially to meet the low-lead levels in the PCB solder, say contacts close to Castle. Well placed sources say that items manufactured before the July 1 deadline can still be shipped and sold. It is understood that the AdvantageSix A9 range is RoHS compliant. Castle have declined to comment. My take: It's a bird, it's a plane... No, it's the RoHS which Castle could've seen coming since 2003.

NeoOffice has released a 2.0 beta version of its OpenOffice-based office suite for Mac OS X, now with aqua look and feel. You can join the beta program for 10 or 25 USD, depending on purchase date.

AMD said it increased its share of the x86 server processor market to 25.9 percent, a number confirmed by Mercury Research's Dean McCarron, who tracks market share figures. Intel now holds 72.9 percent of the overall market for x86 processors, while AMD has 21.6 percent.

A spokesperson for the One Laptop Per Child program revealed July 31 that the countries of Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each committed to buy 1 million Linux laptops through the US-based program. Last week it became known that Nigeria ordered 1 million laptops.

With Windows Vista nearing its first release candidate in preparation for a final launch early next year, Microsoft is providing more details about possible upgrade paths. Of note: Windows 2000 cannot be upgraded to Vista. While Windows 2000 Professional customers may purchase a cheaper "upgrade" copy of Microsoft next-generation operating system, Windows Vista must be "clean installed", which means users will need to back up their files and data manually and then copy everything into place. Applications will also need to be re-installed.

"Too many Linux image viewers are tinged with little annoyances - they take too long to load, are slow to redraw the display, have limited format support, sport inconvenient controls - so when you want to settle on one, inevitably there's something to make you utter feh! in general discontent. Good call - feh is the name of a speedy little viewer that packs a surprising number of features for its size."

Microsoft has submitted documents required by the European Commission in an effort to avoid further fines for breaching an antitrust ruling, a spokeswoman for the European Union regulator said on Monday. "We received the technical documentation from Microsoft. The competition services are currently analyzingit with the help of the trustee. It's too early to say whether they complied with the decision," the spokeswoman said.

The Realtek 8169 network card driver has been ported to the Syllable desktop operating system from Linux. This is the first Gigabit network driver for Syllable. A beta release is available and the driver will be included in the next release of Syllable.

The first beta version of Mandriva Linux 2007 has been released. Available in four differents flavours live/install CDs (KDE or GNOME, i586 or x86_64) or in a whole new dual architecture Installation DVD, get a glimpse of the next Mandriva Linux 2007 edition.

The second draft of the GPL version 3 license is not even a few days old and already one of the largest Linux vendors in the world is taking issue with its content. "HP had hoped that the second draft would clarify the patent provision such as to ease concern that mere distribution of a single copy of GPL-licensed software might have significant adverse IP impact on a company," said Christine Martino, vice president of Open Source And Linux with HP, in a statement. "Unfortunately, the concern lingers in draft 2." The first draft included some contentious terms surrounding DRM and patents; those terms have softened a bit in the second draft. Apparently, not quite enough for HP.

"It's been a while since I looked at Xandros. True to form, it has remained one of the easiest to use and flat out slickest Linux distributions available. This version of Xandros focuses on the 'digital lifestyle' and includes wireless network profiles, a music manager with iPod and MP3 support, photo manager, video players and internet telephone via Skype, among other things. This version also provides good security tools such as a built-in firewall and anti-virus."

Microsoft is recalling an update to its Small Business Server product because of a glitch found late in the manufacturing process. They found a problem with Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 after the product was released to computer makers but before it was made broadly available. "Recently, and during a regular audit as part of our software production process, Microsoft became aware of an issue with the final software containing nonfinal versions of a few core components," Microsoft said in a statement.