Content and news by Rob Williams

For the month of March, Apple placed fourth on NPD’s list of top selling retail notebook vendors with a 9.9 percent share, ahead of of Compaq’s 8.5 percent share but behind Gateway’s 13.0 percent share. Toshiba topped the list — which omits manufacturers like Dell who only sell direct. — by grabbing 26.2 percent of the market, followed by HP at 23.9 percent.

This is not the highest percentage Apple has hit, but they have some staying power. Their desktops are also selling well, hitting 7.7% in that market.

Source: Apple Insider

Architecture updates, drivers, filesystems, networking, security, build
scripts, reorganizations, cleanups.. You name it, it’s there. You want a new firewire stack? We’ve got it. New wireless networking infrastructure? Check. New infiniband drivers? Digital video drivers? A totally new CPU architecture (blackfin)? Check, check, check.

The kernel devs worked overtime on this new release it seems. Although there are many updates, this particular kernel is still in prepatch status, so chances are bugs will be floating around. Use at your own risk, and help the devs stomp those bugs.

Source: Kernel Trap

The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google, Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won’t be free anymore.

This isn’t going to end until a Judge ends it. As far as I know, the patents in question are known by no one, except Microsoft. It’s going to be an interesting few months, although it’s going to be amazing if Linux actually does directly violate patents.

Source: CNN Money

This is not that news worthy, but Chile Hardware once again has a first look at an upcoming product. The TwinMOS module they stumbled upon is rated for 666MHz, or DDR2-1333 speeds. The voltage is DDR3 standard at 1.5v, and the CAS latency is 8.

The module shown is of a 512MB density, so we have yet to see a 2GB performance DDR3 kit. It’s going to be a while before DDR3 catches on at all, but having 1GB kits as the primary offering certainly won’t help speed anything up.

Source: Chile Hardware

It well over six months late, but the HD series from AMD is finally here. The series consists of the HD 2400, HD 2600 and HD 2900 XT, which the top offering at the $399 USD price point. From todays press release:

Available immediately, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is expected to be priced at an incredible USD $399 (SEP) including Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two from Valve. This price enables more consumers than ever to enjoy the best in discrete graphics.

It’s no surprise that the web is chock full of reviews. HardOCP has performed extensive testing and makes a few important points in their conclusions:

In the above screenshot you will see the 3DMark06 score of 10723 on the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, 9105 on the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB and 11191 on the GeForce 8800 GTX. Yes, the 3DMark06 score and “game tests” are a good deal higher with the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT compared to the GeForce 8800 GTS and is just shy of the GeForce 8800 GTX. If you were a benchmark enthusiast you might think wow, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT has to be faster in games because it is faster in 3DMark! By looking at 3DMark alone you would think it is almost as fast as a GeForce 8800 GTX. Well, you would be wrong.

Our friends at HotHardware had similar sentiments:

As we bring this article to a close, we’re sure many of you are left scratching your head and wondering what happened. Has ATI forgotten about enthusiasts now that they are part of AMD and don’t care about the high-end any longer? The answer to that question is, no. Even though you may hear different, we think ATI would have loved nothing more than to release a halo product that shines above all others. We just think they rolled the dice with R600 and built it on TSMC’s 80nm node hoping it would be able to hit higher clock speeds and have much more manageable power consumption. Unfortunately, that just didn’t happen.

I think that’s all that needs to be said. For those Linux users interested in how the new series will affect them, head on over to Phoronix for their perspective.

Sunnyvale, Calif. – May. 14, 2007 – AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced the ATI Radeon HDTM 2000 series, a top-to-bottom line of ten discrete graphics processors (GPUs) for both desktop and mobile platforms. This family of GPUs delivers The Ultimate Visual Experience(tm) through best-in-class immersive high-definition gaming and high-definition multimedia playback.

Source: AMD Press Release

Sunnyvale, CA—May 11, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today released PC2-5400 2GB SODIMM modules, an addition to their line of premium upgrade laptop memory. Though OCZ is renowned for enthusiast-driven products, their commitment to performance and quality extends to mainstream consumers looking to add value and performance to their systems.

Source: OCZ Press Release

One in 10 web pages scrutinised by search giant Google contained malicious code that could infect a user’s PC. Researchers from the firm surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to “in-depth analysis”.

It’s good that Google has begun to “filter” out these corrupt sites with warnings. I am not sure if they are implemented yet, but it sounds like they should be soon.

Source: BBC News

Mason, who said he built the school district’s network and computers, said he thinks the district is using him as a scapegoat for their technology problems. He cited underfunding and under staffing for the lack of functionality with the school’s technology apparatus, which has drawn strong complaints from students and teachers at the high school in particular.

It sounds like the school district doesn’t have a clue. Mason mentioned that problems would only worsen now that he is gone.

Source: ThisWeek News

Last thursday was not one more day in Villa Cardal. This uruguayan town of around 2000 people received national authorities and presse, as it probably had never happened in its history.
But what happened there was not only important for its settlers, nor for the country: It began the first experience of computation 1 to 1 that covers a 100% of the children that go to school.

This is quite a momentous occasion. We have been reading about OLPC for what seems like forever, but it has finally landed in one school in a Uruguayan town. The kids seem quite happy, not surprisingly!

Source: OLPC Ceibal Blog

It’s a many-step process, but guide is very detailed, so it’s a pretty easy set up. Once you’ve finished, you can install and run any of a number of great Linux apps (actually, it’s technically UNIX apps that run on Linux).

If you are an Apple user and have a desire to get a Linux program running, this is a great guide. Prepare to spend a while setting it up though.

Source: Life Hacker

Julie Marto of Medfield, Massachusetts, purchased a Dell Inspiron notebook running Windows XP last October. Through a program called Express Upgrade, she was promised a free copy of Windows Vista when the operating system became commercially available. It’s been five months since Vista went on sale January 30. Marto is still waiting and steaming mad.

Five months and nothing yet? I’d be peeved too, if I didn’t realize how unstable and frustrating Vista was.

Source: Yahoo! News

Everybody’s favorite open-source browser, Firefox, is great right out of the box. And by adding some of the awesome extensions available out there, the browser just gets better and better.

Yes, another top 10+ list. Don’t hate me. If you are on the internet a -lot-, then you likely know most of these, but there are a few gems that you might find.

Source: Life Hack

Many ICQ users woke up and found their ICQ numbers were no longer working. There is a topic on the ICQ support with more than 1,500 replies. There are pages upon pages of other topics asking what happened. As of yet, there has been no official response from AOL about what has happened.

In other news, ICQ does indeed still exist.

Source: Slashdot

In a surprise reversal, IDG management removed Colin Crawford as PC World’s CEO and reinstated Harry McCracken as Editor in Chief, after a dispute over a canceled Apple story led McCracken to quit. A memo just sent to PC World and Macworld staffers by IDG president Bob Carrigan states that McCracken “has decided to remain with PC World.”

Harry did the right thing and it ended up paying him back big time. Just when PC Worlds integrity was on the hot seat, they demoted the biggest problem at hand. What a great result.

Source: Wired Blogs

Scientists have developed an artificial plastic blood which could act as a substitute in emergencies. Researchers at Sheffield University said their creation could be a huge advantage in war zones.

Wow, what can’t you make with plastic?

Source: BBC News

Microsoft is teaming up with peripherals manufacturer SanDisk in an effort to develop smart USB devices that will allow users to carry their complete personal computing environment on a device as small as a thumb drive, Microsoft announced Friday.

This is not something new, as Linux users have enjoyed their OS on a thumb drive for some time now. The problem is, it’s often a lengthy process to have proper functionality. I assume that Microsoft will be the one to write a specific application for this purpose. With 8GB and even 16GB thumb drives available today, there is certainly enough room to carry your workstation with you.

Source: Information Week

The specification, known as the Type 0 Routing Header (RH0), allows computers to tell IPv6 routers to send data by a specific route. Originally envisioned as a way to let mobile users to retain a single IP for their devices, the feature has significant security implications. During a presentation at the CanSecWest conference on 18 April, researchers Philippe Biondi and Arnaud Ebalard pointed out that RH0 support allows attackers to amplify denial-of-service attacks on IPv6 infrastructure by a factor of at least 80.

The flaw resides in the fact that you can specify two specific addresses in the IPv4’s extended header. This could be used to bounce data between two computers, causing a DDoS. This is something that needs to be fixed prior to widespread adoption, as it’s not a difficult trick to pull off.

Source: The Register

Going into these meetings, in a secluded location away from AMD’s campus, we honestly had low expectations. We were quite down on AMD and its ability to compete, and while AMD’s situation in the market hasn’t changed, by finally talking to the key folks within the company we at least have a better idea of how it plans to compete.

AMD is not doomed to fail, and this article instills that belief even further. Anand takes a deep look at what AMD has in store, and I must say, the future looks good.

Source: AnandTech

The latest Gentoo release is upon us and I am going to take a look at what’s new. Promised updates include a revamped installer and the latest versions of your favorite applications.