Oracle Joins the Hardware Big Leagues with Sun Buyout

The $7.4 billion buyout of Sun Microsystems is giving Oracle an opportunity to build an integrated hardware and software company that can compete with the likes of IBM and Hewlett-Packard as a full-service IT systems provider. But Oracle has to demonstrate that it is prepared to invest in the Sun brand for the long term, and not just wring as much profit as possible from a once great company that has long been in decline.

Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition offer of Sun Microsystems gives CEO Larry Ellison a chance to do something he probably has always wanted to do—build a vertically integrated hardware and software company along the lines of IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

He built Oracle into one of the top software companies in the world. Oracle has consistently turned up as second or third on the published lists of the world’s largest software companies, behind IBM or Microsoft depending on who is doing the counting. Ellison has never wanted to be anything but No. 1 in any market, which is why his company has shelled out more than $50 billion to date to acquire software companies that would add to its revenue stream and its technology portfolio.

The Sun buyout isn’t even Oracle's biggest deal. That distinction goes to Oracle’s acquisition of enterprise resource planning software provider PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion in December 2004. It’s also eclipsed by middleware and application development tool company BEA Systems for $8.5 billion.

So far Oracle hasn’t stumbled with any of these acquisitions. Despite the massive cost of all these acquisitions, Oracle has reported quarter after quarter of hefty revenue growth at least until the company started to feel the full effects of the recession that started to erode sales and profits across the tech sector late in 2008.

But the Sun buyout put Oracle into a whole new league. Going into the hardware business gives it a chance to go to customers with the pitch that it can supply virtually all their IT needs from soup to nuts—servers, storage, database software and a multitude of applications. If there is any weakness in this lineup, it is the lack of a vigorous services business, since Oracle has historically relied mainly on channel partners for product services. But Oracle can always build or buy an IT services group.

I have to disagree with my esteemed colleague Joe Wilcox, who contends that Oracle will effectively kill off Sun. Yes, it’s the end of Sun as an independent company. But that’s not Oracle’s doing. Sun’s management can only blame itself for all the missteps that caused it to go from a cash-rich industry powerhouse to a weak market has-been that had to go hat in hand to prospective buyers before it ran out of cash and time.

CentOS 5.3 Has Keen Focus on Virtualization

CentOS is based on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux source packages and shares in Red Hat Enterprise Linux's recent virtualization, app dev, security and storage improvements. Many of the enhancements in CentOS 5.3 come in the area of virtualization, targeted largely at scalability on large host machines.


CentOS, the popular community-supported clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, hit Version 5.3 in March, some three months after its parent distribution, RHEL 5.3 began shipping.

CentOS is based on Red Hat's freely available Enterprise Linux source packages. The CentOS project strips trademarked logos and other branding from the packages before building them into a free, Linux-based, operating system that boasts binary compatibility with its parent.

Version 5.3 of CentOS shares in RHEL's recent improvements around virtualization, application development, security and storage. Unlike, RHEL, CentOS may be had without any subscription fees, which makes CentOS a popular operating system option for many hosting providers and cloud computing vendors.

Applications designed and tested to work with RHEL should work just the same on CentOS, and security and bugfix patches from Red Hat flow downstream to CentOS, as well. However, the distribution lacks direct support from Red Hat, and CentOS systems can't be managed through the Red Hat Network service.

That said, with its roots in RHEL, CentOS is very stable distribution with a relatively long support term and a generous catalog of compatible hardware and software. In addition, the free, community-oriented status of CentOS results in plenty of regional mirrors from which to download updates (about 80 in the United States), as well as an active community that provides many software packages beyond those that Red Hat ships as part of its official distribution.

CentOS is a great fit for server deployments, and can serve well as either a host or guest for virtualization. As a virtualization host, CentOS defaults to the Xen hypervisor, with Red Hat's virt-manager utility for graphical management. CentOS isn't as full-featured a virtualization host as VMware's ESX server, but I found the process of configuring a Xen host and spinning up guest instances smoother on CentOS than on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 in my recent tests of that distribution.

CentOS 5.3 can also work well in a desktop role, although the software packages that ship with CentOS trail those that ship with the faster-moving Fedora and Ubuntu Linux by a couple of years on average. For example, where the soon-to-ship versions of Fedora and Ubuntu will include Version 2.26 of the GNOME desktop environment, CentOS offers GNOME version 2.16.

CentOS 5.3 is available for free download from the CentOS project or from one of its mirrors via www.centos.org. The CentOS project doesn't offer support beyond community resources, although the project maintains a directory of companies offering support services. What's more, because of CentOS' closeness to Red Hat's supported enterprise Linux product, migration barriers from CentOS to the Red Hat platform will be low if an organization decided to purchase Red Hat's support.

The CentOS distribution spans six CDs or one DVD, and is available in versions for the x86 and x86-64 processor architectures. The distribution is also available in a slim, 8.3MB network install image. I used this image in some of my tests to boot a new system before pulling down the packages I needed from one of the CentOS mirror sites.

I tested the 32-bit version of CentOS 5.3 from a virtual machine with 1GB of RAM hosted by Sun's VirtualBox desktop virtualization application. I tested the x86_64 version of CentOS on a dual-core AMD Athlon64 server with 4GB of RAM, as well as on a paravirtualized virtual machine hosted under CentOS's Xen hypervisor.

Virtualization

As a reflection of Red Hat's Linux development efforts, it isn't a surprise to see that many of the enhancements in CentOS 5.3 focus on virtualization. These improvements are targeted largely at scalability on large host machines, including support for host systems with as many as 126 processors and 1TB of RAM, and support for guest instances with as many as 32 processors and 80GB of RAM.

CentOS 5.3 taps Xen 3.0.3 as its default hypervisor, but I could opt for KVM as a virtualization option by installing packages from the CentOS project's “extra” repository.

As with the Xen implementation that ships with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, CentOS offers a more spartan feature set compared with purpose-built virtualization products such as VMware's ESX Server. Still, I was able to roll out new, fully virtualized Linux or Windows guest instances very easily, as well as install Linux guests in higher-performance paravirtualized mode.

CentOS 5.3 ships with a Linux alternative to Sun's DTrace system tracing framework called SystemTap. I've found SystemTap rougher around the edges than DTrace, particularly on CentOS. Right from the start, SystemTap requires more setup steps than does DTrace, including installing additional packages. One of these packages, containing kernel debug info, wasn't available in the regular CentOS repositories.

After following the instructions for CentOS at the SystemTap project site, I was able to run the example scripts provided at the site to tease out information about the workings of my test machine. I was able to pipe the output of one script, which tracked disk and CPU utilization, to the data and function plotting gnuplot to visualize the information.

Elsewhere on the development front, CentOS 5.3 ships with OpenJDK, the fully open-source release of Sun's Java Standard Edition platform.

I was also pleased to see that CentOS 5.3 now offers support for block level disk encryption as an install-time option—an important option for notebook deployments because it can keep data inaccessible in case of lost or stolen machines.

Cisco Offering Cloud Computing Security

Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday introduced new network security products to help protect companies' Web-based software and services from attacks on their networks.

Large companies are moving more of their software and services online, trends often called "cloud computing" and "software as a service," to help users communicate and share information.

Such services, delivered through data centers, help companies use less space and computing power. But worries about viruses and external attacks on corporate data and computer systems, due to the open nature of such services, has been an obstacle to greater adoption.

Cisco, known for making routers and switches, has been expanding into a wider range of products including software. It has identified collaborative software and cloud computing as key areas of growth.

The new security products will include software that filters through online traffic as well as services that help companies assess their overall technology security, it said.

Cisco also said on Tuesday that it was upgrading its WebEx online meeting software by introducing more advanced routing systems that help handle the increase in online traffic.

Cisco bought WebEx, a company specializing in web-conferencing software that incorporates features like instant messaging and document sharing, in 2007.

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Derek Caney)

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IT Infrastructure Slideshow: HP BladeSystem Matrix Combines Server, Storage, Networking

With the latest move in the burgeoning data center convergence space, HP is rolling out its BladeSystem Matrix, which pulls together server, storage, network and management software into a single package, tied together by an enhanced Virtual Connect technology. With virtualization becoming more commonplace in the data center, enterprises are looking for ways to take advantage of the technology while reducing the complexity and overall operating costs. HP and other vendors, including Cisco, Dell, IBM and Sun, are jockeying for position in the space with solutions designed to bring together server, storage and networking to give businesses a more agile, flexible and cost-effective data center environment. HP's BladeSystem Matrix, combined with the Matrix Orchestration Environment—or MOE—increases data center performance and flexibility while reducing costs, HP officials said. In addition, HP is unveiling new storage offerings, some of which come from its acquisition last year of LeftHand Networks, as well as the enhancements to the Virtual Connect networking technology. HP also is rolling out a service to help enterprises plan and design their virtual environments.

Virtualization Slideshow: Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.2 Is a Tempting Alternative to VMware Fare

The no-cost Sun xVM VirtualBox tool is a good system for putting multiple virtual machines on a desktop or notebook system for developers and other IT pros. New in this version is the ability to export and import virtual appliances that are built to the Open Virtualization Format specification, networking features that make it easier to configure guests to communicate with each other while limiting contact with the outside world, and graphics enhancements and access to 3D hardware acceleration. As a challenger to VMware's Workstation (and to the no-cost VMware Server product), the new version of VirtualBox is an even more tempting alternative for cash-strapped IT users. However, the tool does lack the management capabilities and finesse of kingpin VMware's offerings.

Unisys Improves Virtualization Capabilities in Its Servers

Unisys is incorporating Intel’s new Xeon 5500 series chips—also known as Nehalem EP—into its ES3000 rack servers and ES5000 blades. Unisys also is supporting VMware’s new vSphere virtualization platform in all of its x86 enterprise servers. Unisys officials say the moves not only will improve the virtualization capabilities of its enterprise servers, but also close the gap between scale-out and scale-up virtualization environments.


Unisys is ramping up the virtualization capabilities of its enterprise x86 servers by upgrading to Intel’s Nehalem EP processors and VMware’s latest version of its virtualization platform.

Unisys announced April 21 that it is incorporating the Xeon 5500 series chips into its ES3000 rack systems and ES5000 blade servers, and will support the new VMware vSphere 4 platform in all of its lines of enterprise servers.

The vendor is looking to help businesses grow their virtualization environments as well as enhance their cloud computing management and deployment capabilities.

“It’s focused around doing virtualization right,” said Rod Sapp, marketing director for Unisys’ enterprise servers. “We can help clients with their end-to-end deployment of virtualized environments.”

Sapp said Unisys can now help businesses with any type of virtualization environment. Intel’s new Nehalem EP processors—which were announced March 30—not only help businesses improve performance and reduce costs, but also come with improved virtualization capabilities, which Unisys wants to take advantage of in its rack and blade servers.

“This is very much a scale-out virtualization [environment],” Sapp said.

Unisys joins a host of other system makers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Rackable Systems, that unveiled new servers based on the processor.

The new VMware vSphere platform—which also was announced April 21—lifts the ceiling on many of the scalability limits on the hypervisor, making it more of a scale-up play, he said. The new platform enables Unisys to offer customers the capability to run significantly more virtual machines on a single physical server, according to Sapp.

The new systems also help bridge the cost gap between scale-out and scale-up, he said. Previously, the cost per virtual machine was five times more in scale-out environments. With the new generation of servers, that cost difference has dropped to three times more for scale-out deployments. The cost savings in scale-up environments center around licensing, server management, and power and cooling.

Sapp said the new capabilities give Unisys a strong framework to help enterprises create virtualization environments, from the hardware and software to services and best practices.

The new capabilities come at an opportune time for IT administrators, who—thanks in large part to the global recession—are being asked to improve service levels while reducing costs.

“There’s more pressure being put onto IT to start using virtualization more to cut costs,” Sapp said.

The new rack and blade servers will be available starting April 28, he said. A 5U tower server with the new technologies will be available around July 30.

VMware Launches vSphere 4, Its Operating System for the Cloud

vSphere 4 facilitates the delivery of IT infrastructure as a service to enterprise users, so their IT departments can build their own private cloud systems to provide business services internally for the company and for its trusted partners, supply chain participants and other business associates.


VMware on April 21 launched what it claims to be the first operating system specifically engineered for cloud computing with vSphere 4, the first major upgrade to its frontline product since 2006.

vSphere 4, formerly called VMware Infrastructure, will be made available in the second quarter of 2009, the company said.

vSphere 4 is designed to facilitate delivery of IT infrastructure as a service to enterprises, so IT departments can build their own private cloud systems to provide business services internally for the company and for trusted partners, supply chain participants and other business associates.

In short, VMware wants to become the system of choice to run enterprise data centers, and further, to enable these complex systems to reach out and touch others in order to gain business advantages.

"Cloud computing has become known as the next big thing and is now sort of a buzzword, but we believe that with vSphere 4, we can make cloud computing a reality," Bogomil Balkonsky, VMware's vice president of product marketing for servers, told eWEEK.

"It's the first iteration of VMware's virtualization as an enabler for cloud infrastructure. It scales higher, runs faster, offers more automated management technologies."

A lot of the recent talk about this new computing services model, Balkonsky said, has been focused on public external clouds -- such as Amazon EC2 and S3, GoogleApps, Salesforce.com and others.

"Those will all have a very interesting effect on the industry, but we believe where the action is going to be in cloud computing, in the next few years, is helping companies build and transform their internal infrastructure into internal clouds, or internal cloud providers," Balkonsky said..

"A company data center can act with efficiency [using this new operating system] and with the reliablity of an internal utility provider, if they want."

vSphere 4 also provides the foundation for enterprise IT departments to connect their own homemade private clouds behind a firewall with those of partners -- or established public cloud services, like those noted earlier.

Why is VMware calling this an operating system, rather than a cloud computing architecture? Operating systems, in the classical sense of the IT term, refer to products such as Microsoft Windows, Apple's Mac OS, Linux, Unix, and AIX.

"We're calling this an operating system is because at a high level, an operating system does two things: It manages the hardware looking downward, and it provides interfaces or services with applications, looking upward," Balkonsky said.

"An operating system typically is the mediator between applications and the hardware. Our technology is the first software layer that installs on the bare metal. It provides two classes of services: A set of services to manage the hardware -- the servers, the storage, and the network -- and a set of application services to provide availability, security, and scalability to applications."

VMware designed vSphere 4 to be a non-disruptive force in the data center, Balkonsky said. The company's virtualization software works with virtually all other data center systems; vSphere 4 is designed to slip into its own layer without disrupting workflows.

vSphere 4 will be available in the second quarter in six editions, starting at $995 for three physical servers for small offices.

VMware wheels and deals on server virtualization

The low-hanging fruit for server virtualization - customers who already knew they needed it on their x64 iron whether the economy was in good shape or bad - must be starting to dry up as the competition among virtualization-hypervisor providers heats up.

Why? Because VMware is starting to wheel and deal like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems.

VMware wants to keep its dominant position in server virtualization, and to that end announced Monday a promotional program that guarantees that VMware's techies will cut x64 server costs in half or the professional services used to deploy VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 software stack will be free.

The Guarantee Promotional Program is clever in that VMware is compelling customers to sign up for a services engagement, deploy its virtualization software, and then if server costs don't fall by 50 per cent or more, they get the services for free.

VMware is not, you will notice, offering any discounts on the VI3 software stack. Which seems a bit odd given that the vSphere stack - what we would normally think of as the VI4 tools, including the ESX Server 4.0 hypervisor and its related management tools and add-ons - will be launched on April 21.

I think it's highly unlikely that VMware actually expects companies to deploy the VI3 tools when much better (and presumably more aggressively priced) software is only weeks away. It is likely that the server-cost guarantee will continue long past the vSphere launch - but the VMware site says that the deal only runs from April 8 through June 30. This is the kind of deal that a vendor can - and often does - extend even as a new generation of products comes out.

Especially when the economy is rotten.

VMware is not letting just anyone take advantage of this deal. First, you have to want to virtualize between 200 and 750 physical servers, and they have to be located in the United States. Then you have to commit to buy a bunch of services from VMware.

The first of these is the Operational Readiness Accelerator Service, which is an overall analysis of the business and IT environment. Then you have to buy a service called Jumpstart with Physical to Virtual Migrations, which does a few physical-to-virtual conversions at your site to give you some hands-on experience. Then you have to shell out some cash for a Virtualization Assessment, which takes a look at the environment and does an analysis of the expected cost savings from virtualization and consolidation of servers.

Add onto that the Plan and Design for VMware Infrastructure service, which maps out the new architecture for your virtualized servers, and the Configuration/Build service, which does the P2V conversions as laid out in the plan, and then a Wrap Up service to calculate the realized savings from the virtualization project.

VMware did not provide pricing information for these services at press time. But I suspect they're not cheap.

To participate in the deal, customers have to have or acquire servers and storage that are on the VMware VI3 compatibility list, and they have to have host machines with a minimum of four processor cores and 32GB of main memory. That's a fairly hefty piece of x64 iron.

You also have to get VI3 Enterprise 3.5 software licenses, and you cannot disable transparent memory page-sharing settings, which allows VMware to stack up more VMs on a machine than you might otherwise be able to get away with.

To calculate the savings, VMware insists that customers perform a before-and-after configuration in its online TCO Calculator, which we told you about last month and which you can play with here.

It's not clear if the TCO calculator accounts for the cost of any new iron, but it certainly should if it's required. Mileage will certainly vary from shop to shop, but with x86 and x64 server utilization typically very low, even customers needing to buy new iron to virtualize efficiently can show good return on investment if the term is set long enough and operational, power, and cooling costs are tossed in.

The guarantee is open to new and existing customers in the United States. No word on when Europe will get a similar deal, but there is no reason why Europeans shouldn't demand equal treatment from VMware. ®

Sun Launches VirtualBox 2.2 Virtualization Software

Sun is adding support for the Open Virtualization Format standard to its VirtualBox virtualization software. With the OVF standard incorporated into VirtualBox 2.2, users can not only build virtual machines, but also export them from a development situation and import them into a production environment. Sun also is adding greater hypervisor optimization, 3D graphics acceleration for Linux and Solaris applications, and support for Apple's upcoming 64-bit Snow Leopard platform.

Sun Microsystems is putting support for the new Open Virtualization Format into its VirtualBox 2.2 virtualization software.

Sun announced the availability of VirtualBox 2.2 April 8, less than a month after unveiling the beta of its virtualization offering.

Incorporating support for the Open Virtualization Format, or OVF, was important, according to Sun officials. The standard is part of the DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) initiative. The OVF enables virtual machines or appliances—essentially preinstalled and preconfigured virtual machines—to be imported and exported.

Due to the combination of the standard with VirtualBox 2.2, users can build virtual machines and then export them from a test and development situation and import them into a production environment, Sun officials said. It also increases the interoperability between VirtualBox 2.2 software and any other technologies that support the OVF standard.

"VirtualBox has always been a fantastic tool for developers to [use to] create multiple virtual machines, network them together and deploy them using nearly any operating system," Jim McHugh, vice president of data center software marketing at Sun, said in a statement. "Now, with the new import and export features of the VirtualBox 2.2 release, users can quickly and easily put their development environments into production, on the desktop, the server or even in the cloud."

Other new features of VirtualBox 2.2 include ramping up the speed of the software through hypervisor optimizations, and three-dimensional graphics acceleration for Linux and Solaris applications using the OpenGL standard, which enables use of a new class of applications that can be run in a virtual machine.

There also is support for Apple's upcoming 64-bit Snow Leopard platform, an increase in maximum memory size of guests to 16GB and a new host-interface networking mode, which makes it easier for users to run server applications in virtual machines, Sun officials said.

Sun touted the growth of the use of VirtualBox, which has had more than 11 million downloads worldwide since October 2007. During that time, there also were 3.5 million registrations, Sun said.

The VirtualBox software is free for personal use, although for wider enterprise deployments subscriptions start at $30 per user per year.

Virtualization Management Software Market to Grow, IDC Says

Despite a recession that is hammering almost every part of the IT landscape, IDC says the market for virtual server management software will grow more than 21 percent—to $2.3 billion—by 2013. The growth is fueled by the increased use of virtualization technology in production environments in data centers, a trend that is ramping up in large part because of the demands on IT departments to increase their service levels while cutting expenses. Recent moves by HP and Cisco illustrate the push for greater management capabilities in virtualized data centers.

Though the global recession is pounding much of the IT industry, one area that is expected to see strong growth over the next three to four years is virtual server management software, according to research firm IDC.

In a report released April 9, IDC analysts said they expect to see revenues in this space—which they admitted was a newly defined part of the market—from $871 million in 2008 to almost $2.3 billion in 2013.

Businesses are growing their use of virtualization technology in the data center, moving it out of the test-and-development arena and into production environments. That shift comes at the same time that the recession is forcing IT departments to find ways to maintain or grow their levels of service while having to cut their budgets.

These large-scale deployments of virtual machines will fuel the growth of the virtual server management software, particularly in Windows, Unix and Linux platforms, IDC said.

Initially, most of the attention will focus on products around change and configuration management, including discovery, configuration, provisioning, software distribution and change control, according to IDC analyst Mary Johnston Turner.

“While change and configuration management will rule in the short term, performance management and event automation management capabilities will eventually take hold,” Turner said in a statement.

By 2013, the idea of virtual server management capabilities will begin to disappear, blending with core systems management platforms to become part of the fabric of dynamic data centers, she said.

Automation software already is becoming a key focus for many of the top players in the data center. Hewlett-Packard officials, in releasing enhancements to its automation software suite April 8, said that along with the benefits of reduced costs and increased agility, virtualization technology also adds complexity into the data center mix, which calls for greater automation capabilities.

Cisco Systems, which is looking to grow its Unified Computing System data center strategy, April 9 announced it was buying Tidal Software for $105 million, not only for its application management software but also for products that let users automate various practices and tasks.

In its study, IDC also found that many businesses have yet to integrate virtual and physical resource management processes, or aligned virtual server management practices with ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) management standards. IDC also said that as the virtual server management space matures, it will open up opportunities for new competitors.

HP Releases Automation Tools for Virtual Data Centers

Hewlett-Packard hopes to play a bigger role in managing the virtual data center with updates to its Business Service Automation software announced on Tuesday.

HP released updates to two products in the suite, Storage Essentials and Operations Orchestration, and introduced a new subscription service, BSA Essentials, that it said will help keep systems patched and in compliance with auditing standards.

Virtualization has allowed companies to reduce hardware costs and conserve floor space through server consolidation. But it has also created headaches for large organizations that are struggling to manage hundreds of virtual hosts and their related storage and networking resources, said Bob Meyer, head of HP's virtualization group, in a press briefing at HP's offices.

The update to Storage Essentials means the software can now discover VMware hosts in a network and map out their related storage and storage-area-network dependencies, allowing admins to keep track of who is using which resources. It will also track how much capacity assigned to the virtual hosts is actually being used, so that unused storage can be reallocated.

The update is available now for VMware environments and HP is working on a version for Microsoft's Hyper-V. It plans to support Citrix XenServer in the future, though Hyper-V is its first priority after VMware, said Michel Feaster, senior product director for Business Service Automation.

Another challenge for IT departments is the time it takes to provision the storage and networking for virtual servers. A virtual server can be set up relatively quickly, but storage and networking admins are having to spend too much time provisioning other parts of the infrastructure, according to HP.

Its answer is an update to Operations Orchestration, a workflow tool for automating the provisioning of servers and storage. The tool now has templates to guide administrators through the server, network and storage configuration for virtual environments. This should make the process faster and ensure the work is done in a standard way, reducing errors, HP said.

The tool integrates with VMware Virtual Infrastructure, XenServer and HyperV, "so you can automate tasks using the management interfaces provided by those virtualization vendors," said Kalyan Ramanathan, HP director of product marketing.

Forrester analyst Glenn O'Donnell, who was at the HP briefing, agreed that as virtualization moves from test and development into production use, more automation is required. Otherwise capital savings will be lost through higher operational costs, he said.

"You shouldn't have high-priced network engineers Telnetting into a router doing grunt work; you have to automate it," he said.

Administrators will resist automation because it undermines their role, but it's a necessary change as businesses try to cut costs in today's economy, he said.

HP also introduced a new service called BSA Essentials. HP will monitor clients' systems to see that they comply with internal and external policies, like being up-to-date with security patches or meeting certain security or configuration requirements. The service is billed as a percentage of the software license fee, HP said.

It also launched the BSA Essentials Community, a Web site where BSA customers can share best practices and other tips.

The new products mean HP will be able to compete more directly with VMware, which also hopes to play a bigger role in data center management through its upcoming Virtual Data Center OS.

"VMware will be in 'coopetition' with HP and everybody else out there," O'Donnell said.

Virtual Iron Issues Latest Training Vignette Focused on Architecture

Virtual Iron Software www.virtualiron.com, a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software, today announced the latest addition to the company’s training vignettes will feature an in-depth look at the Virtual Iron architecture. By understanding how Virtual Iron connects and interacts with traditional data center components such as networking, storage, and security, customers can immediately take advantage of a variety of enterprise-level features without the high price tag of similar offerings.

“As a new Virtual Iron customer, the ability to understand the ins and outs of the software quickly was imperative,” said Bjorn Andersson, Manager, Shipboard & Network Operations for Crystal Cruises. “The on-demand training materials presented detailed architecture information in a very visual way and left me feeling like a Virtual Iron veteran before we even went into production.”

To view the vignette and other training materials visit the Virtual Iron training webpage http://www.virtualiron.com/training.

“Many of our customers have leveraged virtualization to address their challenges with outdated physical hardware and have seen tremendous value. However, there are additional benefits to be had simply by employing the full range of features,” said Chris Buzzy, principal trainer at Virtual Iron Software. “The vignettes are designed to help clients understand all of the capabilities that our virtualization platform can deliver so they can continue to do more with less in today’s difficult economic climate.”

About Virtual Iron Software, Inc. – True Server Virtualization for Everyone
Virtual Iron provides server virtualization software that reduces the cost and complexity of operating and managing IT infrastructure for organizations of all sizes. Leveraging industry standards, open source, and built-in hardware-assisted acceleration, Virtual Iron provides a complete and cost-effective solution including VI-Center, an intelligent virtual infrastructure management platform. Over 2,000 customer organizations worldwide leverage Virtual Iron today to support a broad range of data center initiatives including server consolidation, virtual server management, dev/test optimization, business continuity and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) enablement. The software is available exclusively through Virtual Iron's Channel One partner network. Trial versions of the software are also available for free download at www.virtualiron.com/free. For more information, visit www.virtualiron.com or e-mail info@virtualiron.com.

HP Pavilion DV3

HP's slick, all-purpose portable puts up a good fight against Gateway's similar UC7807u, but its performance is only middling.

The budget-minded Hewlett-Packard Pavilion dv3 laptop gets a lot of things right in its design and delivers just the right amount of style--not to mention supplying all the right ports to get your multimedia mobilized. But it also has enough drawbacks to keep me from wholeheartedly recommending it.

To hit its appealing $888 price (as of April 8, 2009), the dv3 ships with AMD's 2.3GHz Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-84 CPU. That configuration, combined with 4GB of RAM, adequately but unimpressively runs the 64-bit flavor of Windows Vista Home Premium. The dv3 earned a mark of 68 on WorldBench 6.

For context, consider the slightly bulkier Gateway UC7807u. Aside from being half a pound heavier and having a comparable price, the UC7807u closely resembles the dv3 in style and purpose. But the Gateway crushes the HP in performance tests, notching a score of 84 in WorldBench 6, thanks in part to its Core 2 Duo T6400 Mobile CPU (2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache) and 3GB of RAM. On the other hand, the dv3 stands its ground in the stamina department, lasting an impressive 5 hours, 24 minutes against the UC7807u's approximately 3.5-hour battery life.

With the dv3 (and with the Pavilion dv2, for that matter), HP embraces high-definition resolutions. Capable of 1280 by 800 pixels, the Pavilion dv3 has a glossy coating that helps images pop (and yes, there will be some sunlight-induced glare as a result). But as with the dv2, as you push the brightness up, you'll be surprised that it's still delivering an acceptable, viewable image. It just makes some colors on the brighter end of the spectrum seem a little more subdued.

I'm also digging the Pavilion dv3's connectivity options. HP crams in both HDMI and VGA video outputs, two USB 2.0 ports, one hybrid USB/eSATA port (perfect for high-speed data jockies), a PC Express Card slot, a flash-card reader, ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth onboard. It also has a slot-fed DVD burner, similar to the Gateway UC7807u's, and a 320GB hard drive. But the dv3 manages to accommodate all this into a fairly slim profile (12.2 by 9 by 1 inches) and a fairly lightweight body (3.8 pounds). I should add that the 9-cell battery included with our review unit creates a wedge underneath--but one that props up your notebook to a more ergonomic angle.

Which leads me to the keyboard. It feels great, almost sensual to the touch. It has a special coating that helps my fingers feel as if they're dancing over the supple keys (and probably repel abrasion from Cheetos grit). HP even went to the trouble to migrate its neat touch-inductive shortcut buttons from the HDX16 and HDX18 to this low-end model. I just wish that HP had opted to buy back some room to give equal love to the function keys. They are barely there--microkeys lingering at the top of the keyboard. I have to crane my head in just to see what the heck button I'm trying to hit. If this sounds even remotely familiar, it's because I recently had the exact same beef with the dv2.

But by all that's holy, this computer's touchpad is possessed. I need an electronics exorcist: As I'm trying to write this review, I go to highlight and bold a section to make a note for myself, and the touchpad's multitouch drivers read it as my wanting to zoom in, instead. Multitouch drivers are handy, but if I have to dig into the drivers and try to turn them off or disable the built-in mouse altogether, those functions have failed. For all that the touchpad does right--and I would have given props for its feel and the rigid-but-comfortable feedback of the buttons--these issues subtract points in my book.

The front-firing Alec-Lansing speakers sound good, not great--but certainly better than what you get from a lot of other value proposition portables at this point. So you might as well grab for the headphones now. And then there's the software.

HP continues loading its notebooks with software that you're bound to uninstall the second you get home (games, demos, and such). However, I appreciated the HP Advisor bar that sits atop the desktop view. While the bar is borderline obtrusive, it gives you a handy shortcut for online searches, and the "PC Health & Security" button is as good as any one-stop window to get a full status report on your PC. It's by far the handiest of the preinstalled apps. A second runner-up, the digitalPersona Personal app, is built to take advantage of the fingerprint scanner. Keep those, ditch most of the rest (hint: don't delete Cyberlink's DVD Suite either!), and you're pretty much set.

The dv3 is a bit of an odd bird for me when it comes to an up-or-down recommendation. The performance is lackluster on paper, but I didn't have any major holdups in everyday use. What really got on my nerves was its touchpad, which kept trying to second-guess my moves. Tweak that touch sensitivity enough--or just be extra careful while highlighting--and it shouldn't be a big a burden. But why should you have to wonder if it will be a burden in the first place? The dv3 gets enough right to make it worth considering, but I'd recommend you go to the store and lay hands on it yourself. Otherwise, the heavier, but way more powerful, Gateway UC7807u could do you right. Alternatively, keep your eye out for the Pavilion dv2, the cheaper brother that I'm digging right now. It's good for the basics and is pretty flexible for most everyday needs.

Cisco to buy Tidal Software for app management

Cisco Systems Inc. today said it intends to acquire Tidal Software Inc., an application management software provider, for $105 million in cash and incentives.

Products from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tidal will help advance Cisco's Unified Computing data center strategy, Cisco officials said in a statement.

"With the acquisition of Tidal Software, Cisco will accelerate its ability to help customers optimize the performance of their business applications and automate operational best practices ... which will lead to significantly reduced operational costs," said Gary Moore, Cisco's senior vice president of advanced services, in a statement.

Tidal's software provides management and automation of application performance as an application moves from a server through the network to the desktop.

The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter, and Tidal's workers will become part of Cisco's Advanced Services group.

Japanese Robotic Exoskeleton Looks Cool, Dorky

The Japanese have a knack for developing movie and television inspired tech products that straddle the fine line of usefulness and nerdy fantasy. From a robotic maid that look like a Gundam, to an extremely true to form R2D2 video projector, Japanese electronics companies spare no expense in developing drool-worthy, if not somewhat absurd robotics projects.

This time in the spotlight, it's HAL, or Hybrid Assistive Limb- a cybernetic suit that "augments body movement and increases user strength by up to tenfold." The company responsible is named Cyberdyne, which is of course a not-so-subtle nod to the Terminator franchise. But this suit isn't just for Schwarzenegger fans- I believe Cyberdyne is hoping to hit the demographic of extravagant Iron Man, RoboCop, and Six Million Dollar Man fanatics as well. I have my doubts whether it actually works (looks like it attaches to your limbs with Velcro straps) but I must admit I've always been curious to know what it feels like to be "better, stronger, faster." Though whether or not that curiosity warrants the $4,200 price tag remains to be seen.

Follow us on Twitter @ geektech for your daily fill of tips, hacks, hardware, and even more nerdery.

Samsung BD-P1600

Despite incorporating a few bone-headed design decisions, the Samsung BD-P1600 is a very good player for its price.

The Samsung BD-P1600 ($250 as of April 9, 2009) delivers very good-looking Blu-ray playback and adds a host of multimedia goodies previously found only in higher-end Samsung models, including BD-Live, Netflix, and Pandora streaming to your TV and home-theater sound system. Unfortunately, in a few simple areas, this model put its foot in its mouth.

The BD-P1600's video chipset is different from--and unfortunately not as good as the Silicon Optix Reon chip (used by the Samsung BD-P2500 we tested last year). When playing Blu-ray discs, the BD-P1600 sent very good but not spectacular images to our HDTV, regularly besting our reference player, a PlayStation 3, by a slim margin. "Just a hair sharper than the PS3" I noted while watching a Mission: Impossible III scene (chapter 7) involving a lot of camera movement and detailed architecture.

It had more trouble with a scene from The Searchers (chapter 20) shot in daylight but set after dark. In this hard-to-reproduce scene, the image seemed too dark on the BD-P1600, even though it did show more detail than the PS3 did. The Samsung's best performance came in its handling of the opening sequence of the animated movie Cars, where it offered vibrant, saturated colors; the "PS3 looks washed out by comparison" wrote one judge.

The BD-P1600 didn't fare well with standard-definition DVDs, which the player must upconvert to 1080p. We found images softer and less detailed on the Samsung player than on the PS3. Our judges split on whether the unit did an acceptable job of upscaling, but none of us thought the output was very good.

All BD Live-capable players have an ethernet port. With the BD-P1600, you can use that port to enjoy Netflix's and Pandora's video and musical offerings. (You'll have to sign up for these services and manage them via a computer.)

When we tested with Netflix content--Gandhi in standard definition and The Host in high def--on the BD-P1600, we deemed the image quality acceptable, though not at the same level as DVD or Blu-ray content. In contrast, two other Blu-ray players--the LG BD300 and the previously mentioned Samsung BD-P2500--delivered horrible image quality in our Netflix trials. Streaming quality depends in part on Internet traffic and other issues unrelated to the technology at either end of the stream, so we can't say for sure what caused the improvement.

The BD-P1600 is the first Blu-ray player we've tested that lets you listen to personalized Pandora.com music channels over your television or over the home-theater system you use with your TV. The interface is easy enough. And since streaming audio over the Internet isn't a problem, sound quality isn't a major issue. But once you've set up your player with one Pandora account, you can't remove that account or add another.

The BD-P1600 comes with a USB 2.0 port for use with a 1GB flash drive (for BD-Live functions) and for playing MP3 music and displaying JPEG photos. To find the files you want to play, though, you have to search through folders on your flash drive (or external hard drive). Another problem: Though the USB port doesn't support video, a poorly placed menu option suggests that it does. The player has on-board audio decoding of Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HS Master Audio Essential.

For reasons unknown, Samsung decided to put a big flap over the front panel of the BD-P1600. The flap swings open when you eject the tray--and it stays open until you remember to close it, meanwhile posing a scrape hazard to anyone who walks by the player too closely. Like the Panasonic DMP-BD60K, the BD-P1600 is shallower and lighter-weight than its predecessors, helping it fit easily into tight spaces.

The BD-P1600's setup menu is a good-looking, legible full-screen affair, though it lacks explanations of its options. If you press the remote's Display button while watching a movie, a big box on the side will pop up, listing the title, chapter numbers, time elapsed, and some technical information. When you press Pause or skip to the next chapter, a leaner, more useful information display pops up, showing you time elapsed and total time.

This Samsung unit is one of the fastest Blu-ray players we've tested, getting a disc up and running in just 42 seconds. There's a very slight wait when you skip a chapter, and none at all when you press Pause.

Other recent Samsung HDTVs have had excellent remote controls, but not this one. Many important buttons--such as the ones for Play, Pause, and the disc menu--are well placed but too small. Meanwhile, the setup button is quite large--and how often do you use that? The remote isn't backlit, although a few commonly-used buttons glow in the dark. It is, at least, programmable.

The Samsung BD-P1600 produces very good images, and by Blu-ray standards it's as fast as lightning. But problems with upscaling DVDs and some unwise design decisions prevent it from being a great player.

Conficker-Infected Systems Spew Spam

Windows PCs infected with the Conficker worm have turned into junk mail-spewing robots capable of sending billions of spam messages a day, a security company warned.

According to Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based antivirus firm, yesterday's update to Conficker, which in some cases was accompanied by the Waledac spam bot, has resulted in a floodtide of junk e-mail.

"In just 12 hours, one bot alone sent out 42,298 spam messages," said Kaspersky researcher Alex Gostev in a message Friday. "A simple calculation shows that one bot sends out around 80,000 emails in 24 hours. Assuming that there are 5 million infected machines out there, the [Conficker] botnet could send out about 400 billion spam messages over a 24-hour period!"

The spam is pitching pharmaceuticals exclusively at the moment, said Gostev, primarily erectile dysfunction medications such as Viagra and Cialis, with message subject headings including "She will dream of you days and nights!" and "Hot life -- our help here. Ensure your potence [sic] today!"

Gostev also noted that almost every message contained a unique domain in the embedded link, a tactic spammers sometimes use to side-step anti-spam filters, which analyze the frequency which any one domain is used. "We detected the use of 40,542 third-level domains and 33 second-level domains," said Gostev. "They all belonged to spammers and the companies that ordered these mailings."

Most of the domains are hosted in China, he added.

Conficker, the worm that first appeared in November 2008, exploded in early 2009 to infect several million machines and set off a near-panic as an April 1 trigger date approached, was fed a new version early Thursday that restored its ability to spread and beefed up its defenses against security tools. If it successfully updated an already-infected PC, Conficker.e -- as the new variant has been labeled -- also downloaded and installed a noted spam bot, Waledac.

Waledac has its own checkered history, in that it's assumed to have been created by some of the same hackers who operated the notorious Storm botnet during 2007 and 2008.

The spam coming from Conficker.e-infected systems is actually generated and sent by the Waledac bot Trojan.

Some Conficker bots have also downloaded and installed Spyware Protect 2009, one of the many "scareware" programs in circulation. Scareware is the term given to fake anti-malware software that generates bogus infection warnings and then nags users with endless alerts until they pay to $50 to buy the useless program. According to Microsoft, the scam -- also called "rogue software" -- is one of the biggest threats to Internet users. In the second half of 2008 alone, Microsoft's antimalware tools cleaned nearly 6 million PCs of scareware-related infections.

Yesterday, another researcher raised the alarm about the new Conficker and the software it drops, saying that the spam and scareware angles were clearly the first solid evidence of how the worm's makers planned to profit from their crime. "I don't want to be a scaremonger," said Kevin Hogan, director of security response operations at Symantec Corp. "But the situation now, as Conficker does go back to propagating, is actually more serious than a couple of weeks ago."

Apple and McDonald's Team Up, Unveil iMc

In one of today’s more surprising announcements, Apple and McDonald’s are today partnering in a cross-brand product effort.

The two companies said that they are looking to leverage the similarities of each other’s brand to expand their respective client bases. Both companies had been in talks since late 2003 when a deal to distribute iTunes with Happy Meals fell through, making this deal more than half a decade in the making.

“We realized the overlap when we started selling the new 13- and 15-inch Unibody MacBooks last October. During our busy holiday season, customers would come in looking for the 17-inch version asking if we had the Big Mac,” explained Pullman Legwand, an Apple Genius at Apple’s flagship Apple Store.

The confusion eventually lead customers to McDonald’s restaurants, where they would express their desire for Apple products, only to be sold apple slices with caramel dip.

Apple and McDonald’s marketing teams saw the problem and came together to create a brand new product that would effectively bridge the two company’s clientele: the iMc.

The iMc is an all new food menu item that combines McDonald’s food-making-mastery and Apple’s simplistic and elegant design cues. Doing away with the traditional fixings in a burger that would distract from the overall experience, the iMc contains no ketchup, mustard, cheese, pickles, lettuce, tomato, or meat.

“We’re proud to carry the iMc as part of our permanent menu. The no-frills nature of the iMc represents the next evolution of fine dining,” said Joseph K. Ng, McManager at McDonald’s. “It’s just like the new iPod Shuffle.”

The news hit early in the day before Wall Street opened shop, but already stock analysts are seeing this as a “quick win” for the fast food restaurant giant.

“Before the advent of the boutique coffee shop with its fancy baristas, McDonald’s was the hang out of choice for the young and fashionable,” quipped analyst Lisa Tuu. “Through its partnership with Apple, McDonald’s will bring the yuppie MacBook-owning crowd back to enjoy a milkshake instead of their usual grande-quad-ristretto-nonfat-no whip-vanilla-latte-in-a-venti-cup.”

The iMc goes on sale today starting at $19.99 with add-ons (cutlery, napkins, pickles, mayo) available at an additional cost. No meat is available at this time, however reps say this is to help further the "slimmed-down" ideal of the iMc. Customers will also have the option to upgrade to the iMc Pro, a vegetarian friendly Quorn hamburger patty for a 50 percent price increase.

New Quadro GPUs add virtualization option for Nvidia users

Nvidia Corp. yesterday added seven graphics cards to its Quadro line for professionals, including three that support a new technology designed to enable users to run multiple design and animation applications in virtual machines with their own dedicated Quadro cards on a single workstation.

Nvidia said the SLI Multi-OS virtualization platform can be used to move rendering work that currently is done, albeit slowly, by virtualization software back onto the Quadro graphics processing units, or GPUs. And the cards that support SLI Multi-OS — the Quadro FX 3800, FX 4800 and FX 5800 — are more powerful than most of Nvidia's consumer graphics cards aimed at gamers and other PC enthusiasts.

The cheapest of the three, the $1,199 FX 3800, has 192 processor cores and 1GB of video memory, while the most powerful, the $3,499 FX 5800, comes with 240 processor cores and 4GB of video RAM.

The cards and the SLI Multi-OS technology work with Parallels Inc.'s Workstation Extreme virtualization software, which also was introduced on Monday. The combined technologies support virtualization of Windows and Linux applications and are aimed at engineers who use computer-aided design and manufacturing tools as well as digital animators who use software such as Pixar's RenderMan Pro.

Using SLI Multi-OS isn't cheap: Each application that is run in virtual mode requires its own dedicated graphics card. But, Nvidia contends, that approach will still prove to be less expensive than having users run each app on separate workstations, as many do now.

Nvidia said SLI Multi-OS also could be used in conjunction with virtualization tools from vendors other than Parallels, including market leader VMware Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But an Nvidia spokeswoman declined to comment on when other vendors would support the new technology.

All seven of the new Quadro cards support CUDA, an architecture designed by Nvidia for offloading graphics processing work from the CPU to the GPU. The goal in doing so is to speed up applications that can be rewritten for parallel processing so they can take advantage of the numerous processing cores in Nvidia's cards. Central processors, in comparison, typically have a maximum of eight cores now, apart from very high-end server chips.

Nvidia has even rolled out its own line of CUDA-based systems, the Tesla Personal Supercomputer, to demonstrate the architecture's potential. And it is planning to invest as much as $5 million in software vendors that write applications to take advantage of CUDA.

But CUDA has potential competition. ATI Technologies Inc. is working on a similar technology called ATI Stream that the subsidiary of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced last November.

Cisco rolls out low-end telepresence system

At VoiceCon Orlando, Cisco Systems Inc. plans to announce a less expensive telepresence system designed for deployment in existing teleconference rooms without upgrading them to accommodate top-of-the-line telepresence equipment.

Called CTS 1300, the system consists of a 65-in. high-definition screen and three high-definition cameras mounted above a coder-decoder. The unit is installed against a wall and is 9 in. deep.

Cisco says the device costs less than $89,000; in comparison, its top-shelf room telepresence system that costs more than $300,000.

If three people are in the room with the CTS 1300, each individual can have a camera trained on him, but only the image of the current speaker is presented to the screens at other sites participating in the conference. A full-blown room telepresence system would have three screens in a room built to accommodate speakers, microphones lighting and décor to match all the other telepresence rooms owned by a customer.

The idea is to create the impression that all participants are in the same room sitting across the table from one another. The setup includes cameras mounted in a way that makes it look as though the participants in different locations are looking each other in the eye.

CTS 1300 can send and receive at 1080p resolution and drop down to 720p for sites with less than 2Mbit/sec. network bandwidth. The device also supports a technology Cisco calls 720p Light that runs over 1.5Mbit/sec. links such as T-1 circuits at 30 frames per second. It does this by grabbing bandwidth dedicated to data transmissions for the conference and slowing the data rate to one frame per second.

The light version can run over DSL or cable connections as well but its quality might not be as good without guaranteed 1.5Mbit/sec. bandwidth. Teleworkers can use Cisco Virtual Office, a VPN link to a corporate office that supports VoIP and includes switching, routing and wireless connectivity.

CTS 1300 is the first in a product line that will include models with smaller screens or just a single camera, for instance, Cisco says.

Cisco competitor Tandberg has a 720p resolution video system called Profile with one screen that costs $38,900 that can be boosted to 1080p with a high-definition add-on. Tandberg's low-end telepresence system costs $69,900.

Cisco is also introducing Recording Studio, an application that runs on Cisco telepresence systems that makes it possible to use the gear to produce high-quality prerecorded videos for mass viewing. Recording Studio includes a server that hosts the videos, and those that want to view it can do so by responding to its URL.

The application is supported by the telepresence conference phone that will include a record button similar to the connect button they already have to initiate conferences. Recording studio is priced not to exceed $100,000 Cisco says.

The company is also introducing Event Control, which enables live direction of a telepresence conference. If a conference includes a guest speaker, that person's image can be kept on the screen at all times regardless of who is talking. Telepresence sessions generally display the last talkers. A prototype of that technology was used at Cisco's VoiceCon keynote last year to allow former Vice President Al Gore to participate via videoconference and endorse the use of telepresence gear as a way to reduce the energy spent traveling to and from conferences.

Cisco is also demonstrating any-to-any sessions between its telepresence sites and high-definition videoconferencing gear. The key feature of this interoperability is that it does not reduce the resolution to the level of any of the participating equipment. Those sites capable of telepresence will maintain telepresence connections with other sites that also support it.

Samsung introduces Mondi, the first WiMax 'Mobile Internet Device'

Samsung Telecommunications America announced the first WiMax-enabled Mobile Internet Device (MID) today at the International CTIA Wireless conference.

Called the Mondi, the touchscreen, pocket-sized device is designed for use on the Clear mobile WiMax network from Clearwire, Samsung officials announced on Tuesday evening. Mondi derives its name from the Latin word for "world."

No price was announced, but it will be available at Best Buy and Clear stores, as well as Samsung's online store sometime in the second quarter, Samsung officials said. The black-slider form factor of the Mondi device extends horizontally to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard and an optical mouse. It runs the Opera 9.5 Web browser and has a 4.3-inch touchscreen.

The Mondi runs on the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. In addition to WiMax, it connects to Wi-Fi, as well as GPS and Bluetooth 2.0. It has a 3.0-megapixel camera and camcorder. It comes with 4GB of internal memory. Other specifications were not released.

"The Mondi provides the power of a laptop but easily fits in the hand or a pocket," said Omar Khan, senior vice president of strategy and product management at Samsung.

Clearwire now operates mobile WiMax service in Portland, Ore., and Baltimore, Md. and expects to launch in 80 markets by 2010.

Khan said Samsung supports WiMax networks globally and felt the need to build a WiMax product even though the capabilities of Clear in the U.S. are still in an early stage.

Samsung's Mondi sports a 4.3-inch touchscreen.

"We do believe its important to support WiMax to take advantage of 4G speeds," Khan said. "Everything starts at a nascent stage, and the Mondi is our first [device] to support that."

He said the Mondi was not a phone, and does not provide voice services. However, Khan left open the possibility of future voice support in the Mondi or other products, saying that Samsung's roadmap provides for dual network mode capability with WiMax and other networks he did not name.

Khan said that Samsung was "on track" to provide Android devices in the second half of the year.

And regarding LTE, a future competitor to WiMax, he said Samsung was cooperating with LTE carriers on trials of that technology. "We are committed to being a leader in both WiMax and LTE," Khan said.

Asked whether Samsung devices would run Windows applications across other operating systems, Khan said Samsung was releasing a Software Developer Kit (SDK) next month as part of its Samsung Mobile Innovator Program to foster creation of widgets that would allow Windows to run on Android or Symbian.

Under that strategy, the browser in the device will run applications and not the OS, he said.

Security managers concerned but confident about Conficker on eve of expected attack

With uncertainty looming large over what the newest version of the Conficker worm might do starting Wednesday, security managers said they were concerned by the threat but confident about their ability to deal with it.

For the most part, companies that have patched the vulnerability that the worm exploits and updated their antimalware and intrusion-detection software should be adequately protected against the threat, security managers and analysts said. Even so, the amount of hype generated by the worm is pushing some to review their measures once again and tweak them as a precautionary measure.

"We are concerned," said Matt Kesner, chief technology officer at law firm Fenwick & West LLP in San Francisco. He noted that several security analysts think that the worm is extremely well-written and updated to respond to counter security measures.

"This has caused us to take it more seriously than most virus and worm threats," Kesner said. In addition to ensuring that all of its computers have been updated with Microsoft's patch, Fenwick & West has instituted a new procedure to "scan every file download from the Web" to make sure nothing malicious gets past the company's defenses, he said.

The Conficker worm, which previously was also known as the Downadup worm, surfaced last year and has emerged as one of the biggest recent threats, both in terms of the number of PCs it has infected so far and for the sheer publicity it has received.

Though exact numbers are hard to come by, the worm, which takes advantage of a vulnerability in Windows, is so far believed to have infected millions of PCs worldwide even though a patch for the worm has been has been available since last October.

Since first appearing last year, the worm has so far mutated into three different versions, each one more sophisticated than its predecessor.

The latest version, known as Conficker.c, features several measures for evading detection and is programmed to start contacting its command and control servers on April 1, presumably to receive further instructions on what to do next. The mystery surrounding the worm's next move -- and its recent featuring on CBS's 60 Minutes -- has attracted more attention to the worm than is usual.

"The 60 Minutes segment certainly has caused CIOs to ask about Conficker," said John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "It is just like the old Slammer-Blaster days," Pescatore said, referring to the last really big mass worm to hit the Internet.

While the Conficker worm certainly represents a serious threat to enterprise and home PCs, the approaching deadline is not as serious as the media hype would suggest, Pescatore said. "Conficker is not a noisy attack, and it does a good job of hiding itself, he said. "So, some FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] has been justified, but the April 1 deadline has been way overhyped."

HP Confirms Considering Android in Netbooks

Hewlett-Packard confirmed Tuesday that it is testing Google's Android operating system as a possible alternative to Windows in some of its netbook computers.

Analysts said the move would allow HP to develop a low-cost netbook optimized for wireless networks that provides access to Web-based services such as Google Docs, but others questioned whether the Google software is ready for such a task.

"Right now Android is barely finished for phones," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. While it works well enough for T-Mobile's G1 smartphone, the software was released only last year and "the UI still feels half-finished," he said.

HP stressed that it was still only testing Android, an OS based on the open-source Linux kernel. It has assigned engineers to the task but has made no decision yet whether to offer Android in products, said HP spokeswoman Marlene Somsak. The news was first reported earlier Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal.

"We want to assess the capability it will have for the computing and communications industry," Somsak said. "We remain open to considering various OS options."

Netbooks are small, low-cost computers that are designed primarily for browsing the Web and doing basic computing tasks. The category has proved popular -- about 10 million netbooks shipped in 2008 and the number is expected to double this year, according to IDC.

Android was designed for mobile phones but has been seen by some others besides HP as a potential OS for netbooks. Some enthusiasts have been testing Android on netbooks such as Asustek's Eee PC, and chip makers such as Qualcomm and Freescale hope to bring Android to netbooks running on their Arm-based chips.

HP may have in mind a netbook optimized for use with Web-based services such as the Google Docs hosted applications suite and Google's online storage service, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates.

The fact that notebooks are designed to provide quick access to online services, often over wireless networks, makes them in some ways like oversized smartphones.

There are also no license fees for Android, which could allow hardware makers to offer lower-priced computers than those running Windows. However, consumers have been willing to pay extra in the past for netbooks running Windows, analysts noted.

HP already offers some PCs with a choice of Linux or Windows, and introducing another OS choice would come with some risk, said David Daoud, a research manager at IDC. Some end-users don't like Linux because they are unfamiliar with it, he said.

"We've seen a number of netbooks returned as a result of the Linux OS. Consumers are used to the Microsoft Windows world," Daoud said. Linux adoption remains weak on client computers, especially in mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe, he noted.

Still, there may be an upside for Android if HP were to make it work in netbooks. HP's heft as the world's largest PC maker would widen Android's use, Daoud said. It could see success in emerging markets like India and China, where Linux adoption is growing.

But HP would need to deliver a consumer-friendly product that makes Linux easier to use in PCs, Daoud said.

Panasonic Bringing Live TV to Intercontinental Flights

Panasonic Avionics, a unit of the Japanese electronics giant that specializes in in-flight entertainment systems for aircraft, is launching a new system that will provide live broadcast television on intercontinental flights.

The company has initially signed agreements with BBC World News, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg Television, Euronews and France 24 and said deals with additional broadcasters are expected to be signed soon.

In-flight satellite TV is already available on some domestic flights in the U.S. but its use is restricted both by the coverage area of the satellite and broadcast rights deals that typically allow a TV station to offer programming to a defined geographical area.

The Panasonic system will use the same satellites that carry the company's ExConnect broadband Internet offering for aircraft so aircraft should remain in range of the signal throughout their flights. In terms of programming, news channels are often available internationally and don't pose copyright problems. However, getting entertainment programming onboard might be more problematic.

Panasonic has yet to announce any deals but says five airlines have signed up for the ExConnect service. They'll be announced when equipment has been installed on aircraft and the service is ready to be offered to travellers, which will probably be in the latter part of this year, said spokeswoman Theresa Yeoh. Panasonic is currently in discussions with several airlines for the live TV service, she said.

It's promoting the service to airlines as a way to earn extra revenue from passengers, either with pay-per-view service offerings or through insertion of advertising into the live TV streams.

ExConnect is the first intercontinental, high-speed Internet service available on aircraft since 2006, when Boeing's Connexion service was shutdown due to mounting losses. Connexion also carried some streaming television.

Mac vs. Windows: What Does $1K Get You?

Apple's been criticized a lot lately for charging premium computer prices during a recession. In its defense, though, I hasten to add that Apple generally delivers value with its computers. In my experience, with a few nits aside, Mac laptops are imaginatively designed, well built, and a pleasure to use. Macs aren't subjected to all the viruses and malware aimed at Windows computers. You can run Windows on a Mac. And though Apple laptops slipped a bit in PC World's most recent reliability and service survey, they still get high marks in those areas.

I should also mention that in July 2008, I compared the specs of Mac laptops to those of similar Windows machines and found very little price difference. In some cases, Apple laptops were less expensive than similarly configured Windows laptops.

But with the recession continuing, I took another look at how Apple's laptops compare price-wise to Windows notebooks. This time, I made a different comparison. Instead of starting by comparing specs and then comparing price tags, I flipped the equation. I asked the question: What would I get if I spent $1000 on a MacBook, and what would the same amount of money buy me in a reasonably similar Windows laptop? That's the focus this week. Next week: What will $2000 buy in a MacBook vs. a Windows laptop?

The Laptops

I compared Apple's least expensive MacBook (the white model, costing $999) to two Windows consumer laptops that also have 13.3-inch screens: the $999 HP Pavilion dv3510nr and a $1005 configuration of Dell's Inspiron 13.

Note: I haven't tested these laptops and make no judgment as to which computer is best.

Processor, Memory, Hard Drive

The Apple, Dell, and HP laptops have relatively similar Intel Core 2 Duo processors, ranging from 2.0 GHz to 2.4 GHz. But there were significant differences in memory and hard drives.

The Pavilion comes with 4GB of memory expandable to 8GB and a 320GB hard drive (at 5400 rpm). The Inspiron 13 I configured included 4GB of memory (not expandable) and a 500GB hard drive (5400 rpm).

By comparison, the $999 white MacBook offers only 2GB of memory (upgradable to 4GB for an additional $100) and a measly 120GB hard drive (at 5400 rpm). An upgrade to a 320GB drive adds $175 to the MacBook's cost. In other words: A white MacBook comparable in terms of memory and hard drive to the Pavilion would cost $274 more than the Pavilion.

Screen and Graphics Processor

All three laptops have a glossy, wide-screen 13-inch display. The HP's is also LED backlit, which tends to be brighter than a traditional LCD. More expensive MacBooks and MacBook Pros, as well as other Dell laptops, offer LED-backlit screens.

The Inspiron 13 has an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100, which is part of the laptop's system chip set and relies on the computer's main memory. Apple's white MacBook features the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor with 256MB of shared memory. The HP laptop looks like the winner here, as it uses the NVIDIA GeForce 9300 GS discrete graphics system with 512MB of dedicated graphics memory.

Generally speaking, a discrete graphics system provides smoother video and graphics than a graphics chip set that's integrated with the computer's system chip set and memory.

Networking and Weight

All three laptops included Ethernet ports and support for 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth. None offered built-in 3G cellular data networking. There wasn't much difference in their weights, either; all weighed 4.6 to 5 pounds, according to the manufacturers.

Other Features

There are lots of other differences between the MacBook and the two Windows laptops. A few examples:

• The MacBook and the Inspiron 13 offer two USB ports, compared to three for the Pavilion.
• The MacBook includes Apple's iLife 09, a terrific suite of integrated applications including iMovie (video editing), iPhoto (photo editing), GarageBand (audio editing), iWeb (for creating Web pages) and iDVD (for burning DVDs). Though the Windows laptops offer software applications for many of those functions, none is an integrated suite, like iLife.
• The MacBook doesn't ship with office productivity software. The HP Pavilion and Dell Inspiron 13 both come with Microsoft Works, a basic suite.

The Wrap Up

If you've got $1000 to spend, there's no question: Your dollar will go farther, in terms of specs and features, with the Dell or HP notebooks. The white MacBook seems a bit stale, in terms of tech specs, especially compared to the more expensive, refreshed MacBook line Apple introduced last fall.

Of course, the comparisons I've made here aren't the whole story by any stretch. For instance, in my opinion, Mac laptops are still easier--and more pleasurable--to use than Windows laptops. You can't attribute a dollar figure to that. And if you've got your heart set on a MacBook but you can't go above $1000, be aware that refurbished MacBook Airs are available from Apple.com for $999. (Refurbished laptops are returned to the store or manufacturer for a variety of reasons. The laptops are tested for defects and resold at a discount.)

Beyond the two Windows systems I've mentioned, there are countless other worthy models costing $1000 or less. Example: The Lenovo Ideapad Y530, which recently received a PCW rating of 85 (very good), is available for $829 and up. (I didn't compare it to the $999 MacBook because the Ideapad has a 15.4-inch screen, compared to the MacBook's 13.3-inch display.) You can even buy decent Windows laptops for around $500.

Keep on Clicking

• Ballmer Is Right: Mac Users Do Pay Dearly for Apple Logo
• How to Save $7500 on Your Technology Purchases
• How to Spot a Technology Money-Waster
• NPD: Mac Sales Fell 16 Percent in February

Mobile Computing News, Reviews, & Tips

Fujitsu's New Notebook with Two Screens: Fujitsu's new LifeBook N7010 features two screens: the main display is a fairly crisp 16-inch, 16:9 aspect-ratio screen. The second, a 4-inch touch screen, designed mainly for using shortcuts. But is that second screen worth the LifeBook's $1500 price tag? Find out in Darren Gladstone's review.

Dell Goes After MacBook Air with Adamo Laptop: Dell's new Adamo laptop line starts at $2000. The stylish, thin-and-light notebook goes head-to-head with Apple's MacBook Air and HP's Voodoo Envy, vying for style-conscious buyers. See also "Can Dell's Adamo Make Windows PCs Sexy?" and read our initial hands-on impressions.

Lenovo Does Yoga: Lenovo has revealed photos (though no specific pricing or spec details) of its Pocket Yoga concept PC, an ultra-compact portable that fits in a back pocket. The leather-bound portable features a QWERTY keyboard and touch screen and can be used as a tablet.

Contributing Editor James A. Martin offers tools, tips, and product recommendations to help you make the most of computing on the go. Martin is also author of the Traveler 2.0 blog. Sign up to have the Mobile Computing Newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

Alcatel Shows off IP Core for LTE Networks

Alcatel-Lucent on Wednesday was set to introduce its Evolved Packet Core (EPC), a set of network components that will help to power the LTE network of Verizon Wireless and other mobile operators.

LTE (Long-Term Evolution) is expected to be the next-generation mobile technology for a majority of mobile operators, while some others turn to the already available WiMax. Like WiMax, LTE is built entirely around IP (Internet Protocol) and transports all traffic, including voice calls, as packets. The new technology will be a hot topic at the CTIA trade show this week in Las Vegas, where Alcatel will demonstrate EPC.

The move to an all-IP infrastructure ultimately will allow Alcatel and other vendors to build a single network for mobile operators instead of the mixed ones used today for 3G, said Lindsay Newell, vice president of marketing at Alcatel. The broader implication of this is that carriers will be able to use one network for both wired and wireless broadband, potentially offering the same or integrated services on subscribers' PCs, TVs and mobile phones.

For mobile-phone users, that means being able to browse the Web while making a call. LTE will provide enough bandwidth for both and will transmit calls as VOIP (voice over IP), putting voice and data packets on separate "bearers" with appropriate levels of quality of service for each use of the network, Newell said. By contrast, 3G networks put voice calls on a dedicated, circuit-switched network while using a packet network for data traffic.

Alcatel's system for supporting this all-IP vision is EPC, built around Alcatel's 7750 Service Router, which is already used in wired broadband networks. The lineup consists of two plug-in modules for that router, plus two separate devices to manage the network and services.

The MME (Mobile Management Entity) and DSC (Dynamic Services Gateway) manage policy and mobility for users accessing the network. Among other things, they handle handoffs between cellular base stations and tie in to user authentication and billing systems. The Serving Gateway and Packet Data Network Gateway, implemented as hardware and software modules for the 7750, forward mobile traffic to the Internet and other IP networks.

These four elements will be ready for trial deployments this year and for commercial services next year, Newell said. Not surprisingly, Verizon has laid out the same rough timeline for its LTE rollout.

But "multiscreen" services available across a subscriber's fixed and mobile devices, using the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standard, are farther out. Carriers aren't likely to offer any of these until after 2010 at the earliest, Newell cautioned. Referring to the full name of Long-Term Evolution, he said, "the first two words are equally important."

With an eye to the long evolution to LTE, Alcatel this week is also announcing the 9238 Base Station Macro, a platform that allows both 3G and LTE baseband units to be installed in the same cabinet.

On Monday, the company announced the next version of the Alcatel-Lucent Rich Communications Manager. Carriers can provide this browser-based portal for subscribers to use on both their PCs and their mobile phones, delivering a unified inbox for e-mail and voicemail as well as a calendar and other features.

The Rich Communications Manager works with any major mobile browser but currently uses Flash, which leaves out the popular Apple iPhone for now. The company is working on future versions that will work without a browser, expanding the offering to less-expensive phones, said Ray Colbert, director of rich communications marketing strategy at Alcatel.

In addition to conventional text, instant messaging and e-mail, the Rich Communications Manager lets subscribers archive their text messages, send mass texts to a predefined group, and drag and drop multimedia content into instant messages. There is also a speech-to-text feature so users can read their voicemail messages.

The European carrier Telefonica 02 is already using the first version of the system. The next version, to be demonstrated at CTIA, will add a synchronized calendar and will be generally available in 30 to 60 days, according to Alcatel.

Three Free, Easy Ways To Protect Your Network

Whether the Conficker worm booms or fizzles, take it as a reminder to keep your networks safe. You could spend money on a security consultant--which isn't such a bad investment if helpful--but here are three free tricks to increase your network's security.

Use OpenDNS

Use OpenDNS Internet traffic gets routed through IP addresses; the text you type as a URL only sits on top of those numbers. Normally, when you type "pcworld.com," it gets referenced in a domain name server directory, which then routes you to the actual IP address. But what happens if that structure is compromised and an attacker can send your request to a different IP address?

Last year, a new, devious attack materialized with that technique. You'd type a trusted name as a URL, but instead of being routed to the correct server, you'd be sent elsewhere. You might even see the name of a bank in the URL bar, but you'd have no idea you're entering personal data directly into a hacker's site.

Domain name servers and operating systems were eventually patched to protect against this attack. But the OpenDNS server already anticipated the problem and is quick to react to threats. Use it instead of relying on your ISP's DNS servers.

On the client side, you can open the Network Connections Control Panel. Right-click the active connection, and pick Properties. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and click Properties. Click the radio button to Use the following DNS server addresses and enter 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

Or you can enable it on your router, sending DHCP clients these details without additional intervention. The specific process varies, but you'll essentially log in and enter those IP addresses in the NAT area. Visit OpenDNS.org for some hardware-specific details.

Update Your Router Firmware

Psyb0t is a worm that was written to attack router hardware directly, embedding itself inside. It simply guesses the login and password for a range of routers, starting with the defaults. At the very least, you should be using a strong password, especially since many low-end routers don't let you change the login ID. (Try a password of about 12 characters with a mix of numbers, letters, and symbols.)

Just like your operating system, hardware companies typically patch routers over time, especially when security flaws are discovered. Look up your specific model and see if there's a firmware update. If so, download, and apply the revision; it'll likely protect you from many attacks.

Disable Remote Administration

In addition to updating your router firmware and giving it a strong password, you can close another door by disabling remote administration. This option is often off by default, but check your router's settings to tell for sure.

With remote administration on, someone can log in from offsite. They'll typically need a valid password, although this access presents another weak point in your defenses.

If you need to administrate the network remotely, set up a secure connection to a VPN gateway at your network, instead of connecting in that open method. (Or use your router's built-in secure connection if available.)