News
IT News: Wireless LAN, Ethernet Hit Growth Spurts
Plus, new laptops for the road warrior, an Exchange hosting service and IT records retention products.
Someday, wired LANs will seem as old as dial-up Internet. A recent study by
Infonetics Research predicts that by 2010, 85 percent of all North American
organizations will have hopped on the WLAN bandwagon, compared to just 56 percent
in 2005. The study cites two major reasons for the jump: employee demand and
businesses' increasing reliance on wireless mobility.
Even so, growth in the "wired" kind of networking -- specifically,
metro Ethernet equipment -- hasn't gone unnoticed by Infonetics' radar. The
research company expects worldwide sales to balloon from $5 billion last year
to $15 billion by 2009, with carrier-class switches and routers leading the
charge. http://www.info.infonetics.com
New Products: StepNote NC1500, Alienware, Iron Mountain,
More
The world's most energy-efficient notebook? That's what VIA Technologies and
Everex Systems are calling their new joint offering: the StepNote NC1500 notebook,
which runs on just 12W at peak power. Retailing for $498 at Wal-Mart, the NC1500
uses the VIA C7-M processor, which the companies say increases the computer's
battery life by as much as 20 percent. Other features include a 15.4-inch display
with DiamondBrite technology, built-in DVD burner and wireless LAN card. http://www.everex.com/nc1500/
Also claiming its own notebook landmark is computer manufacturer Alienware,
which now equips its Aurora m9700 and Aurora mALX notebooks with up to 400GB
in hard drive capacity. Customers can configure these notebooks with either
one or two 200GB hard drives, the latter translating into enough space for roughly
67 games, 100 feature-length movies and 100,000 songs. http://www.alienware.com/200GBPR
Retention Center, a new Web-based records-retention program due for general
availability in the first quarter of 2007, is in the works for Iron Mountain.
Designed to help companies comply with evolving federal laws on records retention,
the Retention Center will help make pinpointing where specific information has
been stored and managing retention schedules easier, the company says.
In that same vein, Iron Mountain announced that it will collaborate with Microsoft
to equip companies upgrading to Office 2007 with records-management solutions.
The company expects to provide Office 2007 customers with and access to Iron
Mountain's consulting services to help them create a records-management program
they can implement through SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007.
http://www.ironmountain.com
Integration between Windows and Unix/Linux servers just got cheaper, according
to MKS Inc. The company has just released the MKS X/Server which, at $199 for
a single user license, costs less than half the price of Hummingbird Exceed,
MKS says. Even switching servers will cost less than usual; the company has
implemented a "Premiere Replacement Program" to save companies money
if they decide to swap their current PC X server for an MKS X/Server. The MKS
X/Server features cut-and-paste capability between Unix/Linux and Windows apps,
color matching and built-in SSH with secure tunneling. http://www.mkssoftware.com
Here's something for Microsoft partners: ThinOffice, Ceryx's hosted Exchange
services suite. Developed with Microsoft Canada, ThinOffice lets partners offer
customers an HMC-based messaging solution, messaging services like Active Sync
and Blackberry Enterprise Server, and the ThinOffice Customer Centre, a Web-based
administration application where users can do all their major mailbox management.
http://www.thinoffice.com/partner-programs.html
Alt-N technologies has a new anti-virus tool for users of the MDaemon e-mail
server with SecurityPlus, now featuring Recurrent Pattern Detection from Kaspersky
Lab and Outbreak Protection from Commtouch. SecurityPlus compares the e-mail
message patterns of MDaemon users with other patterns collected from live Internet
e-mail traffic. Based on this analysis, SecurityPlus can catch zero-hour outbreaks
within minutes, the company says. http://www.altn.com/SecurityPlus
For creative professionals up to their ears in audio editing, Adobe's Soundbooth
is now available as a free, downloadable beta. Compatible with both Intel-based
Macintosh computers and Windows-based PCs, Soundbooth features tight integration
with Macromedia Flash to let you clean up background noise from recordings,
polish voiceovers and add customized music and effects to an existing audio
file. http://labs.adobe.com/soundbooth