VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X to Release on Monday, August 6th

VMware has announced the public availability of its VMware Fusion software will finally happen on Monday 6th August 2007. With the new software all Mac users will be able to simultaneously run Mac OS X, Windows and other PC-based applications on Intel-based Macs. The other option is restarting to run Windows and Windows applications, as Apple’s Boot Camp software mandates.

VMware boasts that its VMware Fusion enables Mac users to run both 32- and 64-bit operating systems, using two processor cores concurrently, and a number of USB 2.0 devices. Further more, VMware maintained that Fusion also has the distinction of being the only Mac virtualization software available in the present day that has the ability to offer support for more than 60 operating systems and power management capabilities to safeguard virtual machines when laptops are running out of battery.

VMware Fusion beta was released in December 2006 and since then there have already been 250,000 downloads of the software.

VMware product manager Dan Chu said, “VMware Fusion was designed for Mac enthusiasts looking for a seamless way to run Windows applications on the Mac.” Adding, “VMware Fusion combines a very clean and intuitive interface that Mac users expect with the world’s most trusted desktop virtualization platform to allow users to run Mac applications seamlessly alongside PC applications on Intel-based Macs.”

However, VMware is sure to face a cut throat competition from the Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac product, in the Windows-on-Mac virtualization market. Parallels launched its third-generation product in June and a few days later there was news about the VMware Fusion Software bringing Windows apps to Mac.

For those who are currently working with Parallels, VMWare provides a Converter utility to allow users to convert their Parallels virtual machine to a VMWare version instead. Fusion also works with Boot Camp.

Parallels director Benjamin Rudolph maintained, “We’re confident that we will maintain our leadership role by continuing to respond to the needs of our customers by introducing new groundbreaking technologies - as we did with Coherence and SmartSelect - that make working with multiple operating systems easier, faster, and more productive than ever before.”

According to Lee, users who are using Parallels with a Boot Camp partition are encouraged to uninstall Parallels prior to installing Fusion.

Furthermore, Fusion bundles “experimental” support for Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard,” and also features “experimental” 3D graphics support making it possible for users to try Windows games (similarly to Parallels, it’s limited at this time to DirectX 8.1 support — an older version of Microsoft’s 3D API).

VMware Fusion is now available online, and will be available through Apple’s retail stores and other authorized retailers worldwide. And the VMware Fusion site states: For a limited time, VMware Fusion is available for pre-order for only $39.99, a 50% savings over the suggested retail price of $79.99 when VMware Fusion is released for general availability.” So you have a chance to pre-order it now through Sunday, August 5, 12:00 PM (Pacific Time).



source:tech2.com
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Acer TravelMate 6291 Notebook launched in India

Acer India has just launched the ultra portable Acer TravelMate 6291 notebook that runs on the latest Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processor T5500. This notebook also comes preloaded with Windows Vista Business. The Acer TravelMate 6291 notebook has a design that boasts portability, protection and user-friendliness, making it a trustworthy companion especially for business professionals.

The TravelMate 6291 notebook is powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processor T5500 with 2MB cache and 1.66/667 MHz FSB. It even supports Intel 64 architecture, Mobile Intel 945GM Express Chipset and Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN network solution, providing excellent speed and performance, better graphics and signal integrity using the N Wireless platform.

Moreover, the newly launched TravelMate 6291 notebook from Acer has a large storage capacity with its 160GB Hard Disk Drive.

The TravelMate 6291 notebook sports a 12.1-inch WXGA Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD display. This notebook offers system memory of 1GB RAM that is upgradeable to 4GB.

The TravelMate 6291 laptop is equipped with a battery life up to 5 hours. Besides, the Acer ePower Management enables users to choose the power management setting in order to extend the battery life.

What’s more; the Acer SignalUp and Acer GridVista technologies that have been incorporated into this notebook only provide more reliable wireless connectivity as well as optimized and feature driven display management.

The Acer TravelMate 6291 notebook has an embedded DVD-Writer.

A notable feature of Acer’s new notebooks lies in its design. With its sturdy and slim magnesium alloy cover, the TravelMate 6291 laptop is 20 times stronger and lighter than plastic. This tends to lessen the weight and even helps to protect against drops, vibration, dust and everyday wear and tear.

Other features of the TravelMate 6291 notebook include anti-shock protection, Gigabit LAN, easy-launch buttons for WLAN, Bluetooth 2.0, email, Internet and Acer Video Conferencing facilities using the Acer CrystalEye Webcam.

According to Rajendran, general manager, sales and marketing. Acer India, “We are the first to launch the latest notebook with Intel Core 2 Duo and Vista business in India with the ultra-portable TravelMate 6291.”

The Acer TravelMate 6291 notebook is available at a price of Rs.47,499 (excluding taxes) in India


source:tech2.com
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HP Dismisses Laser Printer Health Risks

Printer manufacturer claims that emissions from its laser printers do not pose a danger.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Hewlett-Packard Co. Friday disputed research published earlier this week that said some of its laser printers may be a health risk to office and home computer users. While it did not directly contest the data gathered by Australian researchers, the U.S.-based printer and computer manufacturer flatly rejected the idea that emissions pose a danger.

"We do not believe there is a link between printer emissions and any public health risk," the company said in a statement.

On Wednesday, researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, published a paper detailing emission measurements of 58 laser printers inside a typical office. Emissions, believed to be related to the ultrafine powdered toner used in the printers, were tracked and the printers ranked as non-, low-, medium- or high-emitters. HP's models dominated the last category, accounting for 90 percent of the printers classified as emitting high levels of particulates.

"HP does not see an association between printer use by customers and negative health effects for volatile organic compounds, ozone or dust," the company continued in its statement. "While we recognize ultrafine, fine, and coarse particles are emitted from printing systems, these levels are consistently below recognized occupational exposure limits."

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy lab in Berkeley, Calif., agreed that it's too early to draw a line between printer emissions and health dangers.

"What we don't know is what the findings in the study mean," said Rich Sextro, an environment scientist at Berkeley Lab, in a posting on the laboratory's Web site. "Certainly our expectation is that exposures to lots of ultrafine particles probably isn't a very good thing, but we have no idea at the moment what that translates into in the real world."

The Australian study is among the first to document emissions from laser printers, but the specifics of how printers produce particles and what those particles are made of is mostly unknown -- something HP emphasized. "Testing of ultrafine particles is a very new scientific discipline," the company said. "Currently, the nature and chemical composition of such particles, whether from a laser printer or from a toaster, cannot be accurately characterized."

One thing that everyone agreed on -- even the Australian researchers -- is that more study should be done. Until a definitive link between laser printers, particulates and health risks are made, "fine particles alone are not enough to worry about," said Tom McKone, another Berkeley Lab scientist.


source:pcworld.com
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Mozilla Giving Away Security Testing Tools

Mozilla is releasing some of its own security tools to the open-source community.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Mozilla Corp. will release some of its homegrown security tools to the open-source community, the company's head of security said Wednesday, starting with a "fuzzer" it uses to pin down JavaScript bugs in Firefox.

The JavaScript fuzzer, said Window Snyder, Mozilla's security chief since last September, will be handed over Thursday morning, following a presentation at Black Hat, a two-day security conference that opened Wednesday in Las Vegas.

"We're announcing that we'll be sharing our tools with the community, and releasing the JavaScript fuzzer then," said Snyder. Other tools will follow, including fuzzers that stress-test the HTTP and FTP protocols. Those two tools, however, are not ready to offer to outsiders, largely because Mozilla wants to wrap up talks with other browser vendors before they are shared.

Fuzzing, a technique used by both white- and black-hat researchers trolling for vulnerabilities, and by developers to finger flaws in their code before it goes public, drops data into applications or operating system components to see if -- and where -- breakdowns occur. Typically, the process is automated with a fuzzer, the term for software that hammers on application inputs. The JavaScript fuzzer, Snyder said, has identified "dozens" of vulnerabilities in Firefox code.

Snyder said Firefox developers have created many tools, and though a lot of them are small, special-purpose ones, all of them could be useful to others.

"We want to make the work we're already doing available to other people and to other products" in the hope that the tools might help developers outside Mozilla spot problems in their code, she said. Snyder sees a direct benefit to Mozilla, too. The more people who bang on the tool, tweak it and modify it, the better the tools should become, she said.

She seemed unconcerned that any tool Mozilla released would prove a significant danger to users. Although hackers also use fuzzers in their vulnerability-sniffing tool kits, "the tool isn't bad or good on its own," Snyder argued. "They use debuggers all the time. Debuggers aren't bad" because of that.

Mozilla might have wished it had fuzzed Firefox a bit more over the past three weeks, when it was caught in a name-calling contest between it and Microsoft Corp. supporters. Early last month, Danish researcher Thor Larholm found what he said was a critical input-validation bug in Internet Explorer that let the browser pass potentially malicious URLs to other programs, including Firefox. He laid blame on IE, while other security experts said it was Firefox's fault.

Shortly after that, Snyder hinted that she saw the whole mess as an IE problem, but within days acknowledged that Firefox was guilty of the same behavior. "We thought this was just a problem with IE," she said July 23. "It turns out, it is a problem with Firefox as well."

Wednesday, she said that the very public disagreements between security experts as to which browser was to blame had actually been a good thing. "Debate is healthy," she said. "And if we're wrong, we say we're wrong and move on."

Mozilla updated Firefox twice in July, first on July 17 with 2.0.0.5, and then Monday when it released Version 2.0.0.6. Both updates included fixes for the URL protocol handling bug that started the brouhaha. "We weren't twiddling our thumbs during all of this," said Snyder. "We were also on the back end moving forward with fixes."

At Black Hat, Snyder and fellow Mozilla executive Mike Shaver, the company's technology strategist, also plan to discuss the new security features of Firefox 3, the major update that currently is in preview testing. Firefox 3 is expected to ship sometime this year.


source:pcworld.com
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Microsoft to Release Free Version of Works

Microsoft confirmed Wednesday that it will be rolling out a free, ad-supported version of Microsoft Works over the next few months.

ADVERTISEMENT The free version, Microsoft Works SE 9, won't be distributed by Microsoft. Instead, the company's OEM partners will be responsible for the pilot deployment, according to a statement released by the company.

Microsoft decided to run the pilot, which will run for about a year across an unspecified number of "developed" countries, "in response to customer and partner needs who definitely value having productivity [applications] installed on their new PCs," said Melissa Stern, a senior product manager for Microsoft, in an interview.

The Works 9 SE software, however, will only be deployed by a limited number of OEMs. Microsoft's Stern would not name them or their number. The Works 9 SE software, however, will likely provide an inexpensive means of enticing customers to use Microsoft's low-cost Works suite, which include a word processor, database, spreadsheet, calendar and task launcher.

Microsoft Works Suite 2005
Works 9 SE (the SE is a designation, not an abbreviation, Stern said) will complement Works 9, which will be available for retail "very soon" for $39.95. Both Works 9 and Works SE are essentially identical in features and function, with the only difference the addition of advertising in the SE product, Stern said.

That advertising will be provided by Microsoft, through its partners. Ads displayed will be in conventional formats, such as a 180 x 150-pixel format. They also will be located in natural locations, she said: in the task pane, for example, the top two-thirds of the pane are used for displaying relevant information, such as recently-opened documents. The bottom third of the pane will be used to display the ad.

Accordinng to Stern, the ads served will be "relevant" to the user's activities. "We're defining who the audience is and what they're doing, such as working in budgets," she said.

"We've put a lot of thought into the implementation of advertising in Works, a lot of careful research in designing the ads in a way that's not overly intrusive," Stern added.

As one of the first major offline applications to integrate advertising, Works will have to provide relevant ads to keep its advertisers happy. However, Stern flatly denied that the software would examine the user content, whether actively -- as the user types it in -- or via saved content.

"We're serving relevant ads about what we know about Works users," Stern said. "We're not looking at content at all."

Stern declined to name the advertisers.


Editor's Note:This story was updated at 4:03 PM PDT with comments from Microsoft's Stern.


source:pcmag.com
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HP India launches a New Line-up of Business Notebooks

Hewlett Packard (HP) has announced the availability of their latest line-up of business notebooks in India. The four newly launched notebooks mainly suit the business requirements. The business notebooks having the tag of standard (s), business (b), professional (p) and workstation (w) after the main model name, allows users to easily identify the feature set that best aligns with their particular needs. P. Raghuraman, Country Manager - Business Notebooks, Personal Systems Group, HP India said, “At HP, we believe in understanding deeply the customer needs and thus developing products and solutions to suit their requirements. Hence, backed with a strong research and development team, HP is able to deliver the right mix of mobility, security and productivity to a wide range of business users.” Raghuraman continued, “Three basic principles - Ease of use, security and reliability are at the heart of every HP Business Notebook PC.”

Below is a little on each of the newly launched HP notebooks.

Falling in the ‘p’ as in ‘professional’ range of notebooks is the HP Compaq 2710p, 2510p and 6910p notebook PC.

The HP Compaq 2710p Notebook PC, weighing at about 1.65 kg, is a chic, stylish and ultra-thin convertible tablet that has a screen which is rather interesting. When twisted, the screen changes from an ultra-light notebook PC into pen-based tablet. The HP NightLight on the keyboard feature helps to enhance visibility in low light and integrated business card reader software.

The next in the series is the HP Compaq 2510p Notebook PC which is the smallest and lightest business notebook starting at merely 1.3kg with an in-built optical drive. Dual-pointing devices, both a touchpad with scroll zone and point stick, offer users greater flexibility. With respect to the tablet, the Illumi-Lite display advances battery life by up to 90 minutes over a notebook with traditional backlighting.

And finally the last in the professional range is the HP Compaq 6910p Notebook PC, which packs in industry-leading battery life of up to five hours and 45 minutes. With a starting weight of only 2.0 kg, this notebook is designed for on-the-move productivity.

Coming to the next array of HP notebooks is the ‘b’ for business category of notebooks:

The HP Compaq 2200 series Notebook PC puts forth excellent mobility blended with performance and value. The super-slim notebook that sports a 12.1-inch diagonal widescreen display comes with an integrated DVD Writer etc in just 1.7Kgs.

Next in the list is the HP Compaq 6500 series Notebook PC that delivers better mobility. It incorporates a simple low profile 14.1-inch diagonal widescreen display that offers 30 percent more viewing content than the standard 15-inch diagonal XGA display.

The third one dubbed the HP Compaq 6700 series Notebook PC; it comes with large displays, value and extensive connectivity. They feature a widescreen 15.4 inch diagonal widescreen display with a choice of anti-glare or HP BrightView display options.

HP’s workstation (w) range of notebooks includes the following:

The HP Compaq 8710 series is the company’s most powerful business notebook PC and mobile workstation. Offering the highest-end, independent software vendor-certified NVIDIA 3D graphics, a high-resolution 17-inch diagonal widescreen display and a full-size keyboard with numeric pad. The 8710 series offers HP Performance Tuning Framework, which is a free, simple and convenient to use tool that guides workstation setup and custom configures workstations to better match users’ requirements.

The other one is the HP Compaq 8510 series, which is essentially a notebook PC and mobile workstation offering a variety of intense graphics from ATI and NVIDIA in a 2.77 kg highly mobile design. In addition, users can also develop, record, re-write and playback high-definition video, as well as store up to 50 GB of data, with optional Blu-ray DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL Drive with any of the new high-performance notebook PCs and mobile workstations.

Apart from the advanced individual features, all the HP business notebooks feature HP InnoPro - a suite of hardware features and software solutions that are designed to increase security, improve ease of use and help ensure reliability. These improvements help lessen risk, boost productivity, and improve the mobile computing experience so that users can focus on their business.

Furthermore, HP’s business notebook array is one of the first to bundle the IntelR CentrinoR Pro Mobile technology, which offers built-in remote manageability and proactive security. The notebooks include HP ProtectTools security solution, a family of business PC security features such as Embedded Security, Smart Card Security, Credential Manager, Security Manager, and BIOS Configuration security enhancements. These solutions make it possible for users to experience performance and mobility while protecting the notebook, safeguarding both data and network connections from unauthorized access. HP integrates features such as HP DuraKeys, which are up to 50 times more resistant to visible wear than competitor keyboards without it. The notebooks sport easy-to-access features such as HP QuickLook, which with a touch of a button allows users to browse email, calendars and contact information in as little as ten seconds.

The latest line-up of the HP business notebooks start from Rs 24,990 and go up to Rs 1,49,990 (excluding taxes) and is available throughout India.


source:techshout.com
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