Acer announced its Ferrari 4000 notebook computer this week, with a sleek black and red casing made from what it says is the
same carbon fiber technology used on the body of Formula One race cars. The engine of Acer's latest high-end notebook is a
Turion 64 processor from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) (Profile, Products, Articles) that runs both 32-bit and 64-bit programs, a Radeon X700 graphics processor from ATi Technology, a gigabyte of double data
rate dynamic RAM, and a 100GB hard drive, Acer said. The Ferrari 4000 has a DVD reader/burner onboard and a 15.4 inch display.
The notebook will come in two colors, black and Ferrari red. Acer is the official supplier to Scuderia Ferrari. A company
representative was unable to provide information about pricing and availability.
Veritas
set to release Panther to public beta
May 26, 7:50 a.m. PDT
Veritas Software (Profile, Products, Articles) next week will release to public beta a Web-based end-user file recovery solution, code-named Panther. The Veritas solution
captures granular changes to individual files in real time, delivering true continuous disk-based data protection. Panther
enables users to recover files through a simple Web browser interface on their desktops or laptops, eliminating the need for
IT assistance and reducing overall administration costs. Veritas' Backup Exec SmartLink technology, introduced in Version
10 of Backup Exec for Windows Servers, works with Panther to deliver integrated monitoring of Panther job status and alerts
from the Backup Exec Console. The beta software can be
downloaded starting June 2.
SMIC (Profile, Products, Articles) gets $600M loan from Chinese banks
May 26, 7:50 a.m. PDT
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China's largest chipmaker, announced Thursday it had secured a $600
million loan deal with a consortium of Chinese banks, saying the funds would be used to expand its manufacturing capacity
at the company's 300-millimeter chip fabrication plants in Beijing. At present, only one of three planned plants is being
used for commercial production. SMIC plans to begin pilot production runs at a second plant later this year, which will be
used to certify that the plant is ready for commercial production. The company has not announced plans to begin production
at the third plant, although construction of the building for this plant is complete.
Mainsoft (Profile, Products, Articles)
ships Visual MainWin for J2EE Developer Edition
May 25,
9:45 a.m. PDT
Cross-platform development company Mainsoft has announced the availability of Visual MainWin for J2EE Developer Edition. Also
known as Grasshopper, the Visual Studio .Net plug-in lets Visual Studio developers quickly develop Web applications for Linux
. The plug-in, technical articles, and community forums are available at no charge to developers who register at
http://dev.mainsoft.com
. Mainsoft also announced it is extending its collaboration with the Mono open-source development community to enable Visual
Studio .Net developers to contribute enhancements, class libraries, and fixes to Grasshopper's and Mono's shared open source
runtime.
Avinti
iSolation Server 2.0 stops unknown e-mail viruses
May 25,
6:55 a.m. PDT
Avinti on Wednesday announced iSolation Server 2.0, a next-generation anti-virus solution. Avinti iSolation Server uses virtual
machine technology to identify unknown viruses by testing for and observing malicious behavior in a secure, virtual environment.
Version 2.0 also offers new enhanced scalability to more than 10,000 mailboxes with multiple servers, as well as enterprise-class
reporting capabilities with an SMTP traffic monitor that accurately profiles SMTP traffic. The reporting capabilities will
also be available as a stand-alone product. Pricing is based on a per-mailbox license, starting at $12.50 per mailbox depending
on quantity. Avinti iSolation Server 2.0 will be available in June.
Zend
ships Zend Studio 4 Enterprise
May 24, 7:35 a.m. PDT
Zend Technologies (Profile, Products, Articles) on Monday announced Zend Studio 4 Enterprise, a high-end version of the company's Zend Studio 4 application development
environment. The Enterprise version is specifically designed for business-critical application development, offering a comprehensive
set of features for creating highly reliable PHP applications and new tools for creating and testing enterprise-grade PHP
apps. Zend Studio 4 Enterprise facilitates team development and collaboration and offers enhanced integration with Java and
JVM. Zend Studio 4 Enterprise is available immediately for $499 for a one-year subscription license, and $1,495 for a perpetual
license. Current Zend Studio customers can purchase it for $1,196.
OASIS members approve OpenDocument as standard
May 24, 7:35 a.m. PDT
OASIS announced that its members, including IBM (Profile, Products, Articles) and Sun Microsystems (Profile, Products, Articles), have approved the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Version 1.0 as an OASIS standard. The OpenDocument
royalty-free standard provides a single XML schema for text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. It uses existing
standards, such as HTML, SVG, XLink, and XForms, wherever possible. OpenDocument can be used as a default file format for
office applications with no increase in file size or loss of data integrity.
