With the rise of new, ultra-small netbook computers, Linux has a chance to make its case to consumers. Windows Vista usually won't fit on netbooks, XP already has one foot in the grave, and many netbook buyers may give Linux serious consideration when choosing what OS they want pre-installed. Microsoft says Windows 7 will target netbooks, but until that OS is released, the ball's in Linux's court.

Microsoft learned valuable lessons from the Windows Vista experience, even though the company spent much of 2008 pretending that nothing was wrong with it and that the market hadn't given it a fair shake.

Microsoft showed off new Windows 7 innovations at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week. The focus was how the upcoming version of Microsoft's flagship product will make it easier for hardware partners to create new experiences for Windows PC customers.

Windows senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan rallied hardware partners, encouraging them to begin testing their current products and building new products on the application programming interface (API).

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If there is a common primary goal amongst all system administrators, it is probably "to keep the system up and running." Such a goal has many ramifications, including keeping hardware and software debugged, making sure all upgrades and updates are in place and keeping users functioning and happy. Because technology is such an integral part of companies today, a stable system greatly contributes to a secure, prospering enterprise. It is therefore of benefit to IT personnel everywhere to fully address blocks to that stability.
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Whether you're looking for a system that can take on today's most popular titles or a hardcore rig capable of dominating next-generation DirectX(R) 10 games such as Crysis(R) or Far Cry(R) 2, the Area-51 750i can be easily customized to fit your needs. The base configuration delivers intense gaming performance at a budget-friendly starting price of $1,049, while more aggressive configurations include the Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU, NVIDIA(R) SLI(R) or ATI CrossFireX(TM) multi-GPU graphics, up to 8GB of DDR2 memory and a 64-bit OS.

Once confined to marketing departments and media companies, the Mac is spilling over into a wider array of business environments, thanks to the confluence of a number of computing trends, not the least among them a rising tide of end-user affinity for the Apple experience. Luckily for IT, many of those same trends are making it easier for tech departments to say yes to the Mac by facilitating IT’s ability to provide enterprise-grade Mac management and support.

Don’t miss SQL Server Magazine Connections Conference, the premier event for Microsoft developers and DBAs, in Las Vegas, November 10-13. Every attendee will receive a copy of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition with one CAL.

Virtualization.info, the most popular and trusted news source about virtualization technologies since 2003, invites you to attend its premiere conference: the Virtualization Congress. On a truly independent stage, you’ll see the top technical speakers from the biggest industry players presenting real products, side by side with newest startups, who will be announcing for the first time breakthrough technologies. Join the entire virtualization ecosystem for three days and meet the people that are changing forever the way we deliver IT infrastructures.

View this web seminar to see how you can virtualize the connections between servers and storage creating a shared pool of resources, and is a flexible and highly available platform for consolidating SQL Server infrastructure. Thus seeing no degradation in performance and management is streamlined making this an ideal solution for mission-critical SQL Server databases running SAP applications.

Join Microsoft for the 2nd Annual Microsoft BI Conference from October 6-8th in Seattle, Washington. You’ll gain insight from industry thought leaders; learn about how other Microsoft BI customers are having success; discover best practices and gain product insight from Microsoft’s product experts. Visit www.msbiconference.com for more information.

IndyTechFest is the premier Developer/DBA conference in Indianapolis. Hosted by IndyPASS and IndyNDA, this years' conference includes over 30 sessions to fill your day with training from product experts and Microsoft MVPs. Admission is free!

Help desk support is more secure remotely than in person. That's Joel's argument in this video. On site support visits leave no audit trail and have little means of security authentication.

Remote desktop support, with Bomgar at least, is more secure. Help desk reps must pass through rigorous security steps and only have remote access to the specific applications they need to support.

SIMtone Corporation, a privately held company delivering the next cloud computing paradigm, today announced a new cloud computing device designed specifically for the mobile broadband market. The new SIMtone SNAPbook is the industry's first wireless-ready, zero-touch portable WiFi SIMtone terminal that can be used to access on-demand and on- the-fly any virtual desktop and other cloud computing services powered by the SIMtone platform.

I really enjoyed watching this recent interview with Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich on Microsoft’s TechNet Edge. He covers a wide range of topics, but the one that got my attention is a two-minute snippet near the end, when the interviewer asks whether Mark feels that Microsoft needs to make its own desktop hardware.

There is a lot of talk at present about virtualisation, rack dense computing, thin client technology and so on but what does it all really mean? Many years ago, I carried out some research into the future of thin client computing at a time when the web was not universally available, e-mail was just beginning to become available on the corporate desktop, PCs were starting to intrude into our daily business lives and relational databases had become a credible toolset - yes, it was a long time ago.